SAI SHINU
The talk with Jiro had stretched for hours, our voices running over the tangled past like a river cutting through stone. Just as silence finally settled, there was a knock at the door.
I opened it to find Yosuke. His face was tired but steady. I welcomed him in, and soon we were all talking again—this time about godglyphs.
Yosuke asked if I knew of them. I nodded, telling him how I had broken one and stolen another. Jiro's face twisted in shock at the word stolen, but I explained: killing a wielder meant inheriting their glyph. That was the truth, no matter how bloody it sounded.
Yosuke admitted he had broken one but hadn't noticed its effect yet. With the system I had, I could see things others couldn't—even Naemi's hidden power, though Yosuke hadn't told her yet. He was right not to. She had enough weight on her shoulders without godglyphs pressing down.
We sat in silence for a while, the fire crackling between us. And then—
Knock. Knock.
I stood, slower this time. My chest tightened with the sound. When I opened the door, Taro was standing there. His expression wasn't casual, wasn't soft. It was serious—grave, even.
"Taro," I said. "You came."
"Yes," he replied, his tone calm but heavy. "You told me to meet you tonight, and here I am."
I stepped aside and let him in. Yosuke and Jiro turned their heads toward him, both clearly understanding this wasn't going to be a light talk.
The firelight touched Taro's face as he sat down. His eyes lingered on me.
Taro's voice was steady but heavy as he explained.
"Well, we found a godglyph back then. At the morning, when you were still at your house, the godglyphs started to tremble. I was in the room where I had kept it. I saw it shaking for a moment and then—vanished. I was stunned. But right after that, a portal appeared in the room. I assume the godglyph became that portal."
The room froze in silence. None of us had seen anything like this before, and the weight of it pressed into our bones.
Jiro broke the quiet first. "Maybe the stones are time-limited. You gain powers only if you break them in time. What you got, Sai… it's unique."
I shook my head slightly. "Maybe. But that doesn't explain the portal."
Yosuke leaned forward, frowning. "Could be a trap."
I thought hard, the silence humming in my ears, and then spoke. "What if it's both?"
Taro's eyes narrowed. "Keep talking."
I exhaled slowly. "Maybe the stones are time-limited. You can break them and claim the power. But if you don't… the energy doesn't vanish. It transforms. That's when it becomes a portal to another dimension."
Yosuke filled in the rest: "And inside that dimension… there are battles. Trials. You fight for the power instead of breaking the stone."
"Yes," I said. "It's wild, but it makes sense if you think about it."
Taro's hand clenched into a fist. "You're right. It does make sense. But here's the problem—what do we do about it? We can't just let it sit there forever. What if it shatters and monsters pour out?"
Jiro nodded firmly. "He's right. We have to act fast. This could put the whole village in danger."
Silence fell again, heavier than before. The fire crackled, but none of us moved.
Finally, Taro spoke, his tone decisive. "Alright. The four of us—me, Sai, Yosuke, and Jiro—will go inside the gate. We'll destroy it, and if it grants us power, we'll take it. But the three women and the child stay behind. They're not setting foot in there."
One by one, the rest of us nodded. There was no other choice.
After that everyone got ready and we meet outside of the room where the portal was.
The night was heavy, the kind of silence that only comes at the darkest hours before dawn. The village slept — women and children tucked safely in their rooms, unaware of what we were about to do. Only the four of us moved through the shadows.
The moonlight barely reached us under the canopy as we gathered in the old storehouse where Taro had hidden the godglyph. The stone was no longer there, only the portal pulsing faintly in its place — like a wound in the air, bleeding soft blue light into the room.
Taro whispered, though no one else was awake to hear us.
"It's time. We go in now, before anyone notices."
Yosuke adjusted the straps on his cloak, eyes narrowing at the shifting surface.
"Whatever's inside, we can't hesitate."
Jiro cracked his knuckles, his jaw tight.
"We're doing this for them. For the village."
I stood closest to the portal, the glow reflecting on my chest where the cursed moon mark lay beneath my shirt. My heart beat in rhythm with the hum of the gate. I could feel it pulling at me, like it knew my curse… like it was calling me.
"Alright," I said quietly, breaking the silence. "Once we step through, there's no turning back."
The four of us exchanged a final look — not of fear, but of resolve. The kind of look that meant if one of us didn't make it out, the others would carry his will forward.
And then, at exactly 3:00 AM, we stepped into the light.