Hinata gently pulled away from Mayohi's embrace, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.
"See you soon, Mayohi…" she murmured with a faint smile, her voice still trembling but filled with gratitude.
Mayohi nodded, a reassuring smile on her lips: "See you soon, Hinata. Take care of yourself."
They parted ways, each taking her own path. Hinata walked quietly towards her house, her heart lighter after the unwavering support of her friend.
Mayohi, on her side, walked through the streets, softly humming a little song to relax. The rain had stopped, but the puddles still reflected the street lamps and the dark sky. She enjoyed this moment of calm after all the tension, letting her breathing steady.
As she passed by a narrow alley, her gaze was drawn to something strange. A silhouette stood there, motionless, almost unreal. A compact black shadow that did not move but seemed to fix Mayohi with a disturbing intensity.
Advancing cautiously, she whispered, "Is there someone?" Her voice trembled slightly despite herself.
But the shadow did not answer. It remained perfectly still, a black mass seemingly aware, transmitting a palpable tension.
Mayohi's blood ran cold. She took a step back, her heart racing. But before she could properly flee, the shadow suddenly relaxed and leapt towards her with terrifying speed.
An explosion of black smoke erupted around her, enveloping her and sending a acrid smell into the air. The silhouette had literally dissolved into a dark cloud, leaving Mayohi petrified.
Without thinking further, terrified, she turned and dashed away, her footsteps echoing on the wet pavement. She did not even allow herself a look back, her sole concern being to reach her house alive.
Every flash of light in the alley seemed to dance with the remains of that black smoke, but Mayohi did not stop. Her rapid breath and pounding heart echoed like a drum in her ears as she disappeared into the darkness of the night, still shaken by this inexplicable encounter.
Far away, very far from the city, in the heart of a heavy and unreal mist, a solitary step splashed into a dark puddle.
A silhouette slowly emerged from the fog.
Long hair whipped by the wind, yellow eyes piercing the opacity like headlights in the middle of the night: Bakuzan.
Crouched, he stirred with his fingertips a blackish, oily substance that stuck to his skin.
"Again this strange substance…" he murmured with a grimace of disgust, this time more pronounced than before.
He straightened up, shaking his fingers to rid himself of the liquid, but the matter seemed almost alive, as if refusing to leave him.
He looked around: a world drowned in a dense, almost impenetrable fog, where forms were guessed more than seen. Destroyed dwellings lay here and there, twisted wooden skeletons, collapsed walls, gutted doors.
Everything was silence, rot, and abandonment.
Bakuzan advanced, analyzing every detail, every trace. He stopped in front of a small ruined hut. A horrible smell of decomposing flesh hit him in the face, making him frown.
He approached anyway, drawn by his instinct.
Inside, piled bodies.
Humans, animals, perhaps even other creatures… hard to say as death had disfigured them.
But what disturbed him was not death itself.
It was absence.
A total absence.
He laid his hand on one of the corpses, and a grave expression darkened his features:
"Again… the same phenomenon."
For several years, he had observed this.
At each death, natural or violent… something came.
Something tore out the Inner Being of mortal beings.
A being.
A consciousness.
A soul.
Azazel.
Each victim lost the possibility of being resurrected, reincarnated, reanimated.
An absolute erasure.
A total disappearance.
Bakuzan slowly straightened up.
He, more than anyone, could see this kind of anomaly.
He even perceived the invisible residues to the eyes of the common.
And this time again… the traces were fresh.
"His interventions are becoming too frequent…" he thought, his yellow gaze narrowing as he scanned the fog.
A light sound rang behind him.
A step.
Regular.
Confident.
Bakuzan immediately turned.
Two silhouettes had just emerged from the veil of mist:
— the first, entirely draped in black, a black expressionless mask molded on the face, like a spectral figure cast into the real world;
— the second, a person with indigo hair, almost luminous in this darkness, also dressed in a full black outfit.
Both silently observed Bakuzan, motionless like statues.
Bakuzan, his long hair brushing his cheeks, let his yellow eyes shine with an almost animal intensity.
He stood fully upright, his aura unfolding slightly, instinctively.
"Who are you?" he asked in a low, grave voice, vibrating in the fog like a warning.
The fog tightened around them, heavy like a damp veil ready to collapse.
Bakuzan, motionless, stared at the two silhouettes when one of them stepped forward.
The boy with indigo hair advanced with a smile too relaxed to be innocent. His luminous strands floated slightly, as if even the fog refused to touch them.
"I introduce myself," he said in an almost joyful tone. "Ixlongue. Indigo Dragon heir.
And, if I'm not mistaken… we are indeed facing Bakuzan, aren't we?"
Bakuzan remained silent, sizing up the stranger with his yellow eyes. Then, in a low and steady voice:
"What do you want from me?"
An amused glint crossed Ixlongue's gaze.
"Oh, it's very simple. You have become an Ineffable, haven't you?
No need to deny it, we already know."
Bakuzan did not answer. Silence fell, as cold as the fog licking their legs.
Ixlongue resumed, as if stating an unavoidable truth:
"The Black Grief. You escaped the laws of all narrations by becoming an Ineffable. You transcended everything that can be told... exactly like us."
He paused, his smile slowly disappearing.
"But that's not the strangest thing…"
He inhaled slightly, the feverishness replacing his confidence.
"What troubles us is that you did it alone.
Without the help of another Ineffable.
Without intervention from an original god."
His eyes widened, almost horrified.
"Normally, it's impossible. Completely impossible.
Trying this alone, you should have been annihilated:
breaking your own transcendence,
destroying your narrative role,
making your narration implode…"
His voice trembled.
"You should have shattered into pieces by breaking your name and your conceptualization in the Garbadokasay."
He breathed more heavily, as if uttering these facts already constituted an offense.
Then, calming his voice, he added:
"So... you will tell us how you did it, right?"
Bakuzan slowly raised his eyes to him.
Ixlongue was right.
Becoming an Ineffable alone was absolutely impossible:
worse than breaking causality like the Deviants,
worse than breaking the laws of identity like the Superexistences.
It was detaching from all conceptualization;
shedding all frames;
passing from the possible to the pure impossible.
An act that no one could accomplish alone.
No one… except him.
The wind whipped his face, briefly carrying away the fog around him.
But in his eyes shone a mute truth: even he did not know how he had achieved this transcendence.
It had happened… naturally.
As if, deep down, he was never meant to stay within the limits of the narratable.
Even the Dream Outer Zones, which other Ineffables crossed with difficulty, had seemed almost trivial to him.
He exhaled slowly.
"I'm not obliged to tell you," he finally answered.
His voice resonated in the fog, heavy and sharp.
"I don't know what your intentions are...
and what you are really looking for."