What the Soul Retains

The monk’s voice lingered in the air, thin and dry like brittle parchment. His eyes, clouded with age yet unwavering in their focus, held Jessica in place. There was no mistaking it—he knew her.

Jessica stood frozen, the weight of his words settling in. The others remained silent behind her, waiting. The ruined shrine loomed around them, the scent of damp wood and old incense thick in the air.

"You should not have returned," the monk murmured. His hands, weathered and skeletal, clutched the folds of his robe. "The past was meant to stay buried."

Jessica swallowed. "What do you mean?"

The monk studied her as though measuring something unseen. Then, without another word, he pressed a folded slip of parchment into her palm. The paper was old, fragile beneath her fingers.

"Quae corpus obliviscitur, anima retinet," he said.

The phrase struck like a knife. It was familiar, inevitable. The air constricted. The shrine, the forest, the others were all blurred at the edges. She had heard those words before, but never like this.

Then, as abruptly as he had appeared, the monk stepped back into the shadows. His silhouette merged with the forest, and he was gone. Only the silence remained.

---

Back in the safe house, the tension settled over them like dust on untouched relics. The room was dim, lit only by the soft glow of a single desk lamp as Olivia and Leanna pored over the parchment. Yuki stood at the window, arms crossed, her gaze sharp and distant.

Jessica sat in the corner, the weight of the monk’s words pressing against her ribs.

Olivia exhaled. "It’s Latin."

Leanna nodded. "The phrase translates to ‘What the body forgets, the soul retains…’”

No one spoke.

Jessica traced the edge of the parchment, her pulse steady but slow. She had spent years unraveling her past, only to realize that the truth was always further away than she thought.

"It was meant for me," she murmured.

Leanna glanced at her. "What?"

Jessica lifted her gaze. “He wasn’t just warning us about the shrine.” She paused—a beat that stretched like eternity. “He was warning me.” “

The room felt smaller. The walls, the books, the papers, they were all pieces of a puzzle she wasn’t sure she wanted to solve.

Yuki finally turned from the window. "The sigil on that wooden tag from the shrine—it’s not just old." She pulled out her tablet, swiping through grainy images of an archived document. The faded emblem matched the sigil perfectly. "It appeared in a classified research file."

Leanna leaned in. "What kind of research?"

Yuki’s voice was measured, but there was a sharp edge to it. "Human experimentation. Conducted under a different name. Not Vanguard. This predates them. Different name, same obsession."

Jessica’s fingers curled into a fist.

"The masks," Olivia murmured. "They’re not just artifacts. They’re part of this."

Jessica inhaled slowly. "And someone else is still looking for them."

---

The alert came just before midnight. Yuki’s phone vibrated against the wooden desk. She glanced at the screen, and her expression darkened.

"The businessman from the teahouse," she said. "He’s dead."

Jessica’s pulse didn’t quicken, but something inside her tightened. "How?"

Yuki swiped through the report. "Execution-style. Found in his ryokan suite. No sign of forced entry. No struggle." She looked up. "And the second mask is still missing."

No one spoke.

Jessica exhaled through her nose. This wasn’t a coincidence. The monk’s words, the masks, the murders—it was all connected. But by what?

---

Later, long after the conversation had died down, Jessica walked alone through the sleeping city. Kyoto’s lanterns flickered through the mist, their glow fractured in the rain-slicked street like memory trying to resurface. The scent of cedar and stone filled the air.

The monk’s words echoed in her mind. "What the body forgets, the soul retains…"

Mr. Black’s voice followed, uninvited, low and smug, stitched into the back of her skull. "You think you understand your past? What if it was never yours to begin with?"

Jessica clenched her jaw, gripping the edges of her coat as the night air wrapped around her. She didn’t want to go down this road. The game had already begun. Someone else was still making moves. And if her soul remembered more than her body ever could…

What had she already lost?