All sound nearly ceased as they passed into the dome's domain. So the gasps that broke the sanctuary-like quiet and echoed around the unbelievable world they entered sounded unnaturally loud.
"What…" Lavi whispered, gaping as he stared around.
A completely white, blank town stretched in front of them. All distinct shapes, moldings, and lines but absolutely no color. Even the clouds high above their heads were white and only so shadowed as to see them moving across the vast white sky.
White silhouettes of people moved around the town square. They had no discernible facial features, simply distinctly human forms exhibiting every other characteristic right down to the folds in their clothes. None of them appeared to notice the only spots of color walking in and joining them.
Star had thought there was no sound at all but there was a very low stirring in the air, as if the audio in the place was turned down very low.
"Remember the Rewinding Town?" Allen uttered as he, too, stared.
"When we met Miranda?" Lenalee whispered.
"Yeah," Allen nodded. "We should call this the Blank Town."
"I mean where the heck are we, what is this?" Lavi sputtered. "Are all them really people?"
"Sort of," Mahoja replied. "Don't touch anything."
Carefully, they walked into the crowd.
Lavi stopped to goggle at a quietly giggling and distinctly feminine silhouette in a dress.
"Lavi, you don't even know what that is," Lenalee said.
"Of course I do, it's a girl."
"She doesn't even have a face!"
"Yet she's still a girl and I can see that she is."
Star rolled her eyes.
"Don't touch her." It. Yes, don't touch it was more accurate.
"He really doesn't know what that is," Mahoja muttered. Another way of saying he probably didn't really want to know.
"Don't touch them," Star warned, "Don't touch anything. Don't give them any indication that you're here and they'll ignore you. And that's what you want them to do, trust me."
"Psstt."
Everyone looked in the direction of that noise.
"Jump," Lavi said. The Finder was standing in a narrow nearby alley, masterfully inconspicuous. "You're okay."
Accompanied by a standard issue golem similar to Mahoja's, Jump waved them into the mouth of the alley and they joined him, moving away from the blank people.
"Hi, Lavi. Good to see you again. I wasn't entirely sure of what would happen if any of the other Finders entered the dome so I told them I'd go in alone. It was a risk but no worries, I've just been canvasing and observing the area." Jump gave Star a look. "You're late."
"Have you located the Innocence?" Star hedged.
Jump led them through a maze of alleys away from the main street that was full white silhouettes going about their business.
"Yeah. It's in a very conspicuous fountain up ahead." He stopped at the mouth of alley a few moments later.
Star peered around the corner and saw a big marble fountain up ahead. It was the only thing they'd seen that gave any motion to the scenery other than the blank people and the clouds. It was also the only thing emitting a clearly audible sound: the crystal clear water running and chiming in the pools of it's basins.
Something inside the fountain was shining brightly, shooting off brilliant, mother of pearl rays from the crystalline water.
"And that must be the Innocence," Lenalee said.
"One little problem though: They're already here," Jump said. Very pointedly, he added to Star and Mahoja, "All of them."
They was a hoard of Akuma filling the air around the fountain and standing scattered on the white flagstone around it.
"Akuma," Allen said, then he frowned. "But my eye isn't reacting. Are we inside some kind of barrier?"
"The Innocence drew them in but somehow it's put them in a trance or something," Jump explained. "And even worse, there's one more problem…"
Jump pointed at the base of the fountain. The glassy-eyed townspeople and travelers clustered on the floor, more splashes of color against the whiteness aside from the Exoricists, Finders, and the Akuma.
Star stared determinedly at the fountain.
"It's right there. I'll grab it and this will be over."
Even though she was talking to Jump and Mahoja, Lavi and Lenalee immediately protested.
"You told us not to touch anything!"
"And what if you walk over there, take the Innocence, and whatever spell is holding the Akuma breaks and they wake up? We have to get the missing people out of here first."
"It won't matter one way or the other once I have the Innocence."
Misunderstanding, Lenalee looked shocked.
"That doesn't sound like you, Star. You're not the kind of person who puts the lives of innocent people in danger to complete a mission objective."
"You don't understand—"
Stepping in Star's path, Allen said quietly, "Star, what do you know about this place? There's something you haven't told us,"
"I wasn't going to tell you anything." Star bit her lip anxiously. "But since we've come this far…"
"What do you mean?"
Jump and Mahoja shook their heads at her but Star barreled forward anyway.
"Your eye isn't reacting because this—the Blank Town as you called it-is a special space." She summoned a monocle with the same colored lens as her glasses. "Take this, Allen. Put it on your left eye, your cursed eye. Look at the blank people on the street behind us and study the sky."
Allen took the monocle did as she said. His eyes widened in horror. He looked up and all around as far as he could see.
"It can't be!"
"Allen, what is it? What do you see?" Lenalee asked urgently.
"Every one of the blank people. And filling the sky—all Akuma!"