The Phantom Thieves were changing. They all felt it—though none could quite put it into words.
It started with Ryuji's transformation. One moment she'd been the brash, loud-mouthed guy they all teased and trusted. The next, she was still Ryuji… but her voice was softer, her movements more fluid, her jokes no less terrible—but tinged now with uncertainty and something unspoken in her gaze when she looked at Ren.
They all noticed. But none of them wanted to be the first to say it.
Yusuke, perhaps the most composed of them all, had been unusually silent lately. He stared at his sketchpad far more than usual, pages filled with incomplete images of light and shadow—feminine curves, wind-swept hair, fragmented reflections. He wouldn't show them to anyone.
"She is still Ryuji," he told Ann when she asked. "But something in her energy… resonates differently now. It is delicate. Restless."
Ann had nodded, but it wasn't just Ryuji she was watching. It was Ren.
He moved through the group like he always had—quiet, thoughtful, sharp-eyed. But his presence had begun to feel... heavier. Not dark, not oppressive. Just there in a way that was impossible to ignore. When he looked at you, it was as if he saw more than what you wore on your face. Like he could read the tension beneath your words, the truths you tried to hide behind smirks and sarcasm.
Even Morgana, once relentlessly protective of Ann and quick to boast, had gone quiet when they returned from Mementos that day. Their voice faltered. Their steps slowed. And when Futaba pointed out that Morgana's voice had… shifted, subtly higher, softer—they disappeared upstairs for the rest of the day.
Futaba, meanwhile, was digging through every database and shadowed corner of the Metaverse's code, her fingers flying across keys. "This isn't just a freak anomaly," she muttered under her breath. "This reeks of deity interference. Or worse."
And through it all, Ren stood at the center like the eye of a storm.
He said little. He offered comfort when it was needed. He met their growing questions with steady calm. But there was something in the way his gaze lingered—especially on Ryuji, especially when he thought no one else was looking.
Makoto watched him most carefully.
She noticed the subtle changes—the way his posture straightened like a king beneath a cloak of shadows. The way people instinctively turned when he entered a room. The way her own heart beat faster when he simply said her name.
"He's… changing too," she said to herself one night, alone in the student council room.
But the question that lingered, unanswered, was whether Ren's transformation was the answer to their growing mystery—or its source.