Even at that early hour, the streets outside were soaked in the same constant glow of neon signs. It was hard to tell what time it really was down here, in the underworld. Up in the city above, Ren had managed to get a sense of day and night, even with how rough life was there. But down here, time didn't seem to move at all. It just seemed to stay fixed, trapped in the same hour forever.
Ren's footsteps echoed softly against the wet pavement as he followed the trail toward his next clue.
Kagami followed close behind, sometimes leaping effortlessly over obstacles she found on her path, but her paws made no sound as they touched down. As if there was absolutely no effort at all in her gracefulness.
Ren stayed quiet at first, but the conversation from the clinic still lingered in his mind. After a moment, without looking at her, he decided to push the question anyway.
"You never told me about all of that," he said with a slight edge to his tone.
Kagami leapt ahead from a balcony, with her tail curling with every step.
"It doesn't really matter what happened back then," she replied, completely disinterested in the topic. "The past is the past, and there's no point digging through it."
Ren frowned at that idea. She was starting to be all cryptic again.
"All that matters," Kagami added, "are the eyes."
Her words settled over him like a responsibility that felt not just impossible to pull off, but too vague to even make sense of. Back in the outskirts, at least the routine danger he often found himself in made sense. The Hounds were unavoidable, yes, but predictable. He understood their kind of threat. He knew what it meant to run, to hide, to survive. But whatever this was, was giving him too little to get a hold of.
Ren exhaled softly, glancing away as they walked beneath the scaffolded streets.
"What… exactly am I even looking for?" he asked, half to himself, half to her. "Are they really… eyes?"
The idea unsettled him more than he expected. The thought of finding something human, something mummified, or worse, made his skin crawl.
"Or maybe it's just an artifact," he added, almost hopeful. "Some metaphor, maybe?"
Kagami walked ahead, not looking back once, but she seemed amused in a way. Even in that feline shape she was wearing.
"I can't tell you," she said, blunt as ever. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. The Pact doesn't allow it." She kept walking, moving her tail lazily behind her as she added, "And before you ask: no, I don't know where they are or what shape they've taken now. I lost the right to look for them myself a long time ago."
Ren's irritation grew sharper in that instant.
"Even if you wanted to, huh?" he replied with visible frustration that he made no effort to hide.
But Ren was left without a real answer. Again. He knew by now he should stop expecting one, but every time she dodged his questions, it left something uneasy sitting in his chest. He kept watching her as they walked, part of him frustrated, part of him still trying to figure her out, searching for something in her that might help him work with her, if not actually understand her.
—-
Ren stopped at the edge of the ruins where the old Clan palaces once stood. Now they were all just shells made of stone and wires, hollowed out and left to rot.
Shrine gates lay collapsed against cracked walls, and here and there, wires hung like dead vines, tangling the ruins in a web. Paper charms clung to every corner, untouched by the wind, as if they belonged to another world that didn't follow the same rules.
He studied the floor as he walked, stepping over cracked tiles worn down by time. Here and there, he noticed faint sigils carved into the stone, most of which were hidden beneath layers of dust and debris. They were easy to miss at first, but if the light hit just right, they were clearly there, glowing with the same energy he'd felt back in the tunnel where he first met Kagami.
Ren followed Iori's instructions, watching for the marks she had warned him about.
"Damn this city," Ren mumbled as he moved, sidestepping a collapsed wall, "It never does anything the easy way. Why should it?..."
Kagami drifted from behind him, calm and amused.
"Are we whining again?" she said, slowly making her way through the rubble.
Suddenly, a clearing opened ahead. In the middle stood a tall and strange gate. It had the shape of a torii, but its frame was rebuilt from alloy beams and reinforced by old, blackened wood, which looked cracked and worn now. The whole structure glowed faintly, pulsing with corrupted magic strong enough to make Kagami's senses sharpen, drawing her full attention.
She stopped a few steps behind Ren, as she kept staring at the gate, watching it like something familiar, yet at the same time, unwanted.
"Beyond this gate, the place will test you," Kagami said with an unsteady way about her. "It tests everyone, that's how it was made. But now… after all these centuries left to rot, there's no telling how it'll respond."
Ren certainly didn't like hearing that, but he had come this far. It wouldn't be for nothing.
So he kept walking.
The sensation was very vivid the moment he stepped through. It was like walking through water as it slid over his skin, then slipped past him. It was almost like something went through him and left its mark in a way he could not yet tell. Then, when he looked back, the gate behind him already felt distant, like everything beyond it had been swallowed whole.
He kept walking.