[Location: Ninth Petal Tower - Shirohana's Private Quarters.
Time: Midnight | Cosmic Phenomenon - Inkveil Aurora Drift]
Night in the Arc Sanctum wasn't quiet.
Outside the enormous wall-length window of Shirohana's room, the sky shimmered in slow, elegant pulses of ink-black light and gold-streaked meteors. Cosmic rivers bled across constellations, swirling like spilled story-ink in the heavens.
Her bedroom was structured in an elegant,
Ceremonial minimalism, dark wooden panels etched with living scripture, two hovering spirit lanterns floating at the ceiling's corners, and an elevated bed wrapped in spellwoven silk curtains.
Dozens of blades not for battle, but for memory, hung silently on a shrine wall: each one marked with the name of someone she couldn't save.
In the middle of it all, Shirohana lay still in her dark wood-frame bed. Her body was wrapped in a white-and-black silk nightgown, shaped delicately across her flawless form, soft yet tightly woven around her waist and legs. The fabric bore patterns of faded cherry petals and broken kanji, subtle, quiet, private.
But she wasn't resting.
Her hands twitched. Sweat clung to her forehead. Her breath hitched in ragged pulses.
Kōgetsu and Mangetsu, her twin fox familiars, lay curled on opposite sides with her, their fur dimly glowing with protection wards.
But even they could not stop what came.
Her mind was descending.
[Nightmare Realm: First Petal Memory - "Crimson Hearth Village"]
Age: 5
---
"Okaaa-san!"
"Look, look! I wrote a poem about you!"
The voice was high-pitched, bright, childlike.
Shirohana, much younger, dressed in red-inked robes, bounced into the central courtyard of a village on a mountain slope beneath five falling moons.
Cherry blossoms floated in the warm wind. Tall warriors in ceremonial Oni armor trained in the distance. Her father, a hulking figure with white horns and laughter like thunder,
Watcher her mother prepare the night's prayer circle.
Her mother was a tall, beautiful oni priestess, soft eyes, calligraphy-stained hands, and a voice that made even wild spirits pause.
"Let me see, little blossom," her mother said.
Shirohana held out a parchment, carefully folded.
Her father leaned down. "Hah! I bet she beat your scroll record again, old flame!"
"It's not about speed! It's about what the words say!"
"Well said, Hana," her mother laughed softly.
"Your words hold power. Always."
The smell of burning incense. The clang of wooden practice swords.
She could still remember it all. Perfectly.
Until-
A sudden distortion tore the dream.
Voices changed pitch.
The wind twisted. Sakura petals stopped moving.
A distant bell rang, hollow.
Then a second one, louder, out of place.
Shirohana's child self stopped laughing.
The sky turned violet.
"Okaaa-san." She asked.
"Why's the fire bell ringing at night?"
Her mother didn't answer.
Her father's face went hard.
"Hana. Get behind me. Now."
Then-
BOOM.
A blast ripped across the horizon, flattening trees. Oni warriors screamed in a tongue that was older than pain.
The mountain blurred.
The air stank of ozone, ash, and betrayal.
Ten seconds ago, young Shirohana was laughing. Writing poetry. Watching the white-blossomed trees dance in the spring wind.
Now?
The wind carried blood.
Screams. Explosions. Sizzling flesh. Chanting in a language not meant for this world.
"Otousan... Okaasan... what is going on!?"
Shirohana's small voice cracked under panic.
Her little fists gripped tightly onto the silken collar of her father's battle robe.
Her body bounced in his grip, clutched against his chest, as he ran through fire and shrapnel without hesitation.
Her father's name was Raijin Hozuki, Warlord of the Eastern Oni Court. Eight-foot-tall, skin like burnished steel, two massive white horns, and arms strong enough to split mountain stone.
Her mother, held in his other arm, was Maika Hozuki, High Priestess of the Ink-Blooded Scrollkeepers. Gentle, quiet, but a monster in combat when provoked.
Maika's robes were already soaked with ink-sigil blood. Her lips moved in silent prayers, trying to anchor barrier wards as they ran.
Raijin's voice rumbled, yet held tight control.
"Stay quiet, Hana, don't look back. Don't listen. Just hold on."
But Shirohana only five years old couldn't stop herself.
She turned her head over her father's shoulder.
And saw her uncle Jinbei, her father's brother leading the assault.
Not defending.
"Oji-san...?" She whispered, her voice cracking.
