"Even light casts a shadow... and sometimes, the shadow remembers first."
__________
The sky was screaming.
Thunder cracked across the pitch-black heavens like a blade splitting stone, each boom a violent heartbeat of the earth. Twisted winds howled like dying spirits, tearing banners from shattered towers and sending embers dancing into the choking night. A cloaked figure hovered above the carnage, weightless against the storm, black garments snapping in the gale. Around them shimmered a circle of flickering sigils—dark magic pulsing in uneven rhythm, alive and hungry.
Below lay a battlefield drowned in ruin. The ground was a patchwork of scorched earth and broken steel, a graveyard of shattered blades and fallen warriors. Blood slicked the cracked stones, pooling in channels carved by ancient power. Faint mist in the frozen air.
One of the warriors knelt in the rubble, clutching a limp body against their chest. A girl. Her skin was pale as moonlight, her hair streaked with ash and blood. Crimson trickled from the corner of her mouth, falling in silent drops onto the ruined earth. The sound of it –soft, rhythmic, was louder than the storm.
The cloaked figure raised their hand. Black lightning cracked across the sky, splitting clouds as the circle of sigils flared brighter. Power rolled outward in a suffocating wave. The trembling warriors tightened their grip on shattered weapons but did not move. They couldn't. Every breath, every heartbeat was held hostage by the darkness.
The air itself seemed to recoil. And then-
Darkness.
Total.
Eternal.
__________
Fumiko gasped awake.
Her chest heaved as though she had been running for miles. Cold sweat soaked the collar of her nightshirt, dampening the strands of hair plastered to her neck. Her heart pounded a frantic rhythm against her ribs, heavy enough to drown the sound of the rain tapping against her bedroom window. For a long, disoriented moment she couldn't breathe. The echo of the battlefield clung to her like smoke–metallic blood, burning stone, the silent drop of crimson on cracked earth.
Her eyes darted around the room. Curtains swayed softly in the faint predawn breeze. The ceiling fan spun lazily, blades squeaking in familiar rhythm. Her phone blinked a quiet 4:27 a.m. on the nightstand. Yokohama, present day. Not a ruined world. Not a storm choked sky.
She pressed trembling fingers to her temples.
"It's just a dream"
She told herself, but the words had no weight. The battlefield was too vivid: the acrid taste of smoke, the icy bite of the wind, the sorrow that hollowed her chest. No dream should feel that real.
This wasn't the first time. For months now the visions had returned, each night sharpening the details like a camera slowly focusing. A name floated at the edge of her mind- blurred, unreachable. Sometimes she saw a boy's face hidden in shadow, sometimes only the glint of a blade. But always, always, came the final instant before the world turned black. And the girl. Always the girl lying lifeless in someone's arms.
Fumiko hugged her knees to her chest, forehead resting against them. She breathed in, slow and shaky. Her room smelled faintly of detergent and the lingering sweetness of yesterday's incense. She focused on that– on the small, mundane proof of her ordinary life.
But ordinary had never felt so fragile.
---
By morning the city roared awake, oblivious to her sleepless night. Yokohama's skyline shimmered beneath a crisp blue sky, neon signs flickering against the early sun. The air buzzed with a thousand overlapping rhythms: car horns, bicycle bells, distant train brakes, and the low murmur of voices spilling from open cafés. To anyone else it was just another weekday.
Fumiko adjusted the strap of her school bag and stepped into the tide of commuters. Her reflection ghosted across shop windows as she passed–seventeen years old, shoulder-length black hair slightly messy from the wind, uniform neat but unremarkable. She looked like any other high-school girl. Average height, average smile. Yet she moved with a subtle stiffness, as if the dream still clung to her skin.
"Why does it feels like more than a dream?"
The question chased her down to the crowded crosswalks.
"Why does it feels...so real?"
Her rational mind fought back. Memories of what? She had been born here. Raised here. Nothing supernatural about her life. She was an orphan, yes, but that wasn't unusual. Her parents had died when she was three. She spent years in the foster system before being adopted by a kind foreign couple who now lived overseas for work. She kept in touch through weekly calls, her adoptive mother always asking if she was eating enough vegetables. Ordinary. Comfortably human.
But the night of the orphanage fire had burned a scar across her reality.
She could still hear the crackling flames, the panicked screams, the thick smoke curling around her lungs. Everyone called it an accident. Everyone except her. Fumiko remembered the shadows—how they writhed along the walls like living things. She remembered her brother's voice shouting her name before he disappeared into the black. No one believed her. Authorities called it trauma-induced hallucination. Her brother was declared missing, presumed dead.
