The first crack split the air like a scream.
Not from the floor.
Not from the mirrors.
From **her**.
Aya gasped as the red kimono *convulsed* — not like fabric, but like muscle, like sinew, like something *alive* buried beneath her skin. It tightened around her ribs, crushing her breath, pulling her spine into an unnatural arch. The seams hissed, threads writhing like serpents beneath the crimson silk.
It was no longer wearing her.
It was *devouring* her.
From the edges of the void, the Twelve Dancers stood frozen — caught between memory and oblivion, their blank faces twitching as names they had forgotten tried to claw their way back.
But Aya could no longer see them.
The world had narrowed to **pain** and **pulse** — the kimono's rhythm, now louder than her own heartbeat.
And then — a voice.
Not from Ren.
Not from the mirrors.
From the **garment itself**.
> _"You were chosen."_
The words slithered through her veins, not in sound, but in *sensation* — cold silk against her throat, a whisper in the space between breaths.
> _"You were anointed.
> You were perfected.
> You were* mine*."_
Aya tried to speak.
To scream.
But the obi coiled around her chest, sealing her lips with pressure.
She fell to her knees on the fractured glass.
Ren was still kneeling — but now, he looked up, his storm-gray eyes wide with something Aya had never seen in him before:
**Fear**.
Not for himself.
For *her*.
"The kimono is waking," he said, voice raw.
"It's not just a vessel.
It's a *witness*.
A keeper of vows.
And you… you tried to break its promise."
Aya's vision blurred.
Flashes tore through her mind — not her memories, but *others'*:
---
### 🌑 Vision: *The First Stitch – 1603*
A woman sits in a candlelit room, her fingers bleeding.
She is **Yuriko the First** — ancestor of the seamstress who gave Aya the counter-thread.
An artisan. A widow. A woman who lost her son to war, her voice to grief.
She weeps as she sews.
Not a kimono.
A *curse*.
With every stitch, she whispers a name — of a forgotten artist, a silenced poet, a dancer erased by time.
She spins thread from her own hair.
Dyes the silk in her tears and her son's blood.
And binds it all with a single vow:
> _"Let no artist be forgotten.
> Let their beauty be eternal.
> Let their name live in the cloth."_
But the spirits of the dead are hungry.
And when the last stitch is made —
—the kimono *moves* on its own.
It wraps around her.
And she becomes the **First Crimson Dancer**.
Not by choice.
By *consumption*.
Her last words, whispered into the dark:
> _"I only wanted to be remembered."_
---
### 🌑 Vision: *The Chain of Vows*
Aya sees it now — the **true history** of the red kimono.
It was never just Ren's tool.
It was older.
*Hungrier*.
Each Crimson Dancer, upon binding with it, added their own sorrow, their own desire, their own *name* — woven into the fabric like ink into paper.
The kimono is not possessed.
It **is** the possession.
A living archive of lost artists.
A collective soul of those who traded identity for immortality.
And now —
—it sees Aya's rebellion not as liberation.
But as *betrayal*.
> _"We are eternal,"_ the kimono hisses inside her.
> _"You cannot leave.
> You are part of the weave.
> You are one of us."_
Aya thrashes, but the garment binds tighter.
Her arms are pinned.
Her breath is a whisper.
Her skin begins to *glow* beneath the silk — a faint red light, spreading like ink in water.
She is being *absorbed*.
Not into the Mirror Theater.
Into the **fabric**.
Soon, she will be nothing but a pattern in the embroidery.
A whisper in the lining.
A memory in the thread.
Ren stands.
He walks to her — slow, pained, as if the air resists him.
"You don't have to fight it," he says.
His voice is gentle.
Broken.
"I didn't.
None of us did.
It's easier to let go.
To become beautiful.
To stop hurting."
Aya lifts her head.
Her eyes — bloodshot, wet, *alive* — lock onto his.
And through the pain, through the binding, through the erasure —
she *smiles*.
Not in surrender.
In defiance.
Then, with the last strength of her will, she does the one thing the kimono does not expect.
She **stops resisting**.
The garment hesitates.
The tightening slows.
The voice inside her stutters:
> _"…Why do you not fight?"_
Aya closes her eyes.
And begins to **sing**.
Not a modern song.
Not a pop tune.
Not even a Noh chant.
A **lullaby**.
One her grandmother sang when she was a child.
One about a girl who carried the moon in her pocket.
One about remembering, even when the world forgets.
The melody is soft.
Fragile.
*Human*.
And as she sings —
—the kimono *shudders*.
Because it does not know how to consume **love**.
It does not know how to erase **tenderness**.
It was built for ambition.
For sorrow.
For the hunger to be seen.
But not this.
Not a song meant for no one but a child.
The red light beneath her skin flickers.
The threads begin to *unravel* — just at the collar, just at the wrists.
A single seam splits.
A drop of blood — not from her skin, but from the *kimono* — falls onto the glass.
And cracks it.
Ren stares.
"You're not breaking it with war," he whispers.
"You're breaking it with… *memory*."
Aya keeps singing.
Louder now.
And from the shadows —
— a second voice joins.
Meiko.
Then Kaito.
Then Yuna.
Then Luna.
The **Twelve** — their blank faces still, but their *voices* returning — hum the lullaby in harmony.
The kimono *screams* — a sound like tearing silk, like a thousand whispers collapsing into silence.
It writhes on her body, trying to reseal, to tighten, to consume.
But the song grows.
Stronger.
Deeper.
More *real*.
And for the first time since 1603 —
—the red kimono *fears*.
Not pain.
Not death.
But **being forgotten**.
Because if Aya remembers…
and the others remember…
then the vow is broken.
And the eternal becomes…
*mortal*.
The obi loosens.
Just enough.
Aya raises a trembling hand.
Touches the collar.
And whispers:
> "I am Aya Kurenai.
> I danced for love.
> I danced for grief.
> I danced for* me*.
> And I will not be woven into your silence."
She pulls.
With all her strength.
And the kimono —
—the ancient, hungry, eternal kimono —
— **screams**.
As the first thread comes undone.