Jinbei's once proud ceremonial armor was stripped down to raw mutagenic grafts. His hands were no longer Oni hands, they'd become serrated bonegrowths. Twitching with unstable Evolution Paradigm mutations. One eye burned like an engine.
He pointed at Raijin across the burning courtyard.
"You should've accepted the Adaptum gift, brother."
"Your traditions made us weak. And now we're rebuilding."
Dozens of Oni warriors behind Jinbei had changed, no longer themselves.
Some grew third arms, others shed their horns like dead skin.
They screamed with voices warped by evolutionary madness.
Raijin didn't argue.
He just kept running.
----
[Descent - Shrine of Forgotten Petals]
The inner sanctum of the Hozuki line, a garden of floating scripture stones surrounded by ancient scroll-altars was half-destroyed. Crystal ink wells exploded in arcs. Light flickered unnaturally.
Raijin stopped, setting both Maika and Shirohana down inside a half-broken prayer circle.
His hands shook slightly. It was the first time Shirohana ever saw that.
"Maika, the Seal-"
"I know," her mother said gently, even while her fingers bled. "I'll activate it."
Shirohana clutched her mother's robes. "Don't leave me. Please."
Maika pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"Little blossom, this place will protect you. Even if we can't."
"But I don't want a place!" She cried.
"I want you!"
Then Raijin knelt in front of her, eyes softer than anyone would've believed.
"Hana. Listen to your otousan. You're going to grow stronger than both of us. You're going to protect others. Just like I protected you."
He pulled something from his back. A sword wrapped in white cloth.
He placed it in her lap.
"You won't be able to lift this now. Not yet. But one day, when it answers you... It'll protect what we couldn't."
"Her name is Inkfall Moonlight. She'll sing only when you're ready."
Shirohana screamed and clung to them.
They held her one last time.
The circle is activated. A golden-edged barrier flared around her like a petal blooming in reverse.
Through that transparent dome, she watched her parents turn to face their death.
Maika began chanting in ancient verse.
Raijin raised his gauntlets and roared,
Cracking the floor with the sound.
And then-
BOOM!
A shockwave. A scream. A gurgling roar of flesh-splitting magic. Then silence.
Shirohana tried to run to them but the barrier wouldn't let her out
So she did the only thing her tiny soul could manage.
She screamed.
She cries.
That's the only thing she could do...
---
[Inkblade Awakening - Trauma Core Unseal]
The sword. [Inkfall Moonlight] suddenly pulsed.
The scroll-wrapping around it unraveled.
Black ink floated upward. Each word burned into her arms, her eyes, her back.
And the katana melted into her hand, forming into what it would one day become.
She didn't swing it.
She just fell to her knees.
And screamed again.
But this time, her voice carried words not hers.
"Let the poem end where betrayal begins."
A flash. Then unconsciousness.
----
----
----
["First Petal Memory - End of the Oni Flame"]
[Location: Crimson Hearth Grounds - Inner Sanctum Ruins.
Time: Unknown - Post Slaughter.]
---.
The dream did not ease her return.
Young Shirohana's eyes fluttered open with a groggy haze. Her body ached, her throat felt like sand, and her limbs trembled as if they'd fought for hours she couldn't remember.
Her small hands, once wrapped around parchment scrolls and cherry blossom stems, now gripped dried blood and fractured gravel.
"Oka...san...?"
"Otou...san...?"
She sat up.
The golden barrier that once cocooned her in safety was gone, shattered glass remnants of arcane origin glistened around her like fallen stars.
The shrine?
Gone.
The floating scripture stones?
Cracked or melted.
The prayer ring and ancestral walls?
Charred.
Even the mountainside sky looked sick, hung over with veils of smoke and twisted energy.
Strange colors swirled above: sickly violet, bleeding blue, and ink-black clouds that rained ash like funeral snow.
"Okaa...san...?"
She staggered to her feet, barefoot, every step into the soft, squelching soil a mistake her mind tried to undo.
The smell hit her first.
Burned bones and rotting magic.
The sound next.
Flies.
So many flies.
Then,
She saw them.
"The Scene of Massacre"
In the center of what was once the great Oni court courtyard stood a hellish sculpture of death.
Her father, Raijin Hozuki, once invincible now lay on his knees, upper body slumped over her mother, Maika Hozuki, who was on her side, faxe exposed to the sky, eyes half-lidded and glassy.
Their bodies were held together by a massive blade, not a sword, but a fused Monolith of bone, rebar, and cursed ink, a weapon forged by Evolutionist madness.
