The wind rushed past him.
Kujo Akiyo moved fast, faster than he had ever moved before. The ground beneath his feet cracked with each step, dust and debris scattering into the air as he dashed forward.
Ahead of him was Maki.
She stood frozen, eyes wide, unable to move.
"KUJO!"
The creature lunged.
Kujo didn't hesitate.
Light burst from his hand, forming into a sharp blade that shimmered like glass. He stepped in front of her, raising it without fear.
"I've got you."
The creature roared as Kujo swung.
"...Kujo."
He blinked. The sound was coming from everywhere.
"...Kujo?"
The world snapped back into place.
The cracked ground was gone. The light in his hand vanished. The roar faded into nothing.
He was just standing on the sidewalk.
A car passed by. Someone walked across the street. The normal sounds of the evening filled the air around him like they had never left.
His friend stood next to him, hand still raised mid-wave, sighing like this wasn't the first time.
Kujo rubbed the back of his head.
"Right."
He let out a small, awkward laugh.
Zoned out again.
His gaze drifted ahead as he fell back into step, hands sliding into his pockets.
"...I mean, that's normal, right?"
He muttered it quietly, not really expecting an answer.
"People my age think about stuff like that."
Fighting monsters. Saving someone. Looking cool while doing it. The kind of thing where everything clicked into place and he knew exactly what to do — no hesitation, no fear. Where he was fast enough. Strong enough. Where it actually mattered that he showed up.
He'd had that daydream more times than he'd ever admit out loud.
It always felt real in the moment. Too real, almost.
And… yeah.
Maki.
His expression tightened slightly.
He looked away from nothing in particular, a little annoyed with himself now.
"Not like it matters."
He kept walking.
"It's not like I could actually do anything like that."
The thought lingered longer than he wanted it to.
Then —
A pulse.
Kujo stopped.
What was that?
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't something he saw. It was a feeling, like something invisible had passed directly through him. A pressure, faint and gone almost the same instant it arrived, like a wave that had already broken by the time he noticed it.
He stood very still.
His friend had kept walking, already a few steps ahead, not noticing.
The street looked exactly the same. A cyclist passed. Someone's window was open, quiet music drifting out. Nothing felt wrong.
Kujo frowned slightly.
"Weird."
He stood there another second, waiting for it again.
It didn't come.
He shook his head.
"Probably nothing."
With that, he started walking again.
By the time his house came into view, the sky had darkened properly. The streetlights flickered on one by one, casting long pale shapes across the road. The evening had that particular quiet to it, the kind that settled in after people went inside.
Kujo slowed.
The lights were off.
He stopped at the gate, staring at the front of the house.
That wasn't normal. Someone was always home by now. His mother, his father, at least one of them. The kitchen light was always on. The TV was usually audible from outside.
Now there was nothing.
He walked up to the front door.
It was open.
Not wide open. Just slightly. A thin line of darkness stretched from inside the house out across the porch.
Kujo's chest tightened.
"Mom?"
His voice came out smaller than he intended.
No answer.
He pushed the door open slowly. It creaked once in the silence.
"I'm home."
Nothing.
The air inside felt different. Heavy. Still in a way that the air outside wasn't. He stepped in, letting the door swing behind him, his eyes adjusting slowly to the dark.
He reached for the light switch out of habit.
He didn't flip it.
"Hello?"
His voice barely carried.
"Dad?"
Silence pressed back at him from every corner of the house.
Then a smell hit him.
Metallic. Thick. Wrong.
His hand stayed on the wall.
His mind started reaching immediately, the way it does when it doesn't want to catch what's coming. Maybe they fell asleep watching TV and knocked something over. Maybe the smell was the kitchen, something burnt, something spilled. Maybe he was tired and his brain was making it worse than it was.
He took a step forward.
Then another.
Each one felt heavier, like the air itself was pushing back, like some part of him already understood and was trying to slow him down.
"Hey."
His voice came out small.
"I'm home."
No answer.
He already knew.
He just wasn't ready to know yet.
He kept walking.
His gaze moved toward the living room doorway. The darkness was deeper there, pooled and still. He stopped just short of it. His hand found the door frame without meaning to, fingers gripping the edge.
He looked.
And then he froze.
"What...?"
The word came out barely above a breath.
For a moment his mind refused to process it entirely. Like it was a picture he didn't have the right frame for.
His parents lay on the floor.
Not moving.
Blood had spread beneath them across the floor in dark, uneven shapes, wide and still and real.
"...No."
His voice broke.
"...No, this isn't..."
His legs carried him forward without him deciding to move. He dropped to one knee, his hand reaching out toward his father's shoulder.
