The city stretched out before them—eerily still, yet teeming with life. Hikari felt the oppressive weight of the air press down on her chest, heavy like a thick fog she couldn’t see but could taste. The people moved in mechanical unison—too smooth, too perfect in their motions. Children ran and screamed in play, but their laughter was muted, as if muffled by an unseen hand. Shoppers milled around, their footsteps hollow against the concrete. Everything, every action, felt like it was a carefully choreographed scene—a play where the actors had forgotten their purpose.

“They’re not real, are they?” Hikari’s voice broke the silence, raw with disbelief. “This… this has to be Amanda’s doing. There’s no way these people are real.”

Lila’s sharp, discerning gaze swept across the street, where a woman in a polka-dot dress stood, smiling like a mannequin. “They look like automatons. Mindless. Like they’re stuck on a loop.” Her voice was steady, but a flicker of unease danced behind her bright azure eyes. “Even the kids… they don’t have that spark. They’re not real.”

Hikari nodded slowly, her heart pounding against her ribs. “And this pressure… it’s suffocating.” The weight seemed to grow with every step they took, as if the entire city was folding in on itself. “The more we walk, the worse it gets.”

Suddenly, a figure appeared from the corner of Hikari’s eye—a boy, small and pale, his face obscured by matted hair. His eyes were gone, replaced by empty, bloodied sockets, as though someone had ripped his gaze from him. Blood streamed from the gaping holes, dripping onto the sidewalk in sickeningly slow rivulets. Despite the grotesque scene, he smiled—a wide, vacant grin that stretched unnaturally across his face. The sight churned Hikari’s stomach, her blood turning cold.

“D-d-d-do you want to play with me~?” The boy’s voice was like the screech of rusted hinges, a hoarse rasp as though each word was scraped from his throat with an agonizing effort. It was the kind of sound that made the skin crawl and the hairs stand on end.

The smile never faltered, even as blood continued to pour from his eyes in thick streams, pooling at his feet. His hands—no, not hands, more like distorted appendages, thin and contorted—reached out toward them. Every movement was slow, deliberate, as if savoring the discomfort he instilled in them.

Hikari froze. Her mouth went dry. A creeping, nauseating realization settled in her chest: This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. Yet, here it was—this nightmare, breathing in their space, tainting the air around them.

Lila, typically unflappable, stepped closer to Hikari, her cheerful exterior cracking under the pressure. Her eyes, wide and alert, flickered between the boy and the oppressive darkness that seemed to tighten around them. “Is this… a part of Amanda’s curse? Or is it something else entirely?” Her voice trembled slightly, a stark contrast to her usual unwavering confidence.

The boy’s smile stretched further, impossibly wide. He tilted his head to one side, his empty eye sockets staring directly at Hikari, as though he could see her. “I’m lonely. I want to play… with you.”

The words hung in the air like a thick, suffocating fog. The ground beneath their feet felt unstable, as if the world itself was shifting, twisting into something they could never hope to understand.

Hikari felt the weight of it all—the pressure, the dread, the overwhelming sense of wrongness. The city felt like a cage, its walls closing in. She clenched her fists, fighting the urge to lash out, to destroy the grotesque illusion before them. But something held her back—something darker, deeper. It was as if the very essence of this place was gnawing at her soul.

The boy continued to smile, a smile that seemed to stretch beyond the limits of human anatomy, twisted in a grotesque parody of joy. The blood from his eyes splattered on the pavement, dripping in a rhythm that somehow mimicked the sound of a ticking clock.

“Play… with me…” The words were barely a whisper now, though they echoed in Hikari’s mind like a curse.

Lila’s voice broke through the oppressive silence, barely audible, a mere breath of sound. “This place… it’s eating away at us. We need to find Amanda. Now.”

Hikari nodded, but even as she did, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were walking deeper into a nightmare from which they might never wake.

As they moved, the boy’s unsettling presence lingered behind them, his hollow gaze never leaving them, the weight of his eyes pressing down on their backs. Each step forward felt like they were sinking into a deeper, colder abyss, and the once bustling city now seemed to loom like a vast, empty graveyard—silent, watching, waiting.

It was a place of no escape, no sanctuary. The city, the people, the boy—they were all part of something much worse than mere illusion. They were the embodiment of grief, of loss, of something far darker that twisted and rotted at the core of this cursed city. And as Hikari and Lila pressed forward, the walls of their reality felt like they were slowly cracking apart, leaving only the suffocating darkness in its wake.

The city stretched ahead of them, a decaying shell of its former self, and Hikari could feel it in the pit of her stomach. It was as though the air itself had turned heavy, thick with something foul and unnatural, like it was being suffocated by its own inhabitants. Each step they took, the streets seemed to grow darker, the world pressing in around them like a dying beast, its breath growing shallow.

