Memo 09: (R1)The veil underneath.

Nagisa determined announces nateas will be the distraction while they head to the cellar. He stepped forward. His boots cracked the floorboards as if announcing war. Suedomas’ grin widened, eyes glinting with mania noticing the glowing sigil. Suedomas: “Ohhh… so the lost dog shows his teeth. Nateas. Disobedient, branded. I almost thought you’d stay hiding in your shame. Tell me… what’ll you do with that pathetic sigil dragging you down?” Nateas raised his hand, dark fire rippling around his fist, and replied coldly:

Nateas: “I’ll shut your mouth.”

The two blurred forward at the same instant. Their first clash was like thunder, Suedomas’ fist meeting Nateas’ forearm. The impact exploded outward, shattering windows and sending chairs splintering across the restaurant.

Suedomas laughed, his strikes flowing in that same rhythm—JekyllJive—each blow meant to cripple. His arms moved like twin blades of music, cracking tables, shattering beams as they weaved toward Nateas. But Nateas wasn’t the beastfolk girl. His counterstrikes came sharp and precise, every block punctuated with a burst of force that kept Suedomas from finding his rhythm fully. Suedomas: “Ha! You’re ruining my melody, boy! Where’s your harmony? Where’s your dance?” Nateas: “I don’t dance.”

He drove his knee up, colliding with Suedomas’ ribs, launching him through a wall of the restaurant and out into the street. Rubble crashed around the demonill, but Suedomas only cackled, rolling back to his feet. The ogre-hat man bellowed in shock, but quickly noticed Nagisa, Yuranu, and the others slipping toward the cellar. He turned to chase—only for Yuranu to whirl, holding her tail to his throat, silently stalling him.

Suedomas charged back, cracking the earth with each step. His fists moved faster, now weaving illusions with their rhythm, feints layered over feints. Nateas’ chestplate cracked as one blow slipped through, sending him skidding back. Blood at his lip, Nateas steadied himself. The sigil on his chest burned brighter, pulsing like a heartbeat. Nateas (thinking): Nagisa ordered me… no, she commanded me. Damn it.

Suedomas leapt high, spinning, crashing down with a heel aimed to split Nateas’ skull. Nateas caught it on crossed arms, the ground beneath him exploding into a crater. The shockwave blasted the roof off the restaurant. Suedomas, exhilarated, snarled Suedomas: “This is the gap between us, Nateas! You fled, I perfected! You run from the name of demonlike, I embrace it! Say it—say your name! Or you’ll never touch me!”

Nateas’ eyes glowed, his power beginning to break through restraint. Flames licked across his forearms, shaping into jagged talons. He pushed back, forcing Suedomas off balance.

Nateas: “...I don’t need to say my name to break you.” He lunged, fists like cannons, driving Suedomas back with a rapid volley of blows that shook the street. Each strike cracked ribs, shattered teeth, until Suedomas had to retreat, staggering. Still, the maniac laughed, blood spattering across his lips. Suedomas: “YES! That’s the Nateas I remember! Show me more—show me the traitor’s strength!”

Meanwhile, in the shadows, Nagisa and the others slipped further into the cellar.

Nagisa kept her eyes on the furious battle raging above—Nateas clashing with Suedomas like titans shaking the restaurant to its foundation—but her duty pulled her downward. She pressed her hand to the groaning cellar door, the sigils shimmering faintly against her palm. her voice edged with resolve. “Our path is below.” With Riku and Yuranu at her sides and the battered ogreman in the suit and tophat trussed between them, the group descended the winding steps. Dust rained from the ceiling with every distant shockwave, Suedomas and Nateas’ blows threatening to collapse the building entirely.

The air grew colder. Thicker. A pressure wrapped around their chests like an unseen hand squeezing tight. At the base of the cellar, carved deep into the stone floor, a veil shimmered—a living wall of iridescent magic that breathed like a lung, ebbing and swelling. It hissed faintly, like whispers from another world.

Camera shivered, tightening his grip on her satchel. “...That’s not just a barrier,” he whispered. “It feels like it’s breathing.”

