Bleached sky, really. It was as if the sacred had been washed out, and the pale sky left behind absorbed all colors and life. This morning felt strangely still, as if the world held its breath, waiting for something big to happen. Aika Ren tightened her red ribbon, a drop of dancing color clashing against the gray, and walked through the shrine gate, her schoolbag hanging over one shoulder. The morning bell rang down below; far-off and distorted, it sounded like a warning, and yet she didn't hasten. She never did. Not when her dreams clung wet and silken to her skin, whispering secrets of the world just beyond her grasp.
"Daydreaming again, huh?" The sound of Yui's voice fell into Aika's consciousness, bringing Yui into her view. With a bright, shining lollipop clenched firmly in her mouth, she was indeed a sweet but bright symbol of the mundane. "You always look like you are seeing ghosts."
Aika blinked, momentarily taken away from her thoughts. "Maybe I am," she replied, a slight smile crossing her lips; it seemed more like a mask than true amusement.
Inside Class 3-B, the threat of being themselves was endured by all as camouflage. Mai leaned deep into her chair, her feet atop the desk, casual and confident. "Math test today. If I live through it, I want bubble tea. The balls should be as big as eyeballs," she said, her eyes twinkling with mischief.
"Disgusting," Riku muttered, lost in a book, the words flowing over him like a sort of protective wall against the world around him. "You should study."
"I did not know you were qualified to speak, old man," Mai replied in a teasing yet affectionate tone.
Aika chuckled slightly, but it felt like plaster cracking from her discontent; the sound rang hollow in her chest. She glanced down at her notes, mind wandering again. However, her gaze froze; a dark red blot had appeared in the midst of the notes, so conspicuous against the white of the blank page. Blood. A wave of panic coursed through her. She quickly checked her hands. Clean. She looked again, and the blot was gone, as if it had never existed.
After school, it began.
A distant scream ripped through the station as they approached—a sound that was never loud but wrong, stretched and muffled as if it passed through water. The platform lay deserted, an echoing city whose sounds endured longer than they should.
Except for a girl by the vending machines, trembling unnaturally, twisting her limbs in disturbing, grotesque motions. Her vacant expression seemed geared at nothing at all.
"Is she alright?" Yui murmured, fear creeping into her voice.
The girl's mouth. Deformed into a smile.
From her chest, a second mouth burst forth, dragging wet, jagged bone behind with it, a sight that horrified Aika and made her skin raid with goosebumps.
Mai acted first; her umbrella glimmered into life as it reshaped itself into a crescent blade. "Get behind me!" Her voice cut through the thick tension like a knife.
And she hacked fast and clean. Blood sprayed in black, sizzling on the ground while the creature hissed and shifted, melting away, legs transforming into tendrils, and teeth clicking like broken glass.
Riku advanced, withdrawing a chain from his coat that throbbed with energy. "Bind," he commanded, lashing the chain toward the creature. It wrapped around the beast, halting it mid-lunge, while Aika stared, her eyes wide. The shifting mass contained the girl's face, which blinked with understanding yet remained trapped.
They set the body on fire, consuming everything in its wake without leaving a shred of evidence.
"This will not be remembered tomorrow," said Mai, who was wiping the blade with a candy wrapper, unimpressed and as though they were merely discarding an annoying piece of work. "Just like the previous times."
"But I will remember," Aika whispered, heart racing in her chest.
She looked up—and there it was.
A fine crack in the air, slightly above the station clock. It looked as if reality were torn, a jagged line shining with disturbing light.
That night, her father had called her to the shrine altar, unreadable, with heavy weight on the air representing unspoken truth.
"Place your hand on the seal," he stated, his voice steady with intermingled urgency.
"I don't remember making a vow," she protested, still confused at what was occurring.
"You did." He paused, the intensity of his gaze piercing into her. "You just don't remember what you paid."
She moved her hand upon the seal hesitantly, and it broke her in that moment.
Fire. Screams. Blood. A voice inside her calling her name, the echo of something long past.
Then silence.
When she opened her eyes again, she was no longer in the shrine.
She was standing in the station.
At night.
All alone.
Something still screamed.
Aika stood barefoot on the station platform, and the chill of the ground seeped into her skin. The wind was too still, the clocks weren't ticking, the vending machines blinked, but shadows failed to form from the lights, an unsettling aura.
One step. The foot next touched warm and sticky blood.
Then something spoke inside her head and not aloud.
"You're early, Vowkeeper."
She spun around with her heart racing. No one was there but empty tracks stretching into darkness. Then, drip.
She looked up.
A figure hung upside down from the ceiling, head tilted, a smile far too wide carved into its face.
