"I'll be watching from here."
Himari leaned against the crumbling wall, arms folded, her golden eyes gleaming with mockery as they landed on Reika.
"You're way too quiet. If you really deserve to be here, then prove it," she sneered.
Reika didn't react. She didn't even blink. Her empty gaze remained locked ahead, as if Himari's words were nothing more than the passing wind—irrelevant, fleeting, beneath her notice.
Tetsuya fidgeted. "M-Maybe we should stick together...?"
"If you're scared, stay back," Himari snapped.
Tetsuya clamped his mouth shut, biting his lip.
Ryou exhaled slowly, unimpressed. He didn't like this. Himari was arrogant and reckless; Tetsuya was too naïve to push back. Were they sorcerers or children playing pretend?
And Reika?
She simply stepped forward. No objections. No hesitation. As if Himari's demand was nothing but a meaningless footnote in the endless, unreadable cycle of her existence.
Her footsteps were eerily light—too light. Like she wasn't quite part of this world. The moment she crossed the threshold, the air changed.
Something pressed down on them. A suffocating weight, heavy as the grave. The stagnant air clung to their skin, thick with the stench of decay, as if something had been rotting here for years—forgotten, festering, waiting.
Then, something moved. A shift in the darkness. A ripple in the filth-caked walls.
A shape unfurled from the shadows, twisting and writhing like a carcass puppeteered by unseen hands. Its body—if it could be called that—was a grotesque fusion of rotting flesh and curling tendrils of black smoke. Empty sockets locked onto Reika, and its torn mouth creaked open with a wet, unnatural snap.
Tetsuya swallowed hard. "I-It's just a low-level curse, right...?"
No.
The thing standing before them was far too large. Its cursed energy was far too dense.
A few years ago, something like this might have been nothing more than an insect—a pest to be crushed underfoot. But the world had changed.
Ever since Sukuna's fall, the delicate balance had been shattered. Fear still existed, but there was no longer an absolute power to keep it in check.
What was once weak had grown stronger.
A level-two curse?
No—some of them were reaching level one.
"Tch. Coward." Himari rolled her eyes.
She didn't hesitate. Her fingers blurred into a practiced seal, and a burst of radiant golden energy shot from her palm, streaking through the air like a burning lance. It struck the curse dead center.
For a moment, it seemed to work. A ragged hole sizzled in its torso, black blood oozing down its grotesque form.
Then, it moved.
Not faltering. Not falling.
Turning.
Its grotesque head snapped toward her, jagged mouth splitting wider, as if grinning. Himari's confidence flickered. "What the hell…?"
It lunged.
Fast.
Too fast.
Her instincts saved her—she managed to pivot just in time, the curse's clawed hand slicing through empty air. But it had been close. Too close. The tip of its talon barely grazed her shoulder—
Rip.
Fabric tore. Blood welled up.
Tetsuya gasped. "H-Himari!?"
Himari staggered back, clutching the wound, cursing under her breath. "Tch..." She clenched her teeth, already forming another hand sign.
Too late.
The curse was already there.
It moved inhumanly fast—one moment several feet away, the next right in front of her. Its claw lashed toward her—Everything... changed.
The hallway, already suffocatingly silent, became something else entirely. Not just quiet. Hollow.
Like sound itself had been devoured. The curse stopped. Not because of Himari's attack. Not because of fear. Because of something deeper. A presence. A force. A hunger.
Reika hadn't moved. Hadn't spoken. Hadn't so much as lifted a hand. But the air around her shivered.
The curse's grotesque body twitched, its head jerking toward her as if some primal, long-buried instinct had been awakened.
Its limbs locked up—It started shaking. The air felt wrong. Not just heavy, not just cold—wrong.
Something unseen slithered beneath the surface, gnawing at the edges of reality itself. The creature trembled, its grotesque form twitching as if something inside it was eating away at its very essence.
Not pain. Not injury. But fear.
A raw, primal terror that defied logic. A dread so overwhelming it surpassed the instincts of survival. It didn't back away because it was losing. It backed away because it wanted to escape. Because something deep within its rotten mind was screaming at it to run.
Himari frowned. "What…?" Tetsuya's breath hitched, his body frozen in place.
The curse that had just lunged at Himari with murderous intent was now… retreating. Its broken body quivered, inching back toward the shadows, desperate to vanish from existence itself.
Ryou's sharp eyes tracked every movement, his mind racing. This made no sense.
Himari's attack—while flashy—wasn't nearly strong enough to instill this kind of fear. The damage wasn't severe enough to force it into submission. There was no reason for it to act like a cornered animal facing absolute annihilation.
So why was it behaving this way? His gaze shifted. Reika.
She hadn't moved. Hadn't spoken. She just stood there, her expression as blank and hollow as ever, as if none of this had anything to do with her.
And yet—Something was wrong. Her shadow. It didn't follow the rules.
Unlike the others, hers wasn't still. It rippled. It pulsed. Faint, subtle, like a living thing breathing just beneath the surface of reality.
And that was enough. Enough to make Ryou's instincts scream.
A chill slid down his spine, slow and deliberate. His rational mind wanted to dismiss it—maybe it was just a trick of the dim light, an illusion cast by the flickering lamps overhead.
But his body knew better.
His instincts as a sorcerer had already recognized the truth before his thoughts could catch up. Reika wasn't someone to be ignored.
Before he could process it further, Himari's voice cut through his thoughts. "Tch. Useless piece of trash."
She scoffed, wiping the blood from her shoulder. The wound still seeped, red streaks staining her uniform, but she barely acknowledged it. Her golden eyes gleamed, not with concern, but irritation.
"That thing wasn't even worth my time." She cast a glance at the trembling curse, then turned to Ryou. "Let's go." Ryou's brows furrowed. "Go where?"
"Deeper, obviously." Her tone was impatient, as if the answer should have been obvious. He didn't respond immediately. Instead, he studied her, then shifted his gaze toward the others.
"And why should I go with you?" Himari clicked her tongue, exasperated. "Because out of everyone here, you're the only one remotely useful."
Her gaze flicked to the side, barely sparing Tetsuya a glance. "The coward over there will just get in the way."
Then her attention moved to Reika. "And that one…" Something in her expression twisted slightly, a mixture of frustration and disdain. "…she's just standing there. Doing nothing. I'm starting to wonder if she's even a sorcerer at all."
Ryou didn't reply. Instead, he turned back toward Reika. She didn't react. Didn't flinch. Didn't even acknowledge Himari's words.
And yet—
There was something about her silence that was louder than any response.
Most sorcerers—no matter how skilled—would have shown some kind of reaction. An acknowledgment of the fight, a shift in stance, a flicker of tension in their eyes.
But not Reika.
It wasn't just indifference. It was something deeper.
She stood there as if nothing happening around her was of any consequence. As if none of it—none of them—were worth even the smallest fraction of her attention.
And that was far more unsettling. Himari exhaled sharply. "Well? Are you coming or not?"
Ryou hesitated.
He didn't like Himari. She was reckless, arrogant, and far too overconfident for someone who hadn't earned it.
But letting her charge ahead alone in a situation like this? That was a disaster waiting to happen.
"…Fine," he muttered.
Himari smirked, satisfied.
Without wasting another second, she strode forward, disappearing into the darkness of the corridor ahead.
Ryou followed, though not before casting one last glance at Reika. She hadn't moved. Hadn't even shifted her weight.
But—He couldn't shake the feeling that she was watching him. Not just seeing him, not just looking—watching. And somewhere, deep in his gut, something whispered that she wasn't the only one.