---
The sky over Osaka was the color of ash.
Even in daylight, something felt off—as if the city had swallowed its own voice. The streets weren't silent… but the noise felt artificial. Mechanical. Like background music playing on repeat.
Sora stepped off the train and immediately noticed it.
The air didn't carry sound right.
Footsteps didn't echo. People's voices seemed to die mid-sentence. Even the wind sounded dulled, like it was blowing through cotton.
His eyes narrowed.
She noticed it too.
The girl walking beside him—carefree, casual, trying too hard to act unimpressed—paused at the top of the escalator.
She whistled.
No echo.
None at all.
"Okay, that's creepy."
---
They walked several blocks to the district listed in the mission file. It was a quiet cluster of old residential buildings, worn-down convenience stores, and a rundown shrine tucked between two hills.
A shrine that wasn't on any official map.
"Found it," she said, chewing gum as she stared up at the cracked torii gate.
The shrine had no nameplate. Its wood was rotting black, and its steps were overtaken by moss. The paper charms nailed to the entrance had turned gray, their words faded into scribbles.
Sora tilted his head.
A faint pressure pressed against his chest. Not strong. Not even cursed energy exactly—just a deep emptiness, like a hole in the world. He stepped forward, scanning the shadows under the eaves.
She followed, casually tossing a stone up the stairs.
It didn't make a sound when it landed.
---
They entered together.
The inside of the shrine was even worse.
No wind.
No insects.
No sound at all.
Every breath they took felt wrong. Like they were breathing in someone else's last words.
And then they saw it.
A wall—lined with dozens of paper dolls, each with a name written on its chest. But the names weren't in ink. They were in fingernail scratches. Carved violently.
> "These are real," she said under her breath.
"Real names. Real people."
Sora stepped closer.
One of the dolls pulsed—just slightly. Like a heartbeat.
He reached out to touch it.
> "Wait—"
Too late.
The moment his fingers brushed the paper, the room shuddered.
All the sound in the air vanished completely.
Even his heartbeat.
Even her voice.
The world became still.
And then—
He heard a whisper.
Not from outside.
From inside.
---
> "Welcome back, Hollow One."
His eyes snapped wide.
He turned, but the girl was frozen mid-step.
No—she wasn't frozen. She was moving, just slower.
Like time had been fractured.
A shadow passed across the far wall—no source. No shape. Just wrong. A shape that only existed in the space between thoughts.
Sora's own shadow trembled.
Something was watching.
> "Do you remember us?" the whisper came again, gentle and loving and awful.
"We remember you. We waited beneath the moon that never rose."
Sora's hands clenched.
> "Show yourself."
The wall pulsed.
Then cracked open.
Not like a door—like skin splitting open.
And from the wound, something stepped out.
A figure wrapped in shrine robes, face hidden beneath a porcelain mask with no mouth. Its hands were bound with black paper charms, trailing behind it like smoke.
It didn't walk. It floated just above the ground.
And even as it moved, its shadow pointed in the wrong direction.
> "You are the Void's Inheritor," it said, in a voice that existed without sound.
"You are the First Unspoken."
Sora's body tensed.
He felt the curse stirring inside him.
Shōkyo.
Awake.
Its cold breath pressed against the edge of his thoughts.
> "Let me speak," it whispered in his mind.
"Let me answer them."
> "No," Sora muttered.
The masked figure raised a hand.
> "We offer you memory. The world has forgotten what you are. Let us remind you."
And then Sora's mind fractured.
---
He was standing in a field beneath a black sky.
No stars.
No moon.
Just a vast, screaming silence.
Bodies lay around him, faces erased.
He looked down.
His hands were smoking with void.
And someone was laughing behind him.
Not cruel.
Not happy.
Just empty.
> "You erased them all, Hollow One."
> "No," Sora whispered. "That wasn't me."
> "It will be."
---
He gasped—violently—snapping back to the shrine.
The dolls had caught fire.
He staggered backward, coughing, hands trembling.
The girl ran to him, gripping his shoulder.
"What the hell happened?! You were standing there like you were frozen!"
He looked at her—eyes wild.
"I saw something. I… remembered something. I don't know what it was."
She pulled him toward the door. "We're leaving. Now."
---
They made it out just before the flames swallowed the interior.
Smoke curled into the sky.
Sora turned back—looking at the torii gate.
A new symbol had appeared, carved in black ash:
> 空滅 — Void Erasure
His name.
Or something close to it.
---
As they walked away, she glanced at him sideways.
"Hey," she said softly.
He didn't answer.
"You okay?"
"…No."
And for once, she didn't joke.
She just walked beside him in silence.
Not the cursed kind.
The human kind.
-