Lately, light rains have swept sideways through Noctis, each gust brushing past the city like an invisible sigh.
Kuro often sat alone by the corridor rail of the dorms, watching the wind coil along the wall, slip beneath door cracks, or flutter through the forgotten edge of a flag. Sometimes, it felt like an old rhythm — one etched from long ago — still murmuring through the air.
On Mike's desk, the sensor logs remained inconclusive. The device hadn't captured any major anomalies, yet each time Kuro had felt the strange "frequency shifts," there were tiny spikes — micro-variations — that oddly aligned with specific points in the northern edge of Noctis.
At first, Mike dismissed it as coincidence. But after several days, even he began circling repeating locations on the satellite overlay — places far north, near the cliffs where urban monitoring faded.
"It could still be nothing," he muttered one afternoon, not taking his eyes off the screen.
That evening, they went to the old library. Mike rummaged through a stack of scanned pre-war archives: local geological logs, field reports from the Northern Highlands. One hand-drawn map had been ripped in half. Most entries ended with uncertain remarks — too little data, too few returns. That region was sparsely populated, mostly forgotten.
Then Kuro found something — wedged in a book's binding like a half-forgotten memory: an old article about a missing expedition. Three surveyors had vanished in the deep snow of the southern range. Only one returned, and he never spoke again. The report mentioned erratic signal disruptions and wildlife aggression. A name in the final interview caught Kuro's eye.
Geological Engineer Than V.
"Mike," Kuro said, holding up the page. "Read this."
Mike scanned the article. Quiet. Then nodded slowly.
"We need to find this guy."
"But where?" Kuro asked.
Mike tapped the name of an old mine site listed beneath the article.
"We trace this. It's the only lead we've got."
And they were lucky — an elderly woman living nearby remembered something. She gave them vague directions.
They found his house at the forest's edge. A wooden shack sagging at the corners, lost between the trees. Kuro knocked, polite and careful. Through a slit in the door, an old man squinted.
"Who is it?"
Kuro replied with a well-practiced lie. "We're students. Doing a small interview project about local livelihoods."
They had notebooks in hand. Smiled politely. Looked harmless. The man relented.
"You kids are the first ones to walk down here in a long time," he said, with a crooked grin.
Mike wasted no time. He opened his notes to a worn page.
"Sir… did you ever work in a geological survey team in the Northern Snowfields? There was an incident. Three men went in. Only one came back."
The old man froze mid-pour. His eyes darkened. He looked at Mike. Then Kuro. Suspicion flickered.
"Where did you hear about that?"
"In the archives," Kuro said quietly. "Your name was at the end of the article."
A long silence followed. Then, very gently, the old man placed the teapot down.
"Yes… there were three of us," he said, voice low and rasped. "We were just scouting an isolated area. Setting up lines for a remote power grid. Three men. One surveyor. Two electrical engineers."
"The others?" Mike asked, his pen already moving.
"One — Phung — quiet, meticulous. Wrote everything down. He disappeared. Left no trace."
"The other?" Kuro whispered.
"Lu. Talkative. The kind of guy you'd bet would get lost last… but he's the only one who came back."
"But he didn't speak," Mike said.
The old man nodded grimly. "Never again. His eyes still moved. His hands still trembled. But his mouth—sealed shut. It was like whatever he'd seen had erased sound itself."
Kuro's voice was almost a whisper. "And you?"
"I came back… but not all of me." His gaze drifted upward, toward the rafters. "There's a hollow in my memory. Not terrain. Not sleep. Just… silence. When I woke, the others were gone. And I could not retrace the path."
"Why wasn't it investigated?" Mike asked.
"It was. But a blackout order came quickly. Official reason: 'interference and predatory threats.' We got hazard compensation. No questions asked."
Kuro hesitated, then asked what had haunted them both.
"But… do you remember anything more?"
The old man's eyes turned toward the trees. "The fear wasn't that we wouldn't make it back," he said. "The fear was… what if we did—and never walked again."
They bowed and left. As they stepped outside, Mike pulled out the map. Circled a new mark: The Hollow Zone.
He looked at Kuro. "I'm not sure we should go. It could be dangerous."
Kuro nodded. Not just in agreement. But because there was nothing left to say.