The tunnel bent again—sharper this time.
Stone pressed closer, rough and damp, forcing the group into a tighter line. Rei's golden light slid along the walls, revealing veins of dark mineral that pulsed faintly, like something beneath the surface was alive—but sleeping.
Tsuramo slowed.
Not stopped.
Just… slower.
Something tugged at the edge of his awareness.
It wasn't sound.Not movement.
It was absence.
He tilted his head slightly beneath the brim of his ninja hat, eyes narrowing behind the shadow of the mask.
"…Hold on," he said quietly.
Ayame stopped immediately.
Kurojin halted a half-step later. The others followed.
"What is it?" Ayame asked, calm but sharp.
Tsuramo didn't answer right away. He shifted his stance, weight adjusting, eyes tracing the curve of the tunnel ahead—not where the light touched, but where it didn't.
"There's a gap," he said finally. "Not in the tunnel. In… presence."
Kijin's expression changed.
He inhaled slowly, then frowned. "Yeah," he muttered. "The air's wrong."
A faint breeze stirred around him, subtle but deliberate. His silver hair lifted slightly as his senses stretched outward.
"It shifted," Kijin continued. "Like something exhaled… and didn't breathe back in."
Rei stiffened.
His light reacted instantly.
The golden glow brightened, threads thickening, shimmering as he fed more energy into it. The light pushed farther down the tunnel, revealing stone that looked slightly warped, as if reality itself had been pressed and released.
"Light's destabilizing," Rei said, voice steady but tense. "No visual target. Just interference."
Ayame raised her hand.
Closed fist.
Everyone froze.
She stepped forward one pace, eyes scanning the tunnel ahead, then turned—slowly—so she could see all of them.
Her voice carried clearly, controlled, cutting through the tension.
"Kijin," she said first. "Wind spread—thin. I want constant feedback on pressure changes."
Kijin nodded, expression sharp now. "Already on it."
"Tsuramo," Ayame continued. "You're my early warning. If you feel that gap widen, you speak. No hesitation."
Tsuramo inclined his head. "Understood."
"Rei," she said, turning back to the guide. "Increase luminance gradually. Don't spike it—we don't want to provoke anything."
Rei adjusted his grip, the light shimmering brighter but smoother. "Got it."
"Kurojin."
Kurojin straightened slightly. "Yeah?"
"Rear and walls," Ayame ordered. "Your marks stay subtle. If the tunnel folds, I want a trail."
He smirked faintly. "Finally, something fun."
A faint red line burned briefly into the stone as his fingers brushed the wall again.
She turned to the remaining SS-ranker. "You stay silent. If something manifests physically, you intercept—only if I give the signal."
The swordsman gave a single nod.
Ayame faced forward again.
"Everyone stays alert," she said evenly. "This is not an attack. This is the tunnel testing us."
The air grew colder.
Rei's light shimmered—just once.
Tsuramo's fingers twitched.
"There," he said quietly. "It moved."
Nothing appeared.
No sound. No shape.
Just the unmistakable feeling that something deeper within the tunnel had shifted its attention—
—and decided to keep watching.
Ayame stepped forward.
"Move," she ordered calmly.
They advanced again, slower now, every sense tuned tight.
The Yokoshima Tunnel did nothing.
And that, more than anything, made it dangerous.
The change came with color.
Not Rei's gold.
Green.
At first it was only a thread—a fine, hairline seam of green running along the ceiling where the stone had warped.
Rei's light hit it and scattered, bending in a way that made the tunnel look deeper than it was.
Ayame's eyes narrowed. "Rei," she said quietly. "Hold."
The light steadied, stopped advancing. The golden glow hung in the air like a suspended breath.
The green line on the ceiling pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then it dropped.
Not stone.
A figure.
Something—someone—unfolded from that seam, as if slipping out from a crack in reality itself.
Bare feet touched the tunnel floor without a sound.
A girl stood between them and the darkness ahead.
No—woman. Young, but not a child. Her hair, long and straight, fell to her waist in a pale black-green sheen, like wet obsidian catching forest light.
Strands of it lifted in an unseen current, drifting as if she were underwater.
Her clothes might have once been a shrine maiden's robes—white and green—but now they clung like wet paper, stained darker where something had seeped into the fabric.
Faint, scale-like patterns shimmered over her exposed skin, tracing her throat, her cheekbones, her bare arms.
