isn’t that your ex?.. ✿ wanderer x gn!reader (college!au)
㌗ ────⠀synopsis: exes seeing each other after 3 years at a friend’s birthday party.
not proofread. angst with no fluff. mentions of alcohol intake. jealousy.
part 1 • part 2 • part 3
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AETHER! THAT’S MY BRO RIGHT THERE!”
cheers and laughters erupted around the long table childe had set up in the twins’ backyard, with some much-needed help from arataki itto. raising his glass high, itto grinned and boomed out a birthday greeting to aether.
you found yourself seated directly across from wanderer, much to your displeasure. mona sat at his side, while hu tao chatted away from the seat on your right. an empty chair remained on your left, you didn’t bothered asking who it was for. you loved aether dearly, you really do. but tonight, with wanderer sitting across from you and old feelings refusing to stay buried, all you wanted was for the night to be over.
“thank you, itto! i appreciate it.” aether shyly said to itto’s long and heartfelt message about aether being his best beetle match bro and how much aether has helped him find the perfect beetle for each match.
“that was a lovely way of greeting our friend here,” it was kaeya who finally broke the continuous laughter and chatting of the guests. “why don’t we all take turns and say something nice about aether? it could be a memory, or a trait you we like about him. consider it a gift that doesn’t require wrapping.”
the suggestion was met with excitement and nods of approval, while the birthday celebrant looked increasingly embarrassed by the attention. the first to speak was kaeya himself, followed by lumine, mualani, venti, kaveh, mona, then wanderer.
everyone turned their attention to him when it was his turn—mostly because of the development he’s been having in the past few years. in the past, wanderer wasn’t the type to say what he feels nor talk about it in large groups of people. he struggled with friendships, but most of all, in romantic relationships. now that all eyes were on him, waiting for him to say something—anything, he wanted to at least give it a go. just to prove that he was doing better than before (he wasn’t).
when you landed your eyes on his for the first time in years, or when you’d talked in the kitchen earlier, you felt that he changed. for better or worse? you didn’t know.
he stood up slowly from his seat, putting his hands in his pockets, clearly pulling himself together. “well.. for starters, i’m not used to this type of stuff—think you all know that,” he whispered the last sentence, “i’ve always admired aether for being so kind that it’s unnerving, for being so passionate about video games, and for acing every class he’s taking like he’s fucking einstein.”
everyone seemed to be enjoying his message, he went on for a bit, reminiscing about his fond memories with aether. though maybe he was reminiscing too hard..
“i like that aether’s favorite drink are those fizzy water in cans. and lastly,” you were caught off guard when he stopped for a moment and stole a glance at you—too quickly that you thought you had imagined it—then continued. “they’re always looking for the good in people. even when they don’t deserve it.”
everyone fell silent, taking glances at each other. you felt their eyes pointing at you and him, so you took hu tao’s glass of wine and drank it all in one go—to calm your nerves.
you knew, everyone knew. that the one he was describing wasn’t purely aether alone. no one really knew what happened with your relationship, they just saw the outcome of it. so you weren’t surprised if they were a little curious.
“i.. haven’t drank fizzy water in cans hehe.. but thank you!” aether tried to lighten the tension he was feeling between you and wanderer and the guests who just wanted in on the whole affair.
the next few hours were spent inside the house with good booze and a good time. thanks to venti who suggested they’d continue the party with beer games in the living room. you weren’t exactly in the best mood, so you counted yourself out for a couple of games.
remember how i said you didn’t want to drink alcohol? well.. now you’re drinking alcohol straight from the bottle.
why were you drinking? good question! you were pissed off. and hurt. you didn’t want to be like this, but old memories kept resurfacing in your mind about wanderer and his friend, mona. 3 years of healing? did you even heal in the first place? or you just moved universities and distracted yourself from everything?
you drank more alcohol from the bottle you were holding in the kitchen when you remembered a memories that aren’t so fond…
“love, can we study together? i’d like a change of scenery for once. i think i’m about to go insane if i’m stuck inside my room for longer.”
you were in a call with your boyfriend of 2 years while studying for an upcoming 150 item exams. and you’ve been studying nonstop since last last week. you twirled with your pen as you waited for his response.
“sorry, love. i kinda have plans today and—wanwan! your bag’s too heavy! what did even put in here?”
the twirling of your pen stopped when you heard the all-too-familiar voice from the other side of the line. it was faint, but enough for you to hear. you knew mona since the start of your relationship with your boyfriend. she was his friend since childhood, an unbreakable bond. you liked mona and saw her as a friend too. though, not until you started noticing her and wanderer’s habits when they’re together.
