CHAPTER 1: THE SURVIVAL FIRE
♈ Aries – Mountain Climbing – Cabin Locked from the Inside – “The beginning needs an end.”

1

The March wind in the Chichibu mountains isn’t meant for humans. It bites through weak wills, slips down your spine and freezes its way back up to the brain—cold like an unshakable memory.

Hoshino Rei stood before a wooden cabin, now burned to charcoal. He wasn't a firefighter, nor a cop. He was an independent investigator, once involved in neuroimaging technology. Now, he investigated deaths the police couldn't—or wouldn’t—explain.

The body had been removed, but the scent of fire lingered. Not just burnt wood—but something acrid, synthetic. Like scorched nerve endings.

“Male, 31 years old, climbed alone. This cabin was a rest stop on the trail. Locked from the inside. No signs of forced entry.”

A rescue worker spoke quickly. A lowlander, unfamiliar with the altitude.

“Burned to death?”

“No. Dead before the fire.”

“Cause?”

“Possibly... poisoning. But the substance hasn't been identified.”

Hoshino stepped inside. Each footfall on the charred floor made faint cracking sounds—like brittle bone. Only a corner of a metal table, a warped stove, and the wreckage of an uncontrolled blaze remained.

On the floor, near where the body had supposedly lain, something metallic caught the light.

A thin piece of stainless steel, flat, about three fingers long. It didn’t belong to the cabin. He picked it up with rubber gloves. It carried the smell of burning... and antiseptic.

At the top of the metal shard, an engraved symbol — shaped like a pair of curling ram’s horns. ♈

An old surgical tool, used for stabilizing internal organs during wartime operations — pre-World War era.

2

“Why poison first, then burn the cabin?” Rei asked in a personal voice memo. He always kept a spoken diary, like talking to himself.

“If it was to destroy evidence — it’s too elaborate.
If it was to send a message — it’s too precise.”

He stood on a slope, looking down at the cabin from above, recording through a zoom lens.

From that vantage point, the fire’s aftermath traced a sweeping arc, spreading outward like... a spiraled horn.

At the same moment, he received a message from an anonymous account. No name, no profile picture. Just one line:

“The beginning needs an end. ♈”

Rei frowned. The message came right after the first incident. No warning, no digital trace.

In his mind, the fire replayed—only this time, he saw the man’s eyes in the cabin. Wide open. Not with fear... but rage.

3

That evening, in his small Tokyo apartment, Rei opened his computer. He isolated an image from the crime scene, enhancing the engraved symbol on the stainless steel.

After cross-referencing dozens of documents, he confirmed it: a Taisho-era surgical engraving knife used in military medicine, now obsolete. Not something just anyone could own.

In the blue glow of the monitor, Rei carefully added the ♈ symbol to a wall map — a reversed astrological chart. At the center of the circle, he wrote in red ink:

“THIS DIDN’T START HERE.”

“IT’S ONLY STARTING AGAIN.”