Looming Shadow

The journey back home was painful. Every step I took sent tremors up my spine, and by the time I got home I felt like a dead man walking. My skin was almost white with how pale it was, and my body shook at every minute movement.

My mother immediately noticed that I didn't look well the moment I got home, and her panic only spiked the moment I practically collapsed into her arms.

"I just feel sick." I say for the third time after I got home. Though I doubt it sounds convincing, what with the way I keep wincing as I lay there on my bed.

"I'm fine." I say as she hovers over me with that painfully concerned expression. She doesn't listen. My mother is still, sitting by my bedside, anxiously waiting for my father to get back home. She'd already called him minutes ago, and from the abrupt way the call ended, my father was probably just as concerned as she was.

Maybe it's just my experience from my past life, but it feels…weird. Stifling, almost. I've never had someone worry so needlessly over something I know will pass. And knowing that I can't tell her that I'll be fine hurts me even more.

Having someone worry for me; it feels both warm and suffocating.

The exhaustion is beginning to creep up on me, and I struggle to keep my eyes open. My mother sees this, and she only smiles as she pats my head.

I begin slipping in and out of consciousness by that point.

One time, I woke up to find my father sitting beside me instead. He doesn't seem to have noticed that I'm awake. I do nothing. He looks stressed, and terrified. It looks wrong. That expression doesn't suit him. I fell asleep soon after.

Another time, I wake to see my big sister hovering over me. I open my eyes just to see her replace the wet towel on my forehead, and she freezes as her eyes meet mine. I try to say something, but she presses her finger onto my lips and winks. "It's okay." She says. "Just rest." Whatever I wanted to say is frozen, and I can only nod as I slip back into unconsciousness.

Once my lucidity returns, I find myself waking late at night, moonlight peering through the window blinds. I groan as I push myself up from my bed. Everything still hurts, but I feel well enough to function. My skin looks a tad more vibrant, though still too pale to look anywhere close to being healthy.

I close my eyes, and information floods through my brain about what happened while I was unconscious.

As it turns out, not much. I've been going in and out of consciousness for the past couple days. It's just an hour before midnight now. My family is all asleep, and I'll probably join them soon enough. I still don't feel well, and my eyes tell me that I'll need one more day of rest to fully recuperate from my hasty decision.

And it was hasty, that I can admit. I mean, I know there are monsters lurking in this town, but I still should've gone slower. The increase of strength I experienced is amazing, but putting myself out of commission like this? Not a good idea.

Still, I have a feeling I'll be able to handle the stream of Primal Energy with ease now. Even without using my eyes, there's this feeling inside me that says so. Not that I'm immediately going to go rambo on a tree the moment I'm well enough to move. I promised myself that I'll take it slow for a few days, and I will keep to it.

I drop my head back onto my pillow. I close my eyes, and suddenly my vision shifts as my eyes begin to glow beneath my eyelids.

Suddenly my vision is shrunk down to the cellular level, and I find myself peering into the inner workings of my body. Each cell is enlarged to the size of a house. Each organelle widened to the size of a person. The fuzzy borders of atomic bonds become visible.

That's right. The Eyes of God allows me to view my body down to the cellular-, no, the atomic level. Although my eyes tell me that trying to clearly visualize atoms will fry my brain. I did this by accident when I was checking what changed after that most recent Primal Energy absorption. I was just too delirious to realize what it was back then.

There is a reason why I'm doing this, however.

With all the Primal Energy I've gathered into my body, I can't help but wonder if I can push it out willingly. I mean, some Primal Energy will start leaking out the moment I get a wound and all, but that doesn't count. I want to know how to willingly send out bursts of Primal Energy.

Because my eyes tell me it is possible. But knowing something doesn't equate to being able to do it.

So I'm here, watching various cellular organs moving Primal Energy to keep my body's cells functioning. And it's odd. The Primal Energy I've seen is chaotic, flowing out into the world the moment even the smallest hole appears on the body of an organism.

But the Primal Energy in the cells I'm watching; they're moving with purpose. They flow from one cellular organ to another in a tight river, never straying away from their intended paths.

