…After the initial moments of silence, a scream filled the cave.
The daughter has just obtained centuries' worth of lost memories, feelings, and emotions.
So she made herself on her way, leaving her cave behind.
Walking on her path to put an end to this once and for all.
The Tale of Sun and Moon
The daughter's journey was long and dangerous.
She had encountered many atrocities.
Atrocities incomprehensible for most.
But she kept on walking down the path.
Learning more wisdom than most.
Meanwhile, the son, who was followed by hunger and death, was unfulfilled.
He was missing the few years he had spent with his sister close by.
But not because he was fond of her.
Instead, he missed the feeling he got from power.
Power, which he is still given, but can't hold for long.
So he wanders around the world, kingdoms decaying wherever he steps.
Until he suddenly remembered, he had always been able to decide who lived and who died.
Except for once, he did not want for his mother to die. It just took him years to realize.
This revelation drove him nearly mad, the sheer audacity it took for life to betray him.
The once so prideful and controlling son was void of any spirit.
Then one day, he just brought death upon another village with his mere presence.
He was just walking down a crossroad when he met someone.
It looked more like a shadow than a human, standing, stripped of any grace.
No mouth, yet speaking, no ears, yet listening, and no face, yet beautiful.
His name was Amaterasu, bearer of the sun.
He offered a deal to the son, a deal the son could not refuse.
"I shall fulfill your greatest wish… Only if you prove yourself worthy."
The hooded shadow had pulled out a book and handed it to the son before disappearing.
The son, at first sceptical, was deceived by the book. And he listened.
He spent every waking moment reading the ancient scripture.
Hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months.
His eyes had turned crimson red, and his mind hazy.
Hazy enough for one to kill what's most precious to them.
Then he finally found the page, the page that would lead to his demise.
He went along the instructions, following each step carefully.
Finally, it was done, he was standing before the altar.
Quiet voices were whispering into his ears.
"Do it." "The time has come." "Fulfill your purpose."
So he did. Sacrificing what's dearest to him.
The initial silence is filled by a blood-curdling scream.
The candlelight casts grotesque shadows against the walls of the cave.
All 12 sticks of incense burn out at the same exact moment.
The son was bending and stretching as no human should.
Then silence, followed by deep and slow breaths.
"Oh, what have you done, my brother? What terrible fate came upon you?"
The daughter, having witnessed the scenery, cannot do anything but feel dismal.
He had been corrupted, but he was still her own blood, desecrated by this thing, now inhabiting his body.
"You shall not wander this earth any longer."
The daughter, holding the ancient power of the moon, was standing right before him,
The son, holding the ancient power of the sun.
Their battle ensued, the daughter holding the knowledge of the past generations.
While Amaterasu was using the knowledge he himself had accumulated over the centuries.
Their battle was brutal; two true equals fought for days.
No one got tired, no one got hungry, no one got thirsty.
Sometimes it looked like the battle was decided, just to pick up once more.
Thousands of people in the surrounding villages were massacred; no one lived to tell the tale.
Only the omnipresent wind whispering the tale till this day.
Eventually, like everything, it had to end.
The winner of the battle was decided by sheer luck, or maybe fate, it was.
With one brutal blow, the daughter managed to separate her brother and Amaterasu again.
Yet killing Amaterasu is as impossible as counting the sand in the desert or the hair on one's head.
Amaterasu, using his last strength, in his weakened shadow form, uttered a powerful curse.
A curse that sent him into a 500-year-long slumber.
"If you shall do as much as utter my name, I shall return… The world will be mine-"
Aimed at the moon, his voice turned quieter until it completely disappeared.
Left behind was the daughter alongside her brother's cold and empty corpse.
She gave him a quiet burial, not even time itself knows the location of the grave anymore.
Decades went by, civilizations rose and fell, the daughter always watching, waiting.
An estimated 450 years after their fight, the daughter knew her time was coming.
No human soul is destined for eternity, but someone as wise as she knew that.
Therefore, she was prepared.
She lies on her deathbed, surrounded by her loved ones as she speaks one last time.
"My time is near, but there is one thing you need to do for me."
Her words are directed at her youngest daughter.
A beautiful young child with light hair and dark eyes.
"You will be the heir of the moon."
"He is bound to return eventually; thus, you shall take the moon and the book of knowledge and find them."
"Go find the one person who is intelligent enough to look through the web of illusions covering this world and give it to them."
These were her dying words; after this, her body turned into a puddle of blood, staining the hospital bed crimson red and continuing the cycle.
"What a weird book…"
The black book rested on Akane's desk by now; it was so vastly different from Aqua's book. His version was filled with bizarre rituals; Akane's, on the other hand, only contained stories about the past, which told long-forgotten tales about the world hundreds of years ago. The silverish Kanji's on the cover were rather simple, too; it seems to be called "Book of Knowledge."
Akane turned onto the next page and began to read, "The three great powers are as ol-" She halted for a moment. "Why are there three powers all of a sudden? Sun and moon were mentioned dozens of times by now, but why is there now a third one?" She put the book down for a moment and gently massaged the sides of her temple for a few seconds as she felt a small headache approaching her fast. Then she sighed and picked the book back up.
"The first power, the eldest child is known to be quite mysterious, they manipulate reality and life itself; however, like for any magician, once their subject has seen the second coin they won't wall for it ever again."
A loud thud sounded through Akane's room. She has dropped the book to the floor, and her posture is frozen in place. "I think I understand it now…" She muttered as she slowly reached down to pick the book, which seemed to give off an unexplainable aura, back up.
"The second power, the youngest child is known to be ruthless, they will try to achieve their goal by any means. Their strength lies within the manipulation of the human soul; yet they can't affect just anybody, the person they want to influence must have reached their breaking point long before that point."
Akane drank a long sip of water while her eyes never left the paper; seemingly drawn to it, she put the cup back down and continued to read.
"Alast, the one always forgotten, the middle child. Not much is known about them, in all honesty nobody ever saw them before. They are like a whisper in the wind, always there to listen, but too faint to even notice."
"There are many other deities around the world, yet none of them are noteworthy, most don't even know they have any kind of power."
The lamp on Akane's desk flickered as hours went by, in which she rarely raised her head from the texts buried in the book. The shadows on her wall rose higher as the sun itself began to set behind the distant houses, the distant ocean, and whatever waited beyond. Akane yawned and looked up at her in an orange lighting dipped ceiling as she stretched her tired arms high above her head. Her pelvis and knees cracked as she got up from her chair and tiredly let herself fall onto the soft cushions of her bed.
"What have you gotten yourself into again?" she said as she was gently bounced up and down by her mattress.
"I don't understand any of this…" she murmured as she finally came to a rest and had a few seconds to clear her mind.
Only the empty wall stared back at her as she restlessly rolled over onto her other side. Tonight, the soft blanket, which was usually so comfortable, didn't give Akane any comfort whatsoever.
"Everything I believed in is wrong… I thought I understood, but I knew nothing. Three weeks ago, I thought Kamiki was our biggest problem, yet now here I am, having to fight some… thing that's beyond what I believed to be possible."
Akane grabbed one of her many pillows from her headrest and silently wrapped her arms around it. She held it so tight that she could almost feel her palms press against her stomach again. Her eyes went dark as she pressed her face deep into the pillow.
Warm and dense air filled her lungs as she loudly inhaled the pillow. As time went on, she began to embrace it even tighter; yet the room remained silent, apart from the, by now, shallow breaths and the faint rustling of fabric.
Then, "Aqua," she quietly murmured, barely audible enough to hear.