Listen carefully, for the world you think you know... is a lie.
Sin does not linger in the shadows. It does not hide.
Rather, it walks among us. Shaped by our greed, our lust, our envy, and the quiet rot we carry in our hearts.
It breathes.
It waits.
And one day, it will claim us all....
September 20th, 2022
Fukui, Japan
5:32 AM
The sky was a vast slab of slate, heavy and unyielding, as though the night itself refused to surrender. Thick clouds devoured the last faint stars, leaving only a gray, oppressive veil that pressed down upon the city.
No wind disturbed the stillness. The air itself seemed to hold its breath, anticipating the beginning of our story.
In the forgotten outskirts of Fukui, an abandoned warehouse loomed like a forgotten tomb. Junk had been piled with deliberate care against its exterior walls, twisted metal, splintered crates, and nameless debris arranged as though to guard some secret within.
Inside, the space stretched wide and hollow, its concrete floor scarred and cold. Shadows clung to the crumbling brick, and faint drafts whispered through gaps in the incomplete roof like distant sighs.
In the farthest corner, half-hidden by gloom, a young girl lay curled on the bare floor.
She stirred. The chill of the concrete had seeped into her bones.
Tabata Inori, fourteen years old that very day, rubbed her cheek against the unyielding surface, eyes still heavy with sleep.
A low, raspy groan escaped her lips. She pushed herself up slowly, every movement measured by the ache in her neck and the stiffness along her spine. The silence around her was absolute, broken only by the faint skitter of rats fleeing into deeper darkness.
She yawned, long and drawn-out, the sound echoing off the walls like a fragile thing trying to escape.
"Ow… my neck," she murmured, voice thick and small in the vast emptiness.
For a moment she simply sat there, blinking away the haze. Then, as memory returned, a spark of joy flickered across her face. She clapped her hands together once, the soft sound strangely loud.
"Okay, Inori," she whispered to herself, a gentle smile curving her lips. "Today is the day. It's your birthday!"
The words felt warm against the cold. But warmth faded quickly. Awareness crept in like the mist outside. She glanced down.
The clothes she wore were wrong.
Instead of the soft pajamas she remembered falling asleep in, her body was wrapped head to toe in tight bands of white cloth, layer upon layer, snug as a shroud, stopping just beneath her chin.
The fabric felt foreign, constricting, pressing against her skin in ways that made her uncomfortable.
'What… am I wearing?" She asked with furrowed brows before looking around.
"Where am I?" Another question but with a more serious expression.
Her eyes moved slowly across the warehouse: peeling walls stained by years of neglect, heaps of rusting junk scattered like discarded bones, the incomplete roof framing a sliver of that lifeless sky.
In one shadowed corner, rats gnawed at something unseen, their tiny eyes glinting like wet beads. Then her gaze settled on the wall directly opposite.
There, written in dried blood that had long since darkened, were two neat English words, each letter formed with eerie precision:
Good luck.
The message was clearly meant for her. It sent a chill that slid down her spine, far deeper than the morning cold.
Inori's pulse began to quicken, a soft, insistent thud against her ribs. The feeling greatly enhanced her senses, as if just analyzing the various stenches in the strange room.
The air carried the thick, cloying stench of overdue garbage and old engine oil, something sour and metallic that clawed at the back of her throat and turned her stomach in slow, nauseating waves.
Inori quickly rose to her feet, movements brisk and devoid of sleep. The panic had made her fully awake.
"W-what is this? Where am I?!" Her voice cracked, fear and bewilderment threading through it.
No answer returned. Only the echo of her own words, fading into the hollow dark.
She stood motionless for a long time, breathing shallowly. Then a fragile calm settled over her, 'This cannot be real,_ she thought. 'I must be dreaming.' The idea brought a faint, embarrassed smile.
It was absurd, waking in a derelict warehouse on her own birthday, dressed like some forgotten relic. Far too ridiculous to be anything else.
"How strange," she murmured, "It feels so… real. Maybe because today is special?" Her voice soft and wondering.
Father had come home early just for her. The Prime Minister of Japan, always buried beneath endless duties, had carved out this one precious day. She could not waste it on some vivid nightmare.
With that quiet conviction, Inori began to move. She navigated the warehouse with deliberate slowness, fingers brushing against cold brick and rusted metal, letting her senses guide her through the gloom toward what she hoped was an exit.
Once beyond the warehouse doors, Streets stretched empty and silent under the heavy sky.
She walked, her monologue drifting from her lips in quiet fragments.
"I need to wake up," she told the fog. "Father must be waiting…"
A small grin appeared on her face, Inori was curious if she could conjure her father in her sleep.
She called out once, using both palms to act as speakers. However, a grumpy voice growled back through an open window: "Shut up! Some people are trying to sleep!"
Inori flinched, then offered an automatic "Sorry!" Bowing apologetically.
"Excuse me?! Y-you're not even real! I don't need to apologize to a figment of my own subconscious!" She huffed, her pout deepening, clearly offended that a mere projection had the audacity to yell at her.
Inori stormed off with deliberately loud steps. Cheekily making as much noise as she wanted.
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Nearly ten minutes passed in this slow, dreamlike drift. The market district emerged gradually, small shops still shuttered tight, colorful banners with kanji hanging limp and lifeless in the motionless air.