It pierced straight through them, from Maika's chest to Raijin's back.
His lower body is gone.
Her mother's legs and arms were missing below the knees and elbows
And yet they looked...
Peaceful.
His arms were around her.
He had embraced her from behind, shielding her even in death.
Their blood-his, dark red and steaming,
her's, violet-threaded and ink-flecked, mixed into a growing river.
It ran down the slope of the mountain like ceremonial paint.
"No... no no no..."
"Please..."
Shirohana dropped to her knees, crawling through mud, blood, and pools of ink-drenched entrails. She didn't even flinch when her small hand landed in something soft, wet, and wrong.
She reached them.
Her mother's body was still warm.
Her father's eyes were closed, a trace of his final fury etched into his jaw.
She screamed.
But the scream was soundless, a muted nightmare echo.
Around them were hundreds of bodies.
The traitors: grotesque, mutated, their limbs half-transformed into insect legs or biomech spines, some with bines twisted into weapons, others melted mid-mutation.
The loyal: her family's guards, retainers, and cousins. All Oni. All dead. Some burned. Some exploded from the inside. Some were torn apart with ritual blades still in hand.
The ground was a battlefield, yes- but not a clean one.
It was a graveyard.
A butcher's stage.
And in the center of it-
Her parents.
Frozen.
"Why...?"
Her voice cracked. She shook her mother's shoulder gently.
Then her father's wrist.
"You promised..."
Tears mixed with ink. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the giant sword piercing them both.
"I'll pull it out. I can still help-!"
But the blade didn't budge.
Instead, it sang.
A deep, guttural hum that reverberated through her skull, not a sound, but a meaning.
A curse.
And it responded to her hand.
The Echo Triggered
"Let the poem end where betrayal begins."
The phrase from before returned, but this time... it wasn't just a line.
It was a trigger.
The world around her froze the smoke, the flies, even the blood in the air.
And then the air split open, like someone tearing parchment in two.
A black Inkflower bloomed on the corpse-ridden ground beneath her, spiraling petals of negative space unfurling in silence.
The shattered katana, Inkfall Moonlight, rematerialized in her hand.
This time, she gripped it without hesitation.
Her breathing turned ragged. Her eyes glowed with the reflection of a thousand unsaid words.
"I'll never forget this."
"I'll never let this be rewritten."
"I will bury war in ink."
The world around her twisted.
The Dream shook.
Her body, even now in sleep, twitched violently.
Kōgetsu and Mangetsu, sleeping beside her in the present, stirred, ears flicking, fur on edge.
The spiritual link to their master was surging with unprocessed grief.
The nightmare wasn't over.
----
[ "Petal Rite of the Dead" ]
[Location: Crimson Hearth - Oni Clan Burial Grounds (Ravaged)]
Ash clung to her skin. Blood to her fingers.
Smoke to her hair.
The sun never rose again in the memory.
The skies remained grey, blanketed in a purple-black storm cloud that churned without thunder like the world had held its breath in guilt.
Young Shirohana stood motionless at the edge of the crater where her home used to be.
Her arms were torn, her ceremonial dress shredded, her knees scraped raw from crawling through broken grass and the bones of her people.
She had dug.
With her hands.
With rock.
With a broken fragment of a garden lantern base.
Each body part she could move,
She did.
Her parents were the last.
She placed them in a shallow grave lined with the sakura blossom petals that had survived the fire, only four or five, but it felt right.
Her father's horns she set beside his hands, gently.
Her mother's prayer beads, burned and broken, she placed over her eyes.
Around them she lay the loyal warriors, the guards, her neighbors, the ink-callers, the sword tutors, the ones who had stood and died instead of joining the traitors.
Some were so mangled she couldn't find names.
But she buried them anyway.
Not in proper coffins.
Not in sealed ink-urns.
Just dirt, stones, and flower petals, because that's all she had.
She stood over the mass grave for a long time, too numb to scream anymore.
Then, her legs finally gave out.
She collapsed forward, scraping her knees on the jagged rock.
Blood seeped through her robes.
"Okaasan..." "Otousan..."
Her voice was hoarse. She tried to cry, but her throat burned too badly.
She dropped to her knees in front of the grave, and slowly, painfully, brought her trembling hands together.
Fingers bruised. Nails cracked. Wrists shaking.
"A...ari...kato...goza..."
She couldn't finish the word.
She swallowed, choking on air.
And then she tried again.
