The path had no visible end.
Only darkness ahead, darkness behind, and the sound of two pairs of footsteps on wood that no longer belonged to any temple Yūta could recognise. The walls had stopped making architectural sense several minutes back — or what seemed like minutes, because inside that darkness time had also lost something of its usual shape.
Yūta walked beside Kagami and looked to either side every few steps.
"And the others?" he said at last.
Kagami did not stop walking.
"Don't worry about them."
"But—"
"Worry about yourself right now," said Kagami, in his usual tone. "It doesn't matter what happens to the others if you can't take care of yourself."
Yūta processed that in silence.
He thought it was a cruel thing to say. Then he thought more coolly that Kagami was, in a strange way, right. He decided both things could be true at the same time and kept walking.
Somewhere in the east wing of the temple that was no longer a temple, Shirogane Mei walked beside Tsukino Hina along a corridor that turned left and then right and then led nowhere in particular.
"And Amane?" said Shirogane.
Tsukino glanced at her from the corner of her eye with a smile that appeared without her looking for it.
"Are you interested in Amane?"
Shirogane went slightly pink.
"It's not that," she said, in her usual direct tone but a second later than usual. "It's that he's new. He doesn't have his powers developed like we do. If they separated him on his own I don't know if he'll be able to—"
Tsukino cut her off. "When the floor absorbed us," she said, more seriously, "I saw Kagami grab him by the arm before he got carried off alone. They're most likely together, the two of them."
Shirogane processed that.
"Maybe you're right," she said with a smile, already less troubled.
Tsukino added nothing more. They kept walking.
On the other side, Ishida Taro had been walking for a time he could not calculate, alone through corridors that repeated themselves with a monotony that was beginning to feel deliberate.
He did not run. He did not stop. He walked with his hands loose and his eyes moving between the shadows with the attention of someone who has learned that panic is useless and calm is not.
Then he heard the voice.
Faint, from somewhere ahead and to the right. A voice asking for help with the specific urgency of someone who does not have much time.
Help… please… it came from somewhere deep in the place.
Ishida ran.
The corridor turned, then another, then a half-open door he pushed through without slowing — and at the far end of the room, slumped against the wall with his body tilted to one side, was a man.
Ishida reached him and turned him over.
The man had been dead for some time, as was evident from his frozen appearance.
Seeing the man in that state, Ishida moved on instinct, without thinking, to the right — several knives passed through the space where his head had been an instant before, embedding themselves in the wall with a precision that was not random.
Ishida spun round quickly.
In the shadows at the far end of the room there was a figure. Muscular, an ashen grey tone that corresponded to nothing living, with a smile on its face that had too many teeth and none of them in the right place. The figure moved its hands in an almost casual gesture — and the knives pulled free of the wall and flew back to it as though they had never left.
Ishida understood the ability the moment he saw it. He needed nothing more.
He readied himself.
From his hands chains began to emerge — not of metal but of something denser and colder, a colour somewhere between white and blue, extending from his palms with a will of their own that answered to his.
Ishida's mana chains are not simple restraints. They are pure energy that he can launch and control at will, and on contact with an enemy they do more than immobilise — they actively drain the target's energy, slowly dispersing it the longer contact is maintained. They do not transfer that mana to anyone. They simply extinguish it.
The chains shot out and wrapped around the figure in under two seconds — the arms, the torso, one loop around the neck that did not squeeze, but contained.
The figure's smile disappeared.
Ishida breathed and moved closer to finish it.
The figure pulled.
The chains gave — not all at once but gradually, with the specific tension of something being forced beyond its limit — and then they broke with a sound Ishida had never heard before, because no one had ever broken his chains before.
Unsettled, Ishida tried to draw them out again.
The creature lunged forward and a knee connected before the chains had finished forming.
The impact sent him backwards with a force that did not correspond to that grey body, and the wall behind him gave way — not cracking, giving way, as though it were paper — and Ishida landed in another room, the old wooden floor groaning beneath his weight.
He stayed still for a moment.
He spat blood and managed to pull himself upright.
The figure stood in the gap of the broken wall, its smile back in place, the knives turning slowly around its fingers as though they had been waiting for him.
Ishida wiped his lip, readying himself for a second round.
Elsewhere in the temple, Yūta and Kagami walked through dark passageways.
"Silence," said Kagami.
Yūta stopped.
Kagami had already stopped a step before him, looking ahead with a concentration that was not his usual one — narrower, more specific.
