Note-
I will use '..' for showing the thought instead of directly writing them.
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The four of them stood in front of the entrance.
Behind them, the evening sky had lost its bright luster.
In front of them, the detention center waited in silence.
Sora could feel the cursed pressure emanating from the entrance itself.
Ijichi stepped closer.
"I will lower the curtain once you enter."
Megumi gave a short nod.
Then he summoned his Divine Dog.
Yuji adjusted his grip on the cleaver.
Nobara rolled her shoulders.
Sora stood behind the three of them and braced himself for the coming chaos.
The glass doors were dark.
The building looked like it was alive.
Then the four of them stepped inside.
The moment Sora crossed the entrance, the world changed.
The air became cold and damp.
The hallway in front of them stretched unnaturally far and twisted.
The walls warped into shapes that should not have existed.
The floor beneath their feet no longer looked like cheap tile.
It was wet, dark concrete.
Cracked pipes ran along the walls and ceiling.
The lights overhead flickered weakly, buzzing like dying insects.
The detention center had disappeared.
In its place stood something else.
Something closer to a maze.
The hallway split into different directions.
Metal doors lined the walls.
Some were half-open.
Some hung from broken hinges.
A foul smell drifted through the air.
Rot, wetness, and something close to despair lingered in every corner.
Yuji stopped walking.
Nobara looked around with wide eyes.
The ceiling above them looked far higher than it should have been.
It was as if the inside of the building had been folded into itself until it no longer made sense.
Megumi's expression darkened immediately.
His eyes moved across the twisted hallways.
Then up toward the warped ceiling.
The four of them stood in silence for a moment.
Only the weak buzz of the lights answered them.
Yuji slowly turned in a circle, staring down the endless hallway and the warped ceiling above.
"What the hell is this...?"
"Isn't this supposed to be a detention center?"
His voice echoed strangely.
The sound bounced off the walls and came back thinner.
Nobara frowned as she looked around at the cracked concrete, the hanging pipes, and the twisted corridors.
"This doesn't even look like a detention center anymore."
She gave the place a judging look.
"It looks more like some creepy building that got abandoned halfway through construction."
Megumi kept his eyes forward.
His expression had already hardened.
This is not a normal cursed space.
Then the answer clicked into place.
An innate domain.
The walls around them felt both real and unreal.
The air was dense with despair.
Everything looked as though it had been pulled out of reality and stitched together by something inhuman.
Sora narrowed his eyes and slowly looked around.
The floor was uneven.
The hallways bent at strange angles.
The cursed energy in the air felt dense, but unstable.
This looks like the domain thing from the anime.
He quickly pieced together the most likely explanation.
Sora nodded to himself and turned back to the group.
"Guys, I have good news and bad news. Which one do you want first?"
Yuji and Nobara immediately looked at him.
"What do you mean?" Yuji asked.
Nobara crossed her arms.
"Don't start saying weird cryptic stuff right now."
Sora glanced up toward the ceiling, where the pipes disappeared into darkness.
"Choose one."
Yuji scratched his cheek.
"Okay... what's the good news?"
"We can escape this place."
Yuji looked confused.
Nobara, meanwhile, looked completely unimpressed.
"What do you mean, steel pole? Why is that the good news? And what's the bad news anyway?"
Nobara was quick to point fingers.
So she pointed one directly at Sora.
Sora coughed into his fist.
"First of all, I'm Hagane Sora."
He reintroduced himself to her.
"And the bad news..."
"We're inside an incomplete domain."
Nobara blinked.
"Okay? Why is that a big deal?"
Sora looked at the two of them like they had somehow managed to survive this long through pure luck.
"A domain is a special ability used by special grades. It's an extremely advanced technique."
He tapped the wall beside him.
"The special grade here probably reached the point where it can expand a domain incompletely. Not a full Domain Expansion."
He tapped the wall again.
"The space has changed, but not perfectly. Parts of the detention center are still mixed in. That's why the walls and floors look so strange."
Yuji blinked.
"So... we're inside the curse's territory?"
"Something like that," Sora replied.
Then he slowly pointed behind them.
"The reason I can tell is because the place is weird... and because the entrance is gone."
Yuji and Nobara both froze.
Then they turned toward where the entrance should have been.
Their faces immediately changed.
The glass doors they had entered through were gone.
There was no lobby.
Only another wall.
Dark concrete stretched across the place where the doors should have been.
A rusted pipe ran across it like a scar.
Yuji stared.
"...Are we trapped?"
Nobara took a step forward and touched the wall.
It was damp to the touch.
And completely solid.
There was nothing there.
"No, no, no."
"This is not funny."
Yuji scratched the back of his head nervously.
"So we're trapped."
Megumi finally spoke.
His voice remained calm.
"Not really."
The white Divine Dog beside him gave a low growl.
Megumi looked down at it for a moment.
"My Divine Dog memorized the scent of the entrance before we came in."
"Even if the path changes, it can still guide us back."
Yuji visibly relaxed.
Nobara let out a small breath.
The tension loosened slightly.
Then Yuji crouched down and started patting the Divine Dog like it had just become the most important employee in the building.
Nobara leaned down too.
"Good dog."
The Divine Dog looked deeply unimpressed, like a wolf forced to babysit three loud children and one walking metal scrapyard.