The night draped Kyoto in an unnatural, suffocating blackness. The kind of darkness that seemed to swallow the very air, pressing in on the town with a weight that wasn't quite tangible, but so deeply felt. It felt as though the earth itself was holding its breath, waiting for something—something unspeakable—to unfold.
Hiroshi sat alone in the stillness of his living room, the dim flicker of the television casting grotesque, broken shadows across the walls. His fingers trembled slightly around the teacup, the liquid swaying inside like a distant memory of warmth. The clock on the wall ticked, a loud, intrusive sound that seemed to mock him as it echoed through the silence. It was well past 11 PM now, and his wife, Yuki, had yet to return. She was always punctual—always. Six o'clock, every evening, she would walk through that door. But tonight?
Tonight, the door remained empty.
Hiroshi's eyes darted to his watch, the ticking now more maddening than ever. His lips parted, but the words that escaped were hoarse, unsure. Something's wrong. The thought dug into him like an infected splinter, impossible to ignore.
"Where is she?" Hiroshi whispered, his voice barely louder than a breath. "Yuki… she was supposed to be here by six. She's never late… Could… Could something have happened to her?" The question lingered in the air, heavy and foreign, like a ghost that had been waiting for its cue.
The silence that followed felt thick, suffocating. Then, just as the weight of it seemed unbearable, Hiroshi's ten-year-old son, Haruto, appeared in the doorway. His face was pale, eyes wide, reflecting something raw and unsettling, something that shouldn't belong to a child.
"Daddy…" Haruto's voice was small, too small, and trembled as it broke the stillness. "Is mommy… Is mommy gonna come home?"
The question hung there between them, unsettling in its innocence, as though it came from a place where time didn't exist. Hiroshi blinked at his son, an involuntary shudder running through him. He forced a smile, though it was thin, an imitation of comfort that didn't reach his eyes.
"Of course she will, Haruto." His voice cracked, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "Just… just give her some time…" He reached out, his hand trembling as it hovered in the air between them. The smile he wore was a facade, fragile and brittle, barely holding together. It didn't feel real.
Nothing felt real.
The front door creaked open, the sound sharp and jagged against the oppressive silence. Yuki stepped inside, but the air seemed to warp around her, recoiling from her presence. Her movements were sluggish, disjointed, as if invisible strings jerked her limbs forward in a grotesque imitation of life. Gone was her usual warmth, her vibrant laughter. What remained was a hollow shell, a puppet with its strings tangled in the dark.
Hiroshi's breath caught in his throat. "Yuki, you're back!" His voice wavered with a fragile hope, a desperate refusal to see what stood before him. He rushed forward, arms wide, but the closer he got, the more wrong everything felt.
Her lips peeled back into a smile—a jagged, unnatural stretch of skin and teeth. It wasn't human. It wasn't Yuki.
Her voice slithered out, a distorted echo of itself. "Hiroshi… Haruto…" The sound seemed to scrape against the walls, a noise that had too many edges.
Before either of them could react, Yuki's arm contorted. Flesh twisted, bones cracked, and her skin rippled as her limb elongated into a nightmarish whip of raw muscle and sharpened bone. The air split with a nauseating crack as she swung it towards them, the motion too fast, too fluid, like a serpent striking.
Hiroshi's instincts kicked in, and he yanked Haruto to the ground, the razor-sharp bone slicing through the air above them. The force of it rattled the room, sending a shiver through the very foundation of the house.
"Yuki…" His voice came out in a thin, brittle whisper. "What are you doing? How… how are you doing this?"
Her laughter erupted, a high-pitched, childlike giggle that crawled beneath their skin. It was wrong—innocent but twisted, like a nursery rhyme played backward.
"Oh, Hiroshi~" The voice that slid from her lips felt mismatched, too light, too playful. "It's always so fun to watch the realization bloom on your faces." Her arm retracted, the bone and sinew pulling back into a mockery of a human limb. "To see your minds break as you watch me change…"
Hiroshi's face drained of color. "You're… you're not Yuki. What are you?"
The thing wearing Yuki's skin cocked its head, the motion too sharp, too precise. "Not Yuki?" She repeated, her voice slipping into a low hum. "Oh, darling, I'm so much worse."
Her skin began to bubble, flesh sliding off bone like wax from a melting candle. Muscles twisted, bones cracked and reformed, and the wet, sickening sound of cartilage snapping filled the room. She did not merely shift—she unmade herself, each contortion a violation of nature, of reality.
When the transformation ceased, the woman who stood before them was a vision of elegance and unease. Her form was delicate, her features soft and inviting, but there was an undercurrent to her beauty—something that pricked at the edges of sanity. Her violet eyes glowed with a hypnotic pull, an abyss wrapped in allure.
Her clothing flowed around her, silks and lace that seemed to breathe with her, whispering secrets against her skin. The translucent fabric teased at modesty, revealing shadows of her form without ever granting satisfaction. She was an embodiment of temptation, every inch a calculated trap.
Hiroshi's skin crawled as the woman stood before them, her silhouette a delicate brushstroke against the dim light, but her presence stained the air like rot. Her voice came, sing-song and saccharine, dripping with a sweetness that clung to his bones.
