Late at night, the north wing of the academy's sports field was bathed in silvery-gray moonlight.
The air still held the tense atmosphere from the previous night's social intervention, but tonight was even eerier, with a more unstable spiritual pressure.
Kazama Rei and Yuuki Mio walked along the edge of the field, amulets clutched in their hands, highly alert.
Suddenly, a deafening roar echoed from afar, like metal tearing apart or a muffled groan as if a chest had been ripped open.
Three seconds later, they saw a lower-grade student lying on the ground, his body writhing in black spiritual energy as if engulfed in dark flames.
The amulet he held in his hand had turned to ash.
"No—!" Mio screamed and rushed forward to grab him, but the spiritual energy acted like a wall, pushing her back.
Before dying, the student murmured, "Remember my name..."
But the sound was instantly erased by an invisible force. His name vanished; even the spirit world's records denied his existence. Rei stared at his palm.
A black spiritual seal appeared, but it was blank and indistinct, without any words or symbols.
Mio whispered, "That's a lost spiritual seal."
"It looks like someone erased from history." Rei's voice trembled with coldness.
He reached out and lightly touched the seal with his spiritual pressure. The seal seemed to come alive, vibrating slightly as if breathing or trying to point in a certain direction.
Rei's heart pounded instantly.
Because that direction was the sealed, sensitive page in the Black Ledger.
That page recorded a hidden school massacre, erased names, and a completely forgotten "key candidate."
This lost spiritual imprint pointed directly to that name, as if to remind, call, or accuse.
Mio froze. "Rei, the black ledger you saw before wasn't an illusion."
Rei looked down at the blank spiritual imprint. A thought surfaced in his mind:
"Even the vanished are looking for me."
The spiritual pressure on the playground trembled slightly.
Though the student was dead, the spiritual imprint seemed to breathe, compressing all sins, secrets, and destiny into a single point as if waiting for Rei to uncover it.
Rei knew that after tonight, he would face not only the supernatural events on campus.
He would also face those erased by history, recorded in the black ledger yet still existing in the shadows—and the "key secret" truly intertwined with his fate.