The roar of the waterfall drowned out the world.
Mist rose in silver threads, catching the faint morning light. A girl stood at the edge of the cliff, her silhouette stark against the endless cascade. She did not move, did not blink — her gaze fixed on the crashing waters below as if searching for something the river had long stolen from her.
Her eyes shimmered — not with hope, but with the dull, fractured gleam of someone who had already lost too much.
A single whisper escaped her lips, almost swallowed by the wind.
"So this… is where it began."
Nokiren Cliff Residence – Years Earlier
A new day had dawned, but for the Nokiren Clan, mornings rarely brought joy.
Sayosa, the clan matriarch, sat on her creaking rocking chair by the window, her thin fingers tracing idle circles in the air. At sixty, her body was frail, but her words — wrapped in riddles — still carried the weight of prophecy and curse.
Outside, the waterfall thundered as it always had — yet if one looked closely, there were moments when the spray didn't fall quite right, as if the current shivered against its own pull.
Inside one of the rooms, Renji sat across from his daughter Mizumi. A sheet of parchment lay between them, smeared with half-formed characters. Mizumi's small fingers trembled around the brush, her lips pressed tightly together in silence — the curse that bound her from birth.
Her father's eyes were hard, the shadows beneath them deep.
"Write it again."
She obeyed, carefully copying the stroke… but it wavered halfway, bending in the wrong direction. The character collapsed into a shapeless blot of ink.
Renji's hand slammed down on the table.
"We went over this yesterday! And the day before! Are you mocking me?"
Mizumi's breath quickened. She shook her head desperately, tears stinging her eyes.
His voice rose, heavy and cutting:
"Your curse is silence — not stupidity! If you can hold a brush, you can write!"
She sobbed soundlessly, shoulders shaking.
Everyone in the Nokiren Clan knew of Renji's curse — not the gentle kind that could be endured, but a storm that built and built inside him until his control slipped.
He swallowed hard, forcing himself to breathe.
Then, without a word, he stood abruptly, sliding the long side panels open. Cold, damp air rushed in from the cliffside. The endless white roar of the waterfall bled into the room as he stepped out onto the narrow outer walkway.
Inside, Mizumi wiped her tears with ink-stained fingers.
In the kitchen, Hana moved between the stove and the table, placing down bowls of steaming rice, salted fish, and miso. Her voice carried through the wooden halls:
"Breakfast is ready!"
Children's footsteps echoed from upstairs. Somewhere down the hall, Sayosa's voice murmured softly to herself in riddles no one could untangle.
Then —
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Slow. Hollow.
Hana frowned. The Nokiren home was high above the valley, unreachable without purpose. Sliding the front door open, she saw nothing but curling mist.
And the box.
It was small, almost weightless in appearance, but made from wood so black it seemed scorched. Deep carvings twisted across its surface — spirals breaking into jagged angles. As Hana bent to pick it up, the air around her seemed colder.
A shadow passed over her mind, like unseen fingers brushing her thoughts. Her breath caught.
From the hallway behind her, Sayosa's voice shattered the quiet:
"Don't… let it dominate you!"
The sharpness in her tone made Hana's hands shake. But her fingers, almost against her will, pushed open the lid.
Inside lay a shard of stone — darker than pitch, swallowing the morning light. Within its surface, tiny embers flickered and died, flickered and died. The longer she looked, the more it felt like those embers were watching her back.
The lamps in the hallway wavered. Somewhere deep in the house, the sound of rushing wind swelled.
Then a cry — Hima's voice, raw and urgent:
"I can't hold it—please, it's happening!"
The storm came fast. The mist thickened, curling into the corridors, clinging to the air. Rain lashed against the wooden roof, and the waterfall's roar grew deafening.
Hima's breaths were ragged as Haru knelt beside her, his face pale, eyes darting to the shuddering windows. Hana's hands trembled as she brought towels and water, the memory of the box still pressing like a cold weight in her chest.
Sayosa sat unmoving, her eyes fixed on the far corner, whispering riddles faster than the human ear could catch.
The moment the child came into the world, the wind howled through the house as if the valley itself had drawn a breath.
