"Brother Sanju!!" Shinju-maru's frantic voice echoed from deep within the rickety old estate.
"Tch... is he really in there? How many times have I told that idiot not to go near that place?!" Sanju-maru roared.
Without hesitation, he crossed the boundary line into the front yard, and the moment his foot struck the dirt, his reality shattered.
"Gah—hk?!" Sanju-maru gagged, nearly tumbling to his knees as the spiritual veil opened to his senses. The horrifying sight of the floating, wailing spirits burst into view.
Panicking, his desperate gaze swept toward the rotting front door. Through the dark threshold, he caught a sudden glimpse of a limb disappearing deeper inside. He instantly recognised the fabric; it was the distinct, patched pattern of Shinju-maru's kimono.
"What is going on here?! What are those things?!" Sanju-maru's mind reeled in absolute terror, but he didn't stop moving. Only one thought burned in his head: save his brother.
With his eyes darting wildly between the writhing spirits above the roof and the open doorway ahead, he bolted across the yard toward the house.
BAM! BAM!
Huge, ghostly arms plummeted from the sky, slamming into the dirt ground and barely grazing Sanju-maru's shoulders.
'Wait... what?' Inoue watched from the tree line, his cat ears twitching as he analysed the impact. 'I thought those entities were malevolent, but their energy isn't aggressive... It's frantic! They aren't attacking him; they're desperately trying to drag him away from that house!'
Before Sanju-maru could take another step, a massive, hooked spirit hand descended from the storm clouds like a giant scythe, slicing straight down toward the back of his neck.
Inoue's instincts kicked in. Bending his paws, he stomped the ground with explosive force. The earth beneath his feet shattered, sending a concussive shockwave rippling through the yard that violently threw Sanju-maru out of harm's way, sending the boy tumbling hard onto the wooden porch of the house just as the spectral scythe tore into the dirt where he had stood a second before.
Paying no mind to the horrific anomaly warping the reality around him, Sanju-maru reached out and grabbed his brother's limp arm, pulling with all his remaining strength. "Come on! Shinju-maru, let go!"
Sanju-maru propped the boy up, hoisting the heavy weight over his shoulder. "Shit... shit! He's bleeding from his head! What the hell happened here?!"
'Ah... how tragic. He has already lost,' Inoue thought, watching from a distance.
While Sanju-maru was blind to the full reality, Inoue's spirit vision laid the creature bare in all its hideous grandeur. Its body was a massive, bubbling mound of pale flesh, with heavy, rotting flaps hanging loosely over one another. Its face was a smooth, featureless void where eyes and a mouth should have been; there was only a jagged mess of blackened, burnt scar tissue.
And protruding directly out from one of those fleshy folds was the half-absorbed torso of Shinju-maru, the very limb Sanju-maru was frantically trying to pull free.
Suddenly, the wailing spirits above swooped down in a desperate frenzy, attempting to strike the monstrosity. But as soon as they drew near, the creature's entire head snapped backwards like a gaping trap. A dark, bottomless abyss opened beneath its burnt skin, lined with rows of needle-sharp teeth. With sickening, wet crunches, the beast devoured the spirits mid-air, slurping them down one by one until every single phantom was gone.
"Brother... I want to go home..." the half-absorbed torso of Shinju-maru whimpered, trailing behind Sanju-maru's back. "I'm so sorry... for not listening to you..."
"No! Don't worry about it! I'm here, I've got you!" Sanju-maru shouted back.
The moment those comforting words left his lips, a torrential downpour burst from the dark sky. The freezing rain plastered Sanju-maru's hair to his forehead as his boots began to slip in the rapidly churning mud. He strained every muscle in his legs, desperate to cross the boundary line of the estate's gate.
He was so close, just a few more agonising steps away from freedom, but no matter how hard he dragged his feet forward, his progress came to a dead, horrifying standstill.
'Ah... I see how it works now,' Inoue mused, his cat ears twitching once more as he observed the entity's spiritual framework. 'Even spirits, whether natural or artificially born, must obey a set of fundamental rules dictated by the world. For this creature, it seems it cannot simply devour someone or leave this place at will. The target must first willingly surrender themselves, even if it is extracted through a deception...'
'But still... there is something about this that I still don't fully understand...'
As Inoue watched, the torso of Shinju-maru that Sanju-maru had been desperately clinging to began to liquefy, melting away like tallow and re-absorbing into the bubbling flaps of the monster's pale hide.
"Huh...?" Sanju-maru turned around, his eyes wide as he stared into the absolute horror before him.
"How could you, Sanju-maru?" a warm, sickeningly familiar voice called out.
From the centre of the creature's rotting mass, the distorted, tear-streaked face of his mother pushed forward through the skin folds.
"I explicitly told you to take care of your little brother!" she wept, her tone dripping with venomous guilt. "And yet, you left him here to die? Have you no shame as an older brother?!"
Upon hearing those sharp, soul-crushing words, the world went entirely dark for Sanju-maru. His grip gave out. He fell hard to his knees, completely frozen, his mind wiped totally blank by overwhelming despair.
'Ah... how cunning,' Inoue thought grimly.
Seeing its prey broken and paralysed, the creature raised a massive, mutated limb and readied a lethal blow. The heavy strike descended with blinding speed, aimed directly at the boy's head.
BOOM!
The blow never connected.
A split second before the strike could crush him, a burst of divine fire erupted violently from beneath Sanju-maru's kimono, igniting directly from the small protective talisman resting against his chest. The force of the sacred flames detonated like a cannon, launching Sanju-maru backwards through the air and hurling his body completely out of the estate's boundary line.
"Krrrgh! Come back! COME BACK!" the monstrosity shrieked in agony as the divine fire clung to its flesh, searing its pale hide.
Infuriated, the creature lurched forward, giving chase. But the very instant it attempted to cross the threshold of the front gate, heavy, glowing spiritual chains manifested out of thin air, snapping tightly around its neck and torso.
The chains slammed taut, violently dragging the monster back toward the decaying house. It screamed in fury, its elongated claws digging deep grooves into the dirt ground and snapping surrounding trees, but the ancient power of the boundary binding was far too absolute.
Inoue stood perched on a high branch, shaking his head slowly as he watched the creature thrash against its invisible leash.
'Tch... tch... tch... What on earth have the humans of this town done!! To create something like this willingly?'