“This veil… it isn’t just a seal. It’s alive.”

peering closer as glyphs “No… not alive. It’s watching us. Like it knows who’s standing here like it’s waiting.” The colors of the veil shifted suddenly. The ogre captive growled low in his throat, nostrils flaring. “That’s no veil—it’s a maw. The kind you don’t feed, unless you’re ready to lose what you throw.”

Nagisa narrowed her eyes, stepping forward, letting the eerie light roll over her. Her hair caught the glow, giving her the look of someone already marked by fate. She pointed cammy towards the veil and asks the question.

“How do we lift it?”

Nagisa and Yuranu stood in the thick air before the shimmering veil, its surface pulsing faintly like a living thing. Each attempt to breach it only pushed them back harder, as though the barrier fed on defiance.

Yuranu’s tail flicked, her eyes half-hidden under her bangs.

“Someone has to die,” she murmured, low and cold. “This worthless ogre we'll use him as a life token. The veil will dissappear.” The ogre thrashes in her grasp "Anything but that i heard it's a painful way to go. Yuranu tightens her tail tighter around the ogres throat. "You believe you have the right after playing with so many lives. You should make yourself useful right now. 

Nagisa staring at the veil eyes sharp. “No.” Her voice cut through the heavy silence like steel. “He’s a valuable piece of this story. I won’t sacrifice him.” Yuranu tilted her head, expression unreadable. “Valuable, yes. But are you prepared to wager everyone on that sentiment?” Nagisa bit her lip, tension knotting her jaw. "We don’t have time. Nateas is out there, keeping that other demon busy… i dont know how long he'll last?

Her gaze swept back to the glowing wall, recalling the head orc who passed through as if invited. A flash of realization struck her.

“The head of the restaurant.....the orc,” she whispered, clutching her blade tighter. “He must have a way. He was moving freely through this thing. That means there’s a key… or a rite… or some connection he holds.” Her eyes lit with determination, fiery against the hopeless atmosphere.

“If we find him, we find the way in.”

Nagisa narrows her eyes, scanning the pale shimmer of the veil. The pressure radiating off it makes her skin crawl, like static gnawing at her nerves. “Where did the orc run off to?” she demands, trying to steady her voice. The ogre man shrugs, clutching his wounded side. “Got scared. Took off back toward the hills. Coward. Left us all here.”

She folds her arms, thinking. Her instincts as a journalist scream at her—if a wall this suffocating exists, it’s guarding something more dangerous than anyone outside can imagine. Something worth recording, worth exposing. But not at the cost of  anyone. “Journalism means self-sacrifice,” she murmurs under her breath, “not actual sacrifice. That’s the difference.”

Nagisa’s eyes narrow as she steps closer to the caged ogre, the glow of her recording lens hovering just over her shoulder. She forces her voice to stay calm, even as her instincts twist inside. “The girls you captured... the ones deemed useless. They were sacrificed, weren’t they?” The ogre doesn’t answer. His tusked mouth stays shut, but the air thickens—his aura flaring crimson, violent, unrestrained. That silence is confirmation enough.

Nagisa feels the weight sink in her stomach. Her pen hovers at her notebook before dropping limp. There isn’t a key, she realizes. Not a mechanism, not a lock to undo—just an offering. Just loss. The waitress uniforms left behind in piles, the nervous looks from those who “passed” selection—it all makes sense now. She turns toward the dark veil ahead, its surface rippling faintly like a curtain of smoke. Her voice hardens, more for herself than anyone else:

Nagisa: "Why did I think any different? Why wouldn't the key be sacrifice. That’s why our waitress never came back. That’s what opens this thing.” Her throat is dry, but she doesn’t hesitate as she points toward the veil.

Nagisa using her memo pad  Give me an artificial being. (ᴹᵉᵐᵒ ᴹᵃᵉˢᵗʳᵒ) a being in her likeness is created and pushed in to satisfy the maw. The maw sensing whatever was thrown in having no soul. It rejects the offering. Having not satisfy the condition. Nagisa only has one option.

