Shinkai - The Eyes That Shouldn't Exist

The stairs didn't end.

What began as a narrow spiral of rusted iron gave way to cracked stone, then broken tile, then something older — bones of a city buried beneath its own shadow.

Kazuo's boots echoed with each step. The scarf around his face itched, but he kept it in place. Up above, the sun had already vanished behind the towers of Yurelda. Down here, there was no light at all.

Only cold.

The kind that sank into skin — not from wind or water, but from absence.

He reached the base of the stairwell, where a rusted pipe dripped slow droplets into a pool. Moss clung to the walls in patches, faintly luminescent. Kazuo struck the side of an emberstone — one of the small magical torches Gramps had packed — and soft orange light bloomed into the space around him.

He stepped into the corridor.And found silence.

The Hollow Veins were real.

Not myth. Not exaggeration.

Wide tunnels, carved long ago and left to rot. Ruins and glyphs and Stone arches framed pathways that stretched into the dark. Faded murals lined the walls — images of long-lost rivers, of spirit-beasts dancing in moonlight, of cities without spires.

He passed a rusted sign:

LEVEL C – Transit Echo.

The paint was peeled away, but the letters remained sharp, etched into steel.

At one point, the tunnel forked.

To the left, the air was damp.To the right, it was dry — and silent in a way that made the skin itch.

Kazuo took the right.

Somewhere deeper in the tunnels, a whisper curled through the dark.

Kazuo froze.It wasn't a word — more like a breath.Like something was exhaling where no lungs should be.

He drew closer to the wall, hand resting near the hilt of his sword. Water dripped steadily in the distance.

Then a creak — a rusted pipe — and silence again.

He moved onward.

A while later, he found what had once been a platform. The edges were crumbled, stones missing in jagged chunks. But it overlooked a vast channel — a man-made river long since dried, now home to silence and rot.

He sat for a moment, trying to orient himself.Gramps was right. This is no place for normal people.

He leaned back, staring up into the dark ceiling far above.

From here on out, he didn't belong to the surface anymore.

Kazuo heard the sound before he saw the light.Not voices, not yet — but movement. Cloth brushing stone, the soft clink of glass, a faint lull in the air like wind stirred by breath and fire.

Then came the flickers.

At first he thought they were lanterns. But as he crept closer along the cracked corridor, torch in hand, he realized the lights moved too freely — drifting, pulsing, like living things.

He rounded a bend and found a wall of woven tarps, stitched together from fabric and old sails.

Below, through the gaps, he saw it:

A market.

Underground.

Lit by jars of colored fire.

Alive. Loud. Moving.

Makeshift stalls lined a wide corridor carved into the earth. Shadows danced behind thin cloth walls. Steam curled upward from blackened pots. He could hear laughter. Bartering. Coins. People.

Not just humans.

He spotted pointed ears, scaled skin, tails vanishing behind drapes. Fairies. Beastfolk. Mixed and mingling freely.

And yet, the old order still bled through.

A black-eyed boy crouched near one of the stalls, scrubbing stone with a rag wrapped around his knuckles. His hands were cracked. His face sunken.The vendor standing above him barked at a customer without looking down once.

Further along, another black-eyed figure stood holding a lantern above a merchant's wares — arms trembling, eyes glassy, naked. No one thanked him. No one saw him.

Kazuo's mouth tightened.

Even down here... where law was supposed to be dead... their chains still held.

He adjusted the scarf over his mouth and turned away.

He lingered a moment longer, watching the flickering glow of the market below. Then he rose from the edge of the platform and began walking — slowly, deliberately — toward it.

The sounds of fire and trade echoed faintly ahead.

Then —

"You don't belong."

The voice cut through the stone like a knife.Old. Cracked. Female.Clearer than wind. Sharper than instinct.

Kazuo turned.

A figure sat just off the path — hunched, wrapped in layers of green and brown cloth. Her face was veiled in dark fabric, frayed and stiff with age. Her hands, if she had any, were folded beneath the robe. She didn't move.

She had been silent when he passed.Now she had spoken.

Kazuo stepped toward her, cautious. Torchlight flickered on the wall behind her.

"What do you mean?" he asked.