"Sometimes, it's not the screams that haunt me…
but the silence that follows."
I woke up to a sound I couldn't place.
Not voices. Not wind. Not even breathing.
Just… a deep, hollow echo. Like the world itself was remembering something terrible, over and over again.
My body was still aching — not from wounds, but from weight.
A weight that no one else could see.
Airi's name was the first thing that crossed my lips.
But there was no one to answer it.
I was lying in what used to be a chapel, now half-buried beneath rubble and soot. Its glass windows had long shattered, and ash covered the floor like snow. The sacred statues inside had lost their faces — just like the people I failed to protect.
I sat up slowly, my vision swimming. The air was cold… but not in a natural way.
Cold like something was watching.
Like the shadows weren't just around me…
They were waiting inside me.
Then I heard a voice.
"Still breathing, I see."
I turned — it was Guru Renz, older than I remembered, with streaks of blood dried on his coat, and eyes that looked like they hadn't closed in days. Behind him, a handful of survivors huddled in silence. Wounded. Broken. But alive.
Barely.
"You should've stayed unconscious," he muttered, kneeling beside me. "Would've been easier than facing what's left."
"What is left?" I asked.
He didn't answer. He just looked at the sky through a hole in the ceiling — a sky that no longer moved, no longer changed.
A sky that had forgotten light.
---
Later, beneath the shattered chapel, we gathered in a makeshift bunker. The silence among us was heavy. Every breath felt borrowed. Every word… a risk.
There were only six of us.
Six from a village of hundreds.
I recognized a few of their faces. A mother who once gave me bread when I was starving. A blacksmith's apprentice with burns down his arm. A girl with too-wide eyes who hadn't spoken since her brother disappeared.
Each of us carried our own ghosts.
We didn't speak of Airi. We didn't need to. Her absence was louder than any scream.
---
As night approached — though the sky no longer told the difference — I sat with Renz beside the faint glow of a dying lantern. The flame flickered like it was afraid to burn too bright.
"She believed in something," I said, breaking the silence. "Even until the end."
He nodded slowly. "That's what makes it harder."
I looked at him. "Do you still believe?"
His lips twitched. "I believe… that something is watching. And that it's not done with us yet."
He reached into his cloak and pulled out a small, scorched parchment. Symbols were drawn across it — dark, ancient ones that pulsed faintly as if alive.
I frowned. "What is that?"
"A warning," he whispered. "Or a map. I'm not sure yet. But it was left behind… where Airi fell."
My heart twisted.
"There's more to this shadow than just destruction, Keisuke. It's… searching. Feeding. Learning."
I clenched my fists. "Then we need to stop it."
He shook his head. "You're not ready."
I stood up, chest burning. "Then help me become ready."
---
Later that night, I couldn't sleep.
The shadows whispered again — not cruel, not mocking — but familiar. They whispered like they knew me. Like they were me.
And I saw something in the darkness.
A flicker.
Not of fire.
But of memory.
A place, hidden among mountains, where light once stood its ground.
I don't know how I know.
But I felt it.
Like something inside me was… remembering a path I never walked.
Maybe this is what Airi meant to leave behind.
Not just hope.
But a direction.
---
Tomorrow, we'll move.
We don't have a plan. We don't have weapons strong enough. We barely have our minds.
But we still have one thing:
Will.
And if the shadow wants to take what's left…
Then it'll have to face the one thing it couldn't destroy:
The last pieces of who we used to be.
Even broken light… can still shine in the right hands.
---
> "I'm not the same boy who dreamed of light.
I am the shadow of him. But maybe... that's what the world needs now."
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