Behind the Umitasora house as the sun had just begun to climb down from its perch in the sky, Gado walked across the yard to try and check up on his son who he had seen wander off to Annika's garden. "Hey, Eiji… mind if I join you?" Gado asked as he poked his head inside the small clearing for his wife's grave. Eiji turned around to see his father and tried to pull together a smile, but instead his face just made an uncomfortable expression. "Of course not," Eiji said as he slid out of the worn out spot on the marble bench. As Gado sat down beside him, his legs seemed to fit perfectly into the grooves that had been worn into the stone over time, as if he had spent years sitting in that very spot.
So Eiji...I know we haven't talked about it in a while but…" Gado tried to say carefully, yet he could feel the dark cloud that had quickly gathered around his son. Eiji kept his head down but he was visibly clenching his hands. Gado sat alongside his son quietly for a moment before he tried to continue on. "Look it's not that you're not trying-" "I knew you were going to bring it up," Eiji said in frustration, interrupting his father. "I know I'm trying, I train almost every day," Eiji said with a strain in his voice. Eiji swallowed his tongue and regained a bit of his composure, trying to speak more calmly. "Taiyo opened his eyes at thirteen, and Hikari was even younger at twelve… I'm seventeen years old and it still hasn't happened for me… no matter how hard I train." Eiji said as a lump formed in his throat. "I want nothing more than to be able to open my eyes and train my Mesukiro alongside my peers, but instead I'm stuck… I have an augmented school schedule, and I've lost touch with friends because I can't keep up with them… I hate it." Gado sat beside his son. His heart breaking in his own way as he listened. As a Father he desperately wanted to be able to help him. "Eiji look…" He began softly, "I've been talking to some of the other teachers and they've got some ideas on how we can adjust your training, even Hiro mentioned... " Eiji cut him off once again, This time the frustration had come back to his tone. The wind cut through the trees above them, almost as if it were being stirred by his emotions.
"Don't say it like you pity me! It's already pathetic enough… I don't need everybody clamoring to fix my issues either!" He said as his eyes started to well up with tears. "Eiji… I didn't mean to…" Gado said in consolation. "It's fine..." Eiji interrupted, "I don't want anyone's help any more… I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and well..." Eiji took a deep breath and wiped his face. "I'm either gonna do this myself... or not at all." He said with an almost grim confidence. Gado didn't know how to reply, this wasn't the direction he had intended for the conversation to go. He leaned over and put his hand on his son's shoulder. Eiji picked up his head, "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you," He said without turning. Gado looked forward at the grave stone in front of them, wondering what his wife would have said in this moment. "Look son… the path to your future is decided by you alone... it's not my place to stand in your way if that's what you want, but if you need me. If you need any of us, we're always here." Gado wanted to reassure his son, and he did his best to try and instill some more positive confidence, but he wasn't quite sure what more he could say. Eiji had yet to look at him, his mind still filled with the hope that called to him with cries of a different life. "Would you still be proud of me if I never became a Sentoki..." Eiji asked his Father. Gado chuckled in response, catching Eiji off guard. He turned his head to see his father smiling down at him, Gado knew how to answer his son this time. "I'm already proud of you Eiji." He said to him. Eiji smiled softly and leaned into his Father a bit, although it couldn't fix everything, Gado's words did manage to bring him the smallest bit of comfort. "Let's get inside and get some dinner started, huh?" Gado said, trying to rally more of a smile from Eiji if he could. "I think I'm just gonna hang out here for a bit… and… I might skip dinner tonight if that's alright…" Eiji said as Gado stood up. "Could you… before you go?" Eiji said as he nodded toward the Ki stone that sat in front of his mother's grave. Gado smiled as he looked down at his son, reaching out and touching the Ki stone, causing the image of Annika to appear for him.
It was only an hour or so later when Eiji collapsed into his bed with his hands covering his face in frustration. Below him he could hear the sounds of his Father stirring and preparing dinner for the whole family once again. Over the course of the next hour, his siblings along with Hiro, and Kyuen had all joined his Father on the floor below. Their voices all competed with Eiji's thoughts as he listened to them discuss Taiyo's training-grounds blunder as well as his new mission and Hikari's new unexpected rival. "It's starting… They're both gonna take off and leave me behind…" he whispered to himself as he continued to wallow. While he lay in bed unable to rest, he eventually heard the sounds of the family laughing. Teasing and prodding at Taiyo's ego and going over Hikari's training regiment, blissfully unaware that he was in such turmoil. Eiji had refrained from sharing any of his developments at the ruin with his family recently, as it felt shameful for him to keep bringing it up without having any results to show. The hours continued to creep by, the silence of the night blanketing the Umitasora Estate as the family convened. Eiji's mind continued to race back and forth with self-doubt as the last beams of the sunset pushed through his windows. He was unable to get even a second of rest with everything that was eating away at him. As the golden light hit his face, Eiji's eyes steeled with determination while he stared at the ceiling. He had spent the whole evening arguing with himself about how he should proceed and how he could deal with the gnawing feeling of being left behind. In time Eiji's eyes finally became heavy as he faded into sleep, the voices from below getting quieter and quieter as the last glimpses of sunlight traded places with the moon.
