Shadow trilogy

The stench of rot pressed into Takeru's lungs, a heavy presence that felt almost alive.

Before him rose the temple entrance—an arch of giant ribs, warped and yellowed, twisting upward like the contorted fingers of a corpse that died screaming.

In his grip, the white sword—now melted and shortened to a dagger's length—radiated an unnatural, chilling calm.

"This place… it breathes," he whispered to no one.

Beneath his feet, the ground pulsed—rising and falling like the slow, shallow breaths of something ancient and half-dead.

The walls inside dripped with black mucus, slick and warm to the touch, throbbing faintly, as though the temple itself harbored a dying heart.

---

Deeper still, where an altar should have stood, he found the one who awaited him.

Not a monster.

Not a ghost.

But a child.

A boy of barely ten, skin so translucent that black veins traced cruel patterns beneath the surface.

He sat on a pile of dried entrails, legs folded neatly, as if this obscene throne were his by right.

In those small hands, he toyed absently with something round and wet—a grotesquely swollen human eye that seemed to pulse between his fingers.

When he looked up, Takeru's heart stilled.

The boy's face...

was his own, as it had been in childhood.

---

"You took your time," the boy said. His voice had no echo, as though the air itself refused to carry it.

"Who are you?" Takeru demanded, though the answer curdled in his gut before it left his lips.

The boy laughed, and the walls themselves seemed to sob, shedding more of that black, reeking slime.

"I'm what's left of you... before they took you," he said softly.

He raised a finger to point at the dark hollow where Takeru's eye had once been.

"In that emptiness, there lies another sword. A sword with no name... because it is you."

---

Without warning, the boy's chest split open, creaking wide like a rotted gate forced apart.

Inside, wrapped in webs of blackened veins, hung a sword of flesh and bone, grotesque yet undeniably his.

"Take it... the last fragment of your soul," the boy urged.

With breath caught in his throat, Takeru reached out—

And suddenly, he was elsewhere.

---

A memory surfaced, raw and alive:

A small boy—himself—running barefoot through sunlit rice fields.

A samurai-clad man—his father, perhaps—lifting him high onto broad shoulders.

A black shadow oozing from the mouth of the village well.

Screams drowned by the rush of blood—so much blood.

The boy, tiny and defenseless, swallowed whole by darkness.

---

When Takeru returned, the bone sword was clenched in his fist.

And the child...

was melting, like a wax doll left too close to flame, skin sloughing away in glistening folds.

"Now... you'll understand why Kuroyami chose you," the dying echo of the child murmured.

All that remained was a single black tear, falling onto the blade—staining it into a color beyond words or memory.

---

Beyond the temple walls, the seven clouds overhead had contorted into gaping, hungry mouths, ready to devour the sky itself.

Kazuya was waiting, breath steady, resolve unshaken.

And Takeru...

at last began to remember.