The Void Shard didn't just silence the world; it hollowed it out.
When the grain dissolved on my tongue, the transition wasn't a fade to black. It was a violent subtraction. One moment, the Shinjuku line was a roaring furnace of human neurosis, a thousand overlapping screams of "I want," "I fear," and "I hate." The next, the world became a charcoal sketch. The colors bled out of the advertisements, the faces of the commuters turned into indistinct blurs of grey, and the noise—the agonizing, relentless mental static—was simply gone.
I stood in the center of the carriage, my breath hitching in a chest that felt suddenly too large for my lungs.
For the first time in three years, I could hear my own heartbeat.
It was a slow, rhythmic thud. *Lub-dub. Lub-dub.* It sounded like a drum in a cathedral. I looked down at my hands. They were trembling, but the movement felt distant, as if I were watching someone else's appendages through a thick layer of ice.
I stepped off the train at Ebisu, my feet hitting the platform with a clarity that made me wince. I could feel the microscopic texture of the concrete through the soles of my shoes. I could feel the way the air, conditioned and stale, brushed against the fine hairs on my neck.
The debt. VEIL had warned me. Every reward in this game was a loan with an interest rate that would eventually bankrupt the soul.
As I walked toward the exit, I realized the price of the Void. It wasn't just silence. It was the loss of the "Now."
I looked at a man leaning against a pillar, checking his watch. He had no Surface Echo. No pulse of intent. But behind him, trailing like a smudge of smoke in the air, was a Ghost Echo. It was a shimmering, translucent residue of what he had been thinking thirty seconds ago.
*I'm going to be late. She'll leave. She always leaves.*
The thought was hung in the air, detached from its owner, rotting like forgotten fruit. I realized with a jolt of horror that I wasn't hearing thoughts anymore—I was seeing the discarded skin of the past. The Void had shifted my perception from the present moment to the immediate aftermath. I was walking through a museum of mental ghosts.
I pushed through the ticket gate, my movement mechanical. My apartment was a twenty-minute walk away, a small, cramped studio in a building that smelled of damp wood and loneliness. I needed to get there. I needed to lock the door before the Void wore off and the world came rushing back in.
The streets of Ebisu were a nightmare of residual energy. Every lamp post, every shop window, every sidewalk crack was stained with the echoes of the thousands who had passed by.
*Buy this. I'm lonely. Why is it so cold? I wish I were dead.*
The phrases didn't hit me as sounds; they hit me as shadows. I felt them brushing against my skin, cold and oily. The Void had stripped away my armor, and now the world was painting its misery directly onto my bones.
By the time I reached my door, my head was spinning. I fumbled with the key, the metallic scrape sounding like a gunshot in the unnatural quiet of the Shard's influence. I slammed the door behind me and slumped against it, sliding down until my damp back hit the floor.
I didn't turn on the lights. I didn't need to. The room was filled with the Ghost Echoes of my own past week.
In the corner, near the unmade bed, a smudge of grey light flickered. It was me, three days ago, sitting with my head in my hands.
*Is this all there is? Just listening to the rot until I rot too?*
I closed my eyes, but the Void wouldn't let me hide. It forced my internal eye open. It forced me to confront the architecture of my own mind.
And that was when I saw it.
In the center of my room, standing perfectly still where there should have been nothing but empty air, was a trace of silence.
It was a silhouette of absolute darkness, a void within the Void. It lacked the shimmering, oily texture of a normal Ghost Echo. It was clean. Sharp.
It was Han Seo-Yun.
She had been here.
A cold dread, sharper than any drug-induced clarity, washed over me. I hadn't seen her enter. I hadn't given her a key. But the "Silent Zone" she carried had left a footprint in my sanctuary. She hadn't left a thought behind—because she didn't have any, or because she chose not to—but she had left an absence.
I crawled toward the silhouette, my heart hammering against my ribs. I reached out a hand, my fingers trembling as they touched the edge of that dark space.
The moment my skin broke the boundary of her residue, the Void Shard's effect buckled.
It wasn't a fade-out. It was a collapse.
The grey world vanished. The silence was ripped away by a violent, screeching feedback loop. It felt like someone had shoved a live wire into my ear canal. I screamed, but I couldn't hear my own voice over the sudden, explosive return of the city's noise.
The apartment walls seemed to vibrate with the echoes of the neighbors.
*The soup is too salty. Why won't he look at me? I need more money. I hate this job.*
I curled into a ball, clutching my head, waiting for my brain to liquefy. But through the chaos, a new vibration emerged. It wasn't an echo. It was a digital chime.
My phone, lying on the floor a few feet away, was glowing with a fierce, neon intensity.
I reached for it, my movements convulsive. I needed a distraction. I needed a focal point, or I would lose my mind entirely.
[ NEW MESSAGE: ANONYMOUS SENDER ]
[ SUBJECT: THE DEBT COLLECTOR ]
I tapped the screen. The text wasn't white this time. It was a deep, bruised purple.
