Yuji slammed his fists against the barrier till his knuckles bled. It didn't budge. Juno ran her hands across the cursed seams, muttering incantations so fast her lips started sparking. Nothing. The whole thing pulsed like a dying heart—sealed tight, rejecting every soul outside it except Thorne's.
"Why him?!" Juno snapped, almost tearing up. "He can't even hold eye contact during brunch—"
"Because," Spillglass said solemnly, raising a glowing wine bottle, "the domain recognizes tragedy."
Marrow, fed up, threw a bone dagger at it. The blade shattered. "Okay. That's new."
Spillglass began pacing in circles, pouring rum into a chalk sigil shaped like an anime girl. "We could... reverse it."
"Reverse what?" Juno asked.
"The metaphysical consequences of emotional selectivity."
"You don't even know what that means."
"I know it gets the ghosts talkin'."
Yuji watched it all happen, dazed. "Is this... normal for you guys?"
"No," Father Asher said as he walked up, clutching a flask and an entire bag of communion wafers. "This is worse."
Marrow turned to Yuji, dead serious. "If we don't get in soon, he'll either die—"
"—or worse," Flint cut in. "He'll emotionally evolve and become useless to the team."
They all nodded solemnly.
Plan A had failed.Plan B had exploded.It was time for Plan C: Dumbfuckery in Motion.
Juno pulled out the ancient, forbidden sigil known as the "Shared Trauma Loop." Illegal in five prefectures. The last time it was used, a middle school debate team achieved enlightenment mid-seizure.
"You're not seriously—" Marrow started.
But she already carved it into the ground with a lipstick wand.
"Everyone shut up," she said. "We're gonna trauma-link, emotional-syphon, and breach the domain from the inside."
Yuji stared. "That's a thing?"
"No. It's not. But it sounds real, doesn't it?"
They all joined hands.
Spillglass muttered something about the moon. Flint was chanting lyrics from a 2004 emo band. Father Asher started humming "Careless Whisper." The sigil pulsed once, twice—
—and exploded in a flash of cursed glitter.
Inside the barrier, Thorne staggered.
The cleaver had cracked. His grief had wavered. Mahito stood unbothered, analyzing him like a half-finished sculpture. He wasn't attacking. He was watching.
"You really loved her, didn't you?" Mahito said. "The way you channel pain into power… it's beautiful. But clumsy."
Thorne couldn't speak. His vision was splitting. The memory was slipping like sand between bloody fingers. He clutched the handle of his dying weapon and screamed—trying to hold on, trying to force the grief back in place.
Mahito stepped forward. "Want to know what your problem is?"
He reached out and gently tapped the edge of the cleaver.
"You haven't blamed her yet."
The weapon shattered.
Thorne dropped to his knees. Every breath felt like swallowing knives. And just behind Mahito, Junpei lay twitching—alive, barely, soaked in half-spun curse energy and locked in his own mental hellscape.
Thorne looked up, trembling. "Don't touch him."
"Oh, but he's mine now," Mahito said. "His soul's a blank slate. Guilt. Anger. Isolation. I don't even have to twist him—just let him break himself."
That's when the barrier cracked.
Outside, Juno screamed something incomprehensible. A bolt of pink energy exploded from her hands. Yuji had locked eyes with the domain like it insulted his mother. Spillglass was levitating, reciting his ex's breakup text like it was sacred scripture. Marrow was screaming and stabbing air. Father Asher was performing CPR on the sigil. It wasn't dying. He just thought it helped.
And Flint?Flint shoved a flaming skewer through the heart of the trauma circle and yelled:"OPEN UP OR WE TRAUMADUMP THE WHOLE CHURCH!"
The domain wall exploded.
Yuji launched in like a bullet. Flint followed by riding Marrow like a snowboard. Juno floated in like a Sailor Moon transformation gone wrong. Father Asher descended upside-down from a cursed chandelier, wine in one hand, lit incense in the other, screaming, "THE LORD COMETH AND HE AIN'T SOBER."
Mahito's eyes went wide. "What the—"
Yuji punched him across the face so hard it echoed like a stadium hit. "THAT'S FOR JUNPEI!"
Spillglass landed next to Thorne, lifted him by the collar, and slapped him in the face.
"Forge a goddamn weapon now, you melodramatic man-shaped funeral!"
Thorne blinked. "I—I can't. The memory... it slipped—"
Juno appeared, pressed a charm to his forehead, and whispered:"She would've wanted you to swing."
Something ignited.
Thorne stood, fists shaking, eyes burning. But this time, it wasn't Claire he thought of.It was them.Every idiot in his squad. Every idiot that jumped into hell for him.He reached deep. Past grief. Past trauma.
Into something stupider.
The cleaver reformed—but not as a blade. It came back as a massive, cursed tuning fork — pulsing with emotional frequency.
"What the hell is that?" Yuji asked.
Spillglass grinned. "That... is new."
Thorne grinned wide. "Let's see what music guilt makes."
Mahito's smile dropped.
The fork hummed.
The air screamed.