Toru's Workshop
The Resonator sat on a metal table, now humming with a low, pulsing energy.
Toru leaned over it, scanning symbols that had etched themselves into the device overnight.
Toru: "It's evolving. It absorbed Kuroda's frequency… and then wrote its own."
Souta stared, eyes tired but focused.
Souta: "You said there were three locks. That's what the device showed."
Toru nodded. "One's closed. That attack last night it wasn't just defense. It sealed something inside him. Slowed him down."
Souta: "Then we find the other two."
Kuroda's Domain: The Hall of Echoes
A vast, endless space filled with suspended glass panels. Each panel holds a memory floating, looping, glitching.
Kuroda walks barefoot across the void, blood dripping from his ears.
He stops at a specific panel one showing a young Souta, age 9, standing in a hospital hallway… staring at a room labeled ICU.
Inside, a heart monitor flatlines.
Kuroda (softly): "Lock two… the trauma he still avoids."
He touches the glass and grins.
AFTERNOON, Lakeside Field Outside the City
Souta and Toru trek toward an abandoned observatory that overlooks Lake Rinsai.
Toru: "Your old school records said you stopped speaking for weeks after your friend's accident."
Souta (quietly): "I didn't stop. I just… couldn't trust what I heard anymore. Sound became the enemy."
As they near the observatory, the world shifts.
Birds stop singing. The lake goes still. Time bends.
Toru: "Souta… we're crossing into it again."
Suddenly
They're no longer in the field.
They're inside a hospital.
Same as the one in Souta's memory.
Mindspace: Illusion Hospital
The walls are clean, white, cold.
But the silence is wrong.
Too perfect.
Souta's shoes echo on the tile.
Each step forward is harder than the last.
A child's voice echoes down the hallway.
Voice: "You didn't save me."
Souta turns
And sees Kenji.
His childhood best friend. Pale. Eyes hollow.
Kenji: "You ran. You hid under the stairs. While I drowned in that silence."
Souta takes a shaky step forward.
Souta: "You're not real. You're what Kuroda wants me to see."
Kenji's image flickers, twisting with black static.
Kenji: "Then face what's real."
Suddenly, the walls collapse.
They're back in the field but the ground is replaced by water.
A storm brews above.
Kuroda stands on the surface of the lake, barefoot, arms outstretched.
Kuroda: "You buried him. Now he's your anchor."
Lightning splits the sky.
The water around Souta rises into black tendrils, whispering his name.
But Souta doesn't flinch.
He takes the Resonator from his jacket, tosses it into the water
And shouts:
"Kenji… I'm sorry I left you. But I didn't forget you!"
The Resonator pulses deep underwater.
A second wave of silence spreads outward.
The tendrils scream and dissolve.
The sky clears.
Kuroda staggers. His hand twitches.
Kuroda (shaking): "No… not again…!"
He vanishes into static.
Night, Rooftop of Toru's House
Toru: "The second lock is sealed."
He points to the Resonator. Two glowing rings now pulse on its surface.
Toru: "One more to go."
Souta: "And then what? He disappears?"
Toru looks uncertain.
Toru: "Or he unleashes something worse."
Souta stares out at the city below.
Souta: "Then we finish it before he does."
Kuroda's Mindscape
Cracks spread through the Hall of Echoes.
One final door remains sealed tight, chained with symbols.
Kuroda approaches it, bleeding from the nose.
Kuroda (grinning):
"If you're ready to face me in the final memory…
…I'll be waiting where it all began."
To be continued…