Lord of Mediocrity

The bright moon vanished from the sky, leaving only a spread of cold, clear radiance that illuminated a district shrouded in mist.

The buildings were tall, rotten, and coated in dust, as though they had been abandoned for many years.

Strangely, this seemed to be a corner of Old Locust Street, yet there wasn't a single resident. The place was unnaturally vast and deathly silent.

Tap-tap!

Tap-tap!

The sound of running footsteps rang out. A girl's figure sprinted onto the roof of a residential building, then broke into a run and suddenly leaped, landing on the rooftop of another building.

Behind her, an unknown detective was one step too slow. He let out a shriek before being dragged into the darkness, his voice quickly fading away.

"The spirit here... appears during the Hour of the Demon!"

Yamamura Sayako darted into the building, frantically searching for somewhere to hide.

"Then... it drags everyone who sees it, or whom it sees, into this space..."

She hid beneath an office desk and gritted her teeth as she treated the wounds on her body.

There were tears in her eyes, but she stubbornly refused to let them fall.

"So... those who disappear from the real world leave no trace at all, as though they were taken by kami-kakushi..."

As for how she had discovered that this was a different space—

There wasn't a single person in these buildings, and no one could escape that stretch of mist. That was enough to draw a conclusion.

No matter which direction they fled in, they would eventually return here!

In other words, any ordinary person dragged here was trapped in a dead end!

There was simply... no escape!

All they could do was struggle endlessly, suffer, and go mad...

Then offer up their rationality.

That was the