They looked up.
A man stood in the village's old watchtower, waving frantically.
"Hide! They're coming! Don't come out!" he screamed, his voice hoarse with panic.
Kibo, Hiroshi, and Sachiko tensed, instinctively reaching for their weapons. Each of them had faced yokai before—beasts, giants, creatures of ash and bone—but something about this moment felt different.
A thick black smoke began to rise in the distance, curling like a stormfront.
Sachiko squinted. "What… is that?"
"It's people," Hiroshi said slowly. "But they look… different."
As the figures came closer, the trio saw them clearly.
Humans—dozens of them—walking slowly, eerily. Their eyes were coated in dark mist, black fog pouring from their sockets like smoke from a dying fire. They didn't groan. They didn't scream. They just moved forward, one step at a time.
They weren't dead. But they weren't alive either.
They looked… hollow.
"Are they possessed?" Kibo muttered.
Sachiko readied her Naginata. "They're coming for here get ready."
Suddenly, from the homes surrounding them, people began yelling.
"Leave us alone!" a woman screamed from behind boarded windows. "Go back! Please!"
Another voice echoed, frantic and terrified.
"Mom, please! Go back to your grave!"
Sachiko's expression darkened. "Mom?."
Kibo nodded slowly. "They're their families."
More voices came from inside the home, a chorus of agony:
"Father, please, don't come closer!"
"Go back to the shrine—don't look at me!"
"Not like this… not like this…"
Inside the village, chaos brewed. Doors were locked and barred. Wooden planks covered windows. But the cries kept coming—from inside the homes
Then, the trio recognized the woman who had earlier snatched the child from Hiroshi.
She burst from her home, eyes wide in disbelief, running toward the smoky crowd. Her gaze locked onto one man.
"Dear? Is that you?" she cried. "Please… not like this. Leave. Go back!"
The figure she spoke to—tall, thin, and hollow-eyed—tilted his head. The black smoke around him thickened. For a moment, he seemed to respond. He opened his mouth.
"Help me…"
His voice was faint. Empty. But recognizable.
The woman gasped and broke into a run, pushing past Hiroshi.
"Wait—!" Hiroshi stepped forward, but Kibo caught his arm.
"Don't," Kibo said, eyes grim.
The woman reached the man—her dead husband—and threw her arms around him, sobbing.
"I missed you so much…"
For a second, he didn't move. Then—slowly—he raised his arms…
…and wrapped them around her neck.
The sound of choking filled the air. Her feet kicked helplessly. Her sobs turned to gasps, then silence.
"NO!" Hiroshi shouted, racing forward—but it was too late.
The man let her body fall limp to the dirt, his eyes dripping black smoke vanished he fell to with his wife.
The others in the smoky crowd twitched.
Then they began to move—toward the homes.
Chaos erupted.
People screamed and cried out as the dead—or whatever they had become—lunged at their homes. Doors buckled. Windows shattered.
"No—! Please, not you—!"
"You're not my son! Stay away!"
"Go back to the grave!"
Kibo, Sachiko, and Hiroshi stood frozen for a moment, stunned by the horror.
Sachiko gripped her blade tightly. "They are not in control…"
The village was being attacked—not by strangers, but by memories made flesh.
And the three of them stood at the center of it.
The trio stood frozen in horror as the chaos unfolded around them.
Screams echoed through the village.
People were begging, sobbing, pounding on locked doors as the black-smoke-eyed husks of their loved ones stood silently in the streets—watching, reaching, whispering words that barely sounded human.
Suddenly—
Footsteps. Lots of them.
From the treeline emerged dozens of armored soldiers, boots slamming against the dirt road in unison. The trio instinctively reached for their weapons, bracing for a fight.
But the soldiers didn't attack.
Instead, they marched past toward the dead. They carried iron rods, rope, and thick wooden cages mounted on wheels.
At the front of the group stood a samurai general, his white cape stained from travel, a sheathed katana resting at his hip. His expression was calm—but there was something steely in his gaze.
"Round them up," he commanded.
The soldiers nodded and began capturing the dead, throwing them into the cages one by one. The strange black-eyed corpses didn't resist. They kept reaching toward their families, their arms outstretched, mouths whispering broken names.
It wasn't violence. It was obsession.
A desperate longing.
The general watched silently before turning his attention toward the trio.
His eyes narrowed.
"What are a bunch of kids doing in the middle of all this?"
Hiroshi opened his mouth to speak—"We died, and—"
—but Sachiko quickly covered his mouth, shooting him a sharp glare.
Kibo stepped forward, clearing his throat.
He said calmly. "We stumbled into this village by accident."
The general studied them with suspicion. His eyes lingered on Kibo's two-beaded necklace, then drifted to Sachiko's Naginata.
After a long pause, he turned away.
"Follow me," he said. "It's not safe here."
As the trio prepared to leave, Sachiko's gaze drifted back toward the heart of the village.
The woman who had rushed out—the mother who ran into the arms of her dead husband—now lay cold and still beside him. Both were motionless on the ground, their tragic reunion ending in death.
The child—the same boy Hiroshi had carried—ran to their bodies, collapsing beside them.
"Mother!" he screamed. "Wake up! Please!"
His tiny fists pounded against her bloodstained kimono.
People whispered from behind locked doors:
"Poor child…"
"Both his parents gone…"
"An orphan now…"
Sachiko stood silently, her fists clenched. Her eyes never left the boy.
Hiroshi gently placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Let's go," he said quietly.
They followed the general through the broken village.
And behind them, the sobbing of a boy echoed through the silence.