Rakan woke to the distinct sensation of being watched.
No—not just watched.
Breathed on.
He blinked once.
Then again.
There was something… floating near his face. Too close. Definitely alive. Definitely smug.
He cracked open one crusty eye.
And there it was:
The box.
Glowing. Spinning slowly. Suspended midair like a decorative demigod, gently pulsing in soft hues of lavender and sky-blue. The glyphs on its surface twitched in rhythm, as though breathing.
It hovered not a foot from his face.
And then—
It giggled.
"Heeheehee… Rakan."
Rakan screamed.
It wasn't dignified.
He flailed backward, nearly backflipping off the bedding, punching straight at the air like a man being attacked by a floating pancake. His fist missed—wildly—and Yori drifted upward with serene grace, untouched, twirling once like a smug jellyfish.
"Gooooood morrrrning," it sang sweetly—
—in Teruko's exact voice.
Rakan shouted louder. "WHAT—NO—NOPE—GET AWAY FROM ME—"
His shrieking startled Teruko, who jolted from her rigid meditative pose in the corner, blade half-drawn in a blink.
"I'M UP! WHO'S DEAD?"
Her eyes darted in every direction before locking onto Yori.
Yori tilted slightly in the air to face her, glyphs blinking.
"I'm up. Who's dead?"
Then it giggled again—this time sounding a little too self-satisfied.
Teruko blinked. Then frowned. Then blinked again.
She looked at the box.
Then at Rakan.
Then back at the box.
"Did it just…?"
"It said my name," Rakan croaked, back against the wall, hair sticking out in three directions. "It's watching me. I felt it breathing. It doesn't even have a mouth and I felt the breath."
"I think it licked my cheek in my sleep," Shugoh added cheerfully, still curled around a pile of blankets like a feral cat. "It was warm. Slightly citrusy."
Rakan choked. "CITRUSY?"
Shugoh yawned. "I think it's evolving."
Teruko was already pacing now, yanking her hair into a bun with surgical precision.
"Okay. That's it. No more passive observation. We're having a morning briefing. Everyone up. Emergency protocol. Eye contact only if necessary. Do not engage with the giggle orb."
Yori floated beside her and echoed in a twisted mimic of her voice:
"Emergency protocol. Do not engage with the giggle orb. Heeheehee."
Teruko stopped pacing.
Turned slowly.
And growled, "It's mocking me."
"It's learning," Shugoh beamed. "That's sentence structure. That's comprehension. That's basically verbal Ka'ro imprinting!"
"It's a haunted box," Rakan snapped, still rubbing his face. "It's not supposed to have comprehension."
Mazanka strolled in, completely unbothered, sipping from a cup that definitely hadn't been in the room before. He looked crisp, clean, and infuriatingly amused.
"Imitation is respect," he offered casually, "in most Ka'ro resonance traditions."
Yori drifted toward him, pulsed once, and giggled again. The sound echoed like a drop falling into a deep, invisible well.
Then—
"Mazanka," it whispered.
Mazanka raised an eyebrow. "…Well."
Right behind him, Itomei shuffled in with the grace of a man who had died in his sleep but gotten up anyway out of obligation. One hand clutched a bowl of questionable soup. The other rubbed his temples with mechanical despair.
He looked around.
Then at Yori.
Then at the group.
And in the most exhausted voice imaginable, asked:
"…Why is the box talking now."
Shugoh sat up straighter. "It's having a developmental leap! They do that!"
Itomei blinked at him slowly.
"It's a rock," Teruko hissed.
"It's a blessed infant," Shugoh corrected, reaching out and cradling the box like it might sneeze enlightenment.
Yori giggled again.
Then—perfectly, tonelessly—repeated Teruko's deadpan from earlier:
"It's a rock."
The room went still.
Teruko stared.
Mazanka smirked.
Rakan whispered, "…Oh gods, it's getting funnier."
"I think I'm in love," Shugoh whispered, starry-eyed.
Itomei turned on his heel and walked straight back out of the room without a word.
"Where's he going?" Rakan asked.
"To cry in the inn's moldy bath," Mazanka replied. "Possibly forever."
Downstairs at the inn, morning was a concept used loosely.
The air smelled like burnt honey and regret. Someone was either cooking or experimenting—no one could tell which. The floor creaked under every footstep, not from age, but because the wood was slightly alive.
A soup pot was shrieking in the corner as the innkeeper beat it with a ladle and cursed it by name.
"You try that again, Bokonoko, and I'll throw you in the Rift myself!"
Across the room, a thin man wearing a half-buttoned shirt was deep in conversation with the wall.
"—and then she took the Ka'ro dice! I saw her! She had eight arms!"
Two teenagers were drawing glowing glyphs onto each other's foreheads with melted fruit paste, daring one another to chant. One of them had already sprouted antlers. The other was laughing and visibly vibrating.
A goat—large, three-eyed, steaming slightly—stood proudly in the middle of the stairs, unmoving. When Rakan tried to step past, it made direct eye contact and bleated with the gravity of a man who'd seen war.
No one questioned the box.
Not the way it hovered three feet off the floor like a sacred relic on invisible strings.
Not the soft hum it emitted that warped silverware.
Not the occasional, out-of-place giggle.
The locals watched it pass, shrugged, and returned to their deeply personal chaos.
The group—muddy, tired, and mostly emotionally compromised—slumped down at a lopsided wooden table by the window. A vine crept out of the ceiling to offer them shade, which was both helpful and unsettling.
Itomei flopped down across two chairs like a man who had been disrespected by time. One leg draped over the side. Eyes dead. Soul gone.