He was small, but warm — and on his right shoulder, a mark bloomed like ink spreading under the skin: a perfect five-petaled flower. One petal was already blackened.
The room went silent.
Haru's breath caught as his eyes fell on the mark — the five-petaled flower, one petal already blackened like it had died long before the boy's first breath. His lips moved slowly, as if the words themselves weighed too much to speak.
"My great-grandfather… he warned of this mark. He said a child would come — a true warrior born into our blood — carrying the strength to end the curse and the sin of the three kings. But strength, he said, was never a gift. It would grow only as the petals died, one by one… and with each petal's death, the child would lose pieces of himself. Until nothing remained but the will to fight… and the burden to destroy everything that came before him."
Suddenly, Hima's hands froze mid-motion, the damp cloth slipping from her fingers. Her eyes widened—too wide, too hollow—as they locked onto Hana's trembling form. Her lips quivered, trying to shape the truth that her heart already knew.
"There's… another."
The words did not rise like speech; they cracked and broke from her throat, thin and jagged, barely cutting through the storm's roar. Yet, once spoken, they seemed to hang in the air, heavier than the thunder outside. The room shifted.
Haru's head jerked toward her, disbelief hardening into terror. Sayosa's rocking stopped, the wooden chair groaning in protest at the stillness. Even the rain, in its relentless fury, seemed to hesitate against the glass—as though the world itself recoiled from what had been named.
A silence thickened, oppressive, pressing down on every chest in the room. The oil lamp flickered violently, shadows crawling like black veins across the walls. Hana's breath caught, sharp and shallow, her hand clutching her belly as though trying to cage what stirred inside.
Another child.
Another birth.
But something in Hima's voice, in the way the words scraped out of her lungs, told them this was not a blessing.
The second birth came faster — not with the rhythm of life, but as though the valley itself was dragging the child into the world. Hana caught her, but the weight was wrong… too light, like holding a memory.
No cry. No breath. Just a stillness that swallowed everything.
Hana pressed the tiny body against her ear, desperate for even the faintest heartbeat. Her own breath faltered.
"Come on… come on, little one…" she whispered, voice breaking. The name Hima had chosen slipped from her lips — soft, almost reverent — but it hung in the air unanswered.
Haru moved closer, his hands hovering but unable to touch, as if the wrong gesture might shatter what little hope remained.
Hima's face twisted — not in pain, but in something worse: a quiet, consuming grief. A soundless sob trembled through her, her fingers curling into the blankets as if she could pull her daughter back from wherever she had gone.
For the briefest moment, the child's chest shivered.
And then Shion inhaled.
It was a slow, deliberate breath — too deep for lungs that had only just been formed — and with it, the girl's fragile warmth bled away entirely. Her tiny fingers loosened, curling into the stillness.
The blackened petal on Shion's mark pulsed once… and for a heartbeat, a shadow bled into the petal beside it — faint, but there.
From the wooden box Hana had left on the table, the strange shard pulsed once — a blinding flash — and split down the middle with a sound like stone screaming. Hairline cracks raced across its surface, symbols carved into it burning as if seared by unseen hands.
And for a fraction of a second, everyone saw something reflected inside the shard's fracture — a vast, skeletal tree standing in a sky of ash, its roots twisting into the bones of a thousand dead. Then the vision was gone.
But the world did not return to normal.
The waterfall outside hung motionless — each droplet frozen in midair. The rain reversed its fall, climbing back toward the heavens in twisting silver threads. The lantern flames bent sideways, their light sharpening until it hurt to look. Even the air felt as though it were moving backward, pulling the warmth from their skin.
Then, with a sound like a breath released after centuries, time lurched forward again.
Shion's eyes opened — no color, only the endless black of a starless night.
"The first gate has opened."
The voice was not a newborn's, but deep, ancient, and heavy with finality.
In that instant, the frozen waterfall's surface mirrored something impossible — the Nokiren house burning beneath a blood-red sky. It vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Shion exhaled.
The storm returned with a howl, the waterfall crashed downward, and the flames of the lanterns blazed back to life. The blackened petal on his mark pulsed once more… and went still.
Sayosa's rocking chair creaked, her laughter breaking into the air like cracks in old glass.
"Two flames… not one. Two… but only one will burn."