The Void-Eater's Vocabulary

Chapter 4: The Void-Eater’s Vocabulary

​I stared at the miniature black hole floating in front of me. It wasn't furry anymore; it was like someone had taken a puffball, compacted it under a hydraulic press, and given it four tiny, glowing eyes. It looked less like a pet and more like a poorly rendered video game asset of pure gravity.

​And it had just said, "Hungry."

​"Did you... did you just talk?" I managed, my voice a pathetic squeak.

​Fumo tilted slightly, a movement that felt less like curiosity and more like the shifting of tectonic plates. "Ate. Shadow."

​My brain, already running on two hours of sleep and high-octane panic, struggled to process this. "You ate it? The Manifestation? The thing that was trying to rip a hole in the school’s foundations?"

​"Small. Snack." Fumo pulsed, and a minute shimmer of purple energy—the same energy that had been clinging to Akira's shadow—flickered off its surface.

​So, the Talisman wasn't just a lid; it was a diet plan. By containing Fumo's power, it prevented it from consuming ambient spiritual residue, forcing it to remain docile. When the Talisman came off, Fumo instantly upgraded from a fluffy paperweight to an opportunistic predator.

​I quickly scanned the library. Akira, who had been standing frozen and pale moments ago, was now slumped against the bookcase, breathing heavily but looking significantly better. The terrible, exhausted pallor was gone, replaced by the look of a normal teenager who just realized they missed lunch.

​The rift energy was gone. The clicking sounds had stopped. The air felt clean, if still smelling faintly of ozone and old paperbacks.

​"Akira, you okay?" I whispered, scrambling to pick up the loose Talisman—now just a useless piece of decorative yellow paper—and shove it into my pocket.

​Akira rubbed his neck. "Yeah... just had a massive headache. Did the power go out? Man, I need that vending machine coffee." He finally looked up at the empty space where Fumo was floating. "Why are you talking to the ceiling, Kenji? And what did you drop? Sounded like glass."

​He hadn't seen Fumo. Of course he hadn't. Fumo had only appeared to me, its appearance being tied to my spiritual sensitivity.

​I grabbed my bag, stuffing the still-solid Fumo inside. It sank to the bottom with a noticeable thud. "Oh, that. Yeah, I tripped. The power flicker got me. And, uh, I was talking to the spirit of the library, asking where the Dewey Decimal system went."

​Akira gave me a blank look, which, given his exhaustion, was understandable. "Right. Well, I’m starving. If you're done with your existential citation crisis, let’s go."

​As we walked out, I heard a faint, cold whisper from inside my bag. "More."

​The rest of the school day was a masterclass in controlled paranoia. I was carrying an unsealed, talking, and hungry demon that was now casually using my backpack as a post-meal resting spot. I couldn't risk taping the Talisman back on, not until I understood what Fumo had become. If it needed to eat spiritual entities to stay docile, then taping the lid back on was a ticking time bomb.

​In the hallway after school, I cornered my one trusted source: Kiyoko.

​Kiyoko was a petite girl with sharp glasses who looked like she spent all her time studying, but she was secretly the most effective, level-headed exorcist in our regional chapter of the Guild. Unlike me, the reluctant custodian, she was the cleaner.

​"So, let me get this straight," Kiyoko said, adjusting her glasses, her expression perfectly calm despite the situation. We were huddled behind the gym bleachers, the setting sun casting long, dramatic shadows. "The containment seal—the Talisman—came off."

​"Permanently, I think. It disintegrated a Manifestation, and then it spoke," I stressed, holding the heavy backpack like it contained a live grenade.

​Kiyoko pulled out a small, metallic sensor—a kind of spiritual Geiger counter—and waved it over my backpack. The device instantly started shrieking like a banshee trapped in a blender.

​"Kenji, the readings are off the charts. It's radiating a stable level of Class-A demonic energy, equivalent to a fully realized Void-Eater," she said, her voice dropping. "But the containment field is still holding. Why hasn't it vaporized the bleachers yet?"

​I repeated Fumo's single word: "Hungry."

​Kiyoko put a finger to her lip, a deep furrow in her brow. "When a Void-Eater consumes a spiritual entity, especially one of this localized potency, it enters a state of temporary saturation. The energy absorbed acts as a buffer against its natural destructive tendency. It’s essentially a very complex, spiritual digestive process."

​"So, Fumo's just full," I said, feeling a wave of nauseous relief.

​"For now. But it implies a new problem. Before, the Talisman forced it to starve and stay small. Now that it’s unsealed and has tasted power, it will require a consistent intake to maintain its stability. If it doesn't feed soon, that contained energy will be released, and that would be catastrophic."

​I swallowed hard. "So my job isn't to contain it anymore. It's to... feed it?"

​Kiyoko nodded grimly. "Not just feed it, Kenji. You have to feed it strategically. This Manifestation anchored to Akira means the rift is weak and local. You need to find and feed Fumo all the residual entities escaping through that weak spot, quickly, before the rift widens and you get something too big for Fumo to swallow."

​I groaned, running a hand through my hair. "Fantastic. Demon feeding trips. Where do I even start looking?"

​"Where was the anchor the strongest?" Kiyoko asked, putting the shrieking sensor away.

​"Akira. And the power was strongest in the back corner of the library, near the fiction section."

​"That's your epicenter," she declared. "Rifts like this—especially small, localized ones centered on high school kids—don't just happen. They are attracted to strong, focused emotions. Unresolved emotional trauma acts like a beacon."

​I thought about Akira, always quiet, always tired. "He's always exhausted. Maybe depressed. But nothing traumatic, that I know of."

​Kiyoko shook her head. "It's never the thing you know. It's the thing that's buried. You have to find out what emotional beacon is holding that rift open. Then, you shut down the beacon, and feed the final energy burst to Fumo."

​"And if I can't find it?"

​Kiyoko didn't sugarcoat it. "If you can't find the source before Fumo gets hungry again, you have two choices: let Fumo go wild and potentially destroy the city, or... you put the Talisman back on."

​"If I put the Talisman back on, what happens to the energy Fumo just absorbed?"

​She gave me a tight, professional smile that didn't reach her eyes. "It will be violently expelled. It'll be a controlled detonation, Kenji. Probably just vaporizing a few blocks. But it won't be the end of the world."

​Just a few blocks. Right.

​I looked down at the backpack, already feeling the cold dread of Fumo’s internal whisper growing.

​"More."

​Kenji's mission has changed completely: he's now a demonic caretaker with a ticking clock!

​Ready for Chapter 5, where Kenji starts his investigation of Akira's emotional anchor and the library epicenter?