The name echoed in the reverent silence of the knife shop: Akitsushima Asylum. Aiko felt the truth of it in her bones. The cold, sterile dread she had felt from the Elder's memory matched the name perfectly. This was the source. This was the heart of the sickness.
Kaito placed a respectful hand on the ancient blade's sheath. "Elder," he said, his voice a low, solemn vow. "You have given us the path. We will follow it. We will find a way to stop this."
A faint feeling of gratitude, weak but clear, brushed against Aiko's mind.
They returned to the Ishikawa estate in a grim silence. The mood of quiet domesticity was gone, replaced by the heavy weight of an impending battle. Kaito didn't retreat to his office. He summoned Kenji and Master Jin to the hidden library. It was a council of war.
Aiko stood beside Kaito as he explained what they had found—the spirit blight, the fading elder, and the location that the spirit had revealed.
When he said the name "Akitsushima Asylum," Master Jin's face, usually a placid mask of scholarly calm, tightened.
"That place is a wound," the old man said, his voice thin and sharp as breaking glass. "A cancer on the spiritual map of this city. The Kageyama were fools to ever meddle with it."
"What was the 'containment failure'?" Aiko asked, needing to know.
Master Jin looked at her, his ancient eyes filled with a deep sorrow. "They were experimenting. Trying to create a spiritual weapon. They captured a powerful Onryō—the ghost of a woman who had died in that asylum, filled with rage and pain. They tried to bind it, to control it. But an Onryō is not a simple yokai. It is a force of pure, human emotion. It cannot be controlled. It broke their binding rituals, and in its rage, it... consumed. It drained every other lesser spirit, every patient's ghost, every shred of life within those walls, pulling it all into itself. It became a vortex of silent despair."
He turned to Kaito. "The priests who sealed it did not destroy it. They couldn't. They merely built a cage around the black hole. To enter that place is to offer your own spirit up as its next meal. You must not go, Ishikawa-sama."
"The blight is spreading into my territory," Kaito stated, his voice absolute. "It is feeding on spirits under my protection. I cannot allow this wound to fester. I will go."
"Then I will go with you," Kenji said, his loyalty unwavering.
"No," Kaito commanded. "I will need you on the outside. This is not a battle for soldiers." He looked at Aiko.
"Don't even think about it," Aiko said before he could speak. "You told me I'm your eyes. I'm the only one who can feel this thing, aren't I? Leaving me behind would be like sending a soldier to perform surgery. I'm going."
Kaito looked at her, at the fierce, unwavering determination in her eyes. He had wanted to protect her, to keep her far from this place. But he knew she was right. She was no longer a civilian to be shielded. She was his partner. He gave a single, grim nod.
Their preparation was a quiet, solemn ritual. Kenji laid out items from the clan's spiritual armory. Not guns, but bags of blessed salt, bundles of purification talismans, small silver bells meant to disrupt hostile spirits, and a beautiful, ancient mirror in a wooden case, said to reflect a spirit's true nature. Kaito gave Aiko a small, intricately woven charm to wear around her neck. "It will not stop a direct attack," he warned. "But it will help shield your spirit from the oppressive aura of the place."
An hour later, they stood before it. The Akitsushima Asylum was a concrete monolith, dark and decaying under a cold moon. The high wire fence was rusted and broken. The grounds were a tangle of dead weeds. The air was unnaturally cold and utterly silent. No crickets, no distant traffic, nothing. It was a zone of absolute death.
And there, at the front, were the double doors, painted a faded, peeling red, like dried blood. They were wrapped in heavy chains, and plastered with dozens of old, tattered ofuda talismans, the warning script on them barely legible after decades of decay.
Aiko felt the presence of the place like a physical weight, a psychic pressure that made her want to gag. It was a feeling of infinite, silent screaming.
Kaito looked from the chained red doors to Aiko's pale, determined face. He reached out and took her hand, his grip a firm, warm anchor in the suffocating silence.
"Stay close," he said, his voice a low whisper. "And do not believe anything you see or hear once we are inside."