“where are you going?” you tried to keep yourself calm, even as your heart sank.
“we’re going to study at her house. besides, it isn’t a good idea for us to study together since we’re not in the same program.” you scoffed bitterly. mona was taking up astronomy.
“she’s not in the same program as you, wanderer.” you states, matter of factly. you wanted to burst out into tears for being denied again by the very person you loved. it was unfair, you were the partner, yet you feel like you’re the outsider.
“i like studying with her.”
“oh, really? and why is that?”
“because she’s competent.”
that did it for you.
“and i’m not?”
silence was all you heard from him for a couple of minutes. “love, you know that wasn’t what i meant—” you hung up.
you cried a lot that day. frustration and sadness consuming you that you haven’t had time to get back up from lying on your bed to studying again.
you always gave him a chance. even when it was hurting you. those times when he’d smile and laughed more when he was with mona, the inside jokes they didn’t bothered explaining to you, when he frowned at you when you tried calling your boyfriend the nickname mona used for him.
every single one of it you endured. because you loved him. you didn’t want to lose him. in the process though, you had lost yourself.
the nerve of him to say that he liked when you bought fizzy drinks and he oh-so-loved that you always saw the good in him, while he’s also out there in the living room laughing at what mona was saying (also the reason why you went to the kitchen again). like he didn’t promise you that he’d stop hanging out with her when you were breaking up with him. you almost laughed at yourself for being so dumb.
you drank more and more until your mind was filled with nothing. you smiled to yourself when you saw a familiar face finally showing up, now you were really gonna have fun. you went out of the kitchen and into the living room to greet him.
“xiao?” your voice came out soft, but like he always did, he heard you loud and clear even with the loud music. he was still in his part-time uniform. “(name)?” his voice laced with excitement and worry at the same time. maybe because of how you looked—drunk as fuck.
“how have you been?” he asked.
“i’m a’right! better than i’ll ever be!”
“are you.. sure?” he looked awfully worried with the way you were holding your bottle of alcohol and how you chewed up your words, with your hazy eyes fluttering. your legs wobbled when someone stumbled into your shoulder as they danced with their friends. xiao steadied you by holding your waist lightly, still trying to get a hold of your drunken state.
wanderer saw everything.
his jaw clenched when he saw xiao touching you so casually, his grip on his red cup tightening. and if that wasn’t enough to send him spiraling, he saw the way you tilted your head to look in his eyes as you smiled and dragged him to the dance floor.
he shut his eyes close, drowning the sound of mona’s voice—who just keeps on yapping about stars and shit. he weighed his options: one, he’ll let it go. it’s been 3 years already! he should’ve moved on! and two, he’ll go home and rest.
unfortunately, he picked option three: get you the fuck away from xiao because jealousy got the best of him.
“the fuck?!” you shouted when you felt someone drag you by your wrist, out of xiao’s hold on the dance floor (who was telling you to go wash your face and drink water the whole dance by the way).
wanderer dragged you towards an open bedroom and closed the door behind him, he was still holding your wrist—not too tight to hurt you, not too loose to lose you in the crowd.
you two were now face to face with each other’s jealousy seeping through your eyes. “let’s talk.” this time, he really wanted to talk about you and him.
“i don’t want to.”
“i wasn’t asking for your permission.”
you knew there was no way out of this situation. not when your heart was pounding from how close the two of you were standing, still looking into each other’s eyes like a game where the first person to look away was deemed as the loser.
he let go of your wrist when you were first to look away, crossing your arms in front of your chest. he saw you backed away slightly, tears welling from your beautiful eyes.
“let me out.”
he saw you crying and immediately wanted to wipe your tears for you. you cried even harder at his touch. it was just like before—cold, light, and sweet.
“please listen, (name)” he reached for you hand and placed it on his cheek.
“i’m too drunk to be having this conversation right now.”
“i don’t like seeing you with him.” he blurted out.
you frowned at him like you couldn’t believe what he was saying, “aren’t you the one who told me we should just be friends again? well! here it is!”
“i didn’t mean it. i’m sorry.”
“you promised me you’d stop hanging out with mona even after we broke up..”
“i’m sorry.”
“yet here you are! same as before. i thought you changed.”
“i’m sorry, please..” he said once again, “for everything. for being so dense and selfish and stupid. when you broke up with me, i just couldn’t—” he ran a hand through his hair. “—i couldn’t handle it. but after the break up, i was really doing better! believe me, please. but i thought i moved on, but now—” he sighed, “—i realized i haven’t, not even the slightest.”
