The room smelled like roses.
But none were real.
They had crossed into Layer Three—a place draped in soft colors and gentle lies. The world looked like a forgotten painting of childhood: swings that moved on their own, lullabies echoing from unseen mouths, and dolls hung from trees by threads of hair.
"This place is wrong," Airi whispered, clutching her jacket tighter. "It feels kind."
"That's the trick," Ishigami replied. "The Spiral adapts. This isn't meant to scare you. It wants you to stay."
Hiragi didn't say a word.
He could feel it already.
Something familiar was watching them.
They reached the heart of the garden: an altar built of old cradles and shattered mirrors. And in its center stood a woman.
Or rather, the shape of one.
She wore a nurse's gown made of stitched-together lullabies, her face obscured by a veil of crying eyes. Around her feet, dozens of children with no mouths wept silently.
She spoke—not with voice, but warmth.
"You look tired, Hiragi."
His blood froze.
That voice.
It was her voice.
His mother's.
Airi stepped back. "What the—"
"She's not real," Ishigami warned. "This is the Mother Construct. It builds an emotional profile from your trauma and mimics it."
But Hiragi wasn't listening.
The Spiral had reached deep.
And it had found something he never spoke of.
Something he buried.
The night he found his mother's body.
"You left me," Hiragi said coldly. "You drank yourself to sleep and never woke up."
The veil shifted. "I was tired. I didn't know how to be a mother in that house. I was alone."
"You had me."
"Did I?" she asked. "You were already gone. Always staring at that empty sky, like something was calling you."
She held out her hand.
"Let me hold you now. Just once. Let me be the mother you never had."
Hiragi trembled.
The Spiral didn't scream here.
It soothed.
And that was worse.
Then—
Airi slapped him.
Hard.
"This isn't her, dumbass," she snapped, voice cracking. "You think you're the only one who lost someone?"
She stepped forward, tearing the veil from the construct's face.
It screamed.
The face beneath was a mirror.
A reflection of Hiragi's own guilt.
The children opened their eyes—black pits filled with stars—and the altar shattered into crawling limbs.
"Hostile signature confirmed," Ishigami muttered. "Ready?"
Hiragi breathed in deep.
"Void Configuration. Type Gamma: Annihilation Bloom."
The garden burned.
The false mother shrieked, twisting into roots and smoke. The children turned to ash.
And when silence returned…
Hiragi stood taller.
Another name burned itself into the ground.
"Layer Four: The Church of the Broken Hour."
[End of Chapter 76]