Hikari’s eyes darted around, unease creeping up her spine as they walked. The city was alive—in a way—but it was all wrong. The people milling about didn’t move like real people. Their bodies jerked in stiff, mechanical motions, their eyes hollow, their smiles too wide, too fake. The children who played on the streets—laughing, running, skipping—they didn’t feel like children. They were actors in a play, but the script had been distorted beyond recognition.

“Everything feels like it’s suffocating,” Hikari muttered, a frown tugging at her lips. She glanced at Lila, but the girl was already looking ahead, her brow furrowing.

Lila let out a short, breathy laugh. “Yeah, it’s like the whole city is just… rotting from the inside out.”

Suddenly, something moved ahead of them, stepping into the middle of the street, halting their conversation. Hikari’s heart skipped a beat at the sight—a figure stumbling forward, its movements jerky, unnatural. The once-human creature was a grotesque parody of life, its body twisted and deformed. Skin hung loosely from the bones, and dark veins, like tendrils of corrupted energy, pulsed beneath the flesh. Its eyes—if they could even be called that—were hollow pits, blackened voids that only seemed to absorb the dim light around it.

Hikari’s pulse quickened. That thing isn’t alive anymore… She could feel it, a gnawing unease at the back of her mind. This was no ordinary zombie. The air around the creature rippled with necrotic power, a vile aura that stank of death and decay.

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The creature raised its arm slowly, its palm open, and in an instant, an unnatural pulse of energy shot forward, spreading out in waves like a sickness.

“Hikari, look out!” Lila’s voice broke through the rising tension, her eyes wide with shock.

The ground beneath their feet cracked and split open as the air hummed with something malignant. Plants withered at the edges of the blast, their life sucked away as if they were nothing more than fragile toys in a child’s play. And the buildings—God, the buildings—they began to rot at their bases, crumbling like paper being eaten by fire. The collapsing structures leaned precariously towards Hikari and Lila, ready to fall.

“The hell!” Hikari hissed, her hands instinctively raising, the weight of her powers surging through her veins.

Lila swore under her breath, eyes darting to the collapsing buildings around them. “He’s causing the buildings to fall,” she muttered, struggling to keep her focus as the world around them crumbled.

Hikari didn’t have time to wait. She didn’t need to think. The power surged from her core, her telekinesis bursting through her like a tidal wave, propelling her forward toward the grotesque husk. She was moving faster than she’d ever thought possible, her body practically flying across the ground. Her hands shot out, a blast of psychic energy forming at her fingertips, her thoughts shaping it into a solid weapon of destruction.

Hikari’s voice was almost casual as she launched her attack. “Guess I’m getting the hang of this whole psychic thing.”

The blast of psychic energy shot out, aimed directly at the creature’s chest, but it dodged with a horrifying, twisted movement that looked more like a glitch in reality than anything organic. In the blink of an eye, the creature twisted its limbs and lunged at Hikari. Its body was a mass of shifting shadow, darkened flesh and bone melding together into jagged, knife-like appendages. It was fast—too fast—and in its monstrous hands, the creature formed dual blades, sharp as daggers and glinting with sickly black energy.

Hikari’s instincts kicked in. She ducked and spun, moving in a blur of fluid motion. “Karate and Aikido”, she thought briefly. “I spent years learning these techniques. Time to make them count.”

She was a fighter, her body a weapon honed by years of training. Every punch, every kick was a perfect strike, sharp and calculated. Her legs whipped out, sending her foot crashing into the creature’s side, the force of it enough to make it stumble back. A knee to its chest forced it further off-balance, and with a sharp twist of her hips, she deflected the blade-like arm as it swung toward her. The creature’s attacks were predictable, each movement a desperate, mindless repetition of the last.

“Man, your attacks really are predictable~,” Hikari teased, a smirk curling on her lips. The creature’s face, or what was left of it, twisted in a silent snarl.

Her elbow connected with its face, sending it reeling back. Another one down, but this is just the start.

Behind her, Lila was busy with the buildings—her own battle. Her face was pinched in concentration, her hands raised, her own psychic powers pushing against the sheer weight of the collapsing structures. Her azure eyes darted back and forth, looking for a safe place to drop the buildings, but each direction she looked was filled with the same distorted, fake people.

“Fuck,” Lila muttered, her voice strained as the pressure of the buildings grew. Her expression flickered between hesitation and resolve. They both knew what had to be done, but that didn’t make the choice any easier.

Hikari could hear Lila’s mental struggle as if it were her own. The weight of the decision. She wasn’t just saving herself—she was choosing to save others, even if it meant the lives of these warped beings were forfeit.