Expand the following scene, add perspective from Taiyo's side and make the moment where Eiji leaves a bit 'Longer
The next morning Eiji stirred in his bed. His sleep had been restless for a number of weeks now with the growing stress he was under. The early morning sun pushed through his blinds leaving rows of golden light scattered across Eiji's floor. Rubbing his eyes and yawning, he had barely been awake for more than a second before all of the weight and shame he was holding onto took its place at the front of his mind. Eiji let out a sigh as he sat up and rolled his shoulders and as he did he heard a set of faint muffled voices coming from outside his bedroom window. "That's odd, I'm usually the first one up," Eiji thought to himself as he moved toward the window and used his fingers to separate the blinds. Down below at the bottom of his front steps, Eiji could see four individuals all standing and facing each other. Eiji rubbed his eyes once again to clear his vision, and now could make out his Father, brother, and Uncle as well as a young woman all standing in front of the house. "Must be for the mission I overheard them talking about last night," Eiji thought. "Isn't that the girl who Taiyo used to fight with all the time at school?" He wondered as he looked down at the four of them. Before long, Eiji had watched as Taiyo and Aimee threw their bags over their shoulders and headed off into the distance, leaving Gado and Hiro behind. The two men seemed to discuss a few more things before eventually heading back inside. Just like the night before Eiji could feel the weight of his shortcomings constantly holding him back. Although they hadn't been as close as of lately, there were few people Eiji admired more than his older brother and as he watched Taiyo walk off into the distance. towards a life Eiji felt as though he would never be able to reach, something inside of Eiji snapped.
"Screw it…" Eiji muttered as he hoisted himself out of the window and onto the small section of roof that sat outside his bedroom. Carefully, he made his way to the edge and kept as quiet as possible. Successfully slipping outside and avoiding any conversation with his Father and Uncle on the floor below. "I'm getting there first…" Eiji thought to himself as his feet hit the ground after the short jump down from the first-story roof. His memories of the day before and the words Ren had said to him pushed to the front of his mind, egging him on as he made his way down the path that led away from his house. Eiji's decision was already made in his mind. Either he would be the one to uncover the Kami temple… or he would give up on trying to catch up with everyone around him. "I don't care anymore… I'm not letting this get taken away from me!" Eiji thought to himself as he quietly made his way toward his goal. It had only taken him an hour or so to make his way to the excavated entrance of the temple's ruins, where it would be only another short hour before he traversed his way down to the main chamber and stood facing the dark and ominous doorway that led to the final unexplored room.
Eiji stood in silence, his eyes fixated on the foreboding entrance. "I just need proof… Just the smallest bit of proof my theory is correct. I'll get what I need and be done in time to get back for my classes…" He thought to himself, hardening his resolve to traverse knowingly past the point of no return. Eiji let his bag down from his shoulder and reached inside, pulling out a small lantern and a lighter. Without Ren or Rei around, he couldn't use the Ki crystal torches, and the unexplored room had no lights set up within. Eiji gave the lighter a flick and lit the lantern, illuminating the air around him. He was at the end of a long, narrow hallway that branched off from the main chamber of the temple. He had passed a number of the previously explored rooms on his way, each one of them a failure to reveal anything about the Kami Temple that Eiji strongly suspected lay beneath his feet. "No going back now…" he muttered, his voice echoing off the ruin walls as he pushed aside the cloth banner that had been hung across the door, marking it as unsafe.
