Kaito! Stop this drama right now! What is happening in there?" Kaito's mother shrieked from the foot of the stairs, her voice cracking with a mixture of terror and maternal fury. She turned to Ryu, her hands trembling. "Ryu, please! Go up there and stop him. Whatever this is, it needs to end!"
Ryu didn't waste a heartbeat. As he stepped across the threshold into the house, something impossible happened. The blinding White Lightning that had been dancing around the porch suddenly "sucked" inward, retracting into the walls like a strike of pure electricity returning to its source. The house fell into a sickening, unnatural dimness. Ryu began to ascend the stairs, his boots thumping heavily against the wood. Every step was a battle; the air felt like it was made of thick, invisible syrup, pushing against him with the weight of a mountain.
Outside, the world had descended into a primitive nightmare. Every electronic connection on the planet had been severed in a single microsecond. The internet died; the cellular grids collapsed. People stood in the streets, screaming at their dead phones. Telephone wires snapped and lashed like whipped serpents, showering the pavement with white sparks. Massive multi-car pileups began to occur as traffic lights turned black. It was the birth of a global panic.
Inside the room, Kaito was no longer the boy Ryu knew. He was curled in the far corner, shivering violently under his bedsheet as if he were freezing in a blizzard. His hands and feet were trembling with a rhythmic, mechanical tremor. He felt like an overcharged battery on the verge of exploding.
Ryu reached the top and slowly pushed the bedroom door open. Seeing Ryu, Kaito's eyes widened with a primal fear. "Stay back! Ryu, get away from me! Don't touch me!" Kaito shrieked, his voice distorted by a digital reverb.
"What is wrong with you, Kaito?! Snap out of it!" Ryu roared, his frustration boiling over. He lunged forward, ignoring the warnings, and grabbed Kaito by the shoulders to shake him back to sanity.
The instant their skin touched, the universe itself went white. A catastrophic Resonance Shockwave erupted from Kaito's body—a force so powerful it didn't just shake the house; it shook the tectonic plates of the Earth. Beneath the house, the subterranean energy finally reached its breaking point and detonated in a massive, Pure White Blast. A High-Level Megathrust Earthquake shattered the silence of the planet. Across the globe, ancient cathedrals and modern skyscrapers began to crumble into dust under the white glare of the sky.
Ryu was launched across the room like a ragdoll, his body slamming into the brick wall with a sickening thud. The sheer pressure caused the capillaries in his nose and ears to burst; thick, dark blood began to leak down his face. As his vision started to fade, he saw Kaito's room dissolve into a different plane of existence.
Inside Kaito's mind, the chaos vanished. He was suddenly standing in an infinite, white space of absolute silence. "How is it so quiet...?" he whispered. Then, he saw them. In the distance, nine silhouettes stood in a hazy fog—four girls and five boys. Their faces were blurry, like distorted memories. As Kaito stared, his heart leaped. He recognized two of the girls. In that moment, the power of five souls—including his own—began to pulsate in unison. A heavy, divine white energy started to flow into his veins.
Back in the physical world, the earthquake finally subsided, leaving behind a graveyard of ruins. Outside, the scene was hellish. The ground was cracked open in deep fissures. The sky was no longer blue; it had turned a bruised, bleeding violet, with white static flickering in the clouds.
Kaito's mother, having survived the tremors, came bolting up the shattered stairs. "Kaito! Ryu!" she screamed, bursting into the room. She froze. Kaito was sitting in the corner, staring at his hands with a hollow, haunted expression. Ryu was slumped in the opposite corner, unconscious, a pool of blood forming beneath his head.
"Ryu! Oh god, Ryu!" she sobbed, rushing down to find whatever medicine hadn't been buried under the debris.
Kaito didn't move. He didn't even hear her. His mind was still trapped in that white void, fixed on those nine shadows. "Who were they...?" he thought, his soul shivering. "And why do I feel like they are the only reason the world hasn't been completely deleted yet?"