The wires struck.
Kazuo raised the glowstick-mic just in time, screaming a prayer that was half anime chant, half forum shitpost:"Miku beam—resonance triangulation activate!"
The glowstick pulsed, projecting a triangle of faint blue light with the torn Vocaloid poster as anchor. For a moment—just a moment—the wires bounced back, vibrating against the silence field.
The air went dead.
No rain.No traffic.No sound.
Even Kazuo's panicked heartbeat muted in his chest.
The Piano-Wire Void staggered, its form distorting like feedback canceling itself out. The cluster of piano-key teeth snapped open and closed soundlessly, furious.
Kazuo gasped, desperate for air that felt too thick. "It—It's working—!"
Then the glowstick flickered.
The silence field collapsed with a brittle crack, like a CD snapping in half. The wires whipped free, slicing through the ground. Pavement exploded in wet chunks, asphalt curling into splinters of obsidian.
Lilith shrieked, static tearing across her face as her idol aura frayed. Her hands clawed at her hoodie, trying to hold herself together. "You call that working?!"
Kazuo fumbled, the glowstick sparking in his hands. "I—I didn't have enough anchors! The formation's unstable—"
A wire lashed toward him.
Meph stepped forward. His shadow rose like a curtain, intercepting the strike. The wire sheared through—but where it should have sliced him in two, it only carved through smoke. His velvet baritone carried through the chaos like a low organ note:
"Silence isn't absence, boy. It's shape."
Kazuo blinked, sweat dripping into his glasses. "S-shape?"
Another lash of wires screamed through the rain, aimed for Lilith. She braced—only for Kazuo to throw himself in front, jamming the cracked mic into the ground. The poster flared with neon blue fire.
A second silence field bloomed, jagged and imperfect—but this time, Kazuo saw it.
Not just nothingness. Geometry.
The silence curved around the wires like glass, bending their resonance.
Meph's shadow clapped once—a perfect rest. The void recoiled.
Kazuo's eyes widened. "It's not muting… it's conducting!"
Lilith groaned, dragging herself upright, phantom glowsticks sprouting from her arms like glitching wings. "No shit, Sherlock! Do it again before my polygons unravel!"
Kazuo dug frantically through his bag, melon pan crumbs smearing across his phone as he pulled out a tangle of broken USB cables. His cracked screen buzzed with red error codes. He didn't care. He stabbed the cables into the ground, lashing them to the poster edges, his voice cracking as he screamed:
"Triangle formation, version two-point-oh!"
The glowstick pulsed brighter. The mic amplified nothingness. For a split second, the wires froze mid-lash, trapped in a crystalline silence field shaped like a prism.
The Piano-Wire Void convulsed, its humanoid silhouette unraveling into a discordant storm. Keys shattered from its jaw, scattering into the puddles where they dissolved like chalk. Its overlapping voices shrieked out of sync:
"UN-TUNED. UN-CLEAN. UN—"
Then silence swallowed the words.
Kazuo's vision blurred. Blood ran from his nose, dripping onto the infernal tome balanced against his leg. His glasses fogged over completely, but he didn't need to see—his cracked phone projected diagrams across the mist, showing weak points flickering across the demon's strings.
Lilith staggered closer, her form stabilizing under the silence prism. "Hit it now, nerd! That's your opening!"
Kazuo raised the glowstick like a sword. His band tee clung to his chest, soaked with sweat and rain. His heart thudded like a kick drum, fueling the silence prism's pulse.
But the void adapted.
The wires trembled, vibrating faster. Instead of attacking, they tuned themselves—finding frequencies outside the prism's containment. A new hum filled the alley, low and sharp, like bones grinding together.
The silence prism cracked.
Kazuo's phone exploded in his hand, sparks burning his palm. The diagrams vanished.
"No no no no no—!" he screamed, clutching the glowstick tighter.
The void's form re-solidified, jagged and furious. Its piano-teeth clamped open wide, and for the first time, it spoke a word with clarity:
"CONSUME."
The wires shot forward, aiming not for his chest this time—But for his throat.
Kazuo froze, too slow.
And then—
The wires stopped an inch away, quivering against a wall of pure black.
Meph stood between them, one hand raised. His cufflink blazed crimson, burning brighter than the neon signs above. His baritone rolled through the alley, final and absolute:
"Lesson over."
The wires snapped backward like puppets cut free. The void shrieked, dissonance fracturing every window in the street.
Meph turned, eyes glinting like polished obsidian. Smoke curled around his lips as he smiled—too wide, too sharp.
"You've learned enough to survive, boy. Now…" His voice dropped lower, almost intimate.
"…show me if you can kill."
The void screamed, strings unraveling into a storm of wires that blacked out the alley.
Kazuo gripped the glowstick, bleeding palms shaking, chest heaving, Lilith bracing behind him.
And together, they plunged into the silence storm.