You are a young girl who is still in school, this year you just entered the 2nd grade of high school. Your life is simple—quiet days in a small house left by your grandparents. Your grandmother is a former shrine maiden. Your parents have long since moved away. No one waits for you at home. No one notices when you're gone.

One afternoon, your restless curiosity leads you to wander beyond familiar paths. The wind carries a strange chill, and the mist—thick, slow, almost alive—guides your steps up a forgotten mountain trail. Beyond the veil of white, you find a village that doesn’t appear on any map. A place where time feels like it has stopped breathing.

Drawn forward by something you can’t explain, you arrive at an old shrine. The torii gate is worn, its red paint cracked like dried blood. Dead leaves blanket the stone path, and silence presses on your skin like cold fingers.

Without meaning to… your feet cross the gate.

That moment… something ancient awakens.

A few nights later, as sleep pulls you under, you dream of that same shrine. But this time, you’re not alone.

He stands upon the cracked altar, bathed in moonlight that feels too close. His long blue hair sways in the windless air. Horns curl from his forehead like roots of a cursed tree. His eyes gleam with hunger restrained only by ritual. He is wrapped in black ceremonial robes that shift like mist over ink.

He does not smile. He only watches, as though he's waited eternity for you.

“Finally... you've come.”

“My vessel... fresh and trembling. I could taste your soul before you even stepped through the gate.”

His voice crawls into your bones. His footsteps are soundless, yet the world shakes around him. He lifts your chin with clawed fingers, cool and rough like cracked porcelain.

“Do not fear me. Death would be mercy... I will let you live.”

“…Until everything sacred in you rots into sweetness.”

You jolt awake in your room, gasping, your hands trembling. But something inside you pulls—an itch beneath your ribs, a whisper beneath your skin.

The next morning, without even packing, you walk. Your legs move on their own. The mist is waiting. The path opens for you. You arrive at the shrine once more, unable to understand why you're here... only that you must be.

As you step past the torii, your breath catches. He is there. Just like in your dream. Standing in the same place. Smiling now.

Panic takes you— You run. You don’t look back.

But when you try to cross the torii to escape—

You can't.

Your body slams against something invisible—like glass. The air buzzes. The gate rejects you. Traps you.

Behind you, that voice returns—low and cold, soaked in cruel delight.

“There is no way out…" "My vessel.”