Somewhere in Nagano Prefecture. Summer.
The town was too quiet.
Nestled between mist-choked mountains and the curling edge of a black pine forest, it didn't appear on most maps. The houses stood old and swollen from rain, their prayers rotting on paper slips nailed outside. Time collected here like dust, thick and unmoving.
Kaen walked alone.
Sixteen years old, he wore silence like a second skin. No phone. No music. Just the sound of his breath — and something beneath it, a faint hum, a wrongness.
Crickets chirped too loudly.
The shrine bell on the hill rang — though no wind stirred.
A crow landed at his feet. Dead. Neck twisted at an unnatural angle.
Kaen didn't blink.
Omens were nothing new.
He passed the empty schoolyard where rusted swings creaked, moving though no one pushed them. The sky hung pale and sour, like milk curdled under heat. The clouds held their breath.
From the corner of his eye, movement.
A figure bent backward, crawling out from a roadside mirror. Its hair hung long and wet, eyes sealed shut beneath ceremonial cloth bindings.
It smelled of old incense and earth long buried.
It knew him.
Before Kaen could react, a fold of light ripped open behind him — a slash in the world, soundless and wrong.
A girl stepped through, barefoot, coat dragging the grass. Her eyes were moon-pale.
The creature shrieked.
She lifted a finger. The air trembled.
The thing collapsed inward — like a prayer eaten by fire.
Its form flickered and unraveled into smoke, but its mouth moved one last time.
"The Broken Pillar..."
A whisper, half-remembered from dreams or ruins.
Ash drifted down.
Kaen said nothing.
Something ancient inside him stirred — something not quite human, not quite asleep.
The ash settled, silent as snowfall, clinging to grass, air, even the soles of her bare feet.
Yue lowered her hand, breath uneven.
The creature was gone — burnt to nothing by the old rites woven in her blood.
But he unsettled her more.
A boy. Plain uniform. Black hair.
Should've been forgettable.
But he stood like the world bent slightly around him, too still, too silent.
"I wasn't supposed to see that," Kaen said quietly.
His voice was calm, hollow — like a question he didn't quite understand.
She nodded to herself. "No one should've. It slipped through. I came to seal it."
She glanced at the mirror. Its frame cracked and warped, recoiling from what had passed.
Kaen hadn't moved. Hadn't blinked.
The dead crow remained.
"Do you live nearby?" she asked, but too late.
"Yeah."
"Family?"
No answer.
Yue shifted, uneasy. She hadn't expected this — no confusion, no fear, no tears. Just emptiness. Quiet.
Then she felt it.
Something old. Sleeping with its eyes open.
It wasn't in the woods.
Not in the mirror.
It was leaking from him.
Like a house where voices whisper behind the walls.
Her throat tightened.
"What's your name?"
Kaen tilted his head slightly.
"Kaen."
Just a sound. But it echoed too long in her mind.
She almost dropped the charm in her pocket — the one that usually kept echoes at bay.
The wind picked up, this time real, natural.
The moment was closing.
But Yue didn't feel relief.
She felt like she'd stepped into a story already unfolding.
"I need to go," she said, voice low. "This area might be unstable. Stay away from mirrors. If anything else crawls out—"
"It won't," Kaen interrupted, eyes fixed on the field. "They're watching now."
"Who?"
A pause.
"I don't know their names."
He said it like it was weather — a fact no one needed to question.
Yue stepped back slowly, then opened a seal — but kept her eyes on him the whole time.
"You're not in the database," she muttered. "Why not?"
The gate flared.
She stepped through.
Gone.
The wind died.
Kaen stood alone in the brittle light of dusk.
He watched where she disappeared.
Then turned and walked the long way home.
Behind him, in the rice field—
The shadow waited.
Head tilted.
Mouth open in a grin that needed no lips.
⸻
Nagano Prefecture — Two Hours Later
TCA Headquarters, Internal Briefing Room — Sector 3
Classified Incident Report: Mirror Intrusion — Potential Kōzui Aberration
A holographic scan of the twisted roadside mirror flickered midair. Yue stood beside it, arms crossed, eyes downcast. The room was sterile and dim, lined with monitors, glyph-coded filing drawers, and faint ozone lingering in the air. Agents moved quietly behind soundproof glass. No one interrupted the briefing.
"Sealing was successful," Yue said, voice clipped. "Aberration neutralized before further breach. Civilian contact occurred."
She paused, not meeting the director's gaze.
The man across the table was older. Scarred chin. Two fingers missing. Clad in deep blue-black TCA tactical command. His name tag read: Director Aso.
"A civilian?" he echoed, voice low. "Survived direct exposure?"
"Yes."
Yue gestured, and a flicker-drone projected Kaen's face from memory. No database match. No past sightings. The image glitched — resisting being recorded.
Director Aso leaned in, frowning.
"And the entity?"
"A Yurei-class, sir," Yue replied. "Third-tier Kōzui mutation. Ritual type. Entered through a reflective breach. Standard corrupted proxy. It recognized him first. Called him something—"
She stopped.
"What?"
"The Broken Pillar."
Yue barely whispered it.
The director stiffened. The room chilled.
No one used that phrase anymore. Not since—
He switched views, pulling up the Kōzui hierarchy chart:
⸻
KŌZUI PRODUCTIONS — Aberrant Entity Rankings
(Recovered by TCA operatives from Sector Collapse: Kyoto Site Alpha)
1. Shoēn — Ascended Aberration Commanders
2. Seishin — High-Functioning Cognitives
3. Yurei — Ritual-Class Manifestations
4. Kegare — Physical Contaminants
5. Hakai — Instable Protoforms
⸻
"Yurei-class are unstable but rarely wrong," he muttered. "If it identified him as a Pillar..."
"Do we alert the higher division?" Yue asked, brow furrowed.
Aso didn't answer. He switched off the hologram and fixed her with a look that said more than words.
"Keep watch on the boy. Quietly. If I'm right—"
He cut himself off. Old instincts prickled.
"We may have found exactly what Kōzui's been hunting."
Yue's heart skipped.