Haru sprinted through the ruined corridors, his breaths sharp and ragged, chest heaving as dread pooled in his stomach like acid. The unnatural air bent around him, thick with the rot of death and something worse—wrongness. His boots pounded against cracked stone, every corner he turned sharper, faster. The scream still echoed in his skull—high-pitched, terrified, real, It had been Haruka, and then he saw it.
The hallway opened into a crumbled chamber, dimly lit by an eerie green glow bleeding from the broken ceiling. And there, in the center of the room, knelt Haruka.
Her small body was hunched forward, limp, held upright only by the spirit gripping her from behind—its long arms curled around her torso like a grotesque hug. Her knees were bent beneath her, barely holding her weight, twitching slightly with each horrible sound coming from her throat. She was no longer in her transformation, but wearing the same outfit she wore before all of this.
A wet, crunching noise, mixed with something softer—like someone slurping thick soup. Her neck convulsed, blood pulsing from a gaping tear just below her chin, spilling in heavy glugs. The spirit pulled back for a moment, its mouth drenched in red, a long sinew of flesh hanging between its teeth before it slurped it up like a noodle. A sound came from her throat — a wet, choking gurgle. Her mouth opened like she was trying to call out, to say his name — but only blood came out. Thick, bubbling red ran over her lips and down her chin, pooling beneath her head. Her fingers twitched.
"Ha…"
The spirit pulled back slightly, revealing the torn-open mess that used to be her neck. Her throat was mangled, chewed into, muscle and cartilage exposed—her trachea glistening as it pulsed weakly, futilely, before being overtaken by another gush of blood. Her head tilted slightly, jaw hanging open, lips trembling. Blood bubbled up from her mouth and spilled over her chin in thick gobs.
Her eyes weren't even focused. Rolled back so far only the whites showed, fluttering in small, twitchy spasms. Her left arm hung limply at her side—her right was gone completely, torn off at the shoulder. What remained was a mess of tendons and shredded muscle, and the second spirit was gnawing on the stump, pulling skin away like taffy with its needle-like teeth.
Haru screamed.
It tore out of him like a wildfire, primal and raw, echoing through the chamber as tears streamed down his cheeks. His hands hit the floor, fists tightening so hard his knuckles bled against the broken stone. Grief twisted in his gut like a knife, choking him, dragging him beneath a wave of guilt and helplessness so intense he thought he might break apart.
Haru didn't think. He didn't breathe. He lunged.
The world around him collapsed into red — not just blood, but rage, heat, grief. A scream tore out of his throat, high and guttural, as he launched himself toward the spirit chewing into Haruka's neck. The thing didn't even flinch — it simply turned its head a fraction, blood still dripping from its fanged mouth, but Haru was already on it.
He tackled the spirit to the floor, fists slamming down with wild force. He didn't care what part he hit — its jaw, its chest, its eye — his hands were a blur of fury and pain. His knuckles cracked on impact, skin splitting, blood mixing with the creature's as it snarled and shrieked under him.
Then something pierced his side — another spirit. It had sunk its claws into him, dragging them across his ribs like hooks. Haru screamed, twisting, but didn't stop. He elbowed the creature behind him and kept striking the first one, his whole body burning with fury.
A third spirit tackled him from behind.
He hit the ground hard, head bouncing off stone, vision spinning. Teeth sank into his shoulder — hot, sharp — and he cried out again, grabbing blindly for anything. He ripped the thing off him.
He was surrounded. And he didn't care.
He didn't care if he died. He wanted to die.
Suddenly, the temperature dropped. Not like the wind, not like the cold, like the absence of everything. The spirits around him scattered, screeching,hissing,crawling into the cracks and corners like rats caught under a spotlight. Haru stumbled to his feet, vision blurry, blood in his mouth. He turned, panting—body battered, shoulder gushing.
At the edge of the hallway stood a swirling void. No body. No shape. Just endless blackness coiled like smoke, hovering unnaturally above the floor. And from within that void, a hand reached out.
Haru's chest was rising and falling in ragged gasps, blood dripping from a wound on his shoulder as he stood alone in the shadows of that horrible place. The spirits were gone—vanished into the dark the moment he appeared. The Watcher. That presence.
It hadn't said a word. It didn't need to.
From the black void that framed it—shifting like smoke around its shape—an arm slowly extended. It wasn't human. Long and sickly thin, the skin was pulled tight over bone like wax paper stretched over sticks. Its fingers were impossibly long, twitching, curling, the joints clicking as they moved.
In its hand was something small… something familiar.
Haruka's hairpin.
The delicate piece—once a soft sky blue with a gentle emerald set into its center—looked filthy in its grip. The gemstone that had once held light now flickered dimly, like a dying ember. Haru stared, breath caught in his throat. That was all that was left of her.
A mouth from the void opened. Massive and wrong. It peeled open inside the blackness, jagged, disgusting teeth layered in rows, yellowed and misshapen, crowding into each other like coral. There was no tongue. No throat behind it. Just the sound of a breath that wasn't a breath.
Then the hand tossed Haruka's hairpin into its mouth. The sound was deafening in the silence. The emerald shattered between those awful teeth like candy glass, a shrill, crystalline crack that echoed through the palace. The void folded in on itself like a dying flame, the blackness retreating with a silent pull, until there was nothing left.
Haru stood there, staring at the spot where it had disappeared. Blood from Haruka was still soaking the ground. Her broken body was behind him, and yet—he couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't even cry.