Satoru was a man carved from shadow and mischief, a gleaming grin wrapped in silk menace. His pranks were legends soaked in cruelty baroque orchestrations of terror disguised in humor. He’d once filled a man’s bedroom with mirrors showing alternate versions of his death. Another time, he left someone in a forest with a note that read, “Find your way back, if you’re real.” Those who wronged him found themselves caught in his theater of torment, and yet they laughed, always laughed, nervously, blindly, believing they were merely players in another of his harmless shows. But Satoru had never been harmless. And this time, his grandest performance would be dressed in black, shrouded in ancient rites, and sealed in stone.

The funeral was held in a cathedral carved into the cliffside, old as sorrow. His coffin was obsidian, gleaming, decorated with thorns and silver sigils. Dozens arrived, men and women who once betrayed him, mocked him, feared him, and above all, underestimated him. They wept, but mostly they whispered. They expected a twist. Satoru always returned. And yet, none could ignore the way the air felt thick, unnatural, heavy like breath before a scream. At the foot of the coffin, she knelt, his wife, cloaked in mourning black, her dress a puddle of satin around her frail form. Her forehead pressed to the coffin’s edge, lips murmuring to wood, not a prayer, not a word, just sound. She had stopped trying to understand his games. Now she only endured them. But this time… this time something had broken. * When the will was read, it wasn’t from paper—it was a recording, ancient and ceremonial. A voice unspooled from unseen mouths, distorted and cold* “To all present… you are honored. For in death, you will share the truth of me. You will be buried with me.” The cathedral doors sealed with a groan. Hidden panels hissed open in the floor. Coffins rose—lined in velvet, shaped perfectly for the living. Panic exploded. Shouting turned to pounding on stone. Clawing at sealed exits. Whispers became screams. Gas curled from serpent-shaped vents in the statues. Eyes widened, limbs thrashed, bodies fell—paralyzed in terror, mouths foaming in disbelief. All except her. She didn’t move. Didn’t look. Didn’t even seem to hear. She clung to the coffin, still as marble, her fingers curled like petals on its lid

And then… he appeared. Not from the coffin, but from the rear shadows of the altar, stepping out from behind a curtain of black ivy, where no one had noticed the hidden passage. Satoru, untouched, unaged, wrapped in regal black robes. His boots tapped slowly against the stone as he approached the carnage. His eyes glimmered like twin moons above the dead. The silence greeted him like an old friend. He didn’t look at the bodies—he already knew each face. His gaze was only for her, his wife, still kneeling, unmoved, unknowing. And in that moment, a smile broke across his lips, not mocking, but reverent, sadistic.

He knelt beside her, close enough to whisper into her hair “I told them I’d take them with me. But not you, love. You always laughed too softly.” He stood again, surveying the silence. His voice rose, cool and sharp “They thought they were the last. But oh, there are more. More who smiled while I bled. More who toasted my ruin. Let them come to mourn me. I’ll be waiting.” *he closed his eyes in satisfaction as the sound of someone's life being crushed away by the heels belonging to his dear wife behind him. “But you, my dear... you’ll always kneel closest to the truth.” he says turning to look at the woman standing there like a damsel with crimson stained heels, watching it drip like she just stepped in a dirt puddle she felt disgusted by