The sunlight was blinding, yet held no warmth.
In an instant, this early-morning alley in Vienna's Museum Quarter plunged from ordinary reality into a supernatural hunt. Three Name-Catchers, like phantoms born of rules, sealed off both ends. The aura of "negation" they gave off made the air thick and heavy. Even ordinary passersby who happened to glance this way would unconsciously take a detour, as though the alley had become a blind spot in their perception.
I knelt on one knee, the chill of the stone pavement seeping through my clothes. The newly formed dark-red shackles inside me hummed, bringing both a warped sense of power and a deeper feeling of restraint and extraction. The price for blocking that last blow had already been paid-a memory of reading on some inconsequential afternoon had become like a faded photograph, its details blurred.
There was no time for fear, no time for regret. The instinct to survive overpowered everything else.
Were "names" their weakness? Were they sensitive to "True Names"?
My thoughts raced. Names were the core of the Death Note's power. Could I write their names in the notebook? But did they even have names? These beings were manifestations of rules; their "names" were probably concepts or designations rather than names in the ordinary sense. Writing blindly might do nothing, or even trigger some unknown backlash.
I couldn't fight them head-on. I had to outsmart them, or... exploit the rules.
Tall, old buildings with heavy fire doors lined both sides of the alley. The only exits were its two ends, both blocked by the Name-Catchers.
The Name-Catcher directly ahead raised its hand again. The chain formed from "negation" shot silently toward me like a living thing, faster than before! Wherever it passed, even the peeling graffiti on the walls seemed to