Inori paused at a wooden fence, her face only inches away as she scrutinized a motionless ladybug. Just then it hovered, wings beating frantically, the moment her warm breath grazed it. The insect darted off, vanishing into the gray.
Her expression had grown solemn, biting her lips as if irritated.
"I...I have to wake up," she said aloud, clenching both fists.
She reached forward, gripped a shaky plank, and pulled. The wood came free with a sharp crack that split the quiet like a disturbance. Inside the house, a man stirred drowsily at his window. Stammering with half a yell. "H-hey! What the...hell are you doing...?!" He said before dozing back.
"This isn't real, you don't matter!" Inori barked in return. She clutched the plank and ran away with hurry, carrying the wood with an unknown intention.
There, on the rocky ground beside the slow-moving river, she sat with elegant poise that felt strangely out of place. The plank rested across her knees. She lifted it slowly, turning it in her hands with a serious expression.
'This is getting old,' her thoughts whispered. 'Rather than waiting… I'll just end it in the dream.'
Inori's hands trembled. The wood felt heavier than it should, the sense of weight at all was an immediate red flag. But she was still delusional.
Inori, just like anyone, knew nightmares ended when terror reached its peak, she had always snapped awake then. But this one lingered, too vivid, too realistic.
Her heart beat quickened again, a heavy rhythm against her ribs. Cold sweat traced icy paths down her back. Still, the image of her father's rare smile anchored her.
Today was her fourteenth birthday. She could not miss it.
Inori closed her eyes. She breathed in the damp river air, held it, then let it out. The plank rose. For one long, suspended moment it hovered above her forehead, trembling as she hesitated.
'Do it!'
She swung.
Crack!
The impact rang out sharp and loud, bone yielding beneath wood. Pain bloomed like fire across her skull, white-hot and consuming. Crows erupted from the trees overhead in a sudden, ragged burst of black wings, scattering into the gray sky.
As their feathers drifted down like dark snow, Inori came into view.
She dropped the plank. It clattered away. Blood, hot and slick, spilled across her face as her eyes turned watery.
She screamed, a raw, guttural sound that tore from her throat and rolled across the riverbank. Inori collapsed, writhing on the stones, hands clawing at the laceration as though it were alive and burning.
"Argh....arghhhh! It hurts…! It hurts badly!!" The words slowly came out with shock as if she weren't the one who harmed herself.
Inori staggered toward the river's edge on shaking legs, plunged her head into the cold water, and gasped as the chill bit deep. The worst of the pain dulled to a throbbing pulse, a soothing sensation as the current washed the wound.
She remained there, kneeling in the shallows, bloodied hands trembling beneath the surface, watching faint red threads swirl away into the dark water.
When she finally lifted her head, the world had not dissolved. It had not flickered nor faded. It remained, solid and clearly visible.
Inori instinctively grabbed the grass beneath her. "This… isn't a dream?" she whispered with a humbled voice.
The words hung in the mist like a verdict.
Another thought followed, more logical this time: 'Was I kidnapped?'
'No, that makes no sense. Father had been home last night. His protection was more than enough...!'
Inori pressed a shaking hand to her forehead, feeling the sticky warmth of blood. She stood with unsteady legs, and began the slow walk back toward the bridge she bashed her skull. Her mind turned in careful circles, searching for answers.
After some worried pacing about, Inori snapped her fingers with a suddenly relaxed expression.
"I just need a phone! I'll call Father, He'll come flying to save me." Relief washed over her, and she exhaled, almost smiling.
Then the scent reached her.
Blood....
Thick.
Metallic.
Unmistakably fresh.
Inori's face immediately turned sour as she inhaled such a pungent aroma.
It had not been there moments ago, as if appearing after her decision to call her father.
It drifted on the still air like an invitation she did not want.
Her steps slowed. Instinct screamed to turn away, to run. But the pull was stronger. Dread coiled low in her stomach, like a meal refusing to digest. She followed the scent past the bridge, toward a small neighborhood a few steps away.
The smell was at its strongest in a certain building. A seemingly normal local Japanese house, nestled between two larger, silent buildings. Inori covered her nose in disgust, something clearly died there.
Her footsteps slowed down as she reached the alley separating the households.
She heard something through the partly open window.
A faint, wet sound reached her ears...
"Chewing?" She asked.
The sound was similar to cow processing cud. Teeth's gnawing over and over on already digested food.
Inori crept closer, heart pounding a quick rhythm like a blaring alarm. She leaned in, poking her head to invade the privacy within the bedroom. Both eyes adjusting to the lack of light.
Inori's eyes widened slowly with both hands reaching for her mouth.
At precisely 5:55 AM, Tabata Inori faced a horror she'd never known.
A Sinner.
A monstrosity she'd only heard of, crouched in a corner of the room she carefully peeked through.
Its snail-like form hulking fifteen feet tall. It fed lazily on a ravaged female corpse, blood seeping into the futons of a marital bed.
Dark red flesh glistened wetly, muscles shifting with each unhurried bite as it pulled organs free and chewed without pleasure. A massive shell arched over its back, patterned with black spots in the precise mimicry of a ladybug, but it was too big for an insect.
Its eyes were enormous, round and unnaturally bright, cartoonish in their exaggerated size creating an absurd appearance, yet the rest of the creature was rendered in horrifying, immaculate detail.
The fear Inori felt was more than enough proof.
This was no dream.