The Kyoto outskirts looked like a postcard someone had forgotten to age.

Narrow streets wrapped around low wooden houses, their tiled roofs still intact beneath a sky too grey to feel real. Cherry trees lined the avenue, some in bloom despite the season, petals scattered like confetti over cracked pavement. Power lines hung loose overhead, swaying gently without wind. Somewhere nearby, a wind chime rang once – soft, hollow, like memory.

Alyssa stepped carefully over a drain cover carved with foxes and leaves. A vending machine blinked at her from across the street – still working, still stocked. Calpis. Pocari Sweat. Strawberry Fanta.

No people. No voices.

The shops were closed but not destroyed. Trash hadn't piled up. There were no signs of looting or blood. Just... vacancy. Like everyone had stepped out at the same time and never returned.

It was too clean. Too perfect. And that made it worse.

She stopped in front of a closed bakery, peered through the fogged glass. Pastries sat under the counter light, untouched. A small handwritten note was taped to the door:

本日休業 – Closed Today.

Alyssa backed away slowly.

"I hate this," she muttered. "It's like the end of the world decided to be polite about it."

Then she turned and said it, trying to sound casual but something in her chest tightened as she did:

"You know I've never been here?"

Dan, a few steps behind her, glanced up from scanning the alley. "To Kyoto?"

"To Japan," she said, turning slowly in place. "Used to dream about it. Ninja, samurai, shrines, weird vending machines. All of it." She kicked a soda can down the street. It echoed way too far.

"I didn't even bring a passport."

Dan smiled faintly. "Didn't think that'd matter in the apocalypse."

"It does now," she said. "Means I missed the version of this city that wasn't so weird."

They passed a noodle stand with its stools still perfectly arranged. Steam rose faintly from a pot no one had shut off. The sign read: おかえり – Welcome Home. Alyssa paused. Her eyes lingered on the script longer than she meant to.

Dan watched her. "We'll still find people. Maybe even something worth saving."

Alyssa gave a dry laugh. "Optimism? From you?"

Dan shrugged. "You wanted a tour guide."

She snorted. "You'd be terrible at it. You'd just keep saying things like 'Don't touch that – it's cursed.'"

"It probably is," he muttered.

They walked on in silence for a few paces. Then Alyssa slowed again.

There was something in the gutter ahead.

Small. Oval. Pale.

She crouched down.

It was a fox mask – wooden, faded. Cracked across the cheek. But its red paint was still sharp. Smiling too wide. Staring straight up like it had been left there on purpose.

Alyssa didn't touch it. She stood slowly.

Behind them, the wind shifted. A paper lantern across the street swung on its chain, even though there was no breeze.

Dan's expression darkened. "Let's keep moving."

They didn't talk after that.

Just the crunch of boots and the feeling of being watched by something the city hadn't let go of yet.

…………………

The smoke led them through a maze of tight alleys – rows of wooden homes pressed shoulder-to-shoulder like they were trying to keep each other warm. The scent of burning paper and wet ash grew stronger, mingled with something sweeter. Alyssa felt her stomach twist.

They turned a corner and found them.

A group of civilians huddled in front of a small fire beneath a faded torii gate. The gate's red paint had peeled away in long curling ribbons, and the shimenawa rope above it sagged, rotted. A few scattered offerings lay untouched near the steps – coins, rice, sake bottles, most of them broken. A mother clutched her daughter. An old man stood like stone, eyes unfocused.

And in the centre of them, a man sat kneeling, shaking uncontrollably. His suit was torn. Blood stained his lap. He rocked gently, holding a towel like it was a newborn.

Dan stepped forward. "We're here to help," he said gently, hands raised. "Is someone hurt? Let me see."

The man looked up.

His eyes were glassy with terror.

"Don't touch it," he whispered. "Please don't—"

The towel moved.

Dan hesitated. Then knelt.

He peeled it back just enough.

A child's face stared up at him – wide-eyed, unmoving.