"Something is coming," he said.
From the darkness ahead, slowly, a figure emerged.
Humanoid in general form but not in its details — too many joints, too many parts that bent in the wrong directions, a surface that was more carapace than skin. It made sounds as it moved. Not words — something between a click and a hum, like a frequency the human ear could register but not quite process.
Yūta looked at it.
"Is that a remnant?"
"Yes," said Kagami.
"Are you sure?"
"Focus," said Kagami, without moderating his tone. "We don't know how strong it is."
Yūta closed his mouth. He set his feet. He took the dagger Kaito had lent him before they set out — a short blade, nothing special, but it was what he had.
Kagami extended his right hand.
From it emerged something reddish — not Kato's orange but darker, more concentrated, like energy compressed to a point before being released. It shot forward.
The insect remnant raised a hand.
Kagami stopped.
Something was moving behind the figure. Several things. Many things.
From the darkness behind the remnant the cockroaches emerged — not one or two but a swarm, each one the size of a medium dog, their antennae moving in synchrony and a collective sound that filled the corridor in a way Yūta felt more in his chest than in his ears.
Kagami's jaw tightened.
"Get ready."
He did not wait for a response. He launched himself at the swarm with the reddish mana wrapping around his fists, striking with a speed and force that scattered the first five or six with a single sweeping movement. Yūta came in from the flank, using the dagger to keep distance, kicking what came too close.
There were too many.
For every three that fell, five more appeared from the darkness, and the main remnant stayed still at the far end, watching, with a calm that Kagami had noticed from the beginning and which still had no explanation.
"Move away from me," said Kagami.
"What?"
"Move away from me. Now." Kagami's tone was firm.
Yūta did not understand, but he obeyed, retreating several metres while continuing to strike what came near.
Kagami closed his eyes.
One second. Two.
What Kagami did next has no simple name. Gravitation is the ability to alter the force the world exerts upon things — increasing it until nothing can move, reducing it until everything flies upward. In an area Kagami defines with the concentration of his mana, the physical rules change. The greater the scale, the greater the cost. But in that corridor, in that moment, the scale did not need to be large.
Kagami opened his eyes.
The cockroach swarm exploded.
Not with fire or impact — simply the pressure in the area where they stood increased until their bodies could no longer sustain it. Green blood splattered the walls and floor with an almost geometric uniformity.
Yūta looked at them. Then he looked at Kagami.
He said nothing, because he could not find words that would be sufficient.
The insect remnant at the far end of the corridor also said nothing.
It kept watching.
Kagami noticed. And what he thought in that moment was not calm but something closer to alert — because remnants did not wait. Remnants launched themselves. Always. Without calculating, without measuring, without waiting to see what the other did first.
This one had sent the swarm to see how they responded.
It was evaluating them.
Kagami took his stance.
The remnant moved — fast, too fast for its size — and the blow arrived before Kagami had finished preparing. He blocked it with his right forearm and the impact pushed him back half a step. He steadied himself. The exchange that followed was short and brutal — the remnant attacked with a combination of speed and strength that should not coexist in the same body, and Kagami answered with the economy of movement of someone who has spent years reading fights.
He pushed it back.
He placed himself between the remnant and Yūta.
"This remnant is strong," he said, without taking his eyes off the enemy. "Stay close and be careful."
"Understood," said Yūta.
The remnant raised its hand again.
From the ceiling, from the walls, from the darkness remaining at the sides of the corridor, a second swarm emerged — larger than the first, more concentrated, and directed in a single direction.
Towards Yūta.
The impact came from every side at once. Yūta struck, kicked, used the dagger, but the numbers were too great and the floor beneath his feet gave way without warning — it simply opened, and Yūta fell into the darkness of the floor below before he could do anything about it.
Kagami turned.
The remnant was already there, blocking his path to the hole in the floor with that calm posture that was the most unsettling thing about all of this.
It had done it deliberately.
Kagami looked at it. The remnant looked at him.
And then, on a face that should not have been capable of recognisable expressions, something appeared that was.
A smile.
"All of you… will die…" said the remnant, in a voice that sounded like two things at once.
Kagami did not respond.
But somewhere behind that calm of his that was not indifference but total concentration, something registered what had just happened.
A remnant that spoke. That planned. That separated its enemies deliberately and then announced it was going to enjoy it.
This was not what they had been told they would find.