Aphrona: "Tadaaaa~ I am Aphrona, the arch- of lust."
Her words lingered, their edges sharp with an unspoken promise. Her lips curled into a smile too perfect, too polished—like a porcelain mask hiding a festering wound beneath. She twisted her arm, and flesh melted into the shape of a gleaming blade, wet and organic, as if bone and sinew had been coaxed into metal.
Aphrona: "So, which one of you should I kill first? The boy… or you~?"
Her voice danced with the innocence of a schoolgirl pondering a game, but the air seemed to thicken, suffocating them with the weight of something vile. Hiroshi's knees trembled, his mind a chaos of fear and confusion.
Hiroshi: "What did you do to Yuki!?"
Aphrona's expression shifted, her features softening into a parody of pity. Her eyes, a deep, swirling violet, shimmered with amusement.
Aphrona: "Oh, what did I do~?" She cooed, her arm morphing with a sickening squelch. The flesh twisted and reshaped into a puppet's head—a crude mockery of Yuki.
Puppet Yuki: "Kill me, kill me, kill me."
The voice was wrong. High-pitched and broken, a loop of torment spilling from a mouth that didn't belong. Hiroshi gagged, bile burning his throat as the room seemed to constrict around him. Haruto clung to his side, his tiny fingers digging into his father's arm, their shared fear binding them in silence.
Aphrona's giggle filled the room, light and airy, but beneath it lay the sound of nails scraping against bone. She stroked the puppet's hair, her fingers weaving through strands of flesh as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Aphrona: "She looked so sad, you know. So I did her a favor~"
Her arm rippled, the puppet sinking back into the shapeless mass of her limb, leaving only the memory of its hollow eyes behind. Her blade reformed, sleek and sharp, and she tilted her head, considering them with a lazy, almost loving gaze.
Aphrona: "But enough of that. Let's end this little play, shall we~?"
Time fractured as she moved. One moment, her body was still, the next, her arm was a blur—a silver arc cutting through the air. Hiroshi barely had time to pull Haruto close, his mind a tangle of desperate thoughts and unanswered prayers.
In a single, graceful motion, Aphrona's blade met flesh. The world tilted, and for a brief moment, everything was quiet. Then came the wet sound of bodies splitting, of skin parting like fabric. Blood arced through the air, a dark, glistening ribbon that painted the room in shades of crimson.
Aphrona stood amidst the ruin, her expression serene. She hummed a gentle tune, a lullaby for the dead, her feet stepping carefully over the still-warm halves of what had once been a father and his son.
She knelt beside them, her fingers brushing a stray lock of Haruto's hair. Her touch was soft, motherly, and her smile never faltered.
Aphrona: "I suppose… mercy really isn't my thing, is it~?"
She stood back up and walked towards the door.
The world outside felt like a distorted echo of reality. The air hung heavy, thick with the kind of silence that pressed against the skin. Aphrona stepped out, her feet making no sound against the cracked pavement. Her presence seemed to bend the space around her, an unsettling ripple in the fabric of the ordinary.
Across the street, a figure stood on the edge of a rooftop, the silhouette an alabaster ghost against the dimming sky. Silver hair flowed in slow motion, strands suspended as if time itself had become lethargic.
Aphrona's lips curled into a smile, sweet and venomous. "You know I can see you, right, Selene~?"
A pause, the kind that makes every breath feel too loud.
Selene drifted down from the rooftop, not a movement but a quiet surrender to gravity. She did not walk; she simply existed where she chose to be. Her robes billowed as if the air around her moved at a different speed, slower, thicker. Her eyes, pale and glassy, stared through Aphrona, as if gazing at something behind the world itself.
"I'm aware." Her voice was a whisper wrapped in velvet, brushing against the ears like the soft rustle of funeral shrouds. "How was your little game of shapeshifting… or whatever you call it?"
Aphrona's eyes shimmered, the briefest flash of something dark and eager. "Oh, I'm done, for now. But why the rush? It's not like you enjoy getting your hands dirty."
Selene's lips moved, a ghost of a smile. "I'm only here because… she told me to find you." Her body shifted, reclining mid-air, her form a weightless puppet. She drifted on her back, her silver hair pooling beneath her as if floating in water. "There are whispers… two Apostles have been seen."
Aphrona's expression tightened, a predator's stillness. "Two, you say? That does sound… entertaining." Her voice dipped, sugar-coated with an edge that could cut. "Perhaps I'll speak to her about… comforting them myself~"
Selene did not blink, did not breathe. Her presence seemed to leech the energy from the world, every sound muffled, every shadow stretched. "We'll just have to see, won't we?"
The street around them felt wrong, as if the buildings were bending ever so slightly, gravity itself nodding off into a dream. The longer they stood there, the more the world seemed to slow, to sink, as if the earth were a bed pulling its covers over a tired, dying day.
There were things beneath the surface—hungry things, patient things. And as Aphrona's smile lingered, the air tasted sweet and rotten, a promise of something soft and smothering. The kind of comfort that closed in like a lover's embrace and didn't let go.