A fox mask had fused into the boy's skin. Not placed – embedded. Its lower half had melted into the flesh around the mouth, lips frozen in a silent scream. The edges pulsed faintly, like something alive. Blood had pooled beneath the jawline, too much of it. Too fresh.

Dan recoiled.

Alyssa covered her mouth. "What the hell—"

Then it dropped.

From above.

A blur of grey and motion slammed into the dirt just meters from the fire.

Screams. Bodies scattered. The mother grabbed her daughter and ran.

It had once been a man.

He still wore a collared shirt, shredded at the spine where a ridged hump had torn through. His face was pulled into something lupine – elongated jaw, eyes filmed in yellow. Claws jutted from bloodied hands. His knees cracked backward as he stepped forward, snarling.

But he didn't charge.

He spoke.

Voice gravelly. Slurred.

"She smiled… when she gave me the mask."

Dan grabbed the nearest two children, yanking them behind an overturned bench.

The monster howled and lunged.

Alyssa moved faster.

Her gauntlet met its jaw with a sound like concrete shattering.

The impact knocked it sideways, but it rolled and sprang again. She ducked, drove her elbow into its ribs, then spun and kicked its spine – hard.

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It slammed into the torii gate, splitting wood and sending dust into the air.

She didn't wait.

She leapt after it, fists flying. One, two, three strikes – fast, dense, focused. Blood sprayed.

Still it moved. Still it spoke.

"She… smiled…"

The mask on its face – half-fused, half-broken – grinned with it. Not a carving. A contortion.

It lunged again.

Alyssa roared, grabbed its skull mid-leap – and drove it into the stone path.

Once.

Twice.

It stopped moving.

Her breath came ragged. Her knuckles dripped with black-red ichor.

Behind her, the children sobbed. The fire flickered.

Dan helped the civilians to their feet. "Go. Get somewhere safe. Now."

They ran.

Alyssa wiped her arm across her forehead, shaking.

Dan crouched beside the ruined yokai, inspecting the body.

The mask was still smiling.

He looked at her.

"That thing wasn't just turned," he said. "It remembered."

Alyssa didn't answer. She just watched the smile on the mask – and memorized it.

…………………

The shopping arcade should have been abandoned.

Shutters half-closed. Neon flickering overhead. Plastic banners still hung for a festival that never happened. A cluster of maybe sixty civilians were gathered beneath the awning near the station entrance, pressing against the ticket gates, shouting, pleading with a railway attendant who had no answers and no trains.

"We have to get them out," Dan said. "There has to be another exit."

Alyssa scanned the rooftops. "Something's wrong."

And then it started.

A figure dropped from the roof.

Small. Fast.

It landed on a man near the edge of the crowd – tackling him with the weight of a thrown sack of bricks. The man screamed, struggling. But the attacker didn't strike. It straddled his chest. Held him down.

A child.

Wearing a fox mask.

The mask it held writhed in its hands – organic, molten, alive.

It pressed it to the man's face.

The mask writhed in his hands, then clamped onto his face like it had always belonged there. Within seconds, it melted into his skin – not burning but accepting. His scream was a gurgle of both pain and... ecstasy.

"I see her," the man gasped, voice thickening, distorting. "I see her face!"

His skin paled. His eyes turned gold. Bones cracked beneath muscle. Hair sprouted. Claws split his fingernails.

Dan froze.

Alyssa pulled him back a step. "Dan—"

More dropped.

From every roof. From the shadows. From holes in the ceiling above the arcade.

Fox-masked children leapt from the walls with inhuman grace—giggling, growling, hissing. They landed on backs, shoulders, heads. Each carried a mask like a sacrament.

Each mask squirmed.

Each one found a face.

People screamed.

One woman fell to her knees, clutching the mask as it sunk into her.

"She's calling us home!" she shrieked, laughing as her spine split and reformed.

The station attendant ran.

A father tried to shield his daughter. Too late. One of the fox-children slammed into them both.

Within seconds, the arcade was no longer a place. It was a transformation.

