The shrine smelled like wet stone and old smoke.

  The walls were cracked. The ceiling sagged. Whatever gods had lived there once had moved out a long time ago. Still, something remained. You could feel it in the air. Thick. Waiting.

  Risa knelt in the center of the room.

  Her hands shook but she kept working. One by one she placed the palo santo beads inside the chalk circle Ryoichiro had drawn across the floor. The lines were careful and tight. He had taken his time. Every symbol sat where it was supposed to.

  Ed watched her.

  He had seen people panic during rituals. Most did. The strange words, the pressure, the fear that something might actually answer back. But Risa didn’t panic. She studied the paper in her hands and read through the symbols again.

  “Alright,” Ed said. “Let’s hear it.”

  Risa nodded.

  The page looked like nonsense. Crooked runes. Broken letters. Half-dead languages stacked on top of each other. But Ed knew better. Every line had a purpose. Every sound pushed something into motion.

  Risa began to chant.

  Her voice was steady. Slow. Each word clean and careful.

  The room shifted.

  Ryoichiro felt it first. A vibration under the floorboards. The air humming like power lines in summer. He stared at the circle as the beads began to glow. Not bright. Just a faint warmth leaking into the dark.

  Ed gave a small nod.

  “Good,” he said. “Keep going.”

  Risa didn’t stop.

  The chant rolled out of her like a song she had known her whole life. The shrine answered. The air thickened. Something ancient stirred beneath the cracked stone.

  Ed moved to the edge of the circle.

  “Focus on the beads, Risa,” he said. “Everything goes through them.”

  Risa picked them up. The wood was warm in her hands now.

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  Ed walked the perimeter of the room, tracing symbols in the air with two fingers. Quiet words slipped from his mouth.

  Protection. Containment. Barriers.

  “We’re running out of time,” he muttered.

  Then louder.

  “Risa! Finish the chant! Now!”

  Her heart jumped.

  Something had changed. She could feel it crawling through the shrine like cold fog. Her voice wavered for a moment.

  Then she forced it steady and pushed the words out faster.

  The beads flared.

  Light spilled across the cracked walls. Shadows stretched like long fingers. The shrine filled with a low electrical buzz.

  Ed raised his hands, whispering his own spells.

  Ryoichiro stood beside him, scanning the room. His shoulders were tight. His chest felt like it was wrapped in wire.

  The air grew heavy.

  Then colder.

  Ed felt it pushing back. Something alive pressing against the barriers he had drawn.

  “It’s coming,” he said quietly.

  The light from the beads grew hotter.

  Risa gritted her teeth and kept chanting.

  “Ryoichiro,” Ed said. “The circle.”

  “I’m almost done!”

  Ryoichiro dropped to his knees and finished the last marks of the containment ring. His hands moved faster than they ever had.

  Doubt burned in his stomach.

  What if he messed it up?

  What if he had already ruined everything?

  He forced the thought away and finished the final line.

  Risa’s voice rose higher.

  The beads pulsed in her hands.

  The shrine exploded with light.

  Then the wind came.

  It tore through the room like a gunshot. The light vanished. Darkness slammed down around them.

  “No,” Ed whispered.

  Something was wrong.

  Risa stopped chanting.

  “What happened?”

  Ed scanned the black room.

  “The spirit,” he said. “I-it’s stronger than we thought.”

  Ryoichiro grabbed his arm.

  “What do we do?”

  Ed’s face hardened.

  “We finish.”

  Risa took a breath and started the chant again.

  The beads flickered weakly. A small glow returned.

  “Hold the circle!” Ed shouted.

  Cold flooded the shrine.

  The temperature dropped so fast their breath fogged in the air. The walls groaned as if the whole building might collapse.

  Ryoichiro knelt beside Risa.

  He joined the chant.

  His voice cracked but he kept going.

  The circle brightened.

  The darkness pushed back.

  The shrine vibrated with two forces smashing against each other. Old power and something rotten trying to claw its way inside.

  Risa screamed the final word.

  The beads erupted with light.

  A shockwave ripped through the shrine.

  All three of them hit the floor hard.

  Then silence.

  The light vanished.

  For a long moment no one moved.

  “D-did we do it?” Ryoichiro croaked.

  Ed slowly stood.

  He scanned the room.

  The pressure was gone.

  “For now,” he said with a sigh.

  Risa exhaled and nearly collapsed.

  Ed stepped into the circle and picked up the beads. They were cold again. Lifeless.

  “We bought time,” he said. “That’s all.”

  Then his body went rigid.

  His eyes rolled back.

  White.

  His feet lifted off the ground.

  Risa froze.

  Ryoichiro couldn’t move.

  The air turned icy.

  Then it stopped.

  Ed dropped to the floor a few seconds later.

  His eyes snapped open. Terror filled them.

  He looked straight at Ryoichiro.

  “It’s not… a reaper.”

  Then he collapsed.

  “Ed!” Risa cried.

  She checked his pulse.

  Weak. But it was there.

  “We need to get him out of here.”

  Ryoichiro nodded.

  They lifted him and carried him through the twisting alleys of the slum. Trash fires burned in metal barrels. Distant voices drifted through the night.

  Neither of them spoke.

  Ryoichiro kept hearing the same words.

  Not a reaper.

  They reached Ed’s shack and pushed through the steel door.

  Inside, they laid him on the mattress.

  Risa wiped sweat from her forehead.

  “If he’s right…”

  Ryoichiro shook his head.

  “We wait.”

  The room went quiet.

  Ed breathed slowly in the darkness.

  Ryoichiro stared at the floor.

  “W-what if we can’t stop it?” he whispered. “What if I’m a-already gone?”

  Risa forced herself to meet his eyes.

  “We don’t know that,” she said.

  She didn’t sound convinced.

  But it was all she had.

  So they waited.