Eyes like black ink met hers, swirling with a darkness that threatened to swallow her whole.
"You forgot again? How rude."
She backed away but the station stretched like elastic, repeating itself. Every step backward returned her to the same bloodstain, a cruel loop she couldn't escape.
The figure dropped quietly to the floor, its descent soundless, as if gravity forgot to act.
"You're not real," Aika whispered, desperation pouring into her voice.
It blinked slowly, its gaze unblinking. "Neither are you."
A hand suddenly grabbed her shoulder-warm, human.
"Aika!" Yui's voice broke through the haze.
Aika gasped and turned-she was back in her futon, covered in sweat. Yui stood at her bedside, holding a paper charm, her expression serious.
"You blasted out at the shrine. Your dad called me," she explained.
Aika played with the ribbon in her hair, her heartbeat accelerating. "I... wasn't here."
"I know." Yui's tone deepened. "It's beginning again, isn't it?"
Aika paused, a knot of dread forming in her stomach. "Again?"
Yui said nothing, just drew back the curtain covering the window. Fog rolled thickly and suffocatingly outside.
But in much darker, wetter letters on the glass were three words:
"EAT YOUR VOW."
They met later that morning, by Riku and Mai, in the basement of the old flower shop-neutral ground, as Mai called it-a place where they could gather away from prying eyes.
"It's already in your dreams," Riku mused, pacing and brow furrowed with such intensity. "Faster than before."
"Before what?" asked Aika, voice laden with confusion.
"You really don't remember," said Mai, shifting her tone to one of concern. "Damn. Worse than I thought."
"I keep seeing this... thing. Talking to me. It called me 'Vowkeeper.'"
"that's what you are," Riku simply said, gazed intensely. "In fact, you are the anchor. The city runs because of you."
Aika gawked, mind racing: "What?"
Yui averted her gaze as the heaviness of the revelation sunk within the air.
"The vow seals Kaezora's curse," Mai said gently, her voice softening. "You're the seal. If you break, then everything does too."
And suddenly, there was a spark on Riku's wrist. "There is another tear," he said, urgency flooding his tone. "Close."
Mai grabbed the blade, determination etched on her face. "Let's go."
They found it near the river.
A man was kneeling by the water. At first glance, he looked like a fisherman, but then Aika saw his arms—split open like gills, revealing twitching muscle and fish eyes blinking along his veins.
He turned, grinning down at her with a jaw that stretched throatily to his chest, his delightful smile enough to raise every hair of Aika's body to the sky. "Remember me now, little god?"
Mai moved-but too slowly.
She screamed, and the sound tore apart the bridge railing. Yui flung into the river, her scream disappearing in the roar.
Aika ran to help-but suddenly the creature was there inches from her.
"I remember you," it rasped between breaths as it spoke, oozing malevolence. "You were kinder last time."
And then it lunged.
CRACK.
It was a sharp clang. Riku had blocked it, barely snaring the thing with his chain around its throat, tension screwing into the air.
"Do it, Aika!" he shouted, urgency laced in his voice.
"I don't know how—!" she cried, panic rising.
The creature's hands plunged into Aika's chest. Not physically. Spiritually.
And suddenly-she remembered.
The vow.
The sword.
The name.
Her body moved on its own against her will as a red sigil flashed into life across her collarbone, pulsing with power. Her hand opened-and a blade made of blood and light formed in her palm, radiating energy.
She swung.
The creature screeched, and ribbons of gore and black fluid burst from its body. Scales and broken bones crumbled to the ground in a heap, grotesque enough to take Aika's breath away.
The blade dropped from her now racing heart, and she looked around-at the fog lifting to reveal the ravaged world once more.
The others gathered silently around her; awe and relief tangled up in their expressions. Yui limped back up from the riverbank, soaked but alive, staring wide-eyed in disbelief.
Riku simply looked at her-his gaze unreadable. "It's starting."
Aika shook, feelings whirling in her: confusion and fear. "What is?"
"The vows are breaking," he said, a steady voice tipped with urgency. "And when the last one breaks..."
Mai finished for him, softly, her tone grave: "The real Kaezora wakes up."
That night, Aika sat by herself in the shrine, air thick and unspoken words.
She gazed at the altar mirror that refracted not her reflection. Something behind it: a shadow that mimicked her movements rather too perfectly-a dark echo of her own self.
Then came that familiar telling voice again, haunting and answering the dark in its folds:
"You remember too fast. It'll kill you."
She whispered into the empty air, "Who are you?"
"I am the part you left behind," the voice had replied, sending chills down her spine.
"And I'm hungry."