Editing BlazBlue:Calamity Trigger Part 1 Chapter 4 (section)

===Part 2===

Drizzle

Though weak, the night rain chilled the body. Feeling the damp, slightly cooler air, Ragna looked up at the sky.

The Kagutsuchi Branch of the Novus Orbis Librarium.

The three-pronged building stretched up towards the heavens, even higher than the mountain peak on which it stood. With its white exterior, it resembled a magnificent temple, its tip piercing through the clouds. Illuminated from below, it seemed to float in the dark night.

It was a beautiful building. But not everything inside was beautiful. Especially... whatever was deep underground. At the end of the city, there's an entrance at the end of a long bridge-like passage. Taking a deep breath, he started walking down the passage.

His hard shoes clicked on the floor. Before long, he felt something odd. It was unusually quiet. And…

"There's no barrier magic?" Halfway down the passage, Ragna frowned suspiciously. Every city and facility he'd ever been to had powerful barrier magic at the front entrance, designed to turn anyone who tried to enter without permission into charcoal at a touch. But there was no sign of magic at the sealed entrance, and there was no gatekeeper either, who should have been standing guard.

"What's going on?" 

Suspecting a trap, he found himself in front of the door. He reached out his hand. Normally, he would have felt a repulsive sensation, and his hand would have felt like it had been struck by an electric shock. 

But again, there was nothing.

He touched it with his left hand. The door was completely harmless, as if it were just a huge, ordinary door, silently keeping its mouth shut.

"...Well, whatever." Deciding there was no point in thinking about it, Ragna slashed at the door with the sword at his waist, which he would normally open with magic.

His blade was shrouded in a pitch-black darkness, and he cut through the thick, sturdy door as if it were butter. After creating an entrance large enough for one person, Ragna stepped inside with the ease of someone returning home.

The entrance, as seen from the outside, was a grand and solemn structure. The ceiling, which was so high that it made one look up, was arched and lined with evenly spaced white columns. As he went deeper, he eventually emerged into a bright, open space. It was a cathedral, an area with a high ceiling.

In the open space surrounded by circular floors, there stood a colossal, pure white statue of a woman. The beautiful figure of the woman was both divine and inorganic, and her eyeless gaze was directed at the holy book she held and the lower floors. Countless magic circles floated in the high, open ceiling, which seemed to imitate the sky. They illuminated the goddess and the countless floors with a divine light like sunlight. 

This light would never go out. It was as if there was no such thing as night. It was cold to be in darkness all the time, but it was also creepy to be in the morning all the time.

As he walked in front of the goddess, who was bathed in a warm, soft light that seemed to disturb his sense of time, Ragna cast a sharp gaze around him. There was no one in the branch.

If someone had attacked, there would be signs of a battle, and bodies would be lying around. But there were none. As if no one had ever been there from the beginning, or as if all living things had been sucked into something and lost their existence, the branch was empty. With every step, his footsteps echoed.

The statue of the goddess said nothing.

A painful silence stretched on and on…

(No...)

As he continued walking at the same pace, Ragna sensed a presence in the deserted branch. At the top of the stairs, in the shadows of the columns, at the end of the circular floor. Someone was... no, it was him.

When he realized this, a fire ignited deep within Ragna's stomach. The strange absence of anyone in the branch no longer mattered. In that moment any thoughts of the Cauldron and the Boundary vanished from his mind. He could tell without seeing. He could tell without hearing. If there was an invisible connection, it must have been there.

What would he call it? If Ragna were to name that bond now, he would choose "hatred."

His mind was racing. The anger he had built up over years was about to explode within him. The last image he had seen of him flashed before his eyes. 

His brother, Jin’s face, grinning eerily.

His memory of parting with him was intertwined with the crimson of the raging flames.




When he rushed back in a panic at the sound of the explosion, the church was already engulfed in flames. The front entrance, the windows of the corridor, and the back door leading to the fields were all filled with flames, as if to make it impossible to enter from anywhere.

