Mikoshi Chiyo walked barefoot through the desolate forest, her eyes lowered and dim. Cold moonlight filtered through the dense green leaves, casting their silhouettes across her magnificent jūnihitoe.
A gaping wound split her abdomen. Blood poured from it, staining the twelve-layered robe. The blood was so dark a red that it seemed almost black, spreading like ink across the pure white silk.
Within her vacant eyes lay an abyssal darkness.
Mikoshi Chiyo knew that she was about to die.
Corrupted by an otherworldly beast, she would die in this defiled body. That would be the final end of her life.
Even so... even if that was all that remained, she did not want to die in such disgrace.
The only thing that had kept her alive this long was the search for a grave: somewhere far from the human world, somewhere no one would ever see her, where she could curl up like an old cat and die in peace.
Deep twilight hung over Ritou. The night wind bent the branches on either side of her, making layer upon layer of leaves rasp against one another.
Chiyo clenched her teeth until they creaked.
She could still taste blood between her lips, rank and metallic with the stench of rust. It was Kiyono Raimei's blood. Like an oni, she had torn open his chest and devoured his flesh.
She still remembered how he had looked: the enormous hole in his chest, splintered bone tangled with mangled flesh, even his beating heart faintly visible beneath it all. And she remembered his final smile, and the last words he had spoken to her:
"You have done the oni proud."
Scenes from the past surfaced in fragments, flashing one after another before her eyes.
She remembered a sword dance long ago, in the courtyard of the Grand Narukami Shrine. The late maples had blazed like a painting beneath a sunset red as fire. Kiyono Raimei had not yet become the Pillar General. The young man had knelt at one side of the courtyard, his tachi resting across his knees, a gentle smile upon his lips as he watched her.
"Once you've heard thunder at its loudest, no other sound can reach you."
"I won. A moment's hesitation is still hesitation. In a duel between samurai, a single moment can be fatal."
—"I won't lose next time. I will always be Ei's personal guard."
"Then I look forward to our next match."
But when that next match came, Kiyono Raimei lost again.
Chiyo bit down on the tip of her tongue, her shoulders trembling faintly. With her head bowed, she whispered, "I told you before... not to hesitate. So why did you...?"
Sorrow filled her eyes.
"You... mustn't hesitate."
At that moment, the whispers in her ears swelled to a deafening roar. Corruption flooded her consciousness, smearing madness across her golden eyes. She let out a pained whimper, like a wounded animal.
She did not want this.
The more she thought, the more she remembered, the cloudier her mind became. The whispers of ghosts and gods grew ever more clamorous. She was falling into the abyss. Darkness was swallowing her, gnawing through her body.
There was no salvation left for her.
Death would be the kindest end.
She had already gone... far enough.
With great effort, Chiyo looked back along the path she had taken. She had reached the deepest part of Chinju Forest. No lights from the human world could be seen here. Watery moonlight spread over her body, and within that translucent glow, she felt peace.
"I wish... I could hear your voice again."
"But... we promised."
She fell into the moonlight. Just before consciousness deserted her, she saw someone approaching.
Kiyo Seigan gathered Mikoshi Chiyo gently into his arms. He lowered his head and studied the oni girl, now wholly consumed by corruption. Something stirred faintly in his eyes.
"Hello," he said to her.
Kiyo wore a plain white kimono. Watery moonlight streamed over its long collar, while his silver-white hair fell all the way to his ankles. His eyes had returned to pale blue, as though an entire lake of stars lay within them.
He looked like an ordinary man.
Two hundred full years had passed since he created the inner world of Musou Isshin. If the first eight centuries had been a time of forgetting, then these final two had been a time of remembrance.
Kiyo Seigan had lived for a thousand years.
At last, he remembered what he had set out to do.
He had a long-standing appointment to keep—a gathering that spanned a thousand years. He had promised to find every guest. Everyone had to be there when the wine was opened.
"You are...?" Chiyo raised her eyes toward him. She did not recognize this face, yet for some reason it felt familiar. Held lightly in his arms, she felt safe.
Her nose twitched. There was a scent upon him that she knew very well.
The oni were born with a keen sense of smell.
He was...?
"Kiyo Seigan," he told her. "I've come to see Seigan fulfilled."
Chiyo could sense nothing unusual about him. She could not detect the slightest trace of elemental power. He was simply a mortal.
