Initially, they thought the apparition would've been a partial manifestation. Like it had been in the past. A large arm that had its perverse way of seeing. Or a repulsive amalgamation of darkness that looked like a head.
But this was different. Grimly so.
The apparition continued to form. Continued to grow in size. Into something new.
Different.
Abominable.
There was now a proper beginning and end, but even then, it seemed that the darkness it exuded could expand infinitely outward, enveloping everything. The shrine. The city. The sky and all beyond it.
It was a great sight to behold.
Terrifying, yet great.
The form that emerged was neither wholly human nor beast. Its body was a cathedral of bone and shadow, ribs arching high like the frames of a forgotten temple. Veins of pale light pulsed beneath its surface, crawling upward toward a head crowned with an uneven halo—shattered, rusted, and incomplete.
Its eyes, if they could be called that, were empty recesses filled with a dim, churning glow, as if thought itself had been reduced to embers.
Every breath it drew rippled through the air like a tide of cold iron shavings, drawing all sound inward before releasing it in a deep, voiceless hum.
The shrine beneath it warped further, stone and wood folding into patterns that hurt to follow. The torii gate became a jagged frame behind the thing's head, a mockery of sanctity. Where prayers once rested, chains of script now draped its arms, the characters moving, changing—sometimes in language they knew, sometimes in symbols no living mind could recognize.
The ground was not ground anymore but a pale expanse, scattered with fragments of faces, each frozen mid-scream, their features stretched thin like paper lanterns about to tear.
And then came the scent—impossible to ignore. Not rot, not smoke, but something older, heavier. The smell of silence made manifest: the absence of incense where it should have been, the memory of a voice cut short, the stale breath of a closed tomb. It filled the lungs like water, and the world beyond its shape seemed to dim, edges dissolving into the void.
Looking at it too long felt like unlearning how to be alive. And yet, some part of the soul strained toward it, as if pulled by the promise that in its presence, every doubt, every noise, every ache would finally cease.
Kapaala scoffed at Mei. "You just had to open your fat mouth, huh?"
Mei glared at the jester before turning back to the full manifestation of the Silent God.
Can this even be classified as a Thriver level case anymore? What was everyone else thinking back at The Vault? she thought.
Akio broke her train of thought. "Riku! Mei! This apparition now has a concrete form! It should have a weakness! We need to use that to our advantage! Look around, you two!"
But before they could begin to look, the apparition lunged towards the jester and Riku.
In that moment, it seemed that his fate was sealed.
Riku closed his eyes, again thinking about avoiding it all. The line of fire. The Silent God.
The feeling of being anywhere but the spot he was in now. To vanish.
To be unseen.
The world vanished and reappeared as quickly as it left him.
He now stood further back, with a shattered stone substituting where he was.
Akio and Mei glanced back at Riku, their faces showing mild surprise. Whereas Kapaala was just humming a tune while flipping the faceless coin from before.
"You're getting pretty good at ordering me around, boss. That's good!" Kapaala grinned widely.
Riku looked around. The Silent God bellowed and once again charged towards him, only to be intercepted.
Clang!
Two chains erupted and latched onto the lower body, binding it in place while it screamed.
It seemed that its intended target was Riku Shinsora. Nobody else was of concern to it.
Mei leaped high, almost as if she wished to reach the clouds above, before being enveloped in crimson petals. Petals that oozed elegance and deadly power.
A scarlet streak from where she was, flew towards the Silent God, promptly striking it in the chest.
It screamed, the sound sounding like a mix of a nauseous gag and an asthmatic wheeze. An odd disgusting sound that made Riku cover his ears.
Mei landed with grace, her feet landing on the ground with barely any noise.
Riku stared, half-impressed, half-unnerved, as Mei landed beside Akio without a word. They moved like they'd done this a hundred times before—her strikes threading into the openings his chains made, his restraints snapping taut exactly where her blows would follow through.
It wasn't flashy, but it was so clean it bordered on eerie.
It was the opposite of how he fought.
If what they had was a duet, Riku's style was nothing but a lazy drunkard who was trying to keep up.
The Silent God bucked against its bonds, the soundless hum in its chest deepening. Every pulse of its ribs pushed the chains outward, like breathing walls in a nightmare. The veins of pale light under its skin flared.
Akio's voice cut through the air. "Mei! Rotate on my mark!"
The moment he spoke, the chains shifted, dragging the apparition sideways just enough for Mei's next strike to slam into the joint of its arm—if "joint" could even describe the bend in that thing's anatomy.
