The path to the Shrine wasn't eventful. Which, somehow, made it worse.
The sun still shone, a gold disk trailing toward the horizon like a farewell gesture from a tired sky. The wind still moved, brushing over rooftops and through trees with a calmness so gentle it could lull even the most tortured soul to sleep.
Shadows stretched long across the pavement, growing bolder with every passing minute.
But even with all that—the warmth, the quiet, the ordinary flow of time—each step felt wrong.
Too slow. Too loud. Too remembered.
Their footsteps echoed across cracked pavement—too synchronized, too rehearsed, like actors in a play neither remembered auditioning for. The neighborhood they passed—once warm and familiar—now felt like a hollow film set. As if the world had held its breath... and forgotten to let go.
He tried not to think about the last time. But his body remembered what his mind wanted to erase.
That hollow, drowning sensation from before. The sting that carved itself into his hand. The twisted sky—wrong in its colors, wrong in its angles. And that silence… not just an absence of sound, but a presence. A pressure that had tried to erase him, down to the marrow of his soul.
"You alright?" Akio asked without turning his head.
"Do I look alright?" Riku muttered, eyes fixed ahead.
Akio exhaled slowly, his breath fogging despite the summer air. "Right. Dumb question. My bad."
Riku didn't respond. His gaze was locked on the end of the street, where asphalt met dirt, and the familiar path to the Shrine began. Or should have.
"It's different now," Akio offered quietly, like someone afraid of disturbing a grave. "The talisman's active. You're masked. You won't attract anything. Not unless you want to."
"Comforting," Riku said flatly.
"Just stay close. You'll be fine."
They passed the final row of houses. The edges of suburbia frayed into overgrown weeds and brush. Trees leaned inward like silent gatekeepers, their branches twisted, reaching. The air here didn't feel like air anymore. It felt thick, syrupy—like walking into someone else's dream.
And then the sky dimmed.
Not from clouds. Not from dusk.
But from something else—an invisible pressure pushing down from above, smothering sound and light and clarity. The light didn't fade; it was eaten.
The Shrine should have been there.
Instead, they stood at the edge of something that bent the world.
It shimmered at first—subtle distortions, like heatwaves rippling over desert sand. But these waves didn't just bend light. They swallowed it. The forest behind them didn't warp—it vanished, erased like chalk from a blackboard.
Riku slowed, blinking. His breath caught in his throat. His mouth was dry.
"What… is that?" he asked.
Akio stepped forward, his hand rising—not quite touching the ripple, but tracing along it, like he was parting the veil between waking and dreaming. Riku noticed how Akio's fingers hovered millimeters above the surface, yet somehow interacted with it—gliding through something that wasn't quite there, but very much real.
"This," Akio said, "is a Myth Veil."
He said it with reverence, the kind reserved for temples, tombs, and forbidden truths.
"It's a barrier made of pure Mantra. Set in place by the Pylons of Yore at the beginning of creation. Any place that holds myth—stories, legends, rumors—they get sealed off, separated from ordinary space. Like… pressure valves for reality."
Riku blinked. "The Pylons of what now?"
Akio offered a half-smirk. "Yeah. Wild name, I know. I'd explain more, but honestly… even I don't really get the whole picture."
"Damn. That's a first."
Akio chuckled under his breath. "Yeah. Just that they're ancient. Beyond us. We're just patching up the systems they left behind."
Then he reached into his uniform and pulled out another talisman—etched with older, deeper markings than the one Riku carried. This one pulsed faintly, like it had a heartbeat.
"Hold this," Akio said. "It'll help regulate your pulse once we cross through."
"When," Riku repeated, narrowing his eyes. "Not if?"
Akio's expression sobered. "We're not here to just peek, Riku. We're going in."
Riku stared at the veil. The surface rippled again—this time more deeply, more hungrily. As if stirred by their presence.
The last time he came here, he nearly died.
And now they were walking straight back into the wound.
His thoughts began to swirl—faster, deeper.
"Wait," he said. "If this Myth Veil was always here… how did I get through it last time?"
Akio froze.
That was all Riku needed to know.
"You knew," Riku said slowly. "You knew I was here back then."
The wind stopped.
Akio didn't speak.
"You didn't find me on that rooftop by chance, did you?" Riku continued, voice sharpened. "You were already watching. You knew something was off."
Akio's jaw tightened. His eyes dropped.
"I'm gonna need answers," Riku said.
The veil pulsed—low and deep like a drumbeat from beneath the world. It shimmered again. Not just in space, but in memory.
It heard them.
And it remembered.
Akio's voice dropped to a whisper.
"There was… a distortion," he said. "Back then. A tear in the veil—something we hadn't seen in decades. The Shrine collapsed in on itself. Time twisted. Space inverted. We call it a Veil Distortion."