"Hey."
His throat was so tight the word barely came out.
"Get up."
His fingers hovered an inch above the fabric.
He couldn't touch him.
If he touched him it would be real.
Something moved.
Kujo's whole body went still.
A wet sound. Slow. Uneven. Coming from the far side of the room.
His eyes shifted.
Something crouched over the bodies.
Its back was to him, its shape hunched and wrong, arms too long, too thin, moving with a slow deliberateness that made his stomach turn. It hadn't noticed him. It was focused entirely on what was in front of it.
A tearing sound filled the silence.
Kujo's breath caught in his chest and stayed there.
What is that?
His mind couldn't catch up. Couldn't find a category for what he was looking at. Every instinct he had was firing at once but none of them agreed on what to do.
The thing paused.
Like it had heard something.
Its head twisted.
Slowly.
It turned toward him.
Kujo stumbled back a step, his shoulder hitting the door frame.
The creature stood.
From a distance it could have passed for human. Up close, that illusion fell apart completely. The proportions were slightly wrong, the joints too many or in the wrong places, the movements carrying a fluid wrongness that made it hard to look at directly. Its eyes were the worst part — not dark, not cold, just absent. Empty in a way that made his skin crawl. Not the emptiness of someone cold or cruel.
The emptiness of something that had never had anything there to begin with.
It wasn't looking at him like an enemy.
It was looking at him like a meal it hadn't decided to finish yet.
A low, distorted sound rose from somewhere inside it.
Then it moved.
Fast.
Kujo barely had time to react before it crossed the room. It slammed into him full force and they crashed to the ground together, the impact knocking every bit of air from his lungs in one brutal rush.
The creature pinned him down, its weight crushing his chest. Its face hung inches from his own.
Up close it was worse.
Wrong in every way.
Kujo's hands shot up, palms driving into it, every muscle in his arms pushing with everything he had.
"GET OFF!"
The creature didn't move. It pressed down harder, effortlessly, like his resistance didn't register.
How is something this thin this strong?
His arms shook. The pressure on his chest grew. His lungs couldn't fully expand.
I can't move.
Its mouth opened.
Too wide.
Far too wide.
Kujo twisted his head to the side and the creature snapped down onto empty air where his face had been, close enough that he felt it.
His heart slammed against his ribs.
I'm going to die.
The thought arrived quietly, clearly, with a certainty he had never felt about anything before.
I'm actually going to die here.
Something broke open inside him.
"No!"
Heat surged through his entire body at once, rushing from his chest outward to his fingertips. His vision blurred at the edges, white bleeding into everything.
Light.
Faint at first.
Then it grew.
It gathered in his hand without him understanding how, pulled from somewhere he hadn't known existed a moment ago.
The creature lunged again.
Kujo reacted.
Pure instinct. No thought.
He thrust his hand forward.
The light exploded outward.
A blinding flash swallowed the room. The creature let out a distorted screech that tore through the silence and was thrown backward hard, crashing into the far wall.
Kujo scrambled away, gasping, his whole body shaking, his hand burning like he'd pressed it to an open flame.
What was that?
He stared at his palm. The light was still there, flickering, unstable, guttering like a flame in wind.
Across the room the creature twitched.
Then slowly, horribly, it began to rise again.
Kujo's stomach dropped.
No way.
It wasn't dead. It wasn't even close. It moved like the impact had inconvenienced it more than hurt it, rolling its shoulders back, turning toward him with that same empty gaze.
The light in his hand flickered weaker.
"I..."
His voice shook.
"I can't..."
The creature took one step toward him.
Then a blur.
Something moved through the room faster than Kujo could track, a shape that was there and then past him before he could process it.
A sharp sound.
Clean. Final.
The creature's body dropped in two pieces.
Silence.
Kujo stood completely still, chest heaving, staring at what was left.
A figure stood between him and it.
Still. Calm. Completely unshaken.
A woman.
She didn't look at the creature. Didn't spare it a single glance. Her eyes moved directly to Kujo, steady and cold and assessing, like she was reading something written on his face.
"So," she said.
Her voice was flat. Even.
"You have awakened."
Kujo couldn't speak. Couldn't think. The room felt like it was at the end of a very long tunnel and he was standing at the wrong end of it.
The woman tilted her head slightly.
"And you already figured out how to use it."
A pause.
"Impressive."
The edges of Kujo's vision had started to darken. Slowly at first, then faster, creeping in from every side.
The last thing he saw before it closed completely was her watching him.
Calm.
Patient.
Like she had been expecting this.
Then everything went black.