Kaito didn't try to open the door. He knew it wouldn't budge. He took the ancient mirror, still in its wooden case, from his bag.
"Stay behind me," he ordered Aiko. "No matter what happens, do not look directly at it. Look at its reflection in the mirror, or at the ground. A direct gaze is an invitation. It can use your own fear against you."
Aiko positioned herself behind him, her hand gripping the back of his jacket, her knuckles white. She could feel the waves of pure, undiluted rage and despair pouring from the room in front of them, a psychic storm that battered against her senses.
Kaito held the mirror in front of him like a shield, the polished surface facing the steel door. He took a deep breath. "Onryō of Akitsushima!" he called out, his voice ringing with a formal, priestly authority. "We are not here to harm you. We are here to offer you peace. The ones who bound you here are gone. You are free."
The only answer was a drop in temperature so sudden that Aiko could see her own breath crystallize in the air. The frost on the doorknob spread rapidly, coating the entire steel door in a beautiful, deadly layer of ice.
Aiko could feel the spirit's response in her mind. It was not a word, but a feeling. A raw, screaming wave of disbelief and eternal, burning hatred. Free? the feeling seemed to say. There is no freedom. There is only this room. There is only the pain.
With a sound like tearing metal, the steel door was ripped from its hinges and thrown down the hallway, as if by a giant, unseen hand.
The room beyond was pitch black. A perfect, absorbing darkness from which no light escaped.
"Do not look," Kaito warned, his voice a low growl. He raised the mirror.
In the mirror's reflection, Aiko could see the room. It was a small, padded cell, the walls covered in the same frantic, angry scratches as the door. And in the center of the room, there was a girl.
She looked no older than sixteen, her hair a long, tangled mat of black, her body rail-thin in a tattered white hospital gown. She was not a terrifying monster. She was just a sad, broken child. But her eyes... in the mirror's reflection, her eyes were bottomless pits of pure, black rage.
"Leave," a voice whispered directly into Aiko's mind, a voice that was both a child's plea and an ancient, hateful command.
"We cannot leave you here to poison the city," Kaito said, his voice steady, directed at the girl's reflection. "Your suffering is spreading. Let us help you find peace."
The girl in the mirror screamed, but there was no sound. It was a silent, psychic shriek of pure agony that made Aiko's head spin. The padded walls of the cell began to bleed a thick, black, tar-like substance. The temperature plummeted further.
Aiko could feel the Onryō's pain, its rage. It had been a prisoner for so long, experimented on, tortured by the Kageyama's sorcerers, that it no longer knew anything else. It saw Kaito's offer of peace as just another lie, another trick. It saw all living things as enemies.
The girl's dark, hateful gaze in the mirror shifted from Kaito to Aiko. It zeroed in on her.
"You," the voice in Aiko's head hissed, filled with a sudden, venomous jealousy. "He tries to save you. No one tried to save me."
The black substance bleeding from the walls coalesced into long, sharp tendrils of shadow. They shot out from the doorway, not at Kaito, but directly at Aiko.
Kaito moved with the speed of the wind, stepping in front of her, using his own body as a shield. The shadow tendrils slammed into him, and he grunted in pain, stumbling back a step. Where they touched him, his clothes began to smoke and freeze simultaneously.
He held the mirror up high, its polished surface glowing with a faint, pure light, holding the main force of the spirit at bay. But it was a losing battle. The Onryō's power was too vast, fueled by decades of pure, concentrated hatred.
Aiko, standing behind him, felt a strange sense of clarity amidst the terror. Kaito was fighting the monster, but he couldn't win. This wasn't a battle of strength. The Onryō wasn't an enemy to be defeated. It was a wounded soul to be soothed. And she, Aiko, the girl who had calmed a sad teapot and spoken to a shy ghost, was the only one in the room who knew how.
She had to do something.