He glanced at Riku, almost afraid to continue.
"I was dispatched to monitor. Not intervene. Dr. Tsukimura gave that order himself. Said sending a Junior Mantrik in would be suicide."
Riku stared at him.
"You left me there?"
Akio winced. "I didn't know it was you. We thought the Veil would consume whatever got trapped. The logic inside—when a Myth Construct grows unstable—it stops obeying physical law. It starts obeying narrative law."
"Meaning what?"
Akio looked at him, eyes tired.
"Meaning… people stop being people. They become roles. Trapped in the story. You don't think. You act. You perform. Until it kills you… or rewrites you."
Riku was silent.
"That's what we call an Echo Loop," Akio finished.
Riku's hands curled into fists.
"You were there," Akio said. "And I couldn't go in. All I could do was mark the moment. Monitor the collapse. And wait to see if anyone came out."
Akio's voice broke a little. "I didn't even know it was you. Not until I saw the mark."
Riku looked down at his hand. The faint sigil—the one that had burned into him during the Shrine—glowed softly beneath his skin.
As if it pulsed in agreement.
As if it remembered, too.
Riku clenched his fist. He felt like the universe was just abusing him. Teasing him. Mocking him by keeping him alive in what he felt was some death game.
If this was fate's way of playing fair, he wanted nothing to do with it.
"If what you're saying is true now... then how am I alive? How am I here?" Riku asked.
"Why do you think I asked you to come with me?" Akio replied.
Riku began. "I'm not like you. I—"
Akio cut him off. "That's my point. You aren't me, and that's why you're gonna pull through when all is said and done. Everything will be fine. I swear, on my life, that we'll solve this. Alright?"
Riku wondered where such optimism came from. This random person—scarred, seasoned, half-smirking through the pain—looked like he had seen too much for anyone's good. Yet there was something in Akio's words that made Riku feel like he was safe.
Like he wasn't alone.
Akio turned back to the Myth Veil, inhaled, and held the breath for a long moment. Then he stepped forward.
The veil didn't part. It accepted.
For a moment, Akio flickered—like a candle behind rippling glass—and then he vanished.
Riku stood alone at the threshold. The talisman in his palm pulsed once. Then again.
He closed his eyes. Exhaled.
Then stepped forward.
The world didn't shatter. It folded.
Color bled. Gravity loosened. Every atom in his body turned sideways and then realigned.
Time twisted—he could feel yesterday brushing against his ear like a whisper—and then the pressure passed.
He stood in the Shrine.
But not as it had been.
The world within the veil was draped in shadows and silver light. The trees were taller than they should've been, stretching toward a sky that shimmered like cracked glass. The old torii gate at the entrance pulsed faintly with pale crimson lines, and the worn stone path beyond it seemed to breathe.
Akio was already there, waiting.
"You made it," he said, voice calm.
"Barely," Riku muttered.
They moved forward, following the stone trail. The deeper they went, the more the world seemed to forget reality. Lanterns flickered to life without fuel. Wind chimes hung from trees that didn't exist yesterday. And above it all, the silence—the same suffocating silence Riku remembered—returned.
"You said something about the Silent God," Akio began. "Tell me what you know."
Riku blinked. "It's just a legend. A story, parents in my neighborhood, told to make kids behave. I'm pretty sure our neighborhood is the only place on Earth that speaks of such a thing. As for the Shrine, I have no idea when it was built."
"Tell it anyway."
Riku sighed. "It goes like this. Long ago, there was a God who loved humanity so deeply, he gave them everything—light, language, fire, dreams. But they used his gifts for war. For lies. Thousands lost their way and their lives because they took his gifts for granted."
Akio didn't respond.
"So, he stopped speaking. Just… went silent. They say his last words were never recorded. That he's still listening. Waiting. And if you speak too loudly in a holy place, he might notice. Might decide you're not worth the noise." Riku said.
Akio looked down. His eyes were solemn.
"Tetsuya mocked that legend," Riku muttered. His hands curled. "He thought it was a game. A dare. He talked about wanting to hear its voice and what it could do. I called him out on it, but he suddenly started talking like he had no clue about it. And now he's gone."
Akio placed a hand on his shoulder. "We'll find him."
"You don't know that," Riku said, voice rising. "You don't know what this place did to him. You don't know if there's anything left."
Akio looked ahead. "We break down now, the lower the chances we have of finding him. I promised you we'd find him, and we will. You just gotta believe me. Please?"
Riku looked up, breathing hard. But he nodded.
Akio led the way. "We'll look around the perimeter first. You see anything that concerns this, you let me know. Straight away. No exceptions. Understood?"
Riku steadied himself. "Got it."
And off they went, hoping to see anything that concerned them and the task at hand.
The Shrine didn't speak. But Riku had the sinking feeling that it was listening.