"The Void doesn't stop the noise, Ren. It just moves the noise into your future. Did you enjoy the silence? It cost you exactly four hours of your lifespan. And it cost you the privacy of your own skull."
I stared at the words, my vision blurring.
"Who is this?" I typed, my thumbs clumsy.
The reply was instantaneous.
"A fan. Or a predator. In VEIL, the distinction is purely academic. You found the girl. You took the Shard. Now, you've been tagged. Look at your left wrist."
I dropped the phone and pulled back the sleeve of my hoodie.
My skin was pale, mapped with the faint blue lines of veins. But just above the pulse point, etched into the flesh as if by a laser, was a faint, glowing barcode. It wasn't a tattoo. It was beneath the skin, shimmering with a rhythmic, violet light that pulsed in time with my heart.
[ PLAYER ID: 09-K-REN ]
[ RANK: UNRATED (CANDIDATE) ]
[ STATUS: INFECTED ]
I felt a surge of bile rise in my throat. I wasn't just a listener anymore. I was a piece on the board.
"What did you do to me?" I whispered to the empty, screaming room.
The phone buzzed again.
"I didn't do anything. You opened the door. Han Seo-Yun just showed you where the handle was. She likes you, Ren. She thinks you have a 'beautiful' resonance. Most people sound like static. You... you sound like a funeral."
I threw the phone against the wall. It didn't break. It just lay there, the screen glowing like a malevolent eye in the dark.
I stood up, my legs shaking. I needed to wash my face. I needed to feel something that wasn't an echo or a digital threat. I stumbled into the tiny bathroom and splashed cold water on my face.
I looked in the mirror.
My reflection was wrong.
It wasn't that I looked different. I was still the same twenty-two-year-old with messy black hair and eyes that looked like they hadn't seen sleep in a decade. But there was a delay.
I blinked. My reflection blinked a half-second later.
I touched my cheek. My reflection followed the movement with a sickening, stuttering lag.
The Void Shard hadn't worn off completely. It had desynchronized my physical self from my perceived self. I was living in the gap between the action and the consequence.
*You're losing it,* I thought.
*No,* another voice in my head replied. It wasn't mine. It was smoother. Deeper. *You're just finally seeing the lag. Everyone has it. Most are just too stupid to notice the distance between their soul and their meat.*
I backed away from the mirror, my heart racing. Was that an echo? Or was I finally starting to talk to myself in voices that weren't mine?
I went back into the main room and picked up the phone. I didn't have a choice. In this world, you either played or you were played.
"What is the next challenge?" I typed.
The screen flickered.
[ CHALLENGE 02: THE FEAST OF LIES ]
[ LOCATION: THE ROOPPONGI "GLASS HOUSE" GALA ]
[ OBJECTIVE: IDENTIFY THE PERSON WHO IS TELLING THE TRUTH. ]
[ REWARD: CRIMSON SHARD (2.0mg) ]
[ PENALTY FOR FAILURE: TOTAL AUDITORY OVERLOAD (PERMANENT) ]
A gala. Roppongi. The high society of Tokyo—the place where the lies were the thickest, the most expensive, and the most lethal.
Identifying a truth-teller in a room full of politicians, CEOs, and socialites was like looking for a diamond in a landfill. Especially when my own brain was currently out of sync with reality.
I looked at the barcode on my wrist. It was glowing brighter now, a steady, hungry purple.
I thought about Han Seo-Yun. I thought about the way her silence had felt—not like a void, but like a shield. She had been in my room. She had left a mark. Was she the truth-teller? Or was she the one who had written the rules of the lie?
I didn't have a suit. I didn't have an invitation. I didn't even have the strength to stand up straight.
But as I looked at the small, empty vial of the Void Shard on the floor, I felt a new sensation. It wasn't the agonizing static of the train. It wasn't the cold clarity of the Shard.
It was a hunger.
A deep, primal craving for that silence again. I wanted to go back to the grey world. I wanted to escape the screaming rot of humanity, even if it cost me another four hours of my life. Even if it cost me my soul.
I reached for my jacket.
The silence was a lie, but it was the most beautiful lie I had ever heard. And I would burn the world down just to hear it one more time.
As I stepped out of the apartment, the night air hit me. It was thick with the echoes of a million people, a physical weight that threatened to crush my lungs.
*I'm coming for you, Seo-Yun,* I thought, not knowing if I was saying it to her or to the shadow she had left in my room.
The city screamed in response. I walked into the noise, a marked man with a ticking clock in his veins, heading toward a party where the only thing more dangerous than a lie was the truth.
The hunt had begun. And the hunter was already bleeding.
I didn't notice the black car idling across the street. I didn't notice the camera lens catching the faint violet glow under my sleeve. I only noticed the way the wind felt—cold, sharp, and echoing with the phantom whispers of things yet to come.
*Don't blink, Ren,* the voice in my head whispered. *The lag is getting longer.*
I didn't blink. I couldn't. The world was too loud to close my eyes.