After the call ended, I didn't move.
The principal's panicked words kept looping in my head. Five to six staff members... disappeared.
This wasn't a preparation phase anymore. We weren't waiting for the enemy to make a mistake. The board had already been set, and the first moves had been made.
I took a slow, deliberate breath. Then another. I forced my heart rate to drop. Panicking wouldn't solve anything; in this line of work, panic gets you killed. What I needed right now was absolute clarity.
Without wasting another second, I unlocked my phone and dialed Haroku.
He picked up on the second ring. "Hello?"
"Hey, Haroku. What's your status?" I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral.
"I'm good," he replied casually. "What's up?"
I paused, making sure I had the words right. "Have your gear packed and be ready early tomorrow morning. We need to be on-site by the afternoon."
He didn't ask why. He didn't demand explanations about the sudden timeline shift.
"Okay. No problem," he said simply. Then, after a brief beat of silence, his tone shifted. "By the way... are you doing okay?"
The question caught me completely off guard.
For a moment, I didn't know how to respond. It wasn't that I hadn't heard him; I just wasn't expecting it. Surrounded by the chaos of curses, missing people, and shadow entities, a simple, human question felt entirely unfamiliar.
"Yeah, bro," I finally said quietly. "I'm okay. Thanks for asking."
There was another small pause on the line. When Haroku spoke again, the usual casual banter was gone.
"Listen, man. We've been doing this together for seven, maybe eight years. I know how your head works in situations like this. That's exactly why I gave you space this past week. I knew you needed to recover on your own terms."
Something tight inside my chest loosened, just a fraction.
Flashes of the past decade flickered through my mind. The day we first teamed up. The brutal training sessions. The near-misses we had survived. The absolute trust we had forged in the dark. He wasn't just a partner I brought along for muscle. He never was.
"Yeah... thanks a lot," I said, my voice dropping lower. "I really needed that."
I straightened my posture, letting the brief moment of vulnerability pass. My tone shifted back to business. "Just be ready tomorrow morning. This isn't going to be a standard extraction."
"Yeah," he replied without a hint of hesitation. "Definitely."
Silence settled over the line. It wasn't awkward, and it wasn't empty. It was the quiet understanding of two people walking into a warzone.
"Alright," I said.
"Alright," he echoed.
I ended the call and placed the phone gently onto the desk, leaning back in my chair.
The room hadn't changed. My meticulously crafted binding papers were still stacked everywhere. The ink vials, the reference notes, the chaos of preparation—it was all exactly the same.
But the context had shifted. Tomorrow was no longer just a reconnaissance visit. It was a turning point.
Later that evening, I sat at the dinner table with my family.
Everything around me felt aggressively normal. It was a calm, peaceful routine that hadn't changed in years. The clinking of silverware against ceramic plates. Soft, mundane conversations about the day's events.
But inside my head, it was deafening.
Jason.
I picked up my spoon and took a bite of dinner, but it tasted like ash. I chewed mechanically, staring at the grain of the wooden table.
Who is he, really? I thought to myself.
Until tonight, he had just been a ghost from the past. A name on a piece of paper. A suffocating presence in an abandoned hallway. But now, real people were vanishing. Fear was actively infecting the city.
Whatever Jason was, he didn't play by the rules of ordinary spirits.
For a second i thought.
Is he even human? Or maybe a powerful spirit ?
There were too many variables we couldn't account for. We didn't know his face, his origin, or the upper limits of his power. All we knew were the shadows. The chaos. I remembered the heavy silence of that corridor, and that terrifying, constant sensation of being watched by something vastly superior.
This wasn't something we could predict with standard occult theories. This was deeper. Infinitely more dangerous.
I looked down at my plate, completely lost in the mental labyrinth.
If Jason was actively orchestrating these disappearances, then tomorrow wouldn't just be another step in the investigation. It might be the end of the line.
A strange sensation settled over me. It wasn't raw fear, but it wasn't the adrenaline of excitement, either. It was a heavy, cold acceptance.
For the people sitting at this table, tomorrow was just another normal day. But for Haroku and me, it would decide everything. We were either going to get answers, or we were going to become another unsolved mystery.
I finished the rest of my meal. No one at the table noticed anything unusual. To them, I was just Symen, quietly eating his dinner.
But beneath the surface, I was locking every mental door. I was preparing. Emotionally. Psychologically. Completely.
After dinner, I retreated to my room and locked the door behind me.
The moment I stepped inside, my eyes went straight to the center table. The stacks of Legendary Papers, forged over the last week of sleepless nights.
I walked closer and placed my palm flat against the top of the nearest stack.
"This is it," I whispered.
Every drop of effort. Every exhausted hour. Every ounce of focus I had wrung from my own limits—it all led to tomorrow.
I picked up the top talisman, holding it up to the light to examine the intricate symbols. The ink was perfectly set. The runes were flawless.
"No mistakes," I muttered under my breath. "Not this time."
I placed it back on the stack and took one last, deep breath.
Outside my window, the city was peaceful. But inside, the storm had already made landfall.
As I finally lay down to sleep, staring up at the dark ceiling, one final thought anchored me.
Tomorrow is going to be legendary.
Not just because we were going back into the dark. But because something permanent was about to change.