Arc II: Echoes of the Forgotten
The silence of the abandoned shrine pressed down like a suffocating shroud.
The air was thick with the scent of rotting wood and incense long burned out, leaving behind only brittle ashes that clung to the cracks of the altar. Shinomiya Reiji stood in the middle of it, the half-shattered moonlight bleeding through fractured paper walls, illuminating his figure like a specter unwilling to fade.
It had been three days since the massacre at the underground court. Three nights of wandering streets where no light lingered, with only echoes of screams and footsteps trailing him like shadows he could never sever. Reiji's body was bruised, ribs aching with every breath, but it wasn't pain that weighed on him most—it was the silence.
A silence that wasn't peace.
A silence that accused.
He knelt before the broken altar, his hand brushing against a strip of torn prayer paper, the kanji almost erased by time. The words written there whispered a plea for protection, yet the shrine itself was long forsaken, its gods absent, its promises hollow. Reiji couldn't help but laugh, a sound more like a cracked exhale.
"Protection?" he murmured, his voice swallowed by the emptiness.
"Where were your gods when blood painted the floor?"
The silence, of course, offered no answer. Only the creak of the building's bones, as if the shrine itself wanted to collapse and bury the memories Reiji carried.
But silence carried fragments, and fragments carried truth.
And he could not look away.
---
The past invaded without warning.
He saw the girl again—the last witness. Her lifeless eyes reflected his face before the blade fell. Her whisper, trembling yet defiant, still rang in his skull: "You're no different from them."
Reiji's fist tightened until his knuckles bled against the wooden floor. The accusation echoed louder than any scream, louder than the clash of steel. No matter how many enemies he cut down, no matter how many conspiracies he unraveled, he could not silence that voice.
The fragments of silence were pieces of judgment, and they lingered.
---
A rustle broke the stagnant air.
Reiji's eyes snapped open, hand on the hilt of his blade, body coiled to strike. From the shadows, a figure emerged—tattered robes, face hidden behind a mask carved like a cracked Noh visage. The intruder moved without sound, as if carried by the silence itself.
"You've drowned yourself in ghosts," the masked figure said, their voice flat, almost inhuman.
"Do you seek answers here, or absolution?"
Reiji's glare sharpened. "Neither. Answers can be lies. Absolution is for the weak."
The masked figure tilted their head, as though studying him. Then they dropped a fragment of parchment onto the floor. It fluttered down like a feather, landing in front of Reiji's knees.
He picked it up, eyes narrowing as he read the crimson ink. A single word stared back at him:
KAGAMI (鏡) — Mirror.
The masked figure stepped back into the dark, their form dissolving into the silence, leaving only the word to cut deeper than any blade.
---
Reiji sat frozen.
Mirror.
The silence shattered inside him, giving way to the fragments of his own reflection—shards of who he was, who he had become, and what he might yet be forced to do. Each fragment cut him anew, sharper than steel, sharper than the whispers of the dead.
The silence of the shrine was no longer empty.
It was a labyrinth of echoes.
And somewhere within it, the next stage of his war awaited.