The black plane was worse than the darkness in the house. In the house, you could at least feel the walls.
Here, there was no perspective. Every step felt like walking on thin air, even though the ground beneath Masaru's boots remained as solid as granite.
"Keep your eyes moving," Kuzushi said. Her voice didn't echo. It just fell flat into the dark. "Don't let the silence get in your head."
Masaru kept his Beretta raised, the sigil-etched steel cool against his palm. He walked blind, his left hand extended to keep from tripping over anything that might be lurking in the shadows.
After what felt like an hour—but was probably only minutes—his hand hit something soft and heavy.
"Whoa!"
A figure spun around in the dark. A flashlight beam whipped across Masaru's face, blinding him.
"Get back! I'll blow you to hell, I swear it!" Alex's voice was high and jagged, bordering on a scream. He was holding a grenade in one hand, his thumb hooked into the pin.
"Alex! It's me! Put the pin back in!" Masaru shouted, shielding his eyes from the light.
Alex froze. He lowered the flashlight, his face pale and drenched in sweat.
He looked like he'd been running a marathon in a sauna. "Masaru? Bloody hell... I almost cooked you. Where did you come from? Where's the house?"
"Kuzushi breached the seam," Masaru said, gesturing to the pink-haired girl standing behind him. "Where's Yuki?"
Alex's expression crumbled. He looked around at the infinite blackness, his hands shaking. "We were standing in the kitchen, and then the floor just... it went soft. Like mud. We fell in, but we didn't land together. I heard her scream once, but it sounded like she was miles away. I've been walking in circles for what feels like hours."
Kuzushi stepped forward, her eyes scanning the horizon. "The void is small. A demon this low-grade can't manifest a large-scale territory. It's a trick of the light—or the lack of it. We just need to keep moving. It's likely keeping her close to the center."
They started walking again, Alex leading the way with his flashlight. He kept yelling Yuki's name, his voice cracking as it disappeared into the void.
Masaru followed behind, his heart heavy. He had a bad feeling about this. He'd seen Yuki's face in the haunting when Daiki's head was ripped off.
He knew about her PTSD—the way her hands shook when the lights flickered, the way she stared at nothing for hours.
If she was alone in this place, trapped in a dark, silent box with a demon...
Something might have snapped.
"Yuki! If you can hear me, make some noise!" Alex yelled again.
Silence.
Then, Masaru heard it.
It was faint. A rhythmic scraping sound. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. Footsteps. But they weren't human. They were too light, too uneven.
"Stop," Masaru whispered.
Kuzushi and Alex froze. Alex started to turn his flashlight, but Masaru grabbed his arm. "Flashlight off. Now."
The world went pitch black. Masaru closed his eyes, relying on his ears. The sound was coming from the right. It was getting closer.
He opened his eyes, squinting into the gloom. A pale shape began to materialize about twenty feet away. It looked like an old man, hunched over and naked.
Its skin was a bruised, violet color, sagging off its bones in wet folds. It didn't have a nose, just two weeping slits above an ugly, toothless mouth.
It was shuffling toward them, its long, yellowed fingernails dragging on the black floor.
Masaru didn't wait for a monologue. He didn't wait for it to lunge.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
He emptied four rounds into the creature's chest and head. The sigil-etched bullets tore through the violet flesh with wet, slapping sounds.
The old man demon collapsed instantly, its body twitching once before going still.
"That's it?" Alex asked, his flashlight clicking back on. He shone it on the corpse. "That's the 2nd Deviation? It looked like a senile grape."
Masaru walked toward the body, his gun still raised. He reached down and grabbed the creature by its thin, wiry neck, pulling it up. It felt light. Too light.
"Something's wrong," Masaru muttered.
"Why hasn't the void faded?" Kuzushi asked. Her voice was sharp. "If the master of the void dies, the space collapses. This place should be turning back into a living room right now."
Masaru's eyes widened. He looked down at the floor. The shadows beneath the old man's body weren't normal. They were swirling, bubbling like boiling oil.
"Move!" Masaru yelled.
He dove backward just as the "floor" erupted.
The old man's body was swallowed instantly by something massive rising from the depths.
It was a fish-like demon, but it was the size of a city bus. Its scales were the color of lead, and its mouth was a gaping hole filled with thousands of needle-like teeth.
It lunged upward, its jaws wide enough to engulf all three of them in a single bite.
"Kinetic Redirection!" Kuzushi screamed.
She slammed her palms together. A shockwave of invisible force slammed into the demon's upper jaw.
The creature's head was jerked back, its teeth snapping shut just inches from Masaru's face. The force of the impact sent a tremor through the black plane, knocking Alex off his feet.
The fish demon fell back onto the floor, but it didn't land. It sank into the black surface like it was diving into water, then circled around them, its dorsal fin cutting through the darkness.
"It was a nested void!" Kuzushi shouted, her breath coming in quick, ragged gasps. Her hands were still glowing with a dim, black light. "The old man was just a lure. This thing was hiding underneath it. Its own void is much stronger. This isn't a 2nd Deviation. It's at least a 5th."
"Can you kill it?" Masaru asked, checking his magazine. He only had six rounds left.
"It's even!" Kuzushi gritted her teeth. The black plane began to ripple. "My void and its void are fighting for control of the space. But this thing is on its home turf. It has higher demonic energy reserves. It's going to wear me down before I can find a weakness."
The fish demon lunged again, its massive tail whipping through the air. Kuzushi redirected the blow, but the effort made her stumble. Her nose began to bleed.
Alex scrambled to his feet, pulling a grenade from his bag. "Eat this, you oversized sardine!"
He pulled the pin and hurled the grenade at the creature's gills. The explosion was a bright flash of orange, but the demon didn't even flinch. The scales were too thick.
"Dammit! I should've brought the sun-ray gun!" Alex yelled, his voice thick with panic.
Masaru fired his remaining rounds. Click. Click. Click. The bullets sparked off the lead-colored scales, doing zero damage.
He was out of ammo. He reached for his combat knife, knowing it was useless against something this size.
The fish demon sensed their desperation. It rose from the floor, its entire body hovering in the air. It opened its mouth, a deep, guttural hum vibrating in its throat.
A beam of concentrated black energy began to form in its gullet.
"Get behind me!" Kuzushi yelled, her knees buckling. "I'll try to reflect it, but I don't know if I can—"
Suddenly, a voice cut through the darkness. It was cold. Hollow. Completely devoid of the fear that had defined it for weeks.
"[Void - Ice Cage]."
The air didn't just get cold. It turned into a solid block of frost.
From every direction—above, below, and all 360 degrees around the demon—hundreds of massive, jagged icicles erupted from the void. They were ten feet long and sharp as razors, glowing with a sickly, frozen blue light.
The icicles slammed into the fish demon simultaneously. They pierced through the lead scales like they were made of paper, pinning the creature in mid-air.
The demon didn't even have time to finish its attack. The ice began to grow inside its body, shredding its organs and bursting out through its eyes and gills.
The fish demon let out one final, muffled gurgle before it was completely encased in a massive, jagged sphere of ice.
Then, with a sound like a mountain shattering, the ice exploded, taking the demon's remains with it into a cloud of sparkling frost.
The black plane began to flicker. The infinite horizon cracked, and the scent of sour milk rushed back into Masaru's nose.
The void faded.
Masaru found himself standing back in the Setagaya living room. He was breathing heavily, his lungs burning from the sudden shift in temperature. He looked toward the kitchen.
Yuki was standing there.
She wasn't shaking. She wasn't crying.
She didn't say a word. She just watched them, her face a mask of frozen stone.