Warm earth. Dry grass. Sunlight stretching endlessly across golden plains.
Mckell stood alone in a vast savannah beneath a sky that felt too wide to belong to Japan.
The air shimmered gently.
Somewhere in the distance, a voice called softly.
“M’kelu… ?m? mi…”
His chest tightened.
He turned.
An ancient baobab tree stood behind him — its trunk massive, roots like frozen waves gripping the soil.
And beneath it—
Mama.
Not as he remembered her in sickness.
But strong.
Radiant.
Wrapped in white cloth that moved without wind.
“Mama…” .
She smiled the way only she could.
“You’ve opened the door, my son,” “But not everything behind it is ready to be seen.”
“Why is this happening here, what am I?”
The question felt heavier here.
Older.
Mama lifted her hand and pressed her palm lightly against his chest.
The spiral mark glowed through his shirt.
“You are not just blood,” “You carry memory older than language. Before kingdoms. Before names.”
The grass around them bent unnaturally.
“You are a Vessel.”
The word rippled across the savannah.
“And your mark…” “is waking the old ones.”
A shadow moved across the sun.
The golden field darkened.
Black shapes began gathering at the edges of the horizon — crawling, stretching, watching.
Mama’s glow flickered.
“Mama?” .
She gripped his shoulders.
“Find Nana,”
“She is not me — but she remembers.”
The shadows surged forward.
“Mama—!”
The field shattered into darkness.
Mckell woke with a sharp inhale.
The shrine ceiling loomed above him.
Morning light filtered through cracked wooden panels.
Rin was already awake, seated cross-legged near the altar, calmly sharpening her short blade.
Emeka sat nearby with a laptop open, multiple tabs filled with folklore articles and old forum posts.
“Bruh, You shout for sleep,” “Your mark dey shine small-small again.”
Mckell sat up slowly.
“I saw her.”
Rin’s sharpening stopped.
“My grandmother,” . “But she said she’s not the one I need.”
“She said find Nana.”
The name hung in the air.
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Rin’s expression changed.
“Nana…” .
“You know her?”
“She’s part of Yokohama folklore,” . “A girl who died in a warehouse fire over a century ago. Officially, it was an accident.”
“And unofficially?”
Rin’s eyes darkened.
“There are rumors the Oni were experimenting with spirit-binding during that era.”
Mckell’s stomach dropped.
“They used her,” .
Night wrapped Yokohama in mist.
The abandoned train station stood like a skeleton of iron and memory.
Tracks rusted.
Windows shattered.
The air carried a metallic chill that didn’t belong to weather.
As the trio stepped onto the platform, the ground pulsed faintly beneath Mckell’s feet.
His mark warmed.
“She’s here,”
A soft glow flickered near the far end of the station.
A translucent girl in an old-style school uniform appeared beneath a broken lantern.
Her outline unstable.
Her eyes hollow with something deeper than sadness.
“You came,”
Her voice echoed in layers — past and present overlapping.
“You carry the mark that broke the gate.”
“I didn’t mean to break anything.”
“You didn’t,”
Her form flickered violently.
“They did.”
The station trembled.
“They used my soul to test the Vessel bond,” . “I was a failed echo.”
The word failed cut deeper than it should have.
“But I remember,” “I remember the path they were trying to open.”
The mist thickened.
Whispers crawled along the walls.
Black shapes began peeling themselves from the station’s pillars — corrupted spirits stitched together by unnatural force.
“They won’t let you reach it,”
The shadows lunged.
“I swear I go start charging spirit rent for this city!”
Mckell felt it again —
The internal shift.
The slow-down.
The golden pulse beneath his ribs.
Time thinned.
He stepped forward instinctively and slipped partially between layers — not fully Spiritwalking, but bending the air around him.
The shadows’ movements became readable.
Predictable.
He deflected one. Dodged another.
But more kept coming.
A corrupted spirit lunged toward Rin’s blind side.
“Nana!” .
The spirit girl moved.
For the first time, her expression changed.
Not sadness.
Fury.
She screamed.
The sound wasn’t human.
Light burst outward from her fragile form.
The corrupted spirits disintegrated instantly.
The station fell silent.
Nana’s outline began fading rapidly.
“You must find the shrine beneath the city,” .
"There… your blood will be tested.”
“Tested how?” .
Her eyes flickered with something like regret.
“By memory.”
A tremor ran through the station.
“Go before he finds it.”
“He?” .
But she was already dissolving.
Her final words barely carried across the air:
“The blind one knows…”
And then—
She was gone.
Only faint starlight lingered where she had stood.
Mckell’s chest burned again.
Not violently.
Purposefully.
Deep beneath Tokyo, red light pulsed across ancient stone.
In the Oni Syndicate’s underground sanctum, a massive spirit-map flickered.
A single point of white light — Nana’s essence — blinked once.
Then vanished.
Warlord Shinra stood unmoving before the projection.
“The Echo Guide is lost,”
Shinra did not turn.
“He’s moving faster than expected.”
The projection shifted — zooming toward a hidden district beneath the city grid.
An underground shrine symbol pulsed faintly.
Shinra’s golden mask reflected its glow.
“Prepare the inner sanctum.”
In the shadows behind him, an ancient locked scroll shimmered red.
Stamped across its seal—
The spiral mark.
Above ground, beneath a dim streetlamp, Mckell stared down at his trembling hands.
“She said the blind one knows,”
“There is only one blind man in Tokyo connected to spirit anomalies.”
“Emaji,” .
Mckell felt something align inside him.
The hunt was no longer random.
There was a path.
And someone waiting at the end of it.