---
[The Prayer of the Petal Flame - Oni Clan Dialect]
(taught only to direct bloodline daughters of the Eastern Oni Court)
She bowed low, her head almost touching the dirt and her voice came out raspy, broken, too heavy for a five-year-old:
"Ten no mon o tozasu hana no kotoba..."
(Heaven's gate closes with the words of the flower)
"Chi ni shizumu tame no uta wa, tada ichirin."
(The song that sinks to the soil is but a single bloom.)
"Watashi no chi wa anata no tame ni saku."
(My blood shall bloom only for your names.)
"Watashi wa shōri o noroi ni kaeru."
(I will turn victory into a curse...)
"...waera wa ima mo uta ni nemuru."
(...and let our names rest in verses.)
Her breath caught halfway through. She choked on her sobs. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her voice shattering into gasps, but she still tried to finish it.
Because her mother had taught her.
Because no one else was left to remember.
She remained there, kneeling, praying, and crying, for what felt like hours.
The wind howled softly.
The world didn't speak back.
And finally, she whispered the last line one more time, barely a breath.
"...warera wa ima mo... uta ni... nemuru"
(Even now, we... sleep within the song."
---
[Ash and echoes]
The ash had settled.
Only a dark gray silence remained.
Young Shirohana stood on shaking legs, the skin of her hands torn, her knees bloodied, her robe soaked with tears and soot. Her prayer had ended, but its resonance still hung in the air, clinging to her like the final breath of a story never finished.
She turned, facing the other half of the battlefield.
The traitors.
Their bodies were scattered, broken, mutated, and warped by their greed and thirst for artificial evolution. Shirohana's hands curled into trembling fists.
"...How dare they..."
Her voice cracked.
"...How dare they take everything away from me?"
She stepped forward and began to drag them, one by one toward a central crater.
Some still twitched with residual false-life, some oozed blood so black it looked like a void. She didn't care. She wasn't afraid anymore.
She was beyond fear.
Her body screamed in pain.
Her mind was in ruin.
But her soul?
Her soul was burning.
"You all..."
"You... don't deserve to lie beside them."
The pile grew.
A mountain of traitor corpses, stacked as if she were building her funeral pyre.
She didn't know why she did it.
She just had to.
Somewhere between her fury and exhaustion, a bitter wind passed behind her.
But she didn't flinch. She thought it was the wind.
Until-
"Hello there... little one."
A voice.
Warm.
Male.
Calm.
Shirohana stopped mid-step, hand still gripping a severed arm. She hadn't sensed anyone. No sound. No approach. Nothing.
Her wide red eyes slowly turned.
And then she saw him.
---
[The Boy who Shouldn't Exist Here]
He looked around ten, yet something in his gaze felt far older.
His white galactic curls shimmered like starlight. A pair of curved cosmic-black horns crowned his head, reflecting the sky like polished prism glass. His skin glowed faintly with divine pigment, like he wasn't lit by the world, he lit the world around him.
His eyes were swirling galaxies, twin singularities of radiant energy and unfathomable calm.
He wore a perfectly tailored suit, a white coat with golden inlays, and across his chest lay a shifting constellation embedded into his tie.
A star earring swung lazily from one ear.
And his smile...
It wasn't cruel.
It wasn't fake.
It was... tired.
"That's quite the pile you've made," he said, hands tucked in his pockets.
"You've got anger in you, little one. Sharp. Focused. Untouched by guilt... yet."
Shirohana stared, silent.
Her instincts screamed that this boy wasn't from this world. That he didn't belong to this memory. That he didn't belong to any memory.
And yet...
She didn't run.
Something about him was familiar.
Too familiar.
Like the silence after her prayers.
Like the space between stars.
"W-ho... are you...?" She asked, voice dry, and hoarse.
The boy tilted his head slightly.
"That's a complicated question."
He walked closer not with threat, but like he was part of the dream. As if the ink-soaked land parted for him without protest.
"You can call me..."
He paused. Considered.
"...001."
"I used to be like you."
Shirohana narrowed her eyes.
"Like... me?"
"Someone who lost everything and tried to rebuild the world in pieces. Someone who... didn't cry until after it was over."
He knelt beside the grave pile, resting one hand lightly on a dead traitor's blade.
"But the truth is... you're already stronger than I was."
"You prayed."
"I burned."
His voice was soft. Matter-of-fact. Like he'd already accepted his mistakes.
Shirohana stepped back once, unsure. Her instincts told her this wasn't a ghost. This wasn't a hallucination.
"Are you a god?"
