The twilight city stretched endlessly before Hikari, its skyline a maze of shifting structures caught in the hazy limbo between ruin and pristine form. The entire realm pulsed like a living thing, responding to the despair that saturated its streets. Buildings crumbled and reassembled in an eerie, rhythmic cycle, as though mourning their own forgotten pasts. Dim, flickering streetlights cast elongated shadows that murmured secrets in voices too faint to decipher. The air was thick—not just with fog, but with something heavier, like the weight of unshed tears pressing against her skin.
At the heart of this sorrow-soaked world loomed The Weeping Cathedral, a nightmarish gothic structure formed from blackened bone and fractured glass. Its jagged spires clawed at the ink-stained sky, from which a sluggish, tar-like rain seeped down in slow, heavy droplets. The bell within the cathedral tolled at irregular intervals, its mournful chime reverberating through the bones, dragging suppressed grief to the surface. The sound didn't merely echo—it wrapped around the mind, warping perception, making past and present bleed into one another like watercolor on damp canvas.
And beside it stood the abandoned school—a relic of forgotten youth, its walls sagging under the weight of an agony too immense to fade. Within those walls, Amanda Fujimoto remained trapped, alone with her grief, her memories, and the creeping tendrils of something far worse.
And Hikari was coming in fast.
—
The wind howled past her ears as she surged through the twilight, the sheer force of her speed compressing the air into a rippling tunnel around her. Her body was vibrating, glowing, radiating power that crackled against the unnatural stillness of Lirael's domain. Her heart thundered in her chest, an electric pulse in perfect sync with the wild, cyan light blazing from her eyes. She wasn't thinking anymore—just moving, instinct carrying her forward like an unrelenting force of nature.
The school loomed closer.
Too close.
Too close.
"Oh shi—!"
The realization hit her a split second before impact.
A loud CRASH split the air as Hikari slammed through the side of the building like a human meteor. A deafening boom followed as debris exploded outward, sending splintered wood, cracked tiles, and a very unfortunate desk spiraling through the corridor. Dust billowed in thick clouds, and for several agonizing seconds, everything was still.
Then, from the wreckage, a single, battered hand weakly pushed aside a toppled bookshelf.
Hikari groaned, dragging herself upright with all the grace of a crash-landed bird that had just remembered it had no idea how to fly. Her body ached in places she didn't even know could ache. A chair leg was somehow lodged in her sleeve. A rogue textbook labeled Advanced Calculus had smacked her square in the forehead during the landing.
She swayed unsteadily before collapsing onto her knees, coughing out dust.
"…Okay," she wheezed, spitting out what tasted suspiciously like chalkboard residue. "So maybe I do still need some training."
A chunk of ceiling crumbled and plopped onto her head in silent agreement.
She groaned again, brushing debris from her hair before staggering to her feet. The warped, dimly lit hallways stretched before her, lined with overturned desks and rusted lockers. The air was thick with something other than dust—an oppressive, unseen force that coiled around the senses like a whispering fog.
Hikari wandered through the school, her footsteps barely making a sound against the cracked tiles. The building seemed to breathe, slow and unnatural, like a living thing on the verge of waking. The groan of shifting wood and the distant echo of footsteps—ones that weren't hers—made the empty halls feel anything but abandoned. Lockers, rusted shut, oozed a dark, tar-like substance that dripped onto the floor in sluggish, sticky rivulets. The air was thick with dust, mildew, and something sickly sweet, like rotting flowers left too long in stagnant water.
She wrinkled her nose. Jesus. This place smells like someone tried to Febreze over a crime scene.
The fluorescent lights flickered erratically, humming with an uneven, almost nervous rhythm. Their glow stretched out into long, distorted shadows that slithered across the walls whenever she wasn't looking. It was the kind of place that begged for silence, for careful steps, but Hikari had never been good at playing by the rules.
"Alright," she muttered under her breath, shoving her hands into her pockets. "Creepy haunted school, check. Shit oozing from the walls, check. Weird-ass psychic death maze? Yeah, that tracks." She sighed. "Amanda, you better appreciate the effort I'm putting into not just kicking down every door until I find you."
She pushed open a classroom door, her fingers lingering on the worn wood. Inside, the desks were frozen mid-lesson. Some were overturned, others perfectly set as if waiting for students who would never return. Open books lay on tabletops, their pages turned to the last lesson Amanda had before everything fell apart. The chalkboard was worse—its contents twisted and flickering, shifting between subjects as if caught in a broken time loop. One second, it was neat lines of mathematical equations. The next, frantic, looping handwriting spelling out desperate, incoherent pleas for help.
A chair creaked.
Hikari's fingers twitched. Her psychic aura flickered—just a ripple, a warning shot of instinct. The air in the room was wrong. It wasn't just empty. It was occupied.
She turned slowly, eyes scanning the room, pulse steady despite the creeping pressure at the back of her skull. She'd felt this before—the weight of something watching, pressing, whispering without a voice.
This school isn't haunted. It's grieving.
It wasn't just a place Amanda had been. It was a place that had held her. A place that had absorbed her fear, her sorrow, her rage. The walls, the floors, the very air—they weren't just echoing her past. They were mourning it.
Hikari exhaled through her nose. "I don't do ghosts," she said flatly. "So if you're gonna try and scare me, at least be creative about it."
Silence.
Then, the whispering started.
