Eto grinned. The shadows coiled around her like old friends, the weight of the underground pressing in. She lifted a severed hand by the wrist, wiggled the fingers mockingly.
"No one's pointing fingers now~," she trilled, voice dancing on the edge of a melody.
Oyama's breath hitched.
Amatsu didn't look at the two dying men. He had already accepted their deaths. They were not variables anymore; they were corpses that had not yet stopped breathing. Instead, he watched Oyama. Studied the minute flickers in his face, the small tells that most would have overlooked. The way his throat bobbed. The tension in his hands. The way his fingers twitched, the smallest urge to reach for a weapon that he no longer dared to hold.
Fear was good. Fear could be used.
But too much of it, and the mind broke in the wrong direction. The weak did not always submit; sometimes, they shattered entirely, becoming useless.
So Amatsu tilted his head slightly, letting a faint sigh slip from his lips. Not disappointment. Not anger. Something softer. A feigned understanding.
"You understand, don't you?" His voice was quiet, coaxing.
Oyama flinched but nodded. He was still shaking. He was still processing. But the nod had been reflexive. Instinctive. A survival response.
Good.
Amatsu stepped forward, slow, deliberate.
"It's not personal." He kept his voice even, smooth. "It's survival. If they lived, they would speak. If they spoke, you would die. And I can't have that. You're too useful to me."
A truth wrapped in a lie, wrapped in another truth.
Oyama's breathing hitched, but something in his posture shifted. It wasn't relief, not yet. But it was something. A grasping, desperate acceptance. He wanted to believe it.
Eto chuckled, stepping beside Amatsu. Her hands dripped red, smearing against the stone as she dragged her prize along.
"Your call, boss," she murmured, mockingly formal, tilting her head to Amatsu with a sly smile. But her eyes. Her eyes watched with a quiet amusement, drinking in the scene, the unraveling of a mind before them.
Amatsu met her gaze briefly before looking back to Oyama.
"Come," he said, voice light.
Oyama swallowed hard, his gaze flicking one last time to his fallen comrades. For a second, it looked as if he might stop. As if some last, fragile thread still tethered him to what he had been.
But then—something in his eyes fractured.
Not a shattering, not an explosion. A slow, silent collapse. Like rot sinking too deep into wood, like the brittle snap of a bone too weak to heal. His fingers twitched at his sides, as if searching for something to hold onto, but they only found air.
And then he moved.
Step by step, he walked away from them. Away from the past, away from hesitation.
And into Amatsu's shadow.
As they move through the tunnels, Amatsu glances at Eto. Her usual grin is gone, replaced by quiet thoughtfulness. The Vultures know their base now. Staying would be suicide.
Amatsu exhales, voice low. "We can't go back."
Eto stops, tilting her head. "Oh? Why not?" Her tone is light, teasing—but there's something sharp in her eyes.
"They know where we are. If they send more people, we're dead."
She hums, rocking on her heels. "I suppose that's true. But—" She leans closer, grinning. "I liked that spot."
"They'll burn it down."
She giggles. "Well, that's inconvenient."
Her reaction doesn't surprise him. She already knew. She just wanted to see how he'd say it.
"We need another base," he says. "Somewhere they won't find."
Eto nods, still smiling. "Then let's find one. It's not like this place doesn't have options."
Now Amatsu turns to Oyama. "Can you get us somewhere safe? If we stay in familiar territory, they'll find us."
Oyama hesitated. His mouth opened, then closed. A swallow, dry and thin. Even now, he could still see them—his comrades, their limbs on the ground, their expressions frozen between shock and horror.
"If... if we hide, will they follow?"
It wasn't just fear. It was certainty. Like he already knew the answer.
then nods. "I know a place. Hidden. Only I know the way."
He starts leading them. But as soon as they step forward—
—Amatsu feels it.
Something watching. A sensation beyond sight or sound. A weight that curled at the edges of his mind, foreign yet familiar.
The air thickened—not in weight, but in texture, like moving through unseen threads that clung to the skin. A faint pressure built behind his eyes, a dull pulse that wasn't quite pain but something worse—like something reaching through him, peeling apart the layers of thought, of self.