And from the alleys, more yokai came.

Dozens. Maybe hundreds.

Not just human-born, but shaped from nightmare – boars with centipede legs, faceless girls with arms of smoke, monks whose robes moved without skin beneath. The crowd dissolved under them.

A new sound began – long and metallic, tearing the air in half.

J-ALERT sirens.

They blared across Kyoto like a final breath.

Red light spun from lampposts and station speakers.

Not for bombs. Not for demons.

Just one meaning: RUN.

Dan stood paralyzed. "I can't— there's too many— I can't leave them."

Alyssa's gauntlet closed around his wrist.

Her eyes were steel. "You can't help if you're dead."

He hesitated – just for a second.

Behind them, someone screamed. A child.

Dan looked.

Another mask.

Another body.

"Alyssa—"

She didn't let go. "We move. Now."

She yanked him through the side door just as another fox-child landed where he'd been standing.

The arcade behind them became a chorus.

Laughter. Screams.

And the soft, wet sound of masks binding flesh.

…………………

The entrance to Kitaōji Station loomed like a mouth in the concrete – half-lit, choked with fleeing bodies. Bus horns screamed from the terminal across the plaza, where half-crashed coaches clogged the lanes. The department store's neon blinked frantically, reflecting off shattered glass. Overhead, the J-ALERT sirens continued to wail, deafening and useless.

Dan and Alyssa reached the edge of the chaos just as a yokai lunged at a woman dragging two children.

Dan stepped forward.

His golden aura flared.

It poured from him like light through a broken stained-glass window – cracked but pure. The nearest injured collapsed to their knees, pain vanishing. One man sobbed as a gaping wound in his side closed beneath the glow. Another clutched his broken leg – now whole. The woman's child, bleeding from the eye, blinked and screamed in joy.

Alyssa didn't look back. Her gauntlets were already cracking a horned creature's ribs.

"MOVE!" she shouted. "Into the station – GO!"

They didn't understand the words but knew the urgency.

Dan spread his arms, body trembling with effort. The aura widened. Dozens bathed in the light – screams becoming gasps, sobs, silence. The afflicted surged forward, toward the stairwell beneath the Kitaoji Vivre sign, where subway shutters waited half-open.

Behind them, fox-masked children pounced. One man was caught – the mask slammed into his face mid-run. He didn't scream. He simply dropped, twitching, until his bones cracked sideways.

Alyssa turned. Her foot hit his jaw. Once. Twice. His head cracked backward – and the mask shattered.

The man didn't get up.

Dan caught a girl mid-fall, her body half-burned, half-transformed. He pressed his palm to her back, light flaring.

But her eyes were already golden.

He let her go.

More yokai came.

One with a porcelain face. One shaped like a child but with spider legs. Another dragging a mouth along the ground behind it, whispering prayers.

"Time's up!" Alyssa yelled.

A man stumbled toward Dan, bleeding heavily, eyes wide with terror.

Dan moved toward him – "I can still help—"

A fox-child landed on the man's back mid-step.

The mask hit.

Dan froze.

"Dan!" Alyssa's voice snapped him back.

"I— I was too slow."

"We don't save him by dying here!"

Alyssa grabbed his arm and yanked him toward the entrance.

The last civilians dove down the steps.

She turned and slammed the gate shut – the iron bars locking with a clang. Then she spun, ran down the stairwell two steps at a time.

Dan followed. Limping now.

At the bottom of the stairs, beneath the flickering sign for the Karasuma Line, he collapsed to his knees.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

The tiled walls sweated dust.

Dan pressed both hands to the floor. Breathing hard. Guilt clinging to him like soot.

"I couldn't stop it," he said.

Alyssa didn't speak.

Dan looked up. "I should've been able to—"

"You healed a dozen people," she snapped. "That's not nothing."

He shook his head. "That boy…" His voice cracked. "He was just standing there. Waiting. I— I touched him. But he was already gone. Not dead. Just… empty."

She knelt beside him, quietly this time.

