-The Forgotten Pages-

Haruto Imai shouldn't have found the book. It was buried beneath the temple ruins, concealed behind mounds of dust and forgotten prayers. The walls of the cavern were wet, inhaling the darkness as if it were alive. A peculiar energy pressed against his skin, burrowing beneath his flesh. But Haruto didn't mind. His fingers trembled as he traced the cracked surface of the worn leather book. Ancient—but not falling apart. No dust coated it. The pages, when he ran his hand over them, weren't yellowed. The ink was rich and wet, as if someone had sat down to write the day before. "Wow." And then he started reading. "The Hollow Decade did not end." "It was buried." "The truth is not gone. The truth is waiting." Chills danced up his spine. Haruto swallowed hard, forcing himself to turn the page. "The Great Divine Council fears it." "They think it is sealed." "They are wrong." The letters distorted. The ink bled, oozing across the parchment in deformed lines. It was not a book. It was a warning. Then—a voice. "Put it down." Haruto tensed. The cave was supposed to be deserted. A shadow loomed over the gate. The air grew heavy, oppressive with an unnatural silence. A figure stood forth, his armor glinting like black glass, reflecting nothing. His scarlet cloak billowed after him, scraping against the stone like a pool of fresh blood. Field General Kuraimono. Haruto's breath caught. His voice was too low. "You weren't supposed to see that." Haruto gulped hard, his heart pounding against his ribs. "Why is it a secret?" His voice croaked. "What happened during the Hollow Decade?" Kuraimono moved forward cautiously. "You ask the wrong questions." Haruto curled his hand over the book. "The people have a right to know!" A silence. Then—a laugh. Low. Amused. "And now you sound just like them." Haruto's heart fell. "The ones who thought they could change history." Kuraimono raised a hand. And then—Haruto screamed. An invisible force shoved into him, twisting his nerves, setting his insides on fire. His bones cracked, his skin burnt, his mind—his mind was unwrapping like it was a gift. He stumbled. Shuddering. Kuraimono took the book from his hands. "Curiosity is a disease, Haruto." He turned a page, not fazed by Haruto's pain. "And you just infected your entire village." Haruto stumbled out of the wreckage, blind in one eye, his gasps unsteady. His body was crying out in pain, but it was nothing—nothing—next to what he saw. His village burned. Fire twisted in unnatural shapes, alive and writhing, slithering through the streets with a purpose. The flames were laughing—a whispering chorus inching through the crackling embers. People ran. People screamed. And then there was darkness. They were not human. They were nothing. Just bent, stretched-out bodies pulling people into the dark. And the people—they did not even die. They just vanished. Wiped out. His mother. His father. His sister. Their home—vanished. Haruto's throat closed. His legs buckled. "No... no, no, no—" And he saw him. Kuraimono stood there in the middle of it all, his scarlet cloak unspotted by the fire, his hands behind his back, folded. Laughing hysterically Haruto's sight reddened. "WHY?" His throat aching, his fury scrabbling at his voice. "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" Kuraimono gave him a look. Distant. Cold. "Because knowledge is not to be played with." Soft. So calm. "And this village was infested." Haruto plunged forward. Not to flee from it. Into his face. No weapon. No strategy. No anything but raw, pounding fury screaming in his veins. Kuraimono raised one hand. Haruto didn't make it halfway. Something within snapped. Pain—clean, endless, unbearable pain—s***h through his body, and his world came apart. Haruto woke to darkness. The air was thick, pressing down on his lungs like wet cloth. His wrists were bound—chains gnawed into his flesh, suspending him over the ground. The walls... breathed. The ceiling curved up into nothing, consuming the light. The silence was so deep, so vast, that he seemed to float in the void itself. Then—a voice. "You lasted longer than I expected." Kuraimono. Haruto's head twitched back, his breath harsh. "Where am I?" He forced the words out in a normal voice, but they cracked. They sounded raw, weak. Kuraimono materialized into the pale illumination of floundering torches. His face split with a wide, s******c grin. "Hades' Lockdown 2." Haruto clamped his jaw. "What do you want?" The rasp was more pronounced than usual but will remain inside. Kuraimono chuckled again, his grin spreading wider. Haruto glared at him, shaking, but not with fear. With rage. "You murdered them all." His voice shook. "You burned my village. My family—my people—for what?!" Kuraimono sighed. "You still believe this is about you?" He stepped forward, shadows writhing at his feet. Haruto strained against his chains, his breathing harsh. "You work for the GDC. What are they so afraid of?!" Kuraimono c****d his head. "Not fear." He brought his head closer, setting the back of his black-gloved hand upon Haruto's chest. "Control." Haruto bellowed. But Kuraimono didn't flinch. "Did you believe knowledge was a right?" His voice soft, like the scolding tone of a father. "Did you believe the Hollow Decade was concealed from fear?" Haruto's gaze faded. His mind splintered. "No." Kuraimono leaned forward, whispering in his skull. "It was sealed... to keep the world from remembering what is coming." Haruto cried, but now his voice was barely more than a whisper. "What... what is coming?" Kuraimono's smile returned. "That... is the wrong question. Well, enjoy your t*****e till you die." Like Kuraimono said. It was t*****e. Everyday in the morning the guards turned the temperature up to 60 degrees Celsius. And in the night they turned it down to 0. He only got water once every 2 days. He had no blanket or bed. His food was only once a week. And after all that. All Haruto could do was think, Why... Why The cell door groaned open. Haruto didn't even lift his head. What now? They had beaten him enough times for him to know the routine. The footsteps, the cruel laughter, the metallic jingle of chains—it was all the same. They'd throw another prisoner in, another broken soul meant to rot beside him. And he would pretend not to care. Until he heard the sound of a body hitting the floor. Soft. Too soft. Haruto's breath stalled. Something inside him twisted. Then came a weak, ragged breath. No. Not her. He turned his head, and his stomach clenched like a vice. Aya. She was barely there. Sunken cheeks. Dull, lifeless eyes. Skin too pale, streaked with grime and blood. She looked smaller somehow, like the weight of her suffering had compressed her into something fragile, something brittle. The guards laughed. "Try not to die too fast," one of them sneered. "It's more fun when you last." The door slammed shut, and their voices faded into the depths of the prison. Haruto couldn't move. His body felt like lead. His throat was dry. He tried to speak, but the words stuck, caught behind the weight of something he couldn't name. Aya's fingers twitched against the cold stone. Slowly, she lifted her head, her lips parting—but no words came out. Haruto forced himself to move. Every step toward her felt like dragging his body through glass. His hand reached out. Aya flinched. Haruto's chest tightened. