The valley should have been silent.
Yet as Ren Arashida descended into the excavation pit, lantern in hand, the earth pulsed beneath his boots—slow, rhythmic, disturbingly alive. Each throb resonated through the stone walls like the echo of something vast, slumbering, and hungry.
He thought it was his imagination at first. He had always been too attuned to ruins… too willing to listen to what the dead wanted to say.
But this was different.
This heartbeat listened back.
Ren knelt beside the exposed slab at the center of the pit. Strange spiraling marks—neither language nor art—glowed faintly under the lantern's light, as if reacting to him. As if recognizing him.
He wasn't alone.
Ayaka's voice floated down from the ridge. "Ren? You're still working? It's almost midnight."
Her silhouette appeared above, braid swaying softly in the mist. Just seeing her eased the pressure in his chest, the way it always did. She was calm where he was restless; steady where he was scattered. The anchor without knowing it.
"I'm fine," Ren called back. "Just one last reading."
He wasn't fine.
Because the heartbeat synced with his own.
thrum… thrum… thrum…
Ren touched the slab.
And the slab touched him back.
A whisper seeped into his skull, dry as ancient ash:
—Finally… the Ninth returns.
Ren jerked away, collapsing onto the dirt. He clutched his head as images—shrouded temples, collapsing moons, a silhouette with nine burning eyes—flashed behind his eyelids.
"Ren!" Ayaka slid into the pit, grabbing his shoulders. "Hey, breathe. Look at me."
Her touch steadied him, the visions receding like a tide.
But the whisper remained.
—My vessel. My fragment. My seal.
The ground split.
Stone cracked in jagged lines, releasing a breath of cold mist. Something glimmered inside—something small, black as eclipse-shadow, glowing with an inner pulse.
A shard.
A fragment.
A seal.
Ren's hand moved toward it without permission, drawn by a force older than the valley, older than the world. Ayaka tried to pull him back, but his fingers closed around the stone—
And reality shattered.
Darkness surged from the shard, spiraling upward like a rising storm. Ren's vision blurred. His heart stuttered. A second heartbeat—deeper, monstrous—merged with his own.
Behind the darkness, he saw a figure forming.
Long limbs. Hollow eyes. A shape made of shadow and hunger.
Kuro-Obake.
No—something beyond even that.
A voice, layered with centuries of desire and ruin, coiled around him:
—At last… the Ninth Seal is mine again.
Ayaka's scream came from far away.
Ren's knees hit the ground.
Something crawled into his soul, settling there.
Burning.
Claiming.
Awakening.
The world snapped back into focus with violent clarity. The winds died. The mist receded. The heartbeat inside the earth vanished… because it now pulsed inside him.
Ayaka knelt before him, trembling. "Ren… your eyes… they're—"
A shadow flickered behind him, visible only for an instant.
Watching.
Waiting.
Hunting.
Ren forced a breath. "I… think something's inside me."
Far above them, unseen through the mist, a woman in moonlit robes watched the scene unfold—silver hair drifting as though she stood underwater, eyes gleaming with longing older than death.
Yurei Kisaragi smiled.
"Found you," she whispered. "My lost beloved… at last."
Ren shivered.
The Ninth Seal had awakened.
And so had everything that desired it.