He carefully stepped into the unlit room and held his breath with anticipation as his first steps inside began to light up the walls with the glow of his lantern. He stood just within the doorframe, seeing if he could read the text on the walls from where he was. He squinted his eyes, but the light of the lantern was too dim for him to make out any details. Eiji looked down at his waist and then over his shoulder behind him. In an effort to remain safe, he had driven a stake between a few of the floor stones in the hall and secured himself with rope… just in case. Eiji looked around the room one more time before gingerly taking a small step forward, listening for any sounds of shifting stone or tiles. This time, the light in his hand managed to reach the back wall, giving way to the sight of the same crumbling plaster that Rei had discovered the day before in another room. The room that mentioned the Kami Okuninushi by name. Eiji's eyes widened as he saw a glimpse of what looked to be a mural behind the dried-out ancient plaster. He swallowed as he took another small step forward, still no sound of anything giving way as he began to creep across the floor. His eyes darted back and forth from his feet to the flashes of green and gold on the wall that peered out through the cracks of their cover-up. He had made it almost halfway across the room with slow and steady movements, taking as much time as he needed in between steps, when something behind him began to rustle.
Eiji slowly looked over his shoulder to try and see what could possibly be making any sound this far down within the ruins, only to see a rather large rat making its way around the perimeter of the room. It was unnerving. Logically, Eiji knew that the rats must come in and out of the room all of the time, but to watch the creature shuffle around on the same floor he was trying to be so careful on, left him unsettled. "Shoo!" Eiji whispered as gently as he could in an attempt to send the rat scurrying back into the hall, but instead it had the opposite effect. The rat, startled by Eiji's whisper, came bounding toward him and began frantically racing back and forth across the floor around Eiji's feet. Frozen with fear, not at the rat but at his predicament, Eiji watched as the rat scurried around until it eventually found a small gap in the wall of the room and ran inside. He let out a sigh of relief as he saw the tail of the rat disappear from sight, once again leaving him alone in the trepidatious situation. Eiji took another deep breath and took another step forward toward the wall in front of him, but the moment his foot landed on the ground, he heard the unmistakable sound of stone grinding against stone. "Shit! Shit!" Eiji said frantically as he tried to lift his foot away from the shifting stone underneath him, but it was too late. In a cascade that happened far faster than he could react, the very floor beneath his feet began to crumble. Once the first stone had shifted, it was like the rest of the structure just gave up. Eiji tried to turn and run for the safety of the hallway that was only a few feet behind him, but it was no use.
As his footing gave out, Eiji dropped the lantern in his hand, losing the only light he had to see by, as he began to fall with the collapsing floor. There was no way of knowing if the rope Eiji had tied himself off with was short enough to keep him from hitting the ground, or whatever may lay below the floor of the blocked-off room. Eiji let out a desperate and blood-curdling scream as he dropped down, the sight of the hallway quickly disappearing below the floor line as he descended. In another instant, the line was pulled taught and violently lashed at his waist as it halted his momentum for the briefest second. It was as if time had slowed down. As soon as the rope pulled at his waist, Eiji knew that the stake had come loose and failed to catch him, and in that moment, all he could do was brace himself for the impact of his fall and hope to survive… For what seemed like an eternity, Eiji kept falling farther and farther down into the darkness. Air rushed past him as rock and stone fell alongside him. "This is it… I'm gonna die when I hit the ground…" Eiji thought to himself as moments of his life and childhood flashed before his eyes. His early days with his Mother… spending time in the kitchen with his Father… chasing behind his older siblings as a kid… and his memories with his best friends… "Ren… Rei… I'm sorry…" Was Eiji's last thought before he crashed into the room below.
All of a sudden, Eiji's body went cold… he hit the bottom of the pit he had fallen into, but was abruptly startled by the results. "Water?!" Eiji's mind raced frantically as he plunged into a cold, wet pool that had quickly enveloped him. "Water…Water!" Was the only thought he could manage to summon as the rock and stone continued to crash around him. "I… I'm alive!… I can't swim up yet…" He quickly realized, as the will to survive came flooding back into his body. "Let the rocks finish falling first…" he thought as he tried to swim even farther down despite being completely surrounded by darkness. After another few seconds, the falling rocks began to subside, or at least as far as Eiji could tell. Eiji carefully let himself float up to the surface of the chilling pool he had been plunged into, yet after dropping his lantern into the water he had no light and no way to discern his surroundings. After breaching the surface of the water and taking a few of the most appreciative breaths of his life, Eiji tried to regain his composure. "I need to stay calm if I'm gonna get out of this alive…" He thought as he tried to see any way to get out of the hole he had fallen into. Above him, he could still see the faint glow coming from the hallway, just barely illuminated by the dim Ki crystals that had been placed there. Unfortunately for Eiji, the light didn't reach down into the hole and he had no way of telling just how big the pool he had fallen into was. "I guess I should try and find the edge… if there is one. I won't survive long in this frigid water," He thought as he began to swim away from the light of the doorway that shone above his head. Surprisingly, Eiji only had to swim for a few short minutes before reaching the edge of the pool, but what happened when he did was even more surprising. As Eiji's hand desperately reached for the cold and unforgiving stone edge of the pool, the space in which he had touched was illuminated with a faint glow. Eiji quickly retracted his hand back into the water, startled and confused by the quick flash of light that had come from the wall.