A mortal... had no place in the deepest reaches of Chinju Forest, where the Abyssal corruption was at its worst.
"Mortal... run..."
Chiyo tried to tell him to leave, but she could no longer speak. Bloodthirsty madness had almost erased her consciousness. Her thoughts blurred, and she was about to pass out completely.
Her fear soon came true.
The forest rustled around them. From every direction came the clamor of creatures crawling through the undergrowth. Otherworldly beasts converged swiftly upon the living... and in an instant, corruption blotted out the forest.
They were surrounded.
A sorrowful smile touched Chiyo's lips.
Would she drag someone else to his death, even now?
But in the next moment... she froze.
Kiyo did nothing. He did not even draw his sword. His gaze never shifted from Chiyo's face.
The first beast to reach him began to fall apart from the instant its claws touched his body. It crumbled piece by piece toward its trunk, cracks spreading like spiderwebs across its corrupted flesh.
In the span of a heartbeat, it burst into fragments. Those fragments continued to collapse into blood; every drop of blood fractured in turn, until at last it became nothing and vanished utterly into the night.
One beast. Two. Three...
Those that followed struck Kiyo and met the same end. Flesh blossomed, then vanished like momentary fireworks fading across the sky.
They did not make him move a single step.
At last, the remaining monsters of the Abyss felt fear. Yet mindless creatures should not have been capable of fear. This terror came from deeper than thought: the submission of a lesser being before one far above it.
They tried to flee, but it was already too late. Terror crushed their bodies. Once their minds had been severed, their physical forms disintegrated as well. The night wind swept past, and every monster across the mountain turned to ash.
This was beyond anything a mortal could do...
No.
It was beyond even a god.
That was Mikoshi Chiyo's final thought before her consciousness dissolved.
Deep within Chinju Forest stood an abandoned shrine. A maple tree grew before its courtyard, and red leaves covered the vine-choked steps.
"I am the mighty Ioroi!"
With his paws planted upon his hips and his chest thrust out, Ioroi fixed an imperious stare upon the man who had just saved him.
He folded his paws in a warrior's salute and declared in a pompous samurai voice, "Your assistance shall be repaid. But I must make one thing clear: I was not defeated by those fiends. I merely had no wish to take life today..."
The little bake-danuki added for emphasis, "I was not defeated!"
"I see."
Kiyo laid the unconscious Chiyo upon the tatami, then narrowed his pale-blue eyes as he sensed the corruption and karmic burden within her.
"My name is Kiyo Seigan," he told Ioroi. "Her name is Mikoshi Chiyo."
The corruption had reached deep into Chiyo. Her reason had already been almost entirely consumed. If she awoke as she was now, the person who opened her eyes would no longer be Chiyo.
Nuo Exorcism.
It was the only adeptal art capable of expelling and consuming the corruption within her, inherited from Bosacius of Liyue.
Ioroi's round eyes widened as he watched the blood-red color rapidly recede from Chiyo's eyes. As a yōkai, he could naturally sense the dreadful, ominous presence inside her. Now, however, that presence was fading.
The little bake-danuki decided that Kiyo was even more terrifying than the corruption. He had to be some great yōkai more than a thousand years old!
Kiyo took the corruption from Chiyo into himself, yet his eyes remained clear throughout.
Her condition was grave. Even if he saved her, traces would remain in the depths of her soul. Forcing the Nuo Exorcism any further would damage the very foundation of that soul. The residue would return several centuries from now... and when it did, he would leave it to his future self.
Whether or not every trace of the karmic corruption had been removed, Chiyo could no longer walk openly through the world.
In the original course of history, she was supposed to be dead.
She would have to wait here at this shrine, apart from the mortal world, for five hundred years—until she met him again.
"Little bake-danuki," Kiyo said suddenly, "could you do me a favor?"
"You need only ask."
Ioroi answered solemnly. He was a yōkai who always repaid his debts. Kiyo had saved his life, so naturally he had to return the favor... Not that he could not have defeated those otherworldly monsters himself. He simply had not wanted to take life.
He was very loyal, after all.
"Could you..." Kiyo paused and lowered his eyes to Chiyo. The oni girl's brow was faintly furrowed, as though she were trapped in a nightmare. "Could you play with her?"
"Play with her?" Ioroi tilted his head in confusion.
"Having no one to talk to gets lonely." Kiyo's eyes drifted somewhere far away. "I know what that feels like... so I remember it well."
"Will you be our friend? Will you protect her?"
