The stone passages breathed cold and dampness, and the sound of Hakage's footsteps echoed in their depths as if coming from another world. He held Yujiro in his arms, wrapped inside his heavy coat, like someone carrying something too precious to discard… or too dangerous to release.
The place was no ordinary building, but an ancient temple that exuded dust and incense, and the walls whispered sounds that shouldn't be heard.
Hakage descended slowly down the worn steps until he stood before a massive wooden door engraved with strange symbols. He knocked three times with a calculated rhythm.
A gruff voice came from within:
"Enter."
He pushed the door lightly and stepped into a room dimly lit by sputtering tallow candles. Four men, wearing indigo robes, stood gathered around a stone platform at the center of the room. Their faces were grim, betraying the burden of centuries of secrets.
The eldest among them spoke in a harsh tone:
"What brings you at this hour?"
Hakage raised his head with a cold smile:
"I have brought you what you requested."
He nudged Yujiro slightly forward, forcing the boy's body to rest on his knees. The elder looked at him with suspicion:
"What are we to do with this young boy?"
Hakage held out the boy's hand and revealed his palm. Under the faint light, the faint, star-shaped sun mark shimmered.
Silence fell. Then the old elder whispered:
"It is… the same mark."
His voice trembled with an ecstasy he hadn't known for a long time. He looked at Hakage and asked eagerly:
"How much do you demand for this gift?"
Hakage smiled with diabolical confidence:
"One hundred thousand gold coins."
Cries of protest rose from two of the men, but the elder silenced them with a hand gesture. His eyes were fixed on the boy, not the gold.
"Pay him the full amount."
The transaction was swift. Hakage was given a heavy sack of gold, its sound ringing like a faint laugh in the basement.
He bowed slightly and said:
"A pleasure doing business with you, gentlemen."
He then exited the room, leaving the boy behind, his fate sealed behind that thick door.
The Rite of Revival
The four men began their work immediately.
One of them cut Yujiro's wrist with a silver dagger, letting the blood pool on the stone floor. They used it to draw a complex circle around his lifeless body. The scent of iron and blood filled the room, mingling with the black incense that burned around them.
The chanting began. Words in dead, ancient languages, rough and broken, like a sigh from a time no one remembered.
The symbols glowed, and a green flicker rose from the boy's palm. The mark began to evaporate from his skin, as if being forcibly pulled from him.
The chanting intensified, then the circle exploded in a blinding white light.
The blood transformed into an ascending beam, which began to take a human form.
The light converged until it took the shape of a girl with hair as black as night, and eyes that glowed with the radiance of a lost star. She stood firmly on the platform, wearing a long gray gown that billowed with her luminescence.
The four men immediately dropped to their knees.
"Welcome back, Harumi-sama."
She looked at them with a faint smile, holding neither warmth nor anger, only an eternal boredom.
"It has been a long time… longer than befits the wait."
Then she turned to Yujiro's cold body, lying in the center of the circle.
"That body has served its purpose."
She said it with utter coldness.
"Dispose of him. I do not wish to see the remnants of the ritual."
One of them nodded, picked up the body, and left through the dark passages.
And when he cast Yujiro out of the temple and into the freezing forest, he heard only a soft thud in the snow, and a desolate silence all around.
But the moment the first rays of dawn touched his face,
His fingers twitched slightly.