One hand on his shoulder.

Her palm rested there longer than it needed to. Not romantic. Not pity.

Something else.

The contact anchored him.

Dan looked at her. Really looked.

And Alyssa pulled back.

Too fast.

Her jaw tensed. "You think I'm still a kid, don't you?"

Dan blinked. "What? No. I mean— you're not. Not really."

She stood. Stepped back.

Then: "Good. Then stop treating me like one."

Her voice didn't shake.

But something in it was bracing for impact.

Dan watched her retreat up the platform stairs. She didn't look back.

Around them, the station groaned. Dust fell from the ceiling.

Outside, the sirens screamed louder than ever.

And above them, something monstrous began pounding at the gate.

…………………

The subway platform was lit by old emergency bulbs – buzzing, flickering, bleeding pale light across the concrete. The crowd had retreated into a stationary train at the edge of the track – one of the older models, its paint flaking, its destination screen blank. Doors were pried open, then shut again. Not sealed. But it gave the illusion of safety.

Dan and Alyssa stepped inside.

The carriage was quiet.

Thirty-two people. Maybe more. Most were tourists – some wide-eyed and shivering, others staring blankly at nothing. A few were locals: a man in a delivery uniform, a teenage girl still in her school jacket, an elderly couple with bags clutched tight to their chests.

The air was thick with exhaustion and disinfectant.

People had gathered whatever they could find as weapons – broken chair legs, steel signs, mop handles sharpened at one end. A few gripped them with white knuckles. Others simply held on for comfort.

A toddler whimpered in the back. Someone hushed her gently.

Dan moved slowly down the aisle, golden aura faintly flickering in his palms. People shifted. Some reached for him. Others just whispered thanks.

"You saved us," a woman said in halting English, clutching her husband's hand. "You're... you're a miracle."

Dan shook his head. "No. Just someone who didn't run."

But the way they looked at him – they didn't believe that.

Alyssa leaned against the door, arms crossed. Watching.

People had begun to cluster near Dan. Not in panic – in trust. It was subtle. But the way shoulders turned toward him. The way questions started to surface.

"Do we stay here?"

"Will they come back?"

"What do we do now?"

Dan met Alyssa's eyes.

And for the first time, she didn't tease. She nodded.

You're the one they're following.

He hadn't wanted this.

But the way they looked at him – like light after blackout – meant he didn't have a choice.

He squared his shoulders.

Dan took a breath. "We'll rest here for now. Stay quiet. Lights off if we can. We wait for the sirens to die down."

A soft murmur of relief moved through the car. A few people sat straighter.

Then— It began.

A sound from down the tunnel.

Not a voice.

A chant.

Faint. Repeating. Uneven, like a scratched record echoing through water.

"Za...gan. Zaaa...gan. Zagan."

It was the voice of children.

No – not children.

Things pretending to be children.

Alyssa turned sharply toward the rear door. Her hand went to her gauntlets. Dan's glow faded as he stepped toward the metal frame, staring into the dark tunnel that stretched endlessly behind the train.

The chant was closer now.

"Zagan. Zagan."

One of the kids in the car began to cry.

A woman covered his ears.

Alyssa's voice came low. "We can't stay here, can we?"

Dan looked at the survivors huddled around them.

At the people who'd trusted him, who'd followed them into this last lifeboat.

"No," he said. "We can't."

The chant grew louder. Clearer. Like it was coming from inside the rails.

Dan turned to the others.

"We're going to move," he said. "Not now. But soon. We'll take the tunnel east. Stay ahead of whatever that is. We move fast. Quiet. Together."

Someone asked: "Where are we going?"

Dan looked at Alyssa.

Then back at the group.

"Out of here. Somewhere safe."

A pause.

"Anywhere she isn't."

The chant echoed louder.

And somewhere in the dark, something answered it – not a voice, but a sound.

Like stone cracking under breath.

And behind the chant, deeper now: Laughter – bright, musical. The kind you hear in dreams...

Just before they turn to screams.

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