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. She was just breathing—slow, shallow, painful. He saw her ribs move with every unsteady inhale. Saw the way her wrists had been rubbed raw by chains. Saw the way her body trembled, not from fear, but from exhaustion. Then, finally, she whispered, "So... this is where you've been." Haruto swallowed the lump in his throat. "Yeah." His voice was hoarse, barely above a murmur. Aya let out a dry, breathless chuckle. "Guess I shouldn't be surprised." Haruto stared at her. She was broken. Not just physically. He could see it in her eyes—whatever hope she had left had already been shattered. "You shouldn't be here," he muttered. Aya turned her head slightly, looking at him with something unreadable. "Neither should you." His hands curled into fists. He knew exactly what that meant. Aya looked at him again, something distant in her expression. "Haruto... they don't let people go, do they?" Haruto didn't answer. She already knew. No one left The Hades' Lockdown Prisons. Not alive. Aya exhaled shakily. "I thought... I thought maybe I could do something." Her voice cracked. "I thought maybe I could help." Something inside him fractured. Help? There was no helping. There was no escaping. No fighting. No resisting. There was only survival, and even that was temporary. "You shouldn't have tried," Haruto muttered. Aya let out a weak chuckle. "You always were the pessimist." "I'm not a pessimist," he said, voice hollow. "I'm just not a liar." Silence. Aya's gaze dropped. For a moment, he thought she might cry. But she didn't. She just stared at the ceiling, her eyes empty. "I don't want to die here," she whispered. Haruto closed his eyes. Neither did he. But that didn't matter. No one was coming. No one cared. They were already dead. The air in the cramped, dimly lit room was thick with a suffocating feeling of inevitability. Haruto's chest felt heavy, each breath coming with a strain he was unfamiliar with. The silence was louder than any explosion or war cry they had ever heard on the battlefield. There was no avoiding it—their situation had settled in with an implacable weight. Kuraimono's departure had not just marked the end of a conversation, but the end of all that they had fought for, all that they had believed in. Aya had collapsed next to him, her head against the cold stone wall as if it could give her even a small comfort. She had stopped crying hours earlier, as if the well of tears had run dry. There was only a emptiness, a void where their hope had been. Haruto's hands clawed into the rough stone beneath him, as though he could cling to something solid, something real. But the truth was, there was nothing solid left. The world they had understood, the people they had trusted, had all been shattered by forces too vast, too outside their understanding. And now, they were alone. Alone in the dark. The fire that had once burned in Haruto's chest, that untamed, uncompromising desire to just keep going no matter the cost, was fading away. It was as if the fire had been doused and only a smoldering ember remained. He could still feel the heat of it—faint, almost imperceptible—but it was not enough to light the path ahead of him. There was no path. He glanced to the side at Aya, her eyes glassy and unfocused, staring into the void that surrounded them. He had, for a moment, thought that she had drifted off to sleep, but the way her hand moved, the faint curl of her fist showed otherwise. She was still awake, still trapped within her own head. "We were supposed to stop this from happening, weren't we?" She whispered, and Haruto realized that she was not asking a question she needed an answer to. She knew, deep down, that there was no answer left to give. He didn't know what to say. The truth was, they'd been trying to fight a war that had been lost many years before they'd ever stepped foot in the ring. It was not just Kuraimono's words that had broken them—it was the sum of everything that had come before. The Hollow Decade. The lost kingdom. The Shadow King's plans unfolding, piece by piece, beyond their comprehension. Every step they had taken had brought them only deeper into a trap, and now they were at the bottom of it, staring up at a sky that would never again be light. Haruto gulped, the bitterness of that information rising up his throat like a poison he could not shake. There was no escape. No one was coming to save them. They had been tossed away, forgotten, and left to rot in this hole of misery. "I don't think we were ever meant to win," Haruto said, his voice cracking under the weight of it all crushing down on him. He didn't know if he was talking to Aya or to himself. Maybe it didn't matter anymore. "We were just. distractions. Pawns on a board. All this. it was never really about us." Aya's lips trembled, and for a moment, Haruto thought that she might say something more, but she did not. Instead, she shut her eyes, as if she might be able to keep the world out completely. Her shoulders convulsed in the quiet, and Haruto could discern the faint outline of her breath catching, but there were no further tears. There was nothing. There was a thick silence then, hanging between them like a chasm that neither of them could cross. Haruto's head reeled, replaying every battle, every conversation, every shred of hope they'd clung to. And yet, every single one of those moments sounded hollow now. The endless battling, the sacrifices—they all seemed so futile in the face of this insurmountable truth. He could see it now, in the swirling visions behind his eyes: the faces of the dead, the broken pieces of what had once been their lives. It had all been some plan they couldn't even begin to understand. And here they were now. "Why do we keep going?" Aya's voice was barely a whisper, a breath on the wind. "What's the point?"