“please. can we just stop this? do you really think we’ll ever be good for each other?”
what you said was enough for him to break into tears. you were right. who were you even kidding? you’re still a bunch of idiots in love. nothing changed. you two will just end up hurting each other, again and again.
you walked towards the door behind him and opened it.
“i’m happy i saw you today, wanderer. i missed that stupid bob of yours. but you know this is for the best. for both of us.”
﹫ ꒰ 16lohens ꒱ 𖣂 masterlist.
a/n: i kinda wanna make a part 3 of this 😭 but time skip !! let me know if you guys would like that 🥹🫶🏻 thank you reading! i’ll leave the story like this for now hehe.
Imagine, Wanderer, cupping your face and stroking his fingers over your wet cheeks sweetly. His lidded eyes stare at you with sympathy, grasping you closer. This doesn't seem like your usual Wanderer—no, it's something much more raw, pure, and vulnerable. He murmurs soft whispers into your ear while hot tears roll down your face. Brushing your hair away from your shaking frame, as quiet sobs escape. The moon envelops you both, its radiant light shielding you two from the outside world. Maybe this moment could last a little longer.
synops𝐢s ― your enemy, rival, archnemesis, scaramouche was hiding something. randomly, he'd leave the class and come back looking like he'd just fought a battle... in the toilet? no, somethings definitely up. while your suspicions arise, you get mixed up with the infamous spiderman. what would happen if these two happened to be the same? and worse, if you were falling for both of them. hard.
warn𝐢ngs; slow burn, academic rivals to lovers, eventual time skip, in high school they're 15-16, in college they're 19-20, angst, mentions of alcohol, weed, sensual jokes, mention of abuse etc
status — ongoing, no schedule but I'll try to post one every two weeks if i can, irregular hiatuses cuz writers block and burn out is real
profiles ‖ taglist — open, just ask
authors words;
this is a remake obviously
plot kinda the same
the reason why im remaking is also becuz in the og spiderman peter is in highschool so might as well correlate it
guys this is gonna b better and more planned out trust
I even edited a silly poster 🥺😔 (tell me if u fw it)
Fanfics where its wanderer x reader with durin as their kid will always make me giddy.
I love the domestic stuff, dont get me wrong but i crave angst of the two of them. Likeeeeee theres so many found family angst trope potential. Overprotective stuff, the panic stufff, the stufff
hiii, ive been like binging your work and i LOVE IT!! its so hard to find yandere genshin blogs fr😭 can i request like yandere!scaramouche punishing the reader bcs of something bad, and then like after thag reader did not want to do anything and that made him more upset and tried punishing the reader again but bcs of that the reader dies (im so so sorry if this a weird request but ive been craving HEAVYYY angstt)
Flawed Execution
(REQUEST #10) POV: Scaramouche isn’t the fastest man to realize if he has hurt a person, nor does he care about them when he does it. But now that it cost your life, for how long will his ignorance last?
⚠️ WARNINGS:
— This is a Yandere and Angsty SFW work
— Reader is FEMALE and uses SHE/HER PRONOUNS
— There is NO comfort and contains graphic mentions of heavy (physical) violence
— Fatui!Yandere!Scaramouche x Imprisoned!Reader
— AU is: In-Game
“Mmmngh..!” Your legs struggled to move in direction of your bed, almost falling down to the floor within every step you took.
But you knew that if you did crumble, it’d be agonizing and difficult to stand up again or control the thick bleeding in your belly that would be favored by gravity.
You’ve been through enough reasonless torture today. First, it was him, who got mad at you for acting too shallow and not so wifely with him, and threatened you with violence. His short, harsh words about using his hands on you kept spiraling in your head, and the anxiety you’ve consequently built up throughout the hours had only made your behavior less appropriate to his high standards. That’s when his second scolding came and when his previous words about punishment were accomplished just as promised.
Glass was his weapon.
Glass from the thin wine glasses you were peacefully sharing with him before he noticed your shaky hands and timid milliseconds of eye contact.
Glass shards that penetrated your skin like mosquito bites in multiple corners of your body, and have now unified themselves to make your whole body irritated with pain. Glass shards that had swirled themselves with your locks when he hit you in your head. It didn’t even matter to him if that was his favorite haircut on you or if you had invested hours in it to make yourself presentable to him as he had always demanded from you.
How ironic, don’t you think?
And that bigger glass shard that landed very roughly in your belly when it was turn to hit your glass of wine in your body, and he didn’t seem to realize how grave the injury was.
