Nasu and Takeuichi's first collaborative work released professionally and the second work in the Nasuverse after Notes (third if you count the unreleased Mahoyo draft). The publication history of the series means that while it started serialisation as a web novel pre-Tsukihime, it would not be fully released until after the release of the Tsukihime fan-disk Kagetsu Tohya with the publication of a two volume light novel form.

Ryougi Shiki is a cold, abrasive and somewhat depressive young woman of the age of 18 with the ability to see the "lines" of death in a thing. So long as it exists, when cut through these lines - it dies.

There's a certain emptiness to her life, a feeling of something being missing.

And a desire to kill.

Kokutou Mikiya however is a completely normal young man. Nice, caring and completely unassuming.

He's the most important person in Shiki's life. Her rock tying her to normality.

The series focuses on Shiki and Mikiya and at first is somewhat of an episodic series dealing with the tragic supernatural cases they get involved in working under the morally ambigious mage Aozaki Touko

and her agency - The Hollow Shrine. Although, from as early as the second story, a backstory and overarching mystery surrounding the events surrounding the 1995 serial murder case in Mifune City and Shiki's involvement in it.

The Series consits of 8 Chapters:

• Overlooking View/Thanatos
• Murder Speculation Part A/... and nothing heart
• Remaining Sense of Pain/ever cry, never life
• The Hollow Shrine/garan-no-dou
• Paradox Spiral/Paradox Paradigm
• Oblivion Recorder/Fairy Tale
• Murder Speculation Part B/…not nothing heart
• The Boundary of Emptiness
.

In addition, two bonus volumes - Future Gospel/recalled out summer and Final Record/the Garden of Oblivion - were released after the completion of the main series. The former is composed of two interconnected stories as well as a few manga chapters and is pretty important to the series as a whole, and the latter is just a fun bonus.

For years only a pretty bad translation called "Empty Boundaries" was availbe in terms of complete translations, it contained translation errors, random renaming of established Nasuverse concepts, etc. Baka-Tsukai tried to translate the series but gave up after Volume 4, and attempts on Beast's Lair never seemed to get anywhere. However, a compliation of the Baka-Tsukai and various Beast Lair users' translations has been released - check Beast's Lair to find it.

It's not perfect and has one noticable mistake from Chapter 2 not corrected - the Character "Rio" should be named "Lio" - but it is far better than the Empty Boundaries nonsense.

Read it.

The Anime

Anime adaptions of all 8 chapters plus Future Gospel exist - check Amazon or whatever movies/home-entertainment more generally stores exist in your home country (In the UK it would be HMV) to see if they have been released in your country (Annoyingly, 1-8 have been by MVM but Future Gospel has not for whatever reason). IDK and IDC about streaming rights.