After someone dies, they are gone. There is no afterlife. Your soul is wiped clean by the Lethe Barrier and what used to fuel your body floats into nothingness until your soul is reused to fuel another sad sack's life. When souls have been through this cycle too many times, they sour and turn into what are called Aeries. These Aeries find their way into bodies with weak souls, hijacking and transforming the bodies into Shades. All over the world, ever since history started to be recorded, bands of Shade-slaying priests have been documented. In Japan, there are two of these factions: Santo Hanna, which is owned by the government and thus burdened by paperwork and bureaucracy, and the Sunset Knights.

A breeze flowed through the trees outside of Koukoro Café. Kudo took a few small sips of his piping hot tea, while his partner, Sen, nibbled at a pastry. The two had stopped to catch their breath after five hours of patrolling downtown Shinjuku. There hadn't been a single report of a shade all day. If the next two hours went by smoothly, then it would be the first time in a very long time that the Sunset Knights had a quiet day.

But Kudo wasn't hoping for a quiet day. He didn't join the Knights for quiet days. If one were to ask Sen to describe him, she would probably say something like, He's a battle hungry meat head, all he wants to do is fight powerful things. Though Kudo would normally disagree, he couldn't help himself when work was as boring as it was currently. All that filled his ears was car engines and bird chirps. Kudo looked up at Sen. She brushed a lock of her black hair out of the way of her mouth to clear the way for the last bite of her pastry. She looked up at Kudo, catching him mid stare. Her finger still held a lock of hair that she was going to move behind her ear.

"Can I help you?" Sen asked.

"I'm so bored," Kudo knew Sen knew he was bored. She was too. But saying it out loud might make fate change it's course. Knock on wood and all.

"Yeah, just enjoy your tea, it's not everyday we get to have a peaceful lunch," Sen crossed her arms, leaning back in her seat.

On the table, Sen's phone sat lifeless until when Kudo was mid sip, it started to buzz. Sen's arm shot out to check. When she saw the alert, her face sank. "What is it? Something good, I hope," Kudo could only wait for Sen to speak. But she didn't, she sat for a few seconds in pure silence.

Sen's voice creaked out. "Class four, two blocks from here,"

"C-class four?!" Kudo shot out of his seat. "Where is it?!"

"Two blocks away!" Sen leaped onto a car, then onto another. She was already on her way there.

Kudo followed her closely behind. His movements came to him naturally, it didn't take a lot of soul energy to enhance them. The passive noise of the streets was quickly replaced by the growing sounds of carnage. Metal scrapping and snapping, screams of innocents caught in the fury of a Shade. Buildings flanked the class four. Kudo had arrived at the beginning of the street to see a colourless figure tearing up the concrete from the street to throw at the nearby buildings. People ran in all directions. Sen wasn't immediately visible, but Kudo had faith she would make a move at the best moment.

Kudo's advance left an indent in the road behind him. As he flew forward, the extras from his suit left as his speed increased. By the time class four noticed him, his fist was implanted in his face. Kudo used enough soul energy to wipe a class two or lower clean from the face of the earth, but all it did to the class four was send it stumbling back a few paces.

The Shade was a colourless husk of the former body that the Aerie hijacked. A Shade's class was determined by how much the Aerie was able to morph the body while hijacking it. This class four had transformed its arm into a whip with its hand bladed on the end.

Kudo's punch didn't do enough to justify how close he was afterward. The hand came whipping from behind, the edge entering Kudo's side for a moment. A flair of pain shot through his whole body. Kudo attempted to dodge, but his balance was off. He went flying into a car to his side. The car was totaled, and Kudo would have been too if he hadn't enhanced his whole body with soul energy. The Shade's bladed arm came back for another pass at Kudo.

Before it could connect, Sen appeared on the other side of the arm. Outstretched was her knife. Her blade cut a limb at the joint. The Shade howled as it's black blood shot out from the cut. Kudo put a hand on the warped metal mould his body had created, pushing himself to his feet. It was time to see who would land the killing blow on the powerful Shade.

The feeling of a fist connecting with his jaw sent Kudo flying into the air. When he was able to glimpse the ground, he saw what had happened. The class four's blade arm had grown a body to control it. The original body grew a mace from the stump. Kudo had never been taught about Shades duplicating. From what he knew, it wasn't a thing that they could do.