Just remembering that moment of him dragging you through the tips of your hair down to your chamber in the basement, despite all the pain you were already going through, while he screamed horrible words at you, or you, worming in the floor in pain while banging in the room’s metal door while screaming ‘I’m sorry’ over and over like a defenseless little prey about to be eaten, made your stomach twist itself with angst.
“You useless, USELESS wife! If you can’t even look at me properly, I won’t let you look at anything else but the gray walls of your bedroom!”
That was it. You were done for.
That was why the only torture you were willing to accept at this point was the pain you’d have to feel to get on your bed and finally rest. Somehow, you were even excited for it, unlike all the other past nights that you went to sleep wondering when would you ever get rid of him, but at least sleeping deeply thanks to its softness.
With a lot of struggle, you folded and lifted your right leg, opposite to where your injury was, landing it on your bed. Then, with an uncomfortable moan and a single arm in the bed, you forced yourself to jump and lean forward, successfully landing on the bed’s wooly sheets in a very awkward position with your back facing the roof.
Due to that favorable position, you felt even more layers of blood gushing down the hand that was trying to hold it back to your guts, which made you groan in discomfort.
Now, in a situation like yours, do you consider that injury a bless or a curse? That injury could cause you to possibly lose the movement of your legs and make you even more vulnerable to someone like him. That injury could heal normally, and no permanent damage would prevail. Or that injury could lead you to death.
…
You don’t want to die.
But at the same time…
Your logical thinking couldn’t deny that it was one of the few ways you could ever gain freedom again. And if there’s any sort of after-life destiny for your soul instead of a nothingness… you’d finally rest, right? No matter how you repelled the idea of death, a man like the 6th Fatui Harbinger makes it attractive.
After that little moment you took to think and breathe, you forced yourself to swiftly turn around, your injury now facing the ceiling while the left side of your head perfectly rested at the feathered pillow.
What a perfect position.
Relaxing, comfortable, and helpful…
If you were to truly die right now, at least you’d die with dignity. You’d die in a comfortable bed after enduring your roughest beating, without any guilt of knowing that you didn’t do that to yourself. After all, suicide was never an option to you, nor would he ever let your hands harm themselves.
And if you were to survive, it wouldn’t be as honorable as death. To wake up covered in rotting dark blood, whimpering in pain and alone in that eerie chamber with him stalking you from the door’s window or the camera he has in a tall corner of the walls.
Finally, the exhaustion weighing your eyelids finally became too overwhelming for you, so they closed, and you didn’t insist on keeping them open anymore.
Tomorrow would be a new day.
.
Pancakes, juice, biscuits, cake and fruits.
These are all, right? All her favorite breakfasts in a single tray.
She’s going to like it, I know it. And then, I’m gonna slide in some apology, no matter how crappy it is, and she’s going to accept it and praise me just as I trained her to do.
Everything will be back to normal, Kunikuzushi.
It wasn’t as bad as you think.
The heavy metal door to her chamber cranked loudly as I pushed it open, immediately finding myself staring at her laying down at the bed surrounded by dark, back facing me and being highlighted by the light of the hall I came from.
“Y/N.” I called out calmly while trying to keep my worries shoved down my throat.
And she didn’t move. Perhaps my volume was too low?
“Y/N, wake up.” Her body remained frozen in its place, no matter how much I had increased my volume.
Is she really this mad at me?
Well, I know it’s not going to be a tough to make her obey me anyway, so her silent treatment is useless.
“Are you trying to do that thing where you pretend to be asleep again so I’ll leave you alone, hum?” I finally decided to put myself inside the room, still standing as far as possible from her bed.
God, what is this awful smell of blood? Has she bled this much yesterday?
“It’s ok, don’t be shy. I know you can smell your beloved pancakes from there…” I gently shook the plate from where I was, trying to tease her into waking up.
But an annoyed sigh was all that came out of me due to her stupid, unconvincing act of being asleep.
“Listen, Y/N, I know what I did yesterday was horrible and wrong, okay?” My voice finally bursted some of my worry out of my throat, finally deciding to face the moment I most wished to avoid today, actually having to apologize. “I don’t know what happened to me, I just got really angry and…” I put my palm around my face as the embarrassment of apologizing took me over. “There’s no fucking excuse, is there?” No matter how much vulnerability and sincerity I was showing to her, she kept responding me with an awkward silence.
Isn’t she scared of doing this at all? Knowing how easy it is to anger me? Knowing how cruel my punishments can be? Using the same silence of hers was what led me to punish her yesterday? And she’s doing it again?
