✦ Ikiryo ✦
Time slows.
Everything freezes — the air, Yumi's scream, even the flickering blue flames around us.
As I'm about to be swallowed whole by the monster's gaping mouth—
"Do you wish to live?"
A voice.Not outside me.Within me.Deep. Ancient.
The voice from the museum.The voice of the creature sealed in the dark.The blue spirit.
"I granted you passage. I did not promise your survival."
I can't believe this is happening.How can I hear him this clearly?
Rage claws its way up my throat.
"Why bring me here if I'm just going to die?!"
"This is the moment.You must decide.Shall we make one?"
Make one…?My thoughts are chaos.I'm still falling, still plummeting, yet weightless.And terrified.
"I— I don't understand!"
I'm slipping between worlds now.Closer and closer to the darkness below.The open mouth waiting to devour me whole.
"Say yes… or be forgotten."
My heart pounds.My fists clench.The wind is gone, but everything inside me is screaming.
"I— I accept! Whatever this is— LET'S MAKE ONE!"
Then it hits me.
The voice—no, the presence—crashes into my chest like a wave of fire.
And suddenly, I feel everything.
His pain.His hunger.His rage...And his loneliness.
Then—the flame.
A burst of blue fire erupts from my chest like I've been stabbed from the inside out.
My eyes snap open as the pain rips through me.
My blood—It rises into the air, glowing, suspended.
And the fire meets it.
Blue flame. Red blood.
They spiral together.Dancing. Merging.Then slam—back into me.
First, the fire hits my shoulder.Then my spine.Then—My right arm explodes in heat.
"AAAHHHH—!!"
My body convulses.My back arches, every tendon pulled tight like I'm being rewritten from the inside out.
My jacket rips apart.My tee-shirt shreds.
Veins glow under my skin like lightning.
And then—The markings appear.
All around my right arm.
Symbols.Glowing.Crawling across my skin like flame over parchment.
No—Not parchment.That parchment.
The ancient one.The one that burned in my hand.The one that hurt Yumi.The one I never read—But my flesh remembered.
These weren't tattoos.Not scars either.Something in between.
The mark of a contract.
The blue spirit's voice returns—Clearer. Deeper. Inside me now.
"The pact is made.Our fates entwined.You are no longer just one."
Then the world snaps back.
The beast's mouth is still open wide below me—
But I am no longer falling.
I am rising.