A sound. Distant, wet. A slow, dragging squelch, as if something vast and heavy was shifting just beyond sight, folding over itself in the dark.
His stomach turned. Not from fear. Not from nausea. From something deeper—some primal part of him recognizing what his mind had not yet processed.
Oyama stiffened beside him, his breath stuttering into silence, hands trembling at his sides. He had gone still in the wrong way—not bracing, not preparing to run. Just stopped, like an animal caught in the paralyzing haze of a predator's gaze.
Watching.
It wasn't the distant, unfocused gaze of a passing threat. No, this was intent—measured, deliberate. A presence that pressed into his thoughts like fingers digging into wet clay. Something immense, unseen, but there.
Amatsu stopped in his tracks. His breath came slow, measured, but his muscles locked in place. Something unseen scraped against the edges of his mind, its presence vast and cold, like staring into the abyss and realizing it was staring back.
He murmured under his breath. "The Watcher."
Eto blinked at him, tilting her head slightly, but the lighthearted mischief in her eyes dimmed. Oyama shifted uneasily, sensing the sudden shift in the air. The tunnel, already dark, felt deeper, stretching endlessly in all directions, the walls pressing closer.
Oyama sucked in a breath, but it hitched in his throat, choked off.
His fingers twitched, clenching and unclenching. Sweat gathered at his temples, rolling down his jaw in thin rivulets. His body had gone rigid, but his eyes—his eyes were worse. Wide, unfocused, darting like an animal cornered in its own burrow.
"What is that?" His voice was hoarse, barely a whisper.
Amatsu didn't answer. Because there was no answer that would bring comfort. No name that would lessen the weight pressing against their bones, against their minds.
The Watcher did not simply observe. It studied. Dissected. Peeled apart layers unseen, sinking deep into the marrow of knowing.
Amatsu's instincts whispered—no, screamed. If they moved carelessly now, if they rushed, they'd be walking straight into an unseen maw.
"We can't go yet," Amatsu said, voice low but firm. "If we go straight to a new base, it'll follow. We need to make it look like we're going somewhere else first. Give it something to track that isn't real."
Oyama furrowed his brow, but the skin around his mouth was bloodless, taut. "You mean a fake base? Something to mislead them?"
Amatsu nodded. "Exactly. We let them think we've gone to ground somewhere else. That buys us time, keeps them looking in the wrong place."
Eto grinned, an eerie light returning to her eyes. "Ooh, misdirection? I love this kind of game. So, what's the bait?"
Amatsu considered. The Vultures already knew their original hideout. If they suddenly vanished without a trace, it would be too suspicious. But if they made it look like they had relocated to another base—somewhere dangerous enough to deter easy pursuit—they could force their enemies to waste time and resources chasing shadows.
"We need a ruin. Somewhere deep, tangled, filled with old decay, corpses if possible. Somewhere believable, but not too comfortable."
Oyama snapped his fingers, but it was a weak motion, his hand still trembling. "I know a place. Old half-sunken tunnels near the eastern wall collapse. No one sane sets up there. Smells like a graveyard, and the decay warps the air. Even if someone suspects it, they'll hesitate to check."
Amatsu nodded. "Perfect. We'll plant traces of our scent, some signs of movement. Just enough."
Eto leaned closer, her breath warm against his ear. "And what if it doesn't fall for the trick? What if it's already inside our heads?"
Amatsu's gaze darkened.
He turned to Oyama. "Take us to the ruins first. Let's make them chase ghosts."
The air around them remained suffocating. The Watcher was still there. Silent. Waiting. Its presence felt like something vast pressing against the edges of reality, peering through the cracks.
Oyama walked, but his movements were jerky, stiff. He kept glancing over his shoulder, though there was nothing to see. Just the endless dark. Just the weight of something staring through it.
Amatsu exhaled slowly, steadying himself. He did not believe in gods.
But if he did, this thing would be older than them. Hungrier than them.
Something was watching. And it was waiting for them to make a mistake.
The deeper they ventured, the heavier the silence became. It wasn't absence, wasn't emptiness—
it was something vast, something alive.
It did not creep closer, did not recede.
Just loomed at the edges of knowing, coiling through the dark like an unseen noose, waiting for them to step into it.