The darkness inside Hiroshi was not empty.
That was the first thing the Spirit noticed when it moved through him and settled into his skin, the way water settles into the cracks of dry ground, finding every hollow and filling it.
There was something here already.
Something that sat deeper, something that had weight and shape without being physical.
The Spirit recognized what it was.
It was a soul.
Small and young and barely formed in the way that all living souls were barely formed at their beginning, but present and real and occupying the space that the Spirit had intended to consume.
The Spirit reached for it.
This was not new for it. It had done this many times across countless years in many bodies, finding the soul that lived inside a living thing and simply taking it, the way a larger fire takes a smaller one.
It reached for Hiroshi's soul. And then it stopped.
Because the soul was not small.
