Chapter 2:

THE WEIGHT OF BEING SEEN

The Night Beneath The Shrines: When the Invisible Becomes Unstoppable

Akiro did not sleep.

This was not a lack of trying. He was unable to sleep after all that happened. And who could blame him?

He lay on his futon staring at the ceiling of his apartment while the city hummed through thin walls—pipes knocking, someone arguing three floors down, a train rattling past in the distance like punctuation he couldn’t escape. The ceiling fan ticked unevenly, a mechanical stutter that refused to become a rhythm.

Every time he closed his eyes, the alley bent.

Not in memory.

In anticipation.

His brain kept replaying it wrong, like it wanted to fix the moment but didn’t have the right parts. The shadows stretched when they shouldn’t. The air thickened. The sound—God, the sound—like pressure behind glass.

He turned onto his side, pulled the blanket up to his chin, and squeezed his eyes shut…harder.

Nothing happened.

He opened them again.

“Great. Even sleep has abandoned ship.”

Akiro groaned softly and rolled onto his back, rubbing his face with both hands. His arm still ached where the mark had burned itself into him, though the skin looked normal now. Too normal. Smooth. Unbroken.

Like it was pretending.

“Great. Even my trauma is subtle. Everything is just GREAT." He sat up and let his feet dangle off the futon, spine hunched, shoulders tight.

The room felt smaller than usual. Same apartment. Same peeling wallpaper. Same stack of overdue mail on the table.

Different gravity.

He shuffled into the kitchenette, stopping short when he caught his reflection in the microwave door.

He froze.

The mark was faint—but it was there.

Thin lines, barely visible, curving beneath his skin like something etched from the inside. Not a symbol he recognised. Not symmetrical enough to feel deliberate. It looked…grown.

When he shifted, the lines lagged.

Half a second behind reality.

Akiro leaned closer, breath fogging the glass.

They pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

“Not again,” he said quietly. “What’s happening?”

He stepped back, heart hammering so hard it made him lightheaded. The lines faded, retreating as if they’d never existed. His reflection returned to normal; drained with dark circles under his eyes, a student with too many night shifts, and no energy.

Just a guy who forgot to buy milk again.

Except now he knew better.

He pressed his palm flat against his chest.

Nothing.

No heat. No glow.

Which somehow made it worse.

A knock sounded at the door.

Akiro jumped so hard he smacked his elbow against the counter.

“—Ow, shit—”

The knock came again.

Calm.

Precise.

Measured-- like it had been practised.

He didn’t answer.

He stood very still, breath shallow, listening to his own pulse roaring in his ears.

“Akiro,” a voice said through the door.

Male.

Controlled.

Polite in a way that felt rehearsed, like customer service for bad news.

“We need to talk.”

His chest tightened.

Rin’s voice echoed in his head, unhelpful and very smug in retrospect.

People will come looking for you.

He grabbed his phone, fingers shaking as he unlocked it. No messages. No missed calls. The time blinked at him accusingly.

Too early for this.

Always too early for this.

“How do you know my name?” he called, voice cracking despite his best efforts.

A pause.

Long enough to be deliberate.

“Because you are marked,” the man said. “And because you are standing very close to a shrine seal.”

Akiro’s eyes flicked toward the far wall of his apartment.

There was nothing there.

Just old paint and a faint crack running vertically from ceiling to floor. He’d always meant to report that to the landlord. It had been there since before he moved in.

His throat went dry.

“Go away.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“That would be… inadvisable.”

The pressure hit the room all at once.

Not pain.

Weight.

The air thickened like wet cement, pressing down on his shoulders, his lungs, his thoughts. It felt like gravity had decided to renegotiate the terms of reality. His knees buckled.

The mark flared hot beneath his skin.

Akiro staggered back, gasping. “I need to get out.”

He grabbed his jacket off the chair, ignoring the man’s presence, shoved his feet into shoes without tying them, and bolted through the emergency exits… just as the lock on his front door clicked open by itself.

The city outside was painfully normal.

Morning commuters shuffled past with coffee cups and headphones. A cyclist rang a bell in irritation. Somewhere, a radio station played an upbeat jingle about discounted appliances.

Akiro landed hard on the pavement, skinning his palms, and ran.

His lungs burned. His vision tunnelled.

His phone alarm went off mid-sprint.

He nearly laughed.

A sharp, hysterical sound tore out of him before he could stop it.

“Of course. Of course, my body remembers.” Akrio plans and schedules …even though reality doesn’t.

He slapped the alarm off without slowing down, ducked into a narrow side street—and nearly collided with Rin.

She grabbed his jacket and yanked him back just as something snapped through the space where his head had been.

The air cracked like a whip.

Akiro screamed.

“Don’t stop in open lines,” Rin said, already moving.

“I wasn’t planning to!”

She shoved him against the wall, palm pressed flat to the bricks. Symbols flared beneath her hand—angular, sharp, briefly luminous. The pressure vanished as if it had never existed.

Akiro slid down until he was sitting on the ground, chest heaving.

Rin crouched beside him, hood down this time. Dark hair pulled back messily, strands sticking to her cheek. A faint scar traced her jaw, half-hidden, as someone had once missed on purpose.

“You led a Warden to your apartment,” she said flatly.

“I didn’t invite him!”

“No,” she agreed. “You panicked.”

“…yes?”

She exhaled, slow and controlled. “You’re going to do that a lot.”

He laughed once, breathless and brittle. “It’s already a lot.”

She shot him a look—not annoyed. Assessing.

“You didn’t sleep,” she said.

“Observation award.”

“You’re dissociating.”

“Ah,” he said. “Is that what this is?”

“Yes.”

“That’s… comforting...”

She didn’t smile.

They sat there for a moment while the city carried on around them. A man complained loudly about train delays. Someone stepped over Akiro’s legs like he was part of the pavement.

Akiro stared at his hands.

They were shaking.

He pressed them together, hard.

“So,” he said finally, “is this the part where you explain everything?”

“No.”

He looked up. “Wow.”

“You don’t want the truth yet.”

“And who are you to know what I want, so explain what you mean by truth?”

“You want answers,” she corrected. “Those are different.”

“That feels like a technicality.”

“It’s survival.”

He let his head thug back against the wall. “Okay. Cool. Great. Love mysteries. Big fan.”

She glanced down at him. “Sarcasm is a stress response.”

“So is screaming, but you’re not letting me do that either.”

A beat.

“…You can scream later,” she said. “Preferably indoors.”

“Wow. You do care.”

She ignored that.

“You used the mark without knowing,” Rin continued. “That’s why they found you so fast.”

“I didn’t use anything,” he said weakly. “I just—ran?”

“The mark reacts to threat,” she said. “Especially denial.”

He winced. “Your point?”

She leaned back against the wall beside him, arms crossed. Up close, he noticed she smelled faintly of smoke and rain—not the romantic kind, but like wet concrete and burned metal.

“How long do I have?” he asked.

Before what, he didn’t say.

Rin considered. “Before the Wardens tighten the net? Hours. Maybe days if you’re careful.”

“That’s… bad.”

“Yes.”

“And the other ones?”

“The Unbound?” Her jaw tightened. “They’ll feel you too.”

“Great. Everyone’s invited.”

She looked at him sharply. “You don’t understand.”

“Then explain.”

“They won’t try to contain you.”

“…That’s worse?”