Chapter 15: Imitation
The trees had thinned hours ago, giving way to broken concrete and dust-laced wind. Momo Nishimiya hovered above the shattered road, her broom gliding silently through the dry air. Below her, cracked asphalt and twisted rebar told stories of long-forgotten wreckage. This place wasn't cursed in the usual sense—it was… off. Wrong in a way she couldn't name.
"Visuals confirmed. Coordinates match," she murmured into her comm. "No movement yet. Proceeding for closer inspection."
She didn't wait for a response.
As she descended, the sensation grew colder—not heavier, but hollow, like the world was holding its breath. Around her, reality frayed at the edges: a stop sign melted into the ground like wax, a guardrail spiraled into unnatural curves, and a billboard blinked when stared at too long.
That's when she saw it.
The figure knelt at the base of a collapsed streetlight, its body unnaturally long and pale. It was praying—at least, it pretended to. Fingers locked, spine bowed, wings made of exposed nerve and splintered bone jittering behind it. Where eyes should've been, there were only damp, swollen ridges that pulsed faintly.
And then the whispering began.
Not from the spirit—but from the air itself.
It trickled into her thoughts like vapor. A shivering sense of guilt. Grief. As if the environment was echoing something buried deep in her. Memories she hadn't touched in years surfaced and vanished before she could hold them.
She gripped her broom tighter. "This isn't a normal curse."
The comm clicked. "Say again, Momo?"
"Nothing. Hold position."
The spirit moved.
It stood slowly, arms outstretched as if in ritual, head tilting not toward her, but toward something unseen. The sky above it cracked with a soundless tremor.
She dove before she could think.
Her cursed energy surged as she closed the gap, blade drawn. She aimed for the creature's exposed throat—but as her sword connected, there was nothing. No resistance. Just air.
It hadn't dodged.
It hadn't even flinched.
Still bent in its mock prayer, the spirit opened its mouth.
And it sobbed.
Not screamed—sobbed. A deep, ruptured sound that didn't belong in a living thing. It was the sound of something trying to feel… anything. As if it had seen something holy once and had been broken by the memory.
It wasn't wielding the new energy that had begun surfacing around Japan, but it had clearly been tainted by it. Warped. Touched by something that rejected it at the root.
Her weapon ripped from her grasp. The ground rushed up and swallowed her in an instant, bones rattling from the impact. Blood bubbled in her mouth.
The creature didn't follow.
It watched.
Its mouth moved again. And in a voice that didn't match its form—too clear, too old—it said:
"You stole it."
The words dropped like iron.
She didn't know what it meant, and she didn't want to.
Her backup blade pulsed in her palm. She pushed off the earth and dashed forward, letting instinct override thought.
This time, she struck true.
The wings dissolved first—crumbling like sand. The body followed, collapsing without resistance, like it had been waiting for permission to end.
But the whispers lingered long after the body vanished.
Long after she limped away and the silence grew teeth once more.