Where are you now?
The question echoed in Takakai's skull, a dull, insistent throb that refused to fade. The words reverberated through the hollow spaces of his mind, repeating endlessly like a broken record.
What is your name?
Another voice joined the chorus - or was it just his own fractured consciousness playing tricks on him? The line between external stimuli and internal hallucination had become dangerously blurred.
Can you hear me?
Bythos...
The name slithered through his thoughts like a living thing, whispered in countless overlapping voices.
Bythos... Bythos...
It was as if unseen prisoners in a lightless pit were calling out to him. Though their forms remained invisible in the darkness, their voices clawed at the edges of his sanity with desperate intensity.
Step into Bythos...
Flee from Bythos...
Come closer... Go farther...
Do you understand where you are?
The contradictory commands swirled around him, each utterance dripping with equal parts temptation and warning.
Takakai's breathing grew ragged and uneven. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the chill permeating the air around him. The voices refused to stop, their relentless barrage threatening to overwhelm his fragile grip on reality.
Kneeling on the unforgiving concrete, he clutched his head in both hands, fingers digging into his scalp as if trying to physically hold his thoughts together. A sharp, stabbing pain lanced through his temples as another mental fragment shattered with an almost audible crack.
Then—with tremendous effort—he looked up.
[Do you hear them?]
The old man in the opposite cell grinned, his yellowed teeth glinting like tombstones in the dim light. His lips moved out of sync with the words, which seemed to come from all directions at once.
Or was the old man even there at all? Takakai blinked rapidly, his vision swimming. The figure flickered like a poorly tuned television signal, sometimes solid, sometimes barely more than a shadow.
[They're inside your head, aren't they?]
Now the voice came from directly behind him, accompanied by a gust of hot, fetid breath on the nape of his neck. Takakai whirled around, but found only empty air.
[Can you truly decipher their words?]
As suddenly as they had appeared, the iron bars of his cell dissolved into mist. The concrete walls melted away like wax. He stood alone in a void of perfect blackness, where even the concept of up and down seemed to lose all meaning.
Yet through the disorientation, one certainty remained:
Bythos was real.
He knew it with every fiber of his being. This wasn't hallucination or dream—it was a place, a state of being that existed beyond normal comprehension.
Bzzzt—
A new sound cut through the oppressive silence, like radio static given voice.
[Welcome to the Sacrifice Game.]
The announcement came in a dry, rehearsed tone that barely concealed an undercurrent of manic glee. The speaker sounded like a game show host reading from a script while fighting back inappropriate laughter.
[Player: Takakai. Third game. Difficulty: Dusk.]
[Clear Condition: Return what was stolen from the Abyss.]
The phrasing was familiar yet subtly altered from previous iterations. The changes, though minor, set off alarm bells in Takakai's mind.
[Time Limit: None.]
[Hints Provided:]
Reality and delusion share a porous border.
Those who seek gods invite calamity.
You stand at the origin of all things.
The covetous are destined to drown in the depths.
[May you ascend to the Seat of Endings.]
The voice cut out abruptly, leaving only ringing silence in its wake.
Takakai gasped as his vision swam back into focus. The cell rematerialized around him—the flickering bulb, the stench of mildew, the rough texture of concrete beneath his knees.
And the old man, still grinning from his position in the opposite cell.
[Hehehe... They see you now...]
The words slithered into Takakai's ears like living things, carrying a weight of implication that made his skin crawl.
A shadow moved at the periphery of his vision.
Before Takakai could react, a sickly-sweet rot filled his mouth and nostrils, the taste of decay flooding his throat. His gag reflex kicked in violently, but no sound escaped his lips.
As the world dissolved into sensory overload, voices erupted inside his skull—
"What is Bythos?" asked a curious, almost childlike voice.
"The Abyss. Bottomless. Unreachable," replied a weary scholar's tone.
"It exists beyond our world, yet we can go there—at a price," added a third voice dripping with greedy anticipation.
"You'd collaborate with them?" demanded an outraged fourth.
"We'll never reach its heart alone. We only need to take what's ours," the greedy voice countered.
"Have you arrived?" the child asked again.
"No. I'd know if I had," the scholar responded.
"How?"
"Because I can still speak to you." A pause. "Those who enter Bythos... cannot communicate until they leave."
"Why is that?"
"In the Abyss, only the self is real."
Snap.
The voices cut off as abruptly as they had begun.
Darkness.
Moonlight filtered through a grimy window, casting distorted shadows across the dorm room.
Takakai could hear the steady breathing of Kenbei and Hayasaka Kenbei—both apparently asleep despite the chaos.
The mimic-student's bed stood conspicuously empty, the sheets undisturbed as if no one had ever slept there.
Takakai sat up slowly, his body aching as if he'd run a marathon. Disorientation made the room spin around him.
Was it all just a dream?
Then—
Creak.
The dorm door inched open with agonizing slowness.
Something peered through the gap—something that shouldn't have been able to fit through the narrow opening yet did so anyway, its form shifting and warping to accommodate the space.
A woman's laughter, low and throaty, echoed through the room.
The stench of decay intensified, flooding Takakai's nostrils with the putrid aroma of long-dead flesh.
The falling figure I saw earlier... The unspoken rule I must have broken...
Too late. Far too late.
[Why pretend not to see me?]
The voice was a lover's whisper, intimate and terrifying in its closeness.
Thud.
Takakai's body collapsed onto the bed as if his bones had turned to jelly.
Crack.
The sickening sound of snapping bone filled the room as his limbs twisted at impossible angles. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth, pooling beneath his ruined body.
In moments, he was reduced to a broken corpse—skull crushed, limbs twisted like a discarded doll's.
Yet...
As the woman's laughter faded into the distance...
The ruined head twitched.
The corpse moved.