But the traces they had left were everywhere.
Along the shores of Tokyo Bay, the skyscrapers that had once soared into the clouds were reduced to twisted steel skeletons, exposed beneath the gray-yellow sky like the ribs of gigantic creatures.
Some kind of high-pressure torrent had split Osaka's industrial district down the middle. Along both sides of the kilometers-long fissure, twisted pipes and shattered storage tanks were still spewing white smoke.
Nagoya's port facilities had been dragged wholesale into the sea, leaving behind a vast, bowl-shaped depression filled with seawater.
The ruins along its edges continued to slide down, producing a low rumble like the groaning of the earth.
Overhead, lead-gray clouds hung low, with occasional streaks of purple lightning flashing through them.
The air carried a complex mixture of seawater, scorched earth, and a pungent, briny odor peculiar to Atlantean technology.
Scattered figures moved among the ruins.
They were survivors emerging from the shelters, dressed in dust-covered protective suits and makeshift respirators as they rummaged through the wreckage of collapsed buildings.
Some searched for loved ones, some for food. Others simply wandered aimlessly, their faces bearing the almost blank bewilderment of people who had been utterly broken.
Kyoto, the island nation, three hundred meters underground.
The Hand's secret stronghold lay deep inside a long-abandoned subway tunnel, its entrance concealed behind multiple layers of cloaking magic and physical barriers.
Even after Atlantis's giant beasts had rampaged through the city overhead for so long, this deeply buried space maintained a constant temperature, humidity, and an energy signature almost impossible to detect by conventional means.
The passage door, reinforced with five layers of alloy plating and a layer of the Hand's secret arts, had been locked from the inside three days earlier. Beyond it, the air circulation system operated independently of the