Nagisa: “Yuranu—throw him in.” The ogre growls, thrashing against his bonds, but Yuranu’s lips curl into something cruel, almost satisfied. Yuranu: “Finally. Been waiting to hear you say that. ”With one powerful shove, Yuranu hurls the captive ogre toward the veil. The moment his body touches it, the smoke-like surface splits with a crack, swallowing him whole. His screams and cries echoing through. Nagisa grips her pen tighter, heart hammering. She doesn’t know what lies beyond, only that the truth is never free—

The cellar opened into a wide chamber—cold, damp, and heavy with the stench of mildew and iron. What struck Nagisa first were the altars. They weren’t arranged in reverence, but scattered, crooked, each one marked with brown-black stains that had long seeped into the stone. Around them lay scraps of clothing—frilled aprons, lace collars, the pale dresses of maids who once walked the manor’s halls. Each piece was stiff with dust or darkened with old blood, discarded like the shells of moths burned by a flame. Activating a light equipped on cammy so she can traverse the dark chamber.

Nagisa’s breath caught in her throat. She crouched, fingers brushing over a torn sleeve. How many of them…? The image sharpened in her mind—their smiles, their bows, all masking the fate that awaited them beneath the manor.

She forced herself forward, her steps crunching on bones too small to belong to beasts. At the center of the chaos, resting upon a tilted altar, lay a bundle of parchment. The pages looked brittle, their edges burned as though someone had tried to destroy them. With shaking hands, Nagisa unfolded the top sheet. The script was dense, jagged, written in the looping, archaic strokes of Veylstra text. Her eyes strained to follow the symbols. The words seemed to whisper themselves, as if eager to be understood:

Nagisa’s lips parted. The truth sank into her like ice water—there was no key hidden in some drawer or on a guard’s belt. The key was the maids. Each disappearance, each “transfer,” each life tossed into the void. Her hands trembled as she clutched the parchment. 

Before she could decipher a single line, a sharp hand snatched it away.

Riku.

His smile was jagged in the half-light, his eyes gleaming with something feral. “You really thought you’d get to the truth, didn’t you?” he sneered, waving the document just out of her reach. “Pathetic.”

Nagisa staggered back. “Riku…?”

He laughed, low and cruel. “You killed my benefactor, and for that—I should’ve gutted you where you stand. But this,” he lifted the parchment, “will do nicely. These fools will eat it up.” His tone dropped, venomous. “You Journalist wackjob. Sniffing around in places she didn’t belong. You would even kill for a scrap of truth—and now, I’ll sell this for far more than you could ever dream.”

“when you talked about your ‘sister.’ It didn’t add up. Because you don’t have one. Every word you said back then was just another performance.” Riku chuckled, shrugging like she had simply guessed the weather wrong. “Not entirely false. I told a half-truth. I do have a sister.” His eyes flickered with a strange gleam as he leaned closer, whispering the rest like it was a cruel joke. “But whether she exists or not doesn’t really matter right now, does it?"

And Riku’s smirk only widened.

The tension was broken by Yuranu’s sudden step forward, her voice firm. “That document doesn’t belong to you. It’s ours.”

“Oh, sorry,” Riku replied, tucking the folded paper against his chest like a prize. “But the people I work for wouldn’t want this in a snitch’s hands. You understand, right?”

“You—!” Yuranu lunged, blade flashing.

But in that instant, Riku’s skin rippled. His figure stretched and contorted, colors warping like water spilling from a broken vessel. Claws where there had been fingers, scales bursting from skin, a monstrous silhouette replacing the human. Nagisa’s breath caught. He wasn’t just an infiltrator.

He was something else entirely.

Yuranu didn’t falter. She sprinted into the eye of the shifting storm that was Riku, her presence resolute. But his voice followed her, layered, distorted, almost overlapping with itself.

“You don’t get it. I don’t even need to fight you with fists. I’ll break you where it counts.” His many voices reverberated through the space, crawling under their skin. The air thickened. The battlefield wasn’t physical anymore.

It was psychological.