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Kei clutched the old talisman she’d given him. The air grew thick, cold enough to crystallize his breath. Then, from the corner of the room, a — not flat, but rising like smoke into the shape of a small, faceless child.
Outside, a dozen more silhouettes pressed against the nursery’s frosted windows. They weren’t trying to get in. They were for Kei to walk out — so they could follow him home.
In a rain-soaked suburban town, 18-year-old had long stopped believing in ghosts. That changed the night his childhood friend Yayoi Hozuki dragged him to an abandoned nursery — a place where shadows didn’t follow the laws of light.
It didn’t speak. It only — first at Kei, then at a bloodstained closet.
When Kei opened the closet, he didn’t find a corpse. He found a , larger, wearing the tattered coat of a teacher. The two shadows merged, their silent screaming shaking the floorboards.
“One spirit,” Yayoi whispered, her doll-like eyes fixed on a cracked window. “Just one to start. You need to see them, Kei. Otherwise, you’ll never survive what’s coming.”
Yayoi stepped forward. “That’s not a haunting. That’s a gathering . The first of many.”
If you’d like me to based on that title and the mood of Dark Gathering , here’s a short original tale inspired by it: Title: The Shadow That Gathers (Based on “Anime Kage – Dark Gathering – 01”)
End of Episode 1 setup.