It howled without breath, the motion rippling through the shrine's warped stones. Riku swore he could feel that sound in his teeth.
We're doing it! Tetsuya... I swear, we're pulling your dumbass out of there!
Then—
The ground shifted.
Not in the way it had when the apparition arrived—this was deeper. A bone-deep rolling that made Riku's knees want to fold.
The shrine's pale floor began to ripple outward, faces on its surface distorting into yawning mouths. The wooden beams overhead—if they could still be called that—twisted into arcs that bent far beyond what wood should survive. The air thickened, tasting of old paper and colder nights, until Riku realized the "roof" was gone entirely. Above them stretched not sky but an immense, unmoving dome, its surface written over with prayers in thousands of shifting scripts.
Each character pulsed faintly, as though beating in time with a heart they could not hear.
Akio's chains strained. The Silent God braced itself, pressing both hands to the ground. The prayer-scripts above them flickered. Then, slowly, they began to drip.
Not ink—stone. Chunks of the dome's surface peeled and fell like shedding bark, landing with the dull thud of offerings dropped into an empty box.
Mei stepped back, eyes narrowing. "It's pulling the shrine in."
"Not pulling," Kapaala corrected, flipping his coin lazily. "Digesting."
The torii gate behind them crumbled—not into dust, but into fine, black ash that streamed upward, joining the dome's surface. Riku looked back and found no path leading out. Only a long, narrowing corridor of bones fused together like pews in some grotesque congregation.
The faces in the floor began chanting—not with sound, but with vibration. Each syllable rattled his ribs, whispering meaning that he couldn't quite hold onto. It was prayer stripped of faith, a rhythm without purpose. And yet it worked on him, tugging at his attention, urging him to kneel.
Mei didn't seem to hear it. Akio did, though—his jaw tightened, and his chains sparked briefly with a gold-red light as though resisting the pull, but not after they shattered, as the Silent God began to grow even more in size.
The Silent God stood taller now, freed from Akio's chains by its own convulsing strength. Its shadow reached further than it should, spilling down the bone corridor and swallowing the warped beams. As it moved, the walls themselves leaned in to follow, until there was no longer an "outside" at all.
They were standing inside its will.
The domain sealed with a low, resonant chime that Riku felt in his skull, followed by a gravelly voice.
It sounded incomplete almost, but what it said was unmistakable.
"The Last Prayer Hall."
The architecture bent logic. What had been open shrine grounds was now an endless nave flanked by skeletal pillars; each draped with tattered banners bearing symbols that shifted like candlelight shadows. The faces on the floor gave way to rows of kneeling silhouettes—human-sized, but eyeless and hollow, hands pressed together in eternal devotion.
The air was heavier now, every breath feeling weighed and catalogued. Even light seemed rationed; the only illumination came from the pale veins of the Silent God's body, casting the hall in a cold, organ-light glow.
Suddenly, a low ominous voice sounded from deep within the domain.
"Purge the anomaly and his allies... Sanctify this REPUGNANT world!"
The second the words approached Riku's ears, he felt all the energy and reason in his movement wither away into nothingness. As if he was put in a perpetual state of inaction.
He couldn't move. He couldn't even turn his head around to see Akio and Mei.
Damn it... What's wrong with me?
Riku looked around. And he realized something else.
Kapaala vanished.
As in, gone. No sign. No trace of him. Nothing.
Was it because Riku was subdued? Because he wasn't in a condition to "order" the jester to "serve"?
Akio struggled. "Damn it... I can't move!"
"Tch-! Me neither..." Mei replied.
Riku blinked. His limbs remained limp, as if they belonged to someone else. Every effort to move felt like swimming through molasses—or worse, like trying to shout in a vacuum. The heavy silence around him pressed deeper, an invisible force draining the will to act.
Akio gritted his teeth, face pale and strained. "I'm trying to—move. But it's like... my body's a prisoner."
Mei's eyes flickered with frustration. "Same. But why? It's not like it's a physical bind."
Akio frowned, scanning around as best as he could. "Is it mental? Spiritual? Like something beyond just our bodies is put in some sort of stasis?"
Mei closed her eyes briefly, her breath steadying. "That voice — 'Purge the anomaly and his allies.'" She tried to look at Riku.
Akio struggled. "I-It's talking about us. Mainly Riku."
"Me? How do you know?" Riku asked.
"Remember what I told you? About the Myth Veil?" Akio replied.
That set a reminder in Riku. Like a cold splash of water smacked his face.
Those words of why they were here in the first place.
"Meaning… people stop being people. They become roles. Trapped in the story. You don't think. You act. You perform. Until it kills you… or rewrites you."