"What the hell was that?... It looked… almost like the light from a Ki Crystal?" Without any other options, Eiji cautiously reached back out and touched the wall once again, only to realize he was entirely right. The walls surrounding the pit were formed almost entirely of stunning white Ki Crystal. As Eiji's hand pressed against the wet stone, the glow that emanated from underneath it began to spread, slowly but surely filling the room with a dim glow until Eiji could finally see his surroundings. "Why? Why is the Ki Crystal reacting to my touch? It shouldn't…" Eiji thought to himself suspiciously as he began to look around the room he had fallen into, still treading water as his head began to spin around in hopes of finding an exit. "I don't have time to think about that," he said as he quickly noticed a portion of the room that seemed to extend farther backwards and, more importantly, out of the chilling water. Eiji swam to the bank that was now in sight thanks to the illuminated glow from the strange walls. Once again, as Eiji's hands and feet made contact with the surface of the stone that had turned from towering walls to a soft slope where he could lift himself out, things began to glow even brighter around him. Eiji pulled himself out of the water and collapsed onto the cold, hard ground of the strange space he now found himself in. With more light finally provided, he could see the actual extent of his fall from the room above. "That looks like it must be almost sixty feet! I… I can't believe I'm alive," He said as he lay on his back looking up at his only way to get back out to the surface. Eiji stood up and promptly pulled his shirt over his head in order to wring it out, squeezing the water from its fabric as he twisted.
The water splashed down in front of him and trickled back into the pool, each drop creating a small ring of light as they hit the floor that was carved from Crystal. "That's so strange… Ki Crystal shouldn't react to someone without a Mesukiro… much less to a few drops of water. Also..." Eiji began to take a broader look around at his surroundings and where he was. "I've never seen this much Ki Crystal in one place!" he muttered with astonishment as he slowly turned around, only to be met by the sight of an expansive and cavernous room that sparkled with the glow of the stone. "Oh wow…" Was all that escaped Eiji's lips as the sight of the space opened before him. Sharp spires of Ki Crystal protruded from both the floor and the ceiling, some of them even meeting together and forming pillars of glowing stone.
Eiji rubbed his eyes and threw the slightly dried shirt back over his body. The curiosity of what might lie below the temple was starting to well up once more, now that the shock of his near-death experience began to subside. "This… certainly doesn't look like a Kami temple… but it's beautiful nonetheless…" Eiji said to himself as he began to slowly wander into the cavern in hopes of, well he wasn't quite sure what he hoped to find, but standing there on the edge of the pool certainly wasn't going to help his situation. The cavern continued to illuminate even further with each step he took across the uneven crystal floor, and after a few seconds, the shape of another ominous door frame; like the one that had ended him up here in the first place, started to come into view along the back wall of the cavern. Eiji's eyes widened at the sight of the doorway that had very clearly been carved by hand when compared to the rest of the natural cavern. The frame was chiseled and pristinely polished Ki crystal, and as Eiji curiously stepped past the threshold of the crystal wall, the interior of the room began to glow almost twice as bright as the remaining cavern, and Eiji was met with the undeniable proof he had been correct about what lay below the forgotten ruins.
Eiji's astonishment was so much that he almost felt sick. With his stomach in his throat, he stepped farther into the shining crystal room. Unlike the natural cavern behind him, the room was clearly and very precisely carved in a perfect cube. The seams of the walls were non-existent as if it had been carved from a single solid block of stone. Eiji's breath was shallow as his eyes fixated on the mounting evidence before him. Against the back wall of the room stood the most magnificent carved statue he had ever laid eyes on… but said statue did not portray any human or Yokai. Instead, like the tail of an insect… or maybe a serpent that had been carved from Ki Stone protruded from the ground and supported an other-worldly body that seemed more akin to a carapace rather than a torso. Two slender and almost frail-looking arms extended out from the statue towards the center of the room, as if they waited for something, and from behind them came two more appendages that could only be described as 'insect legs' protruding from the statue's back. Atop the strangely looking body of the statue sat an even stranger and more ominous face. There were no facial features that could be distinguished, just a pale, porcelain, almost skull-like head that sat looking down at Eiji. The only notable features were the two foreboding horns that towered over the rest of the face. Eiji was floored… his hands trembled, and as sweat began to form on his brow, the realization came over him… this was the biggest discovery he could have made. "I know what this is… It's a Kami Effigy!" His mind screamed, as several different passages and excerpts from his history books came flooding out from his memory. "I've read about this! In the mainland Temples that still exist… Each Temple was created with an Effigy in dedication to the Kami who resided in said Temple!... This…This must be the Effigy for Okuninushi!" His head spun from side to side to look around the room for any other amazing discoveries he had missed, but there was nothing else. Nothing else at all inside of the pristine crystal room aside from the magnificent carving of the former Demi-god. "It doesn't matter… this is all I need to prove I was right!" For a moment, as he basked in the glory of his discovery; he had almost forgotten that he was stranded deep underground.
