Chains of Malice

The door cracked open.

It was Amilia and Annya. They stood there together, light from the hall cutting across the floor. Amilia's ears flicked once, curious; Annya's eyes were steady, unreadable. They asked if I wanted to take a walk around the town with them—Hikari and Tanseku (the apprentice who went shopping with me) would come too.

I agreed.

We stepped out into Henbō Toshi, into streets that smelled of steamed rice and woodsmoke. Vendors called softly; children chased each other around low eaves; somewhere, a bell chimed. It felt… different. As we walked, I noticed there weren't those cold, heart-piercing stares that usually followed us. No narrow glares, no whispered insults. Faces passed like clouds—curious, but not cruel.

Hikari noticed me looking around. "This town is far from the capital," she explained, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "The legend of Annya isn't that famous here." She offered Annya a small smile. "Distance has a way of softening stories."

For a moment, it almost felt peaceful.

We continued our walk—past a row of lanterns, past a shuttered shrine, past the corner where the cobbles dipped toward the river. And then I started feeling it: that mellous aura, faint at first, then growing. Stronger. Colder. Like a slow hand pressing into the back of my neck.

The feeling wouldn't let go. With every step, it sharpened, a thin needle of malice threading through my ribs. I could feel a revolting presence waiting in a street at the corner of the road. The worst part was—we were going there.

I checked the others. No flinch from Amilia. No change in Annya's breathing. Hikari kept talking to Tanseku about herbs and supply lists. No one else had any revolting expression on their faces. That told me enough. It was them. The ones I had been ignoring since entering this world: yokais.

But that presence was far more revolting than normal yokais.

Back in my world, yokai could be unnerving. Here, they were something else—worse, heavier, like the air itself spoiled around them. I had noticed early that yokai in this world were far more revolting than those of mine. Even so, I didn't have much difficulty ignoring them because of the curse of Annya; it helped, like a veil, dulling the edges of what they were. I had gotten used to it.

But when their aura starts to rise, when it spikes without warning, I still get chills up my spine I can barely handle. It is like standing on rotten boards, hearing them crack, knowing the drop is just beneath you.

So I told myself: Handling the presence of this yokai won't be that hard for me. At least—that was what I thought.

We turned into the street.

The world narrowed.

It was filled with numerous yokais. They clung to doorframes and signposts like shadows that had learned to breathe. Limbs too long, joints bending the wrong way, faces stretched smooth where features should be. Their mouths gaped and didn't move; their eyes were holes that drank in the light. A dry hiss rode the air—no breath, only the sound of something remembering how to live.

And at the very end—one was bound to a cracked stone pillar by chains.

It was humongous. Its shape deformed, swollen in some places, caved in others, like a corpse drowned and dragged and forced to stand. One eye hung from its socket, falling with a sick, slow sway but still attached by a tremoring nerve. Its gut opened by cuts, downward and sideways, a lattice of wounds that never bled out; the edges twitched as if trying to close and failing. Its neck twisted completely, broken beyond any healing, the head almost facing backward, jaw tilted in a wrong smile.

Everything in me recoiled.

I couldn't act like I was seeing him. I knew the rule. If I let it see that I could see it, things would break. I couldn't get scared, couldn't let one flicker of fear show, or else it would know I wasn't blind to it like the others.

But my body refused to listen.

My face made an expression like I was in front of death. Cold sweat slid down my back, soaked my collar, pooled in my palms. My pulse thudded in my ears so loud it drowned the marketplace three streets away. I tried to blink casually and only managed a shudder.

It noticed.

That single dangling eye swiveled. The nerve stretched, trembled, drew taut like a wet string. The chains scraped the pillar as the yokai came toward us, dragging its broken, enormous body a half-step at a time. Metal shrieked; stone powdered; the air turned colder with each jerk forward.

It felt like the gate of death itself was coming to consume its target.

Amilia laughed at something Tanseku said. Annya adjusted her cloak. Hikari pointed out a pastry stand, asking if we wanted to try something sweet. None of them saw. None of them felt the street collapsing inward, the horizon narrowing to a single wet eye and a chain that should never have moved.

Then—the chains wrenched tight.

Halfway down the street, it stopped. The metal dug into its warped limbs; links snapped back into place with a sound like bones settling. It pulled again—once, twice—each drag a thunderclap inside my skull. It could not come any further due to those chains.

Luck. It was our luck that it was bound there.

I swallowed. My tongue felt like it didn't belong in my mouth. Words had to be normal. Words had to be easy. "I… I need to use a restroom," I said, casual as I could manage. "Must've been that soup earlier."

Annya glanced over, reading only the surface. "There's a tea house back the way we came."

"Go." Hikari's voice was warm. "We'll wait."

"We can walk and find one," Amilia offered, already turning. Tanseku nodded, easy.

We turned back. I kept my steps even. I did not run. I did not look over my shoulder. The chain groaned once, long and low, like a warning from the bottom of a well. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood and kept walking. We left that street. We left the sound. We left the eye and the nerve and the pillar and the pressure.

Only when Hikari's door closed behind us did I let out the breath I'd been strangling.

I wiped my face with the heel of my hand. The sweat had gone cold. My fingers shook.

"Are you alright?" Hikari asked gently.

"Yeah," I lied. "Just… needed the walk." I set down my pack so they wouldn't see it tremble.

I didn't tell them what waited at the end of that street. I didn't tell them about the dozens of yokai pressing close without touching, about the one bound thing that had tried to cross. I didn't tell them because fear spreads like fire, and once it's burning, it's hard to put out. And because if I said it out loud, it would feel closer.

But I knew the truth.

Those chains were shattering. Even from a distance I could see the hairline cracks, could hear the weakened note in the metal. They were almost about to break. They would only hold him for two to three months more—or even less. Not more than that.

And after that… I have to face him. Because if I don't, he will come. He won't wander. He won't hunt the streets at random.

He will come after Hikari and us.

I pressed my palm to my chest and tried to slow my breathing. The room smelled like herbs and hot water and clean cloth. The ordinary weight of a safe place. It should have calmed me. Instead, every quiet sound reminded me of the silence in that street—the silence of things that shouldn't move, moving anyway.

Amilia chatted with Tanseku about knives and market stalls. Annya checked our supplies again, making neat stacks, methodical as always. Hikari hummed while she rewound a bandage, the tune steady, kind. I watched them and understood exactly why my hands wouldn't stop shaking.

Because when those chains fail—and they will—the thing on that pillar won't go looking for a fight. It already knows I can see it. It has my scent now, the way blood does to a starving beast. And monsters like that find the places you return to. The people you can't bear to lose.

My jaw clenched. I thought of the spirit's whisper the other night, the name he left me with. I didn't call to him now. Not yet. But the resolve was there—cold, hard, heavier than before.

Two or three months. Maybe less.

I don't know how I knew that. Maybe it was the pitch of the chain. Maybe it was the way the pillar crumbled under strain. Maybe it was just the way dread sometimes tells the truth before reason does. But I knew.

The time is counting down.

And when the links finally give, when the nerve finally snaps and the eye stops swaying because the head is moving—I will meet it first. In the street, or at the gate, or before it can touch her door.

Because if I don't, the next time the door cracks open, it won't be Amilia and Annya standing there.

It will be the Silent Malice itself.

And I won't let it cross this threshold.