"If what you're saying is true now... then how am I alive? How am I here?"
"Why do you think I asked you to come with me?"
That's what this was. Riku was trapped in the story that the Silent God was a part of within the distortion.
"The anomaly."
That was the role he was playing in this domain.
And if had only started because of him...
Because he chose to pray properly at the offering box.
Because he chose to be earnest when prior prayers were nothing but empty.
Because he wanted his friend back.
Then what was to say he couldn't embrace himself as an "anomaly"?
To fight back. To break out.
To surpass the ridiculous trials that he had to encounter again and again.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
He was still here. In charge of his own thoughts and actions.
And so long as he had the power to think... To be the observer of this moment, and not suffer from it...
Riku Shinsora would have a way out.
"The Veil Distortion! Right? Riku asked.
"Bingo!" Akio exclaimed. "The domain is enforcing the story's rules. They want us to play our roles—to submit and fail."
Mei let out a breath. "If we can't act, we can't fight. Then it wins without lifting a finger."
Akio's eyes flickered with an idea. "The key is the will itself. It can't control what you don't give it. The paralysis feeds on submission. If you resist, even in small ways, you can create a crack."
Riku frowned. "That sounds easier said than done."
"It is." Akio grimaced. "But I think I can help. My vows. They're about conviction, about chaining your own will to your purpose. If I bind us with my oaths, maybe it can't touch our minds as easily."
Mei considered this, then nodded. "We don't have much choice."
"Wait! What would you have to give for this vow to work?!" Riku asked.
If he remembered correctly about what Akio's power was, then that means he'd have to give something in order to receive this benefit.
And that is a risk Riku didn't want him to take.
Akio looked at him and smiled. A calm smile. "Don't worry about that. I'll be fine."
Akio raised his hands, fingers weaving through invisible threads as he muttered the ancient words of his vow. The chains around him glowed faintly, their golden-red light pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
"Riku, Mei—listen closely. I'm binding us all in my Iron Vow. It's a contract of protection and resolve. As long as I have the life and energy to stand, you guys won't be affected by the domain. This will keep its influence at bay, at least for a while."
Riku felt a warmth coil around his chest, like a fire being lit inside him. It spread to his limbs, slowly melting the paralysis. Mei's body stiffened, then visibly relaxed as the invisible weight lessened.
"Your turn, boss," Akio said with a faint grin. "Summon your jester. We need him."
Riku swallowed and nodded. Concentrating, he reached deep into his mind, calling out to Kapaala with everything he had left.
What did he always turn to in his darkest hours? What was the only thing in his mind when he was with Tetsuya?
Humor. Even if it seemed like time had no place for it, it was what he had.
He heard a laugh.
A moment later, a wry sigh echoed through the hall.
"Oh, thank the cosmos," Kapaala groaned, appearing in a swirl of smoke and sparks, flipping his faceless coin like a bored magician. "I was starting to feel claustrophobic in that silent prison you call a brain."
Riku couldn't help but grin, relief flooding him. "Glad to have you back. Now—can you help us take this thing down?"
The jester turned to the commotion, his grin widening like a madman.
"Please," Kapaala said, draping himself lazily across Riku's shoulder. "You think I'd hang out in the void for fun? Let's put on a show."
The Silent God bellowed, sensing the renewed threat, and the distorted domain trembled in response. But this time, the group moved as one.
Akio's chains shot forth again, striking and lashing, but the apparition remained a shifting, intangible mass. Kapaala snapped his fingers, and the kaleidoscopic mirrors bloomed once more beneath the creature's feet.
"Keep it distracted," Akio commanded. "We need to find a way to tear through its defenses."
Riku watched closely. The creature's form flickered whenever it interacted with Kapaala's illusions—the mirrors reflected not just light but fragments of its own shape, showing cracks and distortions invisible to normal sight.
"Look!" Mei shouted. "When it's near the mirrors, parts of its body shimmer and falter."
Kapaala cackled. "It hates facing itself. Can't stand the truth in the reflections."
Riku frowned, then realized something. "It's like it's anchored to those fragments—like the mirrors are forcing it to acknowledge what it is."
Akio nodded, his voice sounding strained. "Yes, but we need to push harder. If we can force it to confront its own unraveling, it might weaken enough to be destroyed."
The Silent God shrieked, lashes of shadow flaring wildly, but the chains and mirrors held fast. Kapaala's laughter rang through the hall, weaving paradoxes and chaos into the creature's shape.
Riku smiled.
They had a path to victory now.
And they were going to run through it with no hesitation.