Yet the faint burn mark on her left wrist—an intricate spiral no doctor could explain—never fully healed. Even now, under her blazer sleeve, it pulsed faintly with the morning chill.
A gust of wind rushed down the street, lifting cherry blossom petals from the pavement. For a heartbeat the sound of the city thinned, replaced by a whisper that coiled through the air like a forgotten prayer. Fumiko froze.
The crowd flowed around her, unaware. No one looked back. The whisper faded, leaving only the distant rumble of a train.
She forced herself to keep walking. Lately these… episodes had become frequent. Flickers of movement in the corner of her eye. A sudden chill in an empty room. A soft voice calling her name when no one was there. She told herself it was stress. Exams. Too many late-night coffees. But deep down she knew better.
Something was waking. Something that remembered her.
---
Class 3-B smelled faintly of pencil shavings and last night's floor wax. Students streamed in, laughing about pop idols, football matches, and the latest viral dance challenge. Desks squeaked against the linoleum floor. The chatter swirled around Fumiko but never touched her. She slid into her seat by the window, eyes drifting toward the cloud-dotted sky.
Across the room a name bounced between excited voices.
"Did you hear? Ryuji broke another record!"
"Of course he did. Golden boy never loses."
Ryuji Takahashi. International champion. A smile that melted the hearts of half the student body, adults and even older people. He was everything the magazines loved the most–handsome, athletic, endlessly charming.
As usual, students walked past her desk with an easy stride, exchanging high-fives with friends, sunlight catching in their hairs. They didn't notice her. They never did. And that was fine for her.
Fumiko barely registered the gossip. Her mind was still anchored to the dream, to the cloaked figure and the circle of dark sigils. The image clung to her vision like an afterimage of lightning. She pressed her palm against the mark beneath her sleeve, as if to steady herself.
"What are those dreams of? What it want to remind me? Why does those dreams kept coming every night? Who are those people in her dream actually?"
Her reflection in the glass window offered no answer.
"And why do I remember all those dreams? Why no one else get those type of dreams, why only I?"
The teacher's voice droned on, words dissolving into meaningless static. Outside, a flock of pigeons burst into sudden flight, wings flashing silver against the morning light. Fumiko watched them until they disappeared beyond the rooftops.
---
Lunch came and went in a blur. She ate alone beneath the old ginkgo tree in the school's playground, her best friend is absent today. A small pocket of quiet amid the chaos of laughter and ringing bells. The tree's golden leaves rustled like soft applause, though no breeze stirred them. Fumiko traced the spiral scar on her wrist, feeling the faint warmth that never fully faded.
Sometimes she wondered if the dream was trying to warn her–or to call her. Each night the battlefield grew clearer, the circle of magic sharper. Sometimes she woke with the taste of iron on her tongue, as if she had bitten into the memory of blood.
She tipped her head back, staring at the narrow slice of sky framed by branches. A single cloud drifted lazily overhead, shaped–just for an instant, like a crescent moon. Her breath caught.
The moon. The battlefield. The girl. The boy whose face she could almost remember.
Her phone buzzed, snapping her from the thought. A message from her adoptive mother overseas.
"How's school, sweetie? Don't forget to eat something green today!"
Fumiko smiled faintly, thumbs hesitating before replying with a simple I'm fine. It was easier than explaining the truth. How could she tell them she felt like a stranger in her own skin?
---
The final bell released a tidal wave of students onto the evening streets. Neon lights flickered awake as dusk settled over the city, painting the sidewalks in shades of rose and violet. Fumiko lingered at the school gate, watching shadows stretch long across the pavement.
Something ancient pulsed in the air, subtle yet undeniable. The same sensation that haunted her dreams. A call older than language, vibrating through her bones.
She tightened her grip on her bag. The whisper from the morning seemed to echo in the wind, softer now but unmistakable.
Soon.
Fumiko shivered. Somewhere, beyond the veil of ordinary life, something was stirring.
And she was no longer sure if she feared it… or had been waiting for it all along.
---
The night swallowed the city in glittering lights. From her bedroom window Fumiko watched the moon rise, round and silver, haloed by thin clouds. The mark on her wrist glowed faintly in the moonlight, as if responding to a silent command.
She touched it, heart hammering.
"What does that dream even mean?"
she whispered.
No answer came. Only the steady hum of a world preparing to wake.
Something ancient was calling.
And Fumiko Kajiyashiki was no longer the only one who could hear it.