The Void of Souls

‏Chapter Five: The Echo of the Void

The city was drowning in absolute silence, as if time itself had ceased to flow. Kazuya walked aimlessly, his steps heavy as an unfamiliar sense of fear crept over him. Nothing around him felt real. Everything was merely a reflection or shadow of something that had vanished long ago.

The shadows that consumed him were denser than ever. The dark alleys he wandered through seemed to devour light itself, absorbing every glimmer of hope. He was starting to realize one thing: he wasn't running away from something—he was running towards something.

In that moment, a strange sensation gripped his chest. The old pendant around his neck, which he had always regarded as nothing more than an accessory, began to tremble. That pendant, a relic of a family he could no longer remember clearly, now felt as though it held a hidden truth.

"Can I escape from myself?" Kazuya muttered softly as he stared at the pendant, which began to glow faintly. The question hung in the air, unanswered, while an unfamiliar emptiness consumed him. Was he truly ready to confront himself? Or was he simply running into a deeper void?

Suddenly, an image appeared before him. It wasn't Saika or Yuki—it was the figure of a small child. The child's face was blurry, but it radiated both innocence and profound sadness. With outstretched hands, the child seemed to plead for something from Kazuya.

"Did I... know him?" Kazuya whispered, a growing weight pressing on his chest. The child felt strangely familiar, as if he were the missing link between Kazuya's hazy past and his darkening future. Was this... himself?

Before he could think further, the ground beneath him trembled violently. Cracks began to spread through the earth, and an eerie wailing echoed all around him—a sound filled with despair and anguish.

Kazuya broke into a run, but the ground grew heavier with every step, as if it refused to let him leave. He felt trapped, not by the collapsing world, but by something far more personal.

"I... can't run away..." he muttered shakily as the darkness around him deepened. Everything was falling apart, and the truth was becoming clearer: there was no escape.

Amid the chaos, Saika's voice suddenly resonated in his mind, the same voice that had haunted him all this time. "You've been the game all along, Kazuya."

The voice hit him like a cold slap, stripping away the illusions. Kazuya wasn't just a victim—he was the perpetrator as well.

He stopped abruptly as a massive door appeared in front of him. The door, forged from black metal, shimmered with an unearthly glow, as though it didn't belong to this world. Just looking at it made Kazuya's heart feel heavier, but he couldn't look away. Something deep inside told him this door held the answers.

"Are you ready to return to the beginning?" Yuki's voice broke the silence behind him. He turned to find her standing there, her face shrouded in shadows, her eyes glowing with a mysterious light as if she could see beyond time and space.

"There's no going back to the beginning..." Kazuya replied in a weary voice. "The beginning was lost long ago."

"But you still have a choice," Yuki said as she approached him. "The choice to face what you've done. To face yourself."

In that moment, memories of his life began to flood his mind, unrelenting. The killing. The pain. The souls he had taken. Everything pointed to the same truth: the void he had created wasn't external. It had always been within him.

"Can I live without this void?" he asked himself, his voice trembling. But the answer was clear in the suffocating silence around him. The void wasn't just part of him—it was him.

The door suddenly creaked open, as if inviting him inside. A dim, unnatural light spilled from its threshold, dark enough to consume him even before he stepped through.

"Are you ready?" Yuki asked, her voice steady as the shadows around her thickened. "The choice is yours now. You can return... or fall into the void forever."

Kazuya didn't respond. He stared at the door, then at the shadows coiling ever closer around him. He felt as though every step he took led him closer to a point of no return.

"I think... I'll jump," he finally whispered, stepping toward the door.

But as his foot crossed the threshold, a strange sensation overtook him. The void wasn't just waiting on the other side. It had already been within him, slowly consuming him from the start.

"This was the only choice, wasn't it?" he murmured to himself as he disappeared into the door, leaving behind a world he no longer recognized and a past that no longer existed.