Chapter 6 – The Farewell

The fog that clung to the town seemed heavier than ever. It wasn’t just mist anymore. It was the weight of absence, of things that should exist but were slowly vanishing.

Katakana’s mind floated somewhere between the Choir’s realm and the memory of his family. He could see the silhouettes of his brother and sister, standing in the square, looking for him. He tried to call out, but the sound wouldn’t come. His voice, his very being, was tangled in the Choir’s song.

Back in the real world, the town moved in slow motion. His sister, Aiko, tugged at her brother’s hand. Her laughter was fragile, like a candle flickering against the wind. But the town no longer recognized Katakana. Every person she approached seemed not to see him. His name was whispered in fear, not in memory.

Katakana reached toward her. He could feel the hum of the Choir inside him, a tether connecting him to the world he’d left behind. He screamed silently.

Aiko’s hand passed through his spectral outline as though it were nothing but smoke. She blinked, confused, and shook her head. “Katakana…?” she whispered, her voice breaking.

The longer he lingered here, the weaker their memory of him became. Every laugh they shared, every whispered secret, every scrape of childhood mischief  it all began to blur, folding into nothing. The townspeople stared at them, but Katakana’s name no longer appeared on their lips.

He fell to his knees in the Choir’s dark realm, clutching the invisible tether to his siblings. His shadow lengthened unnaturally, reaching toward them, twisting against the crimson-black fog around him. He wanted to pull them into his world, to keep them safe, but the Choir’s hunger would not allow it.

From the corner of the Choir’s endless void, the skeletal figure watched silently. Its hollow eyes reflected every memory Katakana tried to hold. The voices of the Choir rose and fell in a mournful dirge, echoing with the sorrow of a thousand vanished souls.

Katakana whispered, the words breaking through the barriers of the realm: “Aiko… Taro… I won’t forget you. I’ll find a way to bring you back.”

His sister’s voice, trembling, carried faintly on the edges of his mind. “Katakana… you’re… you’re fading… I can’t… remember…”

The words were like knives, cutting through his heart. The tether weakened, fraying at the edges. The hum of the Choir inside him grew louder, insistent, almost mocking. He tried to pull them closer, to anchor them, but each second he failed, they slipped further.

His brother’s laughter, his sister’s small hand in his, their shared secrets — all began to dissolve. He could feel the memory of him in their minds thinning, like water leaking through a cracked vessel.

Katakana dropped to the ground, tears streaming down his face. “Don’t forget me!” he shouted into the void, even though he knew it would not reach them. “I’ll come back! I swear!”

The skeletal figure moved closer. Its voice was soft, almost gentle. “They will survive in fragments, but only as echoes. You cannot bring them fully. The Choir devours what it chooses.”

Katakana pressed his hands to the ground, the shadows beneath him writhing as if trying to push back against the inevitable. “Then I will become stronger,” he vowed. “I will tear the Choir apart if I have to. I will not let their voices vanish entirely!”

The Choir’s song surged like a storm, and in that moment, he understood something terrible and beautiful. The tether between him and his siblings had not been broken completely. Even if their memory of him faded, their existence was tied to his struggle, their voices lingering faintly in the music.

He reached one last time toward the square in the world he had left behind. His fingers brushed through nothing, and yet he felt warmth, a reminder that they were still there, somewhere, even if the town no longer remembered.

Aiko’s form flickered, pale and translucent, and then her image wavered and faded into the mist. Taro’s laughter vanished, leaving only the silence of the fearful town.

Katakana screamed into the void, a sound that carried no words but all the pain of losing them.

Somewhere deep inside, the hidden power inside him pulsed, answering his anguish. It was cold and sharp, like steel wrapped in shadows, waiting. The Choir sensed it and recoiled slightly, but the skeletal figure smiled behind its hollow eyes.

“You have begun,” it said. “The heart of the Choir knows you now.”

Katakana curled into himself, tears falling silently as the echoes of his siblings’ voices faded completely. The last remnants of their memory were gone from the town, and he understood: nothing would be the same again.

This was the farewell, and it had just begun.

But somewhere, buried beneath despair and pain, a spark glimmered. A power older than the Choir stirred, waiting for him to claim it, waiting for the day he would return, stronger than anything the world had ever known.