The world abruptly became a broken silent film.
I could see Kageyama's mouth hanging wide open, the veins in his neck straining as he screamed something—likely an order to retreat or brace—but not a single sound wave reached my ears. Even the rustle of our uniforms and the roar of the wind shaking the bamboo stalks vanished instantly. This silence wasn't merely the absence of sound; it was a physical pressure crushing my eardrums, as if the atmosphere around us had been replaced by a viscous fluid that swallowed every frequency.
Natsu looked panicked. She clutched her head, her mouth agape in a voiceless shriek. For her, who relied on animal instincts and acute hearing, the loss of sense was instant mental torture. She began swinging her sword blindly into the mist, cleaving through bamboo stalks that fell in an eerie, soundless drift.
No thud. No snap. Kageyama acted immediately. He grabbed Natsu's shoulder and mine, pulling us together. In this absolute pitch, physical touch was our only remaining navigation. He pointed forward, toward a path beginning to be choked by long white ribbons crawling like snakes from beneath the earth.
We began to move. Every step felt heavy, as if the gravity in this forest worked twice as hard.
Suddenly, from behind the thick mist on the left, a shadow darted out. It wasn't a giant monster; it was a gaunt, human-sized figure, its skin a pale gray like a waterlogged corpse. The creature had no face—only a flat surface of skin where eyes and a mouth should be. Wrapped tightly around its entire body were white ribbons with red mantras, fused into its very flesh.
The Minions of Silence.
The creature attacked without warning. It glided over the ground without the sound of a footfall. Its long hands, with nails resembling silver needles, aimed for Kageyama's throat.
Kageyama reacted with professional precision. He didn't draw his sword; instead, he pulled out a tactical knife coated in curse mantras. In one fluid motion, he parried the needle-claws and kicked the creature's chest.
I wanted to help, my hand already at my chest. But Kageyama shook his head vigorously. He pointed to his ear, then toward the deeper forest.
I understood the message: Not now, not yet. The ring of my blades was the loudest noise a human could produce. In a place where silence was the predator, that sound would be a flare, signaling thousands of other demons to surround us. We had to fight manually.
Natsu, beginning to master her fear, conjured a dozen small blood spears between her fingers. She hurled them into the mist. The spears pierced through other shadows emerging from behind the bamboo. I saw black liquid, thick as ink, spurt from those faceless bodies as Natsu's spears impaled them.
However, something was wrong. Every time one of the creatures "died," the white ribbons wrapped around them didn't disintegrate. Instead, they unraveled and took flight, searching for a new host.
One ribbon lashed toward my arm. I tried to dodge, but it moved as if it possessed its own intelligence. It coiled around my wrist with lightning speed.
Instantly, an incredible chill raced through my nerves.
It wasn't physical pain, but something far more horrifying. I felt a part of myself... being erased. The memory of breakfast this morning with Kageyama and Natsu suddenly blurred, as if someone had just rubbed a pencil sketch with a coarse eraser. I tried to remember the taste of the jam on my bread, but all that surfaced was a gray void.
These ribbons eat memories.
I thrashed, trying to tear the ribbon away with my bare hands, but it felt like steel. Kageyama saw my situation. He immediately slashed at the ribbon with his knife, but the blade bounced off as if hitting concrete.
Kageyama looked at me with eyes reflecting deep anxiety. He knew we were caught in a trap of attrition—a war of nerves where we would be drained dry before ever reaching the center.
He pulled us into a hollow between the roots of a giant bamboo tree that formed a sort of natural cave. There, the mist thinned slightly. Kageyama pulled out a lighter and a cigarette, but he didn't light it. He used the cigarette filter to write on the damp earth.
"DO NOT TOUCH THE RIBBONS. THEY EAT CONTRACTS AND MEMORIES."
I wrote beneath it with my finger: "CHARON IS STARTING TO FEEL DISTANT."
Kageyama paused. He wrote again: "THIS DEMON ISOLATES THE SOUL. WE MUST REACH THE RUINED SHRINE IN THE CENTER. IT IS THE HEART. NATSU, USE YOUR BLOOD TO CREATE A SENSOR-PROOF AREA."
Natsu nodded, though her face remained pale. She sliced her own palm, letting her blood flow and form a transparent reddish dome around us. Inside this dome, a miracle occurred. Sound returned, though muffled and distorted.
"Dammit! I hate Kyoto! I hate this stinking place!" Natsu screamed, her voice sounding like a broken radio.
"Keep your voice down, Natsu," Kageyama whispered. "Your dome can only withstand the pressure of this silence for a few minutes. Your energy will evaporate quickly in this cursed atmosphere."
"Kageyama," I said, clutching my chest. "I feel like those ribbons aren't just outside. I feel them crawling underground. They're looking for our heartbeats."
As soon as I finished my sentence, the ground beneath us vibrated. Thousands of bamboo stalks around us began to shift. Not because of the wind, but because the earth itself was moving. The trees began to rearrange, transforming into a shifting labyrinth.
The path we had just taken was now blocked by a wall of dense bamboo.
"This labyrinth is alive," Kageyama hissed. "It doesn't want us to reach the shrine. It wants to exhaust us here."
Suddenly, from the forest canopy, white ribbons fell like rain. This time, there were thousands. They formed a giant net, trying to wrap around Natsu's dome.
"My blood... my blood is being pulled!" Natsu shrieked as her reddish dome began to thin, absorbed by the hungry ribbons.
Kageyama finally drew his sword. Not his usual one, but a short blade he rarely used. "Aqua, get ready. We have no other choice. We have to run through this labyrinth before Natsu collapses from blood loss."
"But where do we run?" I asked in a panic. Everything looked the same—bamboo, mist, and darkness.
That was when the phone in my pocket vibrated again.
I didn't look at the screen, but I knew who it was. The vibration felt different—sharper, more demanding. I pressed the phone to my ear. Amidst the absolute silence of the forest, that voice appeared once more.
"Go straight for thirty meters, then turn left at the bleeding tree, Aqua-kun," Sumeragi's voice sounded incredibly calm, almost as if she were giving directions for a date in the city. "Do not look back. The demon is trying to mimic the faces of those you love behind you. Keep looking forward, toward me."
I glanced back reflexively, and my heart nearly stopped. In the mist, I saw my Mother, standing with a pale face and hollow eyes, waving her hand at me. Beside her was Charon, his body covered in jagged wounds.
"Don't look!" Kageyama yelled, noticing my expression change. He grabbed my collar. "That's not them!"
"Run, Aqua!" Sumeragi commanded in my ear.
We began to run. I led the way, following the instructions of Sumeragi's voice echoing in my brain. Turn left. Jump over the bleeding roots. Duck under the ribbon nets.
Sumeragi's voice became my only compass in this madness. However, the further we ran, the more I felt we weren't heading toward safety. We were being herded toward something much larger and more dangerous.
Our steps halted as we reached a wide clearing. In its center stood a tilted, rotting torii gate. Beyond it, the mist vanished completely, revealing a ruined shrine illuminated by cold moonlight.
And there, sitting silently atop the ruins, was a faceless figure with thousands of ribbons trailing from its body like rotted angel wings.
The Demon of Silence.
The creature tilted its head up, even though it had no eyes. Instantly, Natsu's blood dome shattered into pieces. Kageyama fell to his knees, coughing up black blood.
My world suddenly tilted. And in my ear, Sumeragi's voice turned into an ice-cold whisper.
"Now, Aqua-kun... show me just how loud you can be."