Where Rei's golden light touched her, it broke around her outline, like light around a blade.
Her eyes opened.
They were green.
Not human green.
Deep, luminescent, vertical-slit pupils narrowing as they focused on Ayame's group. She didn't smile.
She didn't frown.
She only lifted one hand, palm toward them, fingers trembling slightly.
"…Stop," she said.
Her voice was soft, but it carried all the way to the rear of the formation. The tunnel seemed to help it, letting the word slide along the stone.
Ayame lifted her hand—signal to hold formation.
"State your name," Ayame answered calmly. "And affiliation."
The girl's gaze flicked over them. Rei. Kurojin. The silent swordsman. The support team behind.
Then it paused, just for a heartbeat, on Tsuramo and Kijin. Something tightened in her eyes.
"You shouldn't have come," she whispered. "He's already…awake."
Kurojin scoffed quietly. "Another possessed local? How many offerings did they throw into this hole?" Ayame didn't look back. Her tone stayed level.
"Formation does not change. Tsuramo, Kijin—" Both straightened slightly at the sound of their names. "—you do not engage," Ayame said, voice like a blade sheath.
"Observation only. Full sensory read. If either of you moves without my order, you're benched for the rest of the operation. Clear?"
Tsuramo clicked his tongue softly behind the mask.
"Hai." Kijin's jaw flexed, but he nodded. "Understood, Ayame-taichō."
The girl took one step forward.
The tunnel reacted. Green light seeped out from the stone beneath her feet, crawling in thin lines along the floor like veins.
It climbed the walls, webbing up toward the ceiling, weaving around Rei's golden threads without touching them.
Rei raised his hand slightly, fingers curving into a sigil.
"Light is refracting," he reported, eyes narrowing. "She's warping it. Some kind of localized domain."
"Support," Ayame said, not taking her eyes off the girl. "Range check. Do not cross my line."
Behind Kurojin, two of the support specialists stepped forward just enough to see—one with prayer beads, another with a charm-paper fan.
Muted murmurs of kotodama began, paper tags igniting in faint blue and red. The girl flinched.
"Don't," she said sharply.
Her hand trembled more. Her eyes glistened, as if something behind them hurt.
"If you fight here—he'll—" Her words broke.
Not her voice.
The tunnel.
A low, grinding vibration rolled through the stone, subtle at first, then rising like a waking growl.
Dust shook loose from the ceiling in a fine curtain. Rei's light flickered. Tsuramo's shoulders tensed.
"Presence gap widening," he said immediately. "It's not watching from far anymore. It's… pressing in."
Kijin sucked in a breath through his teeth. The air around him tightened, wind currents coiling closer to his body.
"Pressure spike," he muttered. "The air's thickening from the front and the walls. Like the tunnel's lungs just filled."
Ayame's eyes never left the girl. "What is he?" she asked. No bark. No threat. Just a question sharpened into command.
The girl's lips trembled.
Green light crawled higher, encasing her calves, her thighs, her hips in a faint, scale-like pattern of phosphorescence.
The veins of color in the stone converged around her, threads tightening like a web being pulled taut.
"I… tried to hold him," she whispered. "To keep him sleeping. But the sacrifices… the hatred… you people kept feeding him. Now he's hungry."
Her pupils widened.
"He knows your names."
Rei's jaw clenched.
Ayame's fingers twitched once at her side.
"Kurojin," she said. "Test shot. Low yield. Aim at the stone beside her." Kurojin's smirk returned, thinner this time.
"With pleasure."
He raised his right hand. The faint red line he'd left on the wall earlier pulsed in answer, brightening.
He dragged two fingers across the air, tracing a short arc. A crescent of dark red flame snapped into existence, no wider than a man's shoulder.
It hissed through the tunnel, skimming the wall right by the girl. It never reached her. Green.
The light around her flared, warping space just enough that Kurojin's arc bent, its path twisting as if the tunnel itself had leaned.
The flame scraped against a different stretch of wall, biting into stone— —stone that bled.
The rock split, a vertical crack opening like an eyelid. Viscous, dark-green fluid seeped out, sizzling where Kurojin's attack kissed it.
The smell hit them an instant later—metallic and sour, like old blood left in something reptilian.
One of the support men gagged.
The girl's face contorted in pain. Green patterns climbed her cheeks, tracing her veins.
"Stop," she said again, more desperate now.