Kiyo looked earnestly at Ioroi, the little bake-danuki's round cheeks reflected in his pale-blue eyes.
Will you be our friend?
In truth, Ioroi did not have any friends. The others of his kind thought him lazy and foolish, and they were tired of his boasting. The bake-danuki would not befriend him. Humans called him a monster, struck him, cursed him, and chased him away. All these years, Ioroi had lived alone.
This was the first time anyone had ever asked him, Will you be our friend?
Ioroi bobbed his round little head. He lowered his eyes, his voice caught in his throat and emerged as a faint, choked whine. At last, as though making a great decision, he looked up at Kiyo and cried:
"Yes!"
"I..." He hesitated, then continued with the utmost seriousness, "I swear I will protect her!"
And so the covenant was made.
Mikoshi Chiyo awoke on the third day.
Heavy rain had fallen the previous night, but the sky had cleared by the time she opened her eyes. Its freshly washed blue was reflected in the puddles before the shrine, as though a piece of the sky had broken away and fallen into the courtyard, clean and crystalline. A breeze from the clearing weather stirred the maple leaves, sending them drifting down to lie thick upon the steps.
"Awake?" someone asked.
Kiyo placed tofu in a pan to fry, then lowered noodles into boiling water. When milky bubbles rose to the surface of the broth, he lifted the noodles into a bowl and laid the fried tofu on top.
Chiyo knelt upon the tatami. Her lowered eyes were empty and lost. She tried to speak, but only something close to a growl emerged from her throat. She touched her abdomen. The wound was still there, but it had already scabbed over.
She had forgotten many things.
Far too many things.
Her memory was as blank as an untouched sheet of paper.
She had even forgotten who she was.
Only instinct remained.
"Would you like a bowl?" Kiyo held out the tofu noodles. "You need to eat if you want to recover."
Chiyo stared at his face. Her nose twitched as she sniffed the fragrance filling the room, almost like a small animal.
She remembered this scent.
It was so familiar.
So familiar... that it made her want to cry.
"Who..." Chiyo forced out. "Who are... you...?"
"The noodles will get cold if you wait any longer." Kiyo smiled at her.
The languid spring light in the courtyard fell between them, and the swaying shadows of the maple leaves shimmered across their eyes.
Chiyo accepted the bowl. She bowed her head and all but devoured the meal, gulping down the broth and swallowing the tofu. Warmth flowed with the food into her chest and spread through every limb.
Kiyo watched her quietly.
By the time nothing remained in the bowl and the oni girl raised her head, tears were streaming down her beautiful face.
"Kiyono..." she whispered. "Raimei."
"Once your wounds have healed"—Kiyo handed her a naginata—"let's have another match."
—
"I have to go."
Kiyo hung a wind chime in the shrine's bedchamber and listened to its delicate notes as the breeze passed through it.
"Chiyo, I need to leave for a while."
For the past ten days, he had been using Nuo Exorcism to cleanse the remnants of corruption from Chiyo's soul. By now, it had mostly been purged.
The appointed time had come. He had to leave the shrine.
He could not arrive early, for that would disturb the timeline and cause changes he could not foresee. Nor could he arrive late, or he would miss his only chance...
He had to reach the right place at the right moment.
That moment was today.
Chiyo did not look up.
She was drawing.
Her style was childish and rough, but she worked with great care. The picture showed two tiny figures fighting with swords. Chiyo knew her memory was poor. She might forget everything, so she had to draw it down.
She kept her head bowed. Her shoulders trembled faintly.
"Hmph. Go, then. Ioroi doesn't care." The bake-danuki assumed a mature and frosty expression and refused to look at Kiyo. But he could not stop himself from adding, "What are you going to do?"
"Save someone." Kiyo smiled. "Or rather, several people."
"Is... is it dangerous?" Ioroi's eyes went wide and pitiful. "Is the enemy strong?"
"Very strong."
Kiyo nodded.
"Perhaps stronger than I am."
"...Then will you come back?"
It was not Ioroi who asked.
Chiyo had set down her drawing. Scattered spring light passed through the shrine's lattice window and entered her lucid eyes, which reflected Kiyo's face.
"Will you come back?" she asked again, with complete seriousness.
Kiyo looked at Chiyo—at his old friend. After a long while, he gave her a solemn nod.
His voice echoed through the swaying spring light.
—"Five hundred years from now, we will meet again."