The heat was so intense that it felt like his skin was being burned just by getting close, and sparks mixed with the air he cautiously inhaled. He couldn't see inside. All he could see were the flames dancing wildly.

Ragna stopped in front of the front entrance, breathing roughly over his shoulder, and stood there dumbfounded for a few seconds, overwhelmed by the despair. He didn't know what had happened. His numb mind couldn't think. There was only the heat that threatened to burn at a touch, the sparks swirling like a brain, and the terrible smell of something burning.

"What... the hell is this... Saya, Jin! Grandma!" He shouted towards the depths of the flames. A burst of fire hit him on the way, and he coughed violently at the searing heat.

Despite the intense heat, Ragna couldn't stop shivering. Driven by desperation, he stumbled forward. He searched for any opening, any sign of life. 

"Saya! Jin! Damn it, anyone, answer me! I'm going to burn up!" His voice cracked with panic. The embers he'd unknowingly inhaled scorched his throat. His exposed arm and face felt on fire, a stark reminder of the hellish reality he was trapped in.

"Grandma! Jin... ah..." Avoiding the church, Ragna quickly looked around, and for a moment, his throat tightened. 

He found it. Next to the church, there was a thick, tall tree. At its base, where he and Jin used to climb as children, lay a small body, limp and lifeless. It was Saya wearing a white dress and long golden hair.

"Saya! Are you alright!?" Shouting her name, Ragna hurried over and lifted her soft body. There was no sign of consciousness in his sister, who limply leaned into him. But he could see that her chest was rising and falling with weak but steady breaths. Her lips moved faintly, letting out a tiny groan that was too soft to hear.

"Thank God... she's alive." Relief and anxiety flooded him at once. "Damn it! Where are Jin and Grandma!? What the hell happened!? What's wrong with my body!?"

Just as he was thinking this, a voice suddenly came from behind him.

"Brother..." The sweet, almost teasing voice made Ragna quickly turn around in a panic.

"Jin!" He saw him—without a doubt, it was his younger brother Jin, who appeared to be conscious and able to walk on his own. "Are you okay? What happened?"

Ragna rushed over and reached out to his brother, who was much shorter than him. From what he could see, there didn’t seem to be any obvious injuries, but Jin was oddly looking down, as though trying to hide his face, which worried Ragna.

"What’s wrong? Does something hurt?"

"Brother..." 

As Ragna tried to ask, Jin smiled. It was probably a smile of relief since they had reunited. But for some reason, Ragna felt something off about the smile, something twisted in its shape, and he furrowed his brow in concern.

"Hey, Jin?" Before he could finish his question, a sharp pain shot through his shoulder, and he heard a sickening sound as something heavy and wet was severed. 

"...Huh?" His shoulder jerked involuntarily, and then something seemed to fly off. It felt both light and heavy. The sensation, as it came at him, was a pain he had never experienced before.

"Guahhh!" 

What just happened? His knees gave way, and he collapsed to the ground. The pain was so intense that his vision blurred. He grabbed his throbbing shoulder, and there was a squishy, wet sensation. Instinctively, he felt nauseous. The sensation was disgusting.

What should have been there was missing. His arm, which had been hanging naturally from his shoulder just moments ago, was gone.

From a distance, something fell onto the grass. It was long and curved, familiar, yet something he had never seen at this distance... it was Ragna’s right arm.

"Aah—" As his brain processed the reality, the pain swelled, magnifying, sending sharp tremors through every nerve in his body. "Uwaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!"

The scream that erupted from his throat didn’t even sound like his own voice. He couldn’t tell where reason ended and where reality began—everything was a tangled mess now. Amidst the chaos in his mind, a cold voice stabbed through his fractured thoughts, like a knife.

“Hahaha! Damn, Ragna, that must hurt like hell. Does it hurt? Huh, does it? I bet it does, hahahahaha!” 