Not in the classroom—from the walls.
She turned on her heel, striding past the faculty offices where the darkness ran too thick, too deep, swallowing even the flickering emergency lights. The whispers bled through the doors, voices trapped in an endless loop. Familiar ones. Teachers, mentors, people Amanda had once trusted.
"Miss Fujimoto, pay attention."
"Don't be difficult."
"Why can't you just be normal?"
"Are you even listening to me?"
The words were colorless, empty—just echoes.
Hikari cracked her neck. "Yeah, yeah, real tragic. Let's move this along."
One of the office doors creaked open.
Inside, it wasn't an office. It wasn't even a room.
It was a hospital ward, all sterile sheets and beeping monitors. The scent of antiseptic burned her nose. The kind of place where kids were told they'd get better. The kind of place where they didn't.
She clenched her jaw, stepping back, and the door slammed shut on its own. When she turned away, another door opened—this one leading to an abandoned playground, its swings rocking with invisible weight. Another: Amanda's childhood bedroom, but wrong, the furniture oversized, the bed sinking into a floor that had no bottom.
Hikari narrowed her eyes. Amanda's world isn't breaking—it's bleeding.
These weren't just random manifestations. They were pieces of her mind, scattered and stitched together by a power too vast, too raw, to be controlled.
A slow smirk tugged at the corner of her lips.
"Kid, you've got no idea how much of a pain in the ass you're making this," she murmured, stretching her arms behind her head. "But, hey. If this is the best you've got, you're gonna have to try a hell of a lot harder to shake me."
△▼△▼△▼△
Lila approached the abandoned school, her bright pink curls bouncing with each step, a stark contrast against the eerie, oppressive atmosphere that loomed over the structure. The building itself seemed trapped in a state of perpetual decay, yet it resisted complete ruin, as if something unnatural clung to its existence. Cracks split through the weathered brickwork like veins of corruption, and blackened vines—thorned and gnarled—climbed the walls with an almost sentient hunger, reaching toward the shattered windows.
The glass was smeared with a dark, viscous substance, glistening in the dim, spectral glow of the moon above. It pulsed, shifting like something alive, distorting the images within. Faintly, she could see figures trapped in the glass—shadowy silhouettes of students, their lips moving in silent, incomplete conversations. Their eyes were hollow voids, and though their gestures were familiar, something about them was grotesquely wrong. The front doors hung slightly ajar, a yawning maw beckoning her inside. She knew the nature of this place. The moment she crossed the threshold, leaving would become a near impossibility.
Lila huffed, placing a hand on her hip as she regarded the haunted school with mild exasperation. "Jeez, I'll never understand how witches make these things so damn creepy," she muttered, her tone flippant, but her grip unconsciously tightening. Her fingers tingled, a faint psychic hum warning her of the eldritch energy pulsing through the air like a heartbeat.
She stepped inside, the temperature plummeting the moment her foot crossed the entrance. The darkness within was thick, suffocating, curling around her like a living thing. But before she could fully take in the details, movement—violent and sudden—rushed toward her from all angles.
Lirael's Wraith Sentinels
Over fifty figures emerged from the gloom, their forms flickering and shifting like living shadows. They were humanoid in shape but had no discernible features—only elongated limbs and razor-thin fingers that ended in wicked, curved talons. They moved like smoke, their bodies lacking any true solidity, yet they radiated an unmistakable menace. Their eyes—if they could even be called that—were dull silver glows, eerily reminiscent of Lirael's own.
The air became oppressive, a psychic chill creeping into Lila's bones as the creatures surrounded her. Despite herself, she wrinkled her nose in distaste. "What is with supernatural weirdos and their obsession with kids?" she mused aloud, her voice casual, but her mind already shifting into battle mode. "Seriously, you've got an entire haunted city to play with, and you're all still hovering around one little girl?"
A dozen of the Sentinels suddenly lunged, daggers materializing in their clawed hands. Their speed was unnatural, their movements erratic yet disturbingly precise. At the same time, the rest of the creatures melted into the shadows, disappearing entirely.
Lila clicked her tongue. "Oh, that's so not fair."
Before the blades could reach her, she raised both hands, palms open, as if welcoming the attack. A translucent field of shimmering violet energy crackled to life in front of her—a psychic shield, smooth and flawless, its edges pulsing with a faint golden hue. The moment the Sentinels struck, their daggers rebounded with a violent screech, their bodies thrown back by an unseen force.
But Lila wasn't content with just defense. She twisted her fingers ever so slightly, and the barrier expanded—not as a static wall, but as a massive psychic force wave. The air quivered under the weight of her power as the shield transformed into a battering ram, slamming into the incoming creatures with bone-crushing force.
The Sentinels had no time to react. They were hurled backward like ragdolls, their ephemeral forms distorting before they crashed into the walls. The impact wasn't gentle—her shield pressed, exerting immense pressure, crushing them against the surface with the finality of an execution. Their forms shuddered, twisting unnaturally, before they were reduced to nothing but dissipating shadows, like embers snuffed out in the wind.
Lila lowered her hands, rolling her shoulders with a satisfied sigh. "Squished 'em like bugs," she remarked with a smirk, flipping a lock of bubblegum-pink hair behind her ear.
But she wasn't stupid.
The others—at least thirty of them—had disappeared, vanishing into the very fabric of the shadows. Lirael's little tricks are never that simple.
To be continued…