The coastline changed before the maps did.
Riku felt it first—not through sight, but through the sea itself. The water beneath his boat grew strangely smooth, unnaturally flat, as if wind had forgotten this place. The sky above remained clear, yet the ocean no longer mirrored it.
No reflection.No stars.No sun.
Just depth.
He slowed the engine and let the boat drift. Ahead, a narrow strip of land emerged from the haze—jagged cliffs rising like broken teeth, their faces stained dark as if something had burned there long ago. No birds circled. No waves broke against the rocks.
This coast did not welcome visitors.
Riku checked his charts. The name was there, faint and crossed out in older ink:
Kurohama — Black Shore
Local superstition, the notes said.Fishermen reported calm waters and perfect weather—but anyone who stared too long into the sea here began to lose pieces of themselves. Memories. Faces. Time.
Riku exhaled slowly.
"So this is you," he murmured to the water.
The boat touched land without a sound.
As Riku stepped onto the shore, the connection in his chest tightened—not painfully, but insistently. The sea wasn't warning him.
It was… withdrawing.
For the first time since the shrine, the ocean felt distant. Closed.
A wooden post stood half-buried in the sand, old ropes rotting around it. Carved into the wood were symbols—not of fear or protection, but absence. Names scratched out. Faces deliberately erased.
Riku ran his fingers over one carving and felt a sudden dizziness.
A memory flickered—not his own.
A woman standing on this very shore, screaming into the water as something unseen pulled her reflection away. Not her body.
Her reflection.
Riku staggered back, heart racing.
"This place doesn't take lives," he whispered. "It takes… selves."
Behind him, the sea remained perfectly still.
Then a voice spoke—not from the water, but from the land.
"You feel it too, don't you?"
Riku turned sharply.
A figure stood near the base of the cliffs—a man wrapped in weathered black robes, his face half-hidden beneath a wide hat. His eyes were unsettling: clear, focused, untouched.
"I was wondering when the sea would send someone who listens," the stranger continued.
Riku kept his stance loose, alert. "I don't work for the sea."
The man smiled faintly."No," he said. "You work for what's left after it."
He stepped closer, boots crunching softly on sand that made no sound otherwise.
"My name is Ren," he said. "And this shore doesn't want you here."
Riku met his gaze. "Neither did the last place."
Ren studied him for a long moment, then nodded slowly."That explains why you're still whole."
A low hum vibrated through the ground beneath their feet—not a quake, not movement.
Something waking.
Ren turned toward the cliffs, his expression darkening."You should know," he said quietly, "Kurohama doesn't create monsters."
Riku felt the pull in his chest return—stronger now.
"It reveals them."
From the still, reflectionless sea, a shape began to form—not rising, not emerging, but appearing, like a missing thought finally remembered.
And for the first time since leaving Aya behind, Riku felt something he hadn't felt in days.
Uncertainty.
Not all darkness came from the deep.
Some waited patiently on shore.