At night, the old school building resembled a ruin, abandoned by time.
The corridor lights had long since disappeared, leaving only the cold, knife-like moonlight to filter through the cracks in the broken windows.
Kazama Rei and Yuki Mio walked forward one after the other, their footsteps echoing as they crunched through broken floorboards.
'Are you sure we can find anything related to the cracks here?' Mio asked in a low voice, her tone betraying a chill.
'Hai said this building was sealed off forty years ago.'
Rei squinted into the depths of the corridor.
'And you saw the security footage, too. The last time the missing 'Spiritual Summoning Research Society' appeared was when they entered this building.'
Mio swallowed hard.
With her spiritual vision activated, the shadows of the entire building seemed to be alive, with every crack concealing shapeless creatures crawling within them.
The two of them made their way towards the deepest 'forbidden room'.
Five layers of sealing talismans were affixed to the door.
Each one was inscribed with ancient characters that did not belong to the modern world. It was as if they were suppressing something that shouldn't exist.
Rei and Mio exchanged a glance.
'Are you ready?' Mio asked.
Rei gave a wry smile. 'When have I ever truly been ready?'
He raised a finger slightly, and the power of sin manifested as black cracks of light at his fingertip.
The seal trembled instantly.
As if it had been awakened.
As if it knew that 'he' had arrived.
Mio's eyes widened. 'Rei, it's reacting to you!'
Rei tried to retreat, but the seal exploded with reverse spiritual pressure.
Bang!
The entire door was flung open.
A cold, black mist surged out.
like a deep well that had been sealed off for too long finally drawing in air.
As their vision cleared—
—they saw it:
A spirit, bound and suspended in mid-air.
Nailed by thirty-two ancient seals.
But that spirit was missing half a face.
Its chest appeared to have been gouged out, and the edges of its hands and feet had shattered into smoke.
It was incomplete.
Not injured —
but born 'only half'.
Mio took a step back. 'This isn't an ordinary spirit. It was created.'
Rei took a step closer.
The moment he moved forward, the spirit jerked its head up as if it had been electrocuted.
Its mangled face fixed on him.
The next second, it struggled frantically.
The runes began to flash and its twisted roar shook the entire room.
"—Awakener!"
"Come back!"
"It's you... it's you!"
Mio's spiritual pressure surged with fear. 'Rei, step back! It's breaking the seal!'
But Rei couldn't hear her.
He felt—
Deep within the spirit's soul, he sensed something familiar and clinging, like the backlash of fate, pulling him in.
It wasn't hostility.
It wasn't a cry for help.
It was recognition.
When the spirit looked at him,
It didn't look at him as though he were a stranger.
It was more like it was looking at a 'form that had been absent for too long'.
The runes in the room shattered, one by one.
Mio cried out urgently, 'Rei! Don't get any closer — it's about to break free!'
But Rei's throat was as dry as sand.
Amidst the shattering sounds of its struggle,
the spirit had uttered a sentence that chilled him to the bone:
'You... you've finally returned.'
The entire Forbidden Room exploded instantly into a white light of spiritual pressure.