001 smiled faintly. It was sad.
"No."
"But I used to be worse."
Then his expression changed, his smile faded.
He looked at her, not as an equal... but as someone who had once been that broken child, and who still remembered what it cost.
"Let me give you something."
He reached into his chest not painfully, not dramatically, and pulled out a flickering, fragile shard of light. It pulsed with stardust. With possibility.
"You'll forget this meeting. But this?"
"This will stay."
He placed it gently over her heart.
The shard melted into her.
And for just one moment-
She felt safe again...
Then his body began to shimmer.
The dream began to crack at the edges.
"One day," he said, standing again, "you'll see me again. You won't recognize me. And I won't remember this moment..."
"...But your strength will guide us both."
He waved once.
"Goodbye, little petal."
----
[Location: Ninth Petal Tower - Private Quarters, Shirohana Hozuki]
Time: Early Morning - Pre-dawn Silence.
---
The stars outside the temple-glass window were gone, swallowed by the mist before sunrise.
The silk canopy above Shirohana's bed swayed softly from her sudden breath, as if reacting to her dream's echo. She sat upright, sweat-drenched, her pulse thunderous. Her hair clung to her neck, her hands trembled in silence, and her chest ached as though something had been carved into it.
Her fox familiars, Kōgetsu and Mangetsu were already awake.
One licked her tears.
The other growled softly at nothing.
"Who was he...?
Her voice was faint. Distant still trapped in that dream.
"That young man... no matter how much I try thinking of him, everything is blurry. Only the nightmare remains..."
She gripped her bedsheet tightly, then slowly reached toward her chest, right above her heart.
There was no pain. No scar.
But something pulsed inside.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
A soft warmth, a tiny heartbeat that wasn't hers.
And the moment she focused her will on it, a quiet chiming echoed in her mind. Her system flickered, hesitant, as if it too was unsure what it was touching. Then:
[System Alert - Unknown Blessing Detected]
[Lionheart's Blessing] - Dream-Shard Resonance Trait.
Origin: Unknown Dream-Genesis Signature
Type: Locked Soul Fragment / Pre-Origin Code.
Status: Dormant, Compatible.
Imprint Match: 87% with Shirohana Hozuki.
[Blessing Functions:]
[Memory Shield]
Immune to all interference effects, mental rewriting, dream poisoning, and narrative infection. Dream Logic attacks suffer a 50% success reduction.
[Wound Reversal Trigger]
Once per battle, if fatally wounded, the blessing will reverse 3 seconds of time within a 2-meter radius. May only activate if emotional resonance is present.
[Dreamfire Vein]
Your attacks burn with emotional tethering. Can mark a target with your emotional state (e.g., wrath, sorrow, vengeance) once per battle. Damage scales to bond depth.
[Lionheart Echo Resurgence]
Once per season, it allows the user to forcefully anchor a dying ally's soul to reality through voice alone.
> Hidden Tag: "You Were Never Alone"
Shirohana froze.
She read the text over and over, hand still resting where the shard had melted into her.
"This... this was not dream code."
"This wasn't crafted. This is... pre-written fate."
She didn't recognize the term "Lionheart," yet the word felt warm in her throat. Familiar. Heavy. Too sacred to say aloud without knowing why.
And that boy...
"My master..."
She whispered the words before even thinking. And they felt right.
Like they were meant to be said.
Suddenly her system flickered again. A faint flicker of visual trace.
For a moment, just a second his face appeared.
Not perfectly. Just blurred vision of his galaxy-colored curls, his eyes like twin stars, and that quiet warm smile beneath the ever-present storm behind it.
Then, another face flashed over it.
Not identical but similar.
Same soul, different shape.
This one had silky black hair tipped in curled purple, and eyes like lavender nebulae with stardust flares.
She blinked, stunned.
The similarity was unmistakable.
"...Could it be him...?"
"No. I am not sure..."
She leaned forward, touching her forehead, breathing heavily.
"But those eyes..."
"The way he looked at me. The way I didn't fear him."
She stood slowly from her bed, draping her ceremonial ink-cloak over her shoulders. Her foxes silently followed, loyal and concerned.
There was no more time to waste.
"Duty waits."
"If that man truly was my master... then I will stand tall when we meet again."
And with that-
Lady Shirohana Hozuki, high Priestess of the Arc Sanctum, made her way toward the Ninth Verse Chamber, where her squad waited and fate prepared to reconnect threads spun across lifetimes.
---
---
---
To be continued....