The Time Has Come for the Stars to Align

An underwater city?

A thought flashed through Norio Kitagawa's mind. If this was a mirage, did that mean such a city truly existed somewhere—more precisely, in some Ocean?

He peered at it.

Green slime coated the deserted city, leaving everything slick and wet. Its sickly hue seemed to hint at something dreadful lurking within.

The stones that made up the city bore pictographs he could not understand. One glance filled him with a sense that space itself had slipped out of place. The symbols seemed to exert a strange visual Corruption; merely looking at them made him nauseous.

Something unspeakably terrifying seemed to lurk deep within the city, somewhere he could not pinpoint. Even without seeing it, he sensed the danger.

"What is that?"

Norio Kitagawa's subordinate, Onodera Ryohei, stared at the bizarre sight in a daze.

An Ocean overlapped almost all of Saitama Prefecture, and within it stood a towering city wider than the prefecture itself. He had never seen anything like it.

"I-is that R'lyeh?"

The priest on a video call with Norio Kitagawa had also seen the immense city through the camera. Familiar with the Cthulhu Mythos, he recognized it at once.

"N-no way."

At the name, Onodera Ryohei began to tremble all over.

R'lyeh. The place where the Evil God Cthulhu Fhtagn slept.

Was the Evil God Cthulhu Fhtagn about to awaken?

Suddenly, a chant drifted toward them, sounding like children singing a song.

But when they listened closely, it sounded more like countless people kneeling before an altar to some unknown horror and reciting a prayer.

"When the rust-red star returns from the endless heavens, when the celestial hymn rings through the dark night sky..."

"The time has come for the stars to align..."

"In the house of R'lyeh, sleeping Cthulhu, we beseech you to