Though Kudo's time in the air was brief, it helped him gain a strategy to fight with his injury. Along his belt in disposable containers sat freshly washed souls, which when consumed would give him a whole new level of soul energy to fight with. Each priest was given one per week due to the side effects that arise when one person consumes too many fresh souls. With this new boost, Kudo was able to land on the newly formed Shade with the weight of three elephants. A wave of black blood and body parts flooded the streets. In the middle of the carnage, under Kudo's hand was an Aerie. Kudo didn't know how the clone got its hands on an Aerie. He grabbed a containment capsule to house the rotten soul.

He looked up to see Sen struggling to hold her own against the original class four. She only had a small blade to resist the blows from its mace. Kudo went to take a step forward, but his foot did not agree. His strength was completely drained. His jaw hit the ground, all he could do was watch Sen fight. Looking in from the outside, the pair seemed to be in a form of dance, Sen leading the movements. Even though she was on the back foot, her demeanour and ferocity cut harder than her blade. She weaved through the force of the mace raining down upon her to land a strike on the Shade's stomach. Blood oozed from the wound, but the creature didn't seem to notice. It brought its other hand around to push Sen back into range of its mace.

The ball of toneless flesh smashed into Sen's left shoulder, sending her flying into a nearby storefront. Glass and concrete smashed around her. Kudo could only hope she used enough soul energy to withstand the blow. The Shade didn't give even a spare second for Sen to recover, it flung the mace backwards, then towards just above where Sen lay. Rubble covered her body, but she didn't let that stop her. She dug through the rubble, the skin on the tips of her fingers torn by the carelessness that came with her speed. Getting to her feet clearly hurt a lot, but she managed to do it. She patted around in her clothes for her knife. Nothing came to her.

The mace was about to make another swing at her when suddenly, without a change in the direction of the wind, the Shade's head loped onto the floor. Kneeling under the shadow of the Shade was a man clad in a dark trench coat who bore the crest which brought Kudo's worst fear to life. The man was from the Sunset Knight's rival company, Santo Hanna.

Shades don't die that easily though, especially not a class four. The man whipped around, drawing his sword with a swiftness to rival light, cutting the Shade in a way that clearly exposed the Aerie inside. This was all done with a katana one-handedly, the other already had the containment capsule ready. The man had made the biggest fight of Kudo's career look easy, and of course he was from Santo Hanna.

The feeling of a hand on Kudo's back sent a shiver through his whole body. Pain jutted through every inch of him. The figure picked him up. Her face was slim, and she had blue hair that almost came down to her shoulders.

"Are you okay?" The girl's voice was sweet, honey for the ears. But Kudo couldn't answer her. All he knew was that he was hurt. His jaw, his side. He couldn't feel his left foot at that point. All of that didn't matter, the only thought on his mind was what was going to become of his and Sen's job. Though that thought fled his mind fast, in no time at all, he was passed out.

Kudo's mind was awake before his body. It felt like he was floating in nothingness, the only thing tethering him to the ground was a sharp pain where the Shade had stabbed him. The sky was made of glass. An eye looked down upon him, seeing all his thoughts. Blood dripped onto his face. His face ran off his head onto the grass below. Kudo's eyeballs boiled away, everything was black. Then Kudo was the eye in the sky. His old body was flooded with colorlessness. It had become a Shade. It rose with a gun in it's hand, shooting at the glass. Everything went silent for a moment, then Kudo was a blade of grass in the never-ending field beneath the glass sky. The wind whispered into the chlorophyll flowing through his veins.

Kudo spread through the grass until he was no longer a single blade, but instead he was the whole field. The sky shattered, blessing Kudo with rain. Shards cut part of his mind off. In the middle of the world, a tree has started to bloom. Out of the tree walked a figure. His hair was black, so was his suit and shoes. This was Kudo's next form, though now no thought was possible. There was a third eye in the middle of the man's forehead. He was the only eye. The body opened a door out of nothing and stepped into a stripped down version of Sen's office at the Sunset Knight's office. The halls were grimy, lit with a single hanging light far above the head. In the middle stood a man holding an umbrella. It was a wrinkled, naked old man, a toad for a head. It opened its mouth, croaking. Kudo could understand the sound as English. 'Song of the night, the dead shall rise. An onslaught only we can stop. Bleed and die for a chance to say hi. I shall await you. Now rise, awake and feel the touch of the one you hold dear in your loin'