After a minute Eiji's mind came back to his reality, "I'll be alright…" he tried to rationalize through his shallow breaths, still caught in the awe of the incredibly complex and intricate carving in front of him. "Ren and Rei should be planning to come by tomorrow… and worst case scenario, the Special Excavation team is scheduled to start on this room in… two days…" he thought reluctantly. "I… I can last that long if I need to…" It was in that moment that Eiji realized something even more peculiar as the thought of possibly needing to survive the cold, dark cave crossed his mind. "My… My clothes are dry? How?" Eiji thought to himself, puzzled as he pulled and tugged at his pants that were sopping wet just a moment ago. It was only another second later that Eiji noticed the rising temperature of the small crystal chamber; it wasn't hot… but it was certainly warmer than the surrounding cave, and it felt like it was getting warmer still. "My clothes wouldn't have dried out that fast just from walking into a warmer room… and… what's that hum?" Eiji thought to himself as he turned back around toward the entrance of the room only to see the most shocking portion of his discovery thus far.
The entrance to the small chamber had disappeared. Panic began to set in as Eiji was met with the sight of nothing but more crystal wall behind him. Gone was the sight of the open cavern and the pool he had crawled out of, and in its stead was the unforgiving wall that now trapped him inside this strange place. Eiji rushed forward and threw himself against the wall in a mix of fear and anger. "Hey!... No!... Open… Open up!" He yelled through ragged breaths. There was no way anybody would find him trapped behind a wall like this. He screamed and shouted as his thoughts and mind became more frantic. "Dammit! Com'on!" Eiji pounded his fists against the solid crystal, but it was no use. He panted as his hand slid down the wall, the crystal still reacting to his touch and leaving streaks behind his fingers. Except it wasn't exhaustion, or futility that made Eiji stop… It was the growing hum that was emanating from the room behind him… and the slow but steady change in not only the temperature… but now the light from the walls as well. As Eiji slowly and reluctantly turned around to face the statue once more. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the room had begun to change from their soft white glow, to an eerie greenish hue, and not only that… but the expression of the statue had changed.
What was a pale and expressionless face just a moment before, now bore a pair of glowing green eyes that almost seemed to shine from within the stone itself. Eiji swallowed hard as his gaze met the intimidating glare of the figure before him, the peculiar hum growing louder as the temperature continued to climb even faster. His stomach sank even more than it had during his fall; at least during that time, he knew what was coming to him. Before he could think, or rationalize what to do next, the green glow of the room began to rapidly grow more intense, and below his feet, an image began to take shape in the glow of the stone. A dark, round ring formed on the ground with a smaller dark circle in the middle, and between them, an array of waving strands of light began to connect the two, almost looking like… "An eye?" Eiji thought to himself as the depiction became more vivid beneath his feet, seemingly staring back up at him in a way that was more spine-chilling than he could put into words. As the image became clearer, the heat too became more intense by the second, and the green glow of the rest of the walls began to fade away, leaving nothing but the eye on the floor staring back at him. Eiji began to choke on the dry air, his eyes watering as the heat suffocated him. He fell to his knees and clutched his throat, the eye on the floor simply mocking him with its stare as he struggled to maintain his awareness. Once again, Eiji lifted his head, only to once again see the unthinkable. "Did…it move closer?... is it… coming toward me?" he thought frantically as the frail outstretched hands of the statue felt as if they had moved within reach. His body flooded with fear and confusion, the burden of the heat had become a sort of pressure that he couldn't bear, and the darkening glow of the walls made the room feel like it was closing in on him. In a desperate and illogical move, completely unlike himself, Eiji reached out to the frail hand of the statue in the hope of finding some relief. He crawled across the pupil of the eye below him, towards the beckoning figure before clasping its hand, and just like he had experienced earlier. He was met with the sensation of falling, and engulfing darkness…