Ragna forced his heavy eyelids open, shivering violently from the cold and heat. Jin was looking down at him, his face twisted in a cruel grin as he clutched his shoulder in agony. And behind him... a shadow, a figure shaped like a person, was smiling with a crescent-shaped mouth.

It was a horrible voice, a horrible laugh, a horrible presence.

“Jin... run,” Ragna managed to say, his tongue thick and heavy. This shadow was evil. He had a terrible feeling about it. “Take Saya and run!”

His intuition told him that the sister had probably been killed. The explosion and the fire in the church were undoubtedly the work of this shadow.
“Jin!”

“Brother...” Jin replied dreamily, as if his mind were far away. “You’re wrong... Brother...”

“What the hell are you talking about? Just go, damn it...” Slipping past Jin, the shadow slid into Ragna’s vision. Its large, green, vacant eyes stared at Ragna's face, which was now inches from the ground.

“Damn you...”

“Oh dear, you’re on your last legs. Are you going to die? Huh? Are you going to die? Kukuku. Well, just crawl around on the ground and die. I’m done with everything, and I have no more use for you.” The shadow mocked the helpless Ragna and stood up lightly. Then, it swayed over to Saya’s side.

When the shadow returned to Ragna’s sight, it was carrying Saya’s small, limp body on its shoulder.

“Saya...”

“Well, I’m going now. I’m taking the kids with me. See ya.” The shadow walked away lightly, as if leaving a friend’s house, and Jin followed a few steps behind. He was holding an unsheathed sword. He stopped in front of Ragna and pulled the sword from its sheath. The icy-cold blade gleamed in the light of the flames that engulfed the church. He raised the blade, pointing it downward. 

“Goodbye, brother,” he said with a cold, almost happy smile, and then he swung the sword down towards Ragna’s back.



His right arm was burning.

Kagutsuchi Branch of the Novus Orbis Librarium.

Ragna walked across the mirror-polished floor, unconsciously gripping his right shoulder tightly. There, where his arm should have been, was a replacement arm, created from the Azure Grimoire that had been buried beneath the burned-out church. Rachel had urged him to do it. That was the beginning of his relationship with the arrogant vampire.

He would never forget that day. The pain, the suffering, the anger he had felt then—all of it was still burned into his soul. The heat of the flames, the shock of losing his arm, the taste of the different soil, the coldness of the ice blade thrust into his back. None of it had faded. It had all accumulated within him, festering and growing darker.
Ragna reached for the sword at his waist. He inhaled sharply. Was it his own breath, or the sound of the one waiting ahead? As he drew his sword, he dashed forward.

"Jin!" he roared, his voice shaking the air. 

A moment later, he heard a landing sound from the top of the stairs. A slender figure emerged, a katana glinting coldly in the light that illuminated the statue of the goddess. A sound of air being cleaved descended. With a sharp hyu, the descending blade was met by Ragna's broadsword.

Sparks flew as metal clashed. The high, clear sound of the collision echoed through the vast, silent sanctuary like a bell. The figure, still holding his sword and katana, leaped down from the stairs and smiled coldly.

"Ah... it's really you... I'm so happy," he murmured, his voice like a soft song. His lips were thin, his skin pale, and his long, golden hair was slightly singed. His eyes, the same green as Ragna's left eye, shimmered with excitement.

How long had it been since they had faced each other like this? He had grown so much taller than Ragna remembered, and yet he still carried the same aura as the boy he had once known.

"I've been waiting for you, brother," he said. As he spoke, he caught the blue sheath that had fallen behind him and, without looking, kicked Ragna's sword away. He took a large step backward. Ragna recovered his sword and readied himself.

The slender yet muscular figure was clad in a blue and white uniform. The hilt of his katana was silver, and its sheath was blue. The only man waiting for Ragna in the deserted Librarium branch was Jin Kisaragi. He was the commander of the Fourth Thaumaturgist Squadron of the Novus Orbis Librarium.

And a long, long time ago, they had spent their childhood together in the same church... Ragna's younger brother.