I use my eyes to look deeper, and it seems to involve…'cooperation', although I'm not sure if that's an adequate word to use. There's an instinctual bond there; the Primal Energy needs a place to stay, and my cells require that energy to keep functioning. It's a symbiotic relationship.

But then why does Primal Energy flood out of an organism the moment a 'wound' is made on their body? If Primal Energy needs the organism just as the other way around, then shouldn't the Primal Energy do its utmost best to remain inside the organism, even if it's wounded? Or am I missing something here?

I want to know, but I don't think I can use my eyes anymore today. My head is ringing like hell, and I think I might start bleeding from my nose if I try looking any further.

So, slightly disappointed, I pull my consciousness back out into the real world. I groan as the headache hits me, and I can only grimace as I sink into my pillow.

It takes only seconds for me to fall asleep.

My sleep is a dreamless one.

When I wake up the next day, it's already past noon. I rise from my bed with a groan. I feel a lot better, but my joints feel stiff as steel. I'm not overly surprised; I did sleep for three days straight and all.

But then a thought hits, and I can't help but frown.

Using my eyes, I can see through the walls of my room. And down on the first floor, I can see my big sister lounging on the couch. Which is…strange. Shouldn't she be in school? Why is she home?

My intent is clear, and my eyes respond in kind. The golden glow of my eyes turns brighter, and information begins flooding my mind. There's a lot, but I'm quick to separate the crucial information from the useless drivel.

And once the full picture comes into my mind, I can't help but freeze.

The day started out normally. My big sister woke up, spent a good few minutes reading her manga, before she went down to eat breakfast. But as she went to grab the box of cereal she usually ate, our mother told her that school is shut down for the week. All schools are shut down.

Apparently, people have started disappearing, but a lot of those people are students. Elementary, middle schoolers, high schoolers; it didn't matter. Some thirty people have disappeared without trace, and nearly twenty of them are students.

My vision returns to normal, and I gasp as I stumble back onto my bed.

People are disappearing, so much so that the schools in town have been shut down to keep people safe.

Immediately, my mind flashes to that monster I saw a week before. That slithering thing that hid in the shadows of the trees; I have no idea if that thing is the cause of this, but I can't help but think so. And I can still remember the sheer, all-consuming hunger I saw in that monster's eyes. It'd wanted to eat me, to eat my family.

That'd been a week ago.

All the people who've gone missing; if that monster really is the cause of this all, then there's a high chance that-

There's a chance that Kiryuu Aika is-

Gritting my teeth, I stand back up. And fighting against my instincts, I pour all my might into my eyes. Pain spikes through my mind, but I push right through and begin scouring through the entirety of Kuoh. Every street, every nook, every building; my eyes roam across them all to find where all these missing people have gone to.

Distantly, I can feel something wet running down my lips, but I keep going.

Then, I see it. On the edge of the town, hiding in the basement beneath the decrepit church that was abandoned years ago, I find that monster. It looks just as I remembered, with an impossibly thin body that seems to melt into the darkness of the basement.

Just close to it are some odd twenty people, unconscious and injured in some way. And just a small distance away, hiding in a corner of the basement is-

I nearly puke.

I can see corpses of people, their bodies half-eaten and their expressions permanently contorted in fear and anguish. Some of the corpses have begun rotting, and some are still fresh.

That disgust soon turns to anger. That thing-, it kidnapped all those people and is eating them!

I can't let this continue. But what can I do? I'm still recovering, and it's not like I know how to fight anyway. My body may be stronger, but so what? It won't mean anything if I can't fight.

…Damn it.

I sigh. For now, I'll keep the thought brewing in the back of my head. I'll no doubt be heading to that abandoned church soon, but I won't rush there without a plan. I'll need to think of something.

…

Curiously, I dab a finger onto my lips. My finger is stained red.

"...Ah." I say as I walk over to the standing mirror just next to my dresser. A concerning amount of blood is trailing down from my nose. Drops of blood are falling from my chin. "Oh dear."

Now then, I need to somehow clean myself off without making my family even more worried. Certainly not a herculean task.

(I somehow manage to do it. Hurray.)