Even though the alarm's piercing sound subsided, the suspense it generated continued to hum. Concentration furrowed on Mitsuru's brow as her fingers fluttered across the keyboard. As if the tower's core were a sickly, irregular heartbeat, the screen pulsed with the strange signal from Tartarus.
With a tight voice, she said, "It's stable for now." However, where it came from remains a mystery. Our environmental readings and shadow signatures don't match.
He leaned in over her shoulder because the alarm was making him want to. "A different kind of enemy?"
"Not clear." He looked at me with his eyes. "But it made Tanaka's Persona do something right away."
Everyone looked at me. I could still feel it—a low, strong pull from deep inside Tartarus that felt like a magnetic hook stuck in my soul. The entity was quiet, but its eyes were fixed on that faraway point, like a predator on the lookout for new prey.
I couldn't find the right words to describe how it felt: "It feels... different. Not mad or sad. It feels more like a wrong note in a song. It wants to be fixed."
From the doorway, Makoto spoke after coming in quietly. "A lock that doesn't have a key."
The room was shivering at the sound of his plain words. It felt precisely like that.
"We can't ignore it," Mitsuru reached a conclusion, her tone making her stance clear. "Such a massive anomaly, buried so far in Tartarus, might pose a serious danger." Alternatively, a chance to comprehend. Once again, she looked at me. "Tonight is the day we will move; get ready."
As the day progressed, it dragged on. A faraway drone sounded like the instructor's voice in class. An invisible, persistent psychic itch was tugging at her from Tartarus. On a school break, I stood on the school roof, staring at the faraway, invisible tower, attempting to calm the buzzing in my heart.
"You seem preoccupied with something else." I pivoted. Standing there, Mitsuru felt the wind delicately rake her scarlet hair. Unlike in the control room, her demeanour was more subdued, as she came to stand by me at the railing, maintaining her impeccable posture.
"It's loud," I admitted, gesturing vaguely towards Tartarus. "This... call. It's all I can think about."
In a hazy manner, I pointed in the direction of Tartarus and admitted, "It's loud. as if the call completely consumes my thoughts."
"I can only imagine," she said in a low voice. "To be so closely linked to that place... it must be hard."
We stood still for a moment, watching the clouds move over the city. It was a rare, quiet time, a bubble of calm before the storm.
She said, "You were impressive during the full moon," but she didn't look at me. "Your control and determination were precisely what we needed."
I replied, "Your plan was exactly what we needed. I just did what it said."
She finally turned her head, a faint, knowing smile on her lips. "You did more than follow, Kaito. You adapted. You understood the spirit of the command, not just the letter. That is the mark of a true asset." She paused, her smile fading. "But this... this distortion worries me. It feels targeted. As if it was placed there for you to find."
She finally turned her head and smiled a little, as if she knew what was going on. "You did more than just follow, Kaito. You changed. You didn't just understand the letter of the command; you also understood its spirit. That is what makes something a true asset."
She stopped for a moment, and her smile faded. "But this... this distortion makes me nervous. It seems like it's aimed at someone. It feels as if it was intentionally placed for you to discover."
The same thought had been circling my mind.
She put her hand on the railing, and her knuckles turned white. "Remember your training, no matter what happens in there tonight. Know your limits; I won't let you work yourself to death for a mystery.
Her voice had a fierce protectiveness that made my heart race. I promised, "I'll be careful."
"I'll hold you to that," she said, her voice light but her eyes serious.
As the Dark Hour came that night, Tartarus looked bigger and scarier. A new sound, a high-pitched whine that made people feel uneasy, joined the normal groans and whispers of the shifting tower. The distortion was effecting the whole structure.
A well-oiled machine, we moved quickly and efficiently through the process. It appeared as though the familiar Shadows that we came across were agitated and skittish, as if they, too, could sense the unease that was present within the tower's core.
The deeper we went, the more dense the air became, but we were able to dispatch them with ease thanks to our years of experience. It had a weighty and restrictive feel, similar to wading through syrup.
"We're getting close," Mitsuru said, her voice sounding a little off through the comms. "The readings for energy are going up."
