The room pulsed with silence. Not absence — pressure. A kind of weight that pressed against the skin, filling the lungs like water. The masked figures didn't move, didn't speak. They watched. Stone eyes in stone faces, carved by hands that no longer lived. The MC didn't count how many there were. He didn't blink. Just walked forward, his steps echoing into that pressure, swallowed and never returned.
They led him through corridors chiseled with care but long since abandoned by grace. Curves that served no function. Symbols etched into the walls with no guiding script. None of it made sense. Yet all of it felt deliberate. This wasn't a maze. It was a message. And he couldn't read it.
A door opened inward — not pushed, not pulled. It responded to proximity, not effort. No hinges. Just thought. The MC paused before crossing its threshold. There was no reason to. Just instinct. He breathed in. Rock, ash, wet metal. Then stepped through.
Inside waited a room less a chamber and more a wound. The walls were smoother here, veined with light. Not torchlight. Not flame. Something older. Something... cellular. Living. At the center, a platform. Atop it, a basin. Above that basin, a single drop of red liquid hovered, unmoving, untouched by gravity. A figure stood behind it. Masked, of course. Everyone was. This one wore a cloak stitched from deep-sea reeds, and its shoulders were too narrow for a man, too wide for a child. Voice came next. Not spoken. Projected. Like thought with edges.
"You've entered without name. Without voice. Without truth. That makes you either dangerous — or valuable."
The MC didn't answer. Couldn't. But he wanted to. That want surprised him. A flicker of emotion not flattened by the system or dulled by the mask.
The figure gestured toward the basin.
"Blood remembers. Not who you are. But whether you matter."
[ SYSTEM NOTICE: IDENTITY TEST — INITIATED ]
[ WARNING: RESULTS PERMANENT ]
[ PROCEED AT WILL ]
No instructions. No map. No second chance.
He stepped forward. The mask didn't stop him. Neither did the fear. It didn't rise. It sat — old and familiar, like a childhood ghost grown quiet with time. He pressed his hand to the side of the basin. The stone accepted him. Cold. Unyielding. Then — a sting. Not from the surface. From within. A sharp ache just behind the ribs, as if a needle had pushed outward from his core. He didn't cry out. The blood surfaced through the pores of his palm. Beaded. Lifted. Joined the red droplet in the air.
Contact.
The chamber dimmed. Not the light — the world. Sounds died. Air thickened. And a vision came.
—
A hallway.
Bright.
Too clean.
A whiteboard with messy symbols. Laughter — muffled. The clink of shoes. A window showing nothing but trees and the edge of a train.
A boy. Sitting. Face not seen. Just the angle of his jaw. A tie loose around his collar. Headphones in his ears. He turns. Just a flash — then gone.
—
The chamber returned. No one spoke. The drop of blood dissolved into mist, then was gone. The basin closed. The figure stepped forward, held out a square stone with four lines etched into it. The lines bent — not letters, but memory. Not language. Resonance.
"You have been marked," the voice said. "Not chosen. Not accepted. Marked."
[ SYSTEM UPDATE: SOUL ANCHOR OBTAINED ]
[ EFFECT: MEMORY TRACE WILL STABILIZE IN TIME ]
[ NAME SLOT — LOCKED ]
He took the stone. It pulsed. Not warm. Not cold. Just present. Like an echo tied to his breath.
They led him out.
Back through the curving corridors.
Back to silence.
Back to the others who had not yet been marked.
He watched them now. How they flinched at shadows. How they glanced sideways. He wasn't one of them. Not anymore. Something had shifted. Inside him — and in the way they looked at him.
Koji met him outside. The smirk was gone. He nodded once. "You've passed the test," he said.
The MC tilted his head.
"No," Koji corrected. "You've survived it. That's not the same."
They walked back in silence. The upper layers of the underground buzzed louder now — not from noise, but from presence. Traders moved carts of mushroom-stained cloth. A woman fed a snake from a bowl of ink. A group of children played a game with broken teeth and chalk bones. Life — strange, broken, breathing — thrived here. Just barely.
"You'll get your first assignment soon," Koji said. "Everyone does."
The MC slowed. Looked toward a passage he hadn't noticed before — smaller, arched. Etchings lined the entrance, and a faint breeze whispered from within. A different smell. A different weight.
Koji caught the glance. "That path?" he said. "Leads to the lower rings. You're not ready."
The MC didn't answer. But the breeze stirred something in his chest. Something asleep.
They walked on. Back toward the dorm. This time, when he entered, no one looked away. They didn't stare either. Just acknowledged. A fraction. A tilt of a head. A shared silence. He wasn't unknown anymore.
Not known. But not nameless.
He lay down in the same corner. The torchlight flickered, catching only the edge of his eye. Sleep didn't come. Instead, thoughts.
Not clear ones. Not words. Just shapes.
A sound. Low. Mechanical. A voice? Female. Calm. Flat.
[ You are now entering Yamada Station. Doors will open on the left. ]
He jerked upright.
Nothing. Just the cave. Just the silence.
But he remembered the voice.
It didn't belong to this world.