Teruko glared down at the menu, which was a single warped card that simply read: "Yes / No"
"What is this?" she muttered.
"That's the menu," said the innkeeper, passing with a tray balanced on one hand. "If you say 'yes,' we feed you. If you say 'no,' you get soup anyway."
Shugoh was already feeding Yori bits of something bright pink and gelatinous.
"Look at it chew!" he beamed.
"It has no mouth," Rakan whispered.
"That doesn't stop it," Shugoh replied.
Mazanka leaned back in his chair, arms folded behind his head.
"I'll have the usual."
"You've never been here," Teruko snapped.
Mazanka shrugged. "Still feels right."
The box hovered just over the center of the table, spinning slowly, softly pulsing.
A nearby spoon began to float slightly, unnoticed.
Teruko tapped her finger on the warped wood with precision.
"Alright. We need to be logical."
"No," Itomei grunted.
"Yes," she continued, ignoring him. "We need to acknowledge the facts: it mimics speech. It responds to names. It glows brighter every day. And now—"
"It floats," Rakan added, poking at it with his spoon.
"Exactly. It's levitating."
"It purrs when I feed it moss jelly," Shugoh said proudly.
"That's not normal."
"Neither is Itomei," Mazanka said.
"Don't drag me into this," Itomei muttered, face in his bowl.
"And last night—" Teruko lowered her voice—"It spoke. In a tongue none of us recognized. Just once. But it wasn't random."
They all looked at the box.
Yori bobbed in the air, then rotated like it was listening. Then—
It spun twice, emitting a soft tone like wind through a flute.
Then, in a smooth, sing-song voice, it said:
"Shugoh. Rakan. Teruko. Mazanka."
All movement at the table stopped.
Even the soup pot hissed and went quiet for a moment.
Rakan slowly lowered his spoon. "…It knows our names."
"That's fine," Shugoh whispered. "That's fine. That means it loves us."
Yori hovered higher, its glyphs flickering gently in soft lavender hues. It giggled again—this time lighter, more aware.
Then, with perfect clarity, in a voice that sounded a little too close to Mazanka's:
"…Itomei."
Silence again.
A long one.
The only sound was a small pop from a bowl of fermented tofu.
Everyone turned to Itomei.
He didn't flinch.
He just took a long sip from his mug of whatever-he-shouldn't-be-drinking-before-noon, wiped his mouth, and said:
"Welp. We're doomed."
They returned upstairs in silence.
The hall groaned beneath their feet, planks shifting like breath. The inn no longer felt like it was swaying from the wind—but from something deeper. Like Kyōgai itself had shifted slightly. As if something had opened its eyes.
Even Yori was quiet now.
Still hovering, still humming faintly. But the sound had changed. Less like a lullaby. More like it was trying to remember a song it never learned—haunted by a melody that didn't belong to this world.
They stepped into their room.
And Mazanka froze.
He stared at the far wall.
There, etched in what looked like charcoal and memory, was a glyph—no thicker than a vein, crooked and sharp, curling like a tendril of Ka'ro drawn too fast by a shaking hand. It hadn't been there before. No one had carved it.
It simply was.
Thin. Uneven. But somehow deeper than the wall itself.
Like a scar in the world.
"…What is that?" Teruko asked quietly.
Mazanka stepped forward, slowly, like walking into a grave.
"A marker," he said. "It wasn't here last night."
"A marker for what?"
Mazanka didn't answer right away. He ran his fingers near it, never touching, watching the faint ripple it caused in the air.
"For… potential," he finally murmured.
Shugoh tilted his head. "Potential?"
"Not the good kind," Itomei said from the doorway, voice flatter than usual. "Not the safe kind either."
Yori drifted silently past them.
And as it floated near the glyph, it pulsed—just once—like a heartbeat.
Then came a giggle.
Not delighted.
Not amused.
Just… tired.
Like a laugh worn out from repeating itself for centuries.
Yori spun once in the air.
And then, with a slow turn, it turned to Rakan.
It hovered there. Perfectly still. Glyphs along its side dimming into a pale blue-white shimmer, nearly translucent.
It watched him.
The hum deepened.
And then, in a low, breathless whisper—one that didn't seem to come from the box, but from behind it, through it, beneath it—it spoke:
"Ka'ra vaeth sholren…"
The sound curved.
It resonated in the bones, not the ears.
Rakan's eyes widened. His Ka'ro flickered—just briefly, unbidden. His hand clenched without knowing why.
Teruko stepped forward, hand on her blade. "What did it just say?"
"Didn't sound like anything I've heard," Shugoh said, suddenly more sober than usual.
Mazanka looked at Rakan for a long moment—longer than necessary. His usual calm had gone still. Not cold. Not afraid.
Just… knowing.
He didn't speak.
But he knew something had shifted.
Rakan, blinking hard, said quietly, "It felt like it was… calling."
Itomei pushed off the wall, shoulders stiff, the laziness in him replaced by something heavier.
"That language wasn't from this world," he muttered.
Rakan turned toward him. "Then where was it from?"
Itomei didn't answer.
Instead, he groaned as he rolled his neck, then headed for the door again.
"We need to talk to the elders in this village."
Teruko raised an eyebrow. "Why? You said they were idiots."
"They are," he said. "But they've lived long enough to be afraid of the right things."
Mazanka looked back to the glyph one last time before closing the door.
The mark on the wall pulsed once more, faintly.
Behind them, Yori hovered in silence, gently turning toward Rakan again as the door creaked shut.