There was no hesitation in Lila’s next action. She let out a deep breath, then made the hard choice. With a grimace, she let the psychic energy she’d been holding back surge, and the buildings crumbled downwards, falling onto the faceless crowd below. They were already dead—had been for God knows how long—but it didn’t make the choice any less bitter.

“Sorry,” Lila whispered under her breath. “This wasn’t the way I wanted it.”

But there was no time to dwell on it. They both had a job to do. Lila spun a heel towards Hikari and saw she was still fighting that shadowy creature, she ran towards her and boasted herself with telekinesis.

High above the ruined cityscape, a lone figure stood at the edge of a crumbling rooftop, her presence an unnatural stillness amidst the chaos below. The wind howled through the streets, yet her raven-black hair remained eerily undisturbed, as if the very air bent to her will. Long, delicate strands cascaded over her shoulders, shifting in a way that felt almost sentient, whispering secrets lost to time. Her dull silver eyes—empty yet piercing—reflected no light, only an abyssal hollowness that made it impossible to tell if she was truly looking at anything or if she was merely staring through the world itself.

Draped around her was a flowing robe woven from the very essence of shadow, its fabric shifting, flickering, dissolving into the air before reforming again, as if it refused to exist in a singular state. It was not mere clothing but something far more eldritch—an extension of her being. Her pale skin, nearly translucent under the dim sunlight, bore markings—ancient runes etched along her arms in an incomprehensible language, symbols that pulsed with a quiet, ominous energy.

She smiled. It was a slow, deliberate motion, one that carried no warmth—only amusement laced with malice.

“So this is the power of Apostles… but I suppose they haven’t fully awakened yet.” Her voice was a melody of silk and venom, smooth yet laced with an edge of something predatory. “That means I get the privilege of killing them myself. And after that… well, they won’t need their bodies anymore.”

Her fingers curled slightly, as if testing the weight of an unseen force. Then, she chuckled softly to herself.

“Though, my Necromancy isn’t strong enough to control two Apostles at once… but Amanda is~”

The way she said the child’s name—like a playful afterthought—twisted the air with something deeply wrong, a corruption that sent invisible ripples through the darkness itself.

Closing her eyes, she brought her hands together in a slow, reverent motion. The moment her palms met, a wave of energy pulsed outward, warping the very fabric of the shadows around her. It was neither light nor darkness but something between—a paradoxical energy that hummed with the echoes of countless voices, whispering, weeping, screaming.

From the depths of those shadows, something began to take form.

It started as writhing tendrils, shifting masses of darkness coiling and slithering into each other like living veins. Then, the shape grew, solidified, twisting into something grotesque—a towering beast, its massive, hunched frame constructed from the remnants of sorrowful spirits, each one still caught in its own silent agony. Countless half-formed faces stretched across its pulsating body, their mouths open in eternal screams that produced no sound.

Its elongated arms—grotesquely disproportionate to its body—ended in colossal, hammer-like fists, each spiked and jagged, forged from solidified darkness and the agony of a thousand lost souls. It radiated suffering—an entity sculpted not from mere shadow, but from grief itself, a monument to despair given form.

The woman let out a satisfied breath as she gazed up at her creation, her dull silver eyes gleaming with cruel satisfaction.

“You will be my Mourning Behemoth,” she murmured, stroking its massive arm as if it were an obedient pet. “Now… go. Kill those two exorcists.”

With a low, guttural roar that vibrated through the very bones of the city, the creature leaped from the rooftop. The force of its descent shattered the concrete beneath it upon impact, sending tremors rippling through the street.

At that moment, the shadowy creature that had been fighting Hikari suddenly went limp, collapsing as if its strings had been cut. Whatever force had been keeping it animated was gone—redirected, repurposed.

Hikari flicked a strand of her medium-length brown hair out of her face, rolling her shoulders as she took in the sight of the massive monstrosity before her. Her heart pounded, but not with fear.

“Well, I guess we’ve got more company,” she said, cracking her knuckles with an easy grin, though there was a flicker of tension beneath her confidence.

Lila exhaled sharply, standing beside her. “Yeah. Looks like it.”

The Mourning Behemoth stood motionless for a moment, its many faces twitching, their silent screams writhing across its flesh. Then, slowly, it lifted its massive, spiked fist and slammed it into the ground once more, the shockwave sending jagged cracks racing toward them.

Hikari’s smirk widened, but her fingers twitched. Her instincts screamed at her—this wasn’t like the fight before.

Something was different.

Something was wrong.

And from the distant rooftops, hidden among the shadows, unseen eyes lingered. Watching. Waiting.

To be continued…