We reached a dead end. The corridor simply stopped at a smooth, dark wall that shouldn't have been there. And at the centre of that wall was a flaw. A patch of reality that looked like a corrupted digital image, glitching and shimmering, warping the space around it. The high-pitched whine was emanating directly from it.
In a low whisper, Yukari said, "This is it," while raising her bow.
It was not with violence that the entity that was within me surged forward; rather, it was with a focused and intense curiosity. It was as if a master locksmith was presented with a lock that was both complicated and fascinating.
An error has occurred, and a thought-impression has come about, not in words but in the meaning itself. There is a flaw in the code of this location. A cure is required for it.
"Is it good?" I mumbled that out loud. "What is it?"
Determine the order. Impose the idea of STASIS on the audience. This issue pertains to correctness.
On behalf of the team, I communicated the message. "It displays that it is a bug. As a scar. It is necessary for me to... fix it."
"Fix it?" Junpei echoed, bewildered. "Dude, we break things; we don't fix them!"
"Just cover him," Akihiko ordered, taking a defensive stance.
I stepped towards the shimmering distortion. It was deeply unsettling to look at, making my eyes water and my stomach lurch. I reached out with my will towards the Entity, towards the concept of stability.
But as I did, the distortion flared. Figures materialised from the glitching light—not shadows, but humanoid shapes made of static and fractured colour. Their forms were familiar. One was tall and lanky, another wore a cap, and a third had long hair. They were twisted, funhouse mirror reflections of us. Of SEES.
"A cognitive echo," Mitsuru breathed, horror in her voice. "It's reflecting us!"
The static-Junepei lunged with a blade of distorted light. The real Junpei met him with a shocked cry. Akihiko was trading blows with a flickering copy of himself. Yukari was trying to line up a shot on a glitching version of her own form.
It was chaos. We were fighting ourselves.
I tried to focus, to push past the chaos and impose STASIS on the central distortion, but the psychic feedback from fighting our own echoes was overwhelming. Every blow they landed felt like a violation.
Then, I saw it. The glitching Mitsuru raised its hand, and a corrupted version of Penthesilea began to form, its ice a sickly, burning purple.
The real Mitsuru saw it too, her eyes wide. "Kaito!"
Panic flared. I couldn't let that thing hurt her. I couldn't let this distortion mock us, hurt us, using our own faces.
The focus shattered. The careful control I had built evaporated.
NO! I screamed inwardly, not at the distortion, but at the Entity. END THIS!
I felt a shift within. The patient locksmith was gone. In its place was the final judge. The power that answered wasn't the precise channelling of a concept. It was the raw, erasing silence.
A wave of absolute negation erupted from me. It didn't target the central distortion. It washed over everything—the glitching copies, the corrupted wall, the very air around us.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying.
The static copies didn't shatter or scream. They are simply unformed. One moment they were there; the next, they were gone, erased from existence without a trace. The high-pitched whine of the distortion cut off abruptly.
The glitching wall smoothed over, becoming ordinary, cold stone. The heavy, resistant air vanished.
The silence that followed was absolute. And empty.
I stood there, panting, the familiar, draining weakness flooding my body, worse than before. I had to brace myself against the now-normal wall.
The others were staring, not at where the enemies had been, but at me. Their faces were a mix of relief and a fresh, deep-seated dread. I had solved the problem. I had erased the threat. But I had done it by unleashing the very thing they feared most.
Junpei was the first to speak, his voice small. "They're just... gone."
Mitsuru walked over to me, her steps slow. She didn't look at the wall. She looked only at me, her expression unreadable.
"You lost control," she said, her voice quiet, but it echoed in the dead silence.
"I had to," I gasped, my legs trembling. "They were... you..."
"I know," she cut me off, her voice commanding but also carrying an unexplained anguish. By firmly grasping my arm, she helped to steady me. "However, Kaito, the price. Take a look at the price.
Her assessment was correct. My stability and power were at stake. Plus one additional thing. A sombre reminder of what lay dormant inside me had replaced the trust that had started to blossom in their eyes.
Feeling defeated, we teleported back to the entrance. I had pierced their trust while we had sealed a distortion. After accomplishing its mission and reasserting its terrifying power, the Entity returned to its state of silent observation. I was fumbling my way down the road ahead, completely alone and in the dark.