What happened to the third law of physics?
Every action has a reaction?
“All I’ve ever wanted for us is a happy married life, ok?! This wasn’t supposed to happen! We should just ignore it, pretend it never happened, and keep moving forward, ok?!” My voice cracked a few times as I started to vomit words.
Was me being this… pathetically apologetic and regretful loser not enough for her to acknowledge me? Isn’t she noticing the sadness in my tone?
“It would be easier to achieve if you were more collaborative!” Neither did harsh, unfair words work with her.
I sighed in annoyance, giving up on both alternatives of communication.
“Ever since I met you, I felt alive. It felt like I’d found peace for once in my life. I couldn’t just let this rare opportunity to slip away from me, Y/N, you’d never understand it, but you’re what has been keeping me more sane than ever. No mater if you hate me, repel me, I need you, Y/N. The more you stay with me, the better of a man I become, the better of a husband I become, the happier you become! You know it! You’ve seen it with your own eyes! How I treat you compared to the maids?! To the other Harbingers?! To my soldiers?!” I could feel even more worry rise to my brain as she still refused to acknowledge my existence.
But I’m being romantic. I’m confessing how deep and true my passion for her is, yet, it’s like I’ve never even opened the door in the first place. Isn’t this what a common human like her would want to hear? A man who loves her every cell and is willing to do anything for a fraction of reciprocation?
Have I hurt her this bad? Have I truly broken her trust for me with I did that yesterday?
“For fuck’s sake, can you acting like a bitch and fucking look at me?! I’m talking to you!!” Not even insulting you was making you move. “I’M DIRECTLY APOLOGIZING TO YOU!” I screamed from the bottom of his lungs while waving his arms to call her attention, expecting her to at least flinch in fear since I know Y/N didn’t like it when I was screaming at her.
But as I saw her body kept itself immobile, my anger finally reached its boiling point.
“I swear to God, do you want to be punished again?! You think you can just make me speak all of that bullshit and ignore m—!” I stormed in her direction, dropping the plate carelessly in the floor, my arm immediately reaching to your shoulder and pulling it to his eyes.
And the sight that was revealed to him made him swear his artificial body had stopped working for a few seconds.
Not a single muscle of your face moved, accentuated by an extremely pale skin tone on it compared to your normal one.
But the thing that most pulled his eyes’ direction was the big stain of blood in your belly.
Scaramouche froze in his spot. He wasn’t breathing or moving, he was just staring at your body. It made it easier for his consciousness to remember more about yesterday’s incident.
“Scara, please! I’m bleeding a lot! Can you please give me one towel?! O-Or anything to stop the bleeding?! Sca—… Darling, pleeeeease!!” The bangs at the door, the desperation in your voice, your pathetic body knelt down like a dying worm, begging for his mercy…
Was this why you were calling for him? Because of this gigantic pool of blood in your belly? But yesterday, when he heard those cries, all he thought was how annoying it was, and how he proudly ignored you with a sadistic smirk in his lips. Watching you beg for his mercy was somehow pleasant to him, after all.
He quickly shook his head back to reality. Thinking about those seconds made him feel the knot in his stomach tighten with more guilt.
“… Y… Y/N..?” He shook your shoulder gently, and the result was obvious, you didn’t respond.
He scoffed.
You were a good actress, weren’t you? You might even get a prize for it after being punished for tricking him so meanly. There was no way your soul had faded away from your corpse, you were either acting or just passed out because of the amount of lost blood!
Right..?
Scaramouche’s anxious hand immediately obliged to its instinct and placed itself on top of the left side of your chest, right on top of your heart… your paralyzed heart.
“Y/N…” His voice came out as a vulnerable mewl, one that would get worse every second he didn’t see you answering him. “Y/N.” He placed both his hands in each shoulder of yours and shook them lightly. “Y/N, wake up.” His voice was firm in its order, but worry had taken his voice chords, cracking its every syllable.
But all you did was bob up and down with his movement with no resistance at all. It almost seemed like you were a real-size doll in his hands.
“Y-Y/N, I know you’re awake.” He called your name like prayer, as he still found some hope to reach a hand to your eyelids and force them open while the other barely broke your shoulder’s bones with its grip.
But the direction of your stare was far from being directed at him.
“Ha… ahaha…” He couldn’t help but scoff at you in pure nervousness. “You aren’t…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the god-forsaken word. The one thing he hoped you to avoid at any cost… your death.
“Y/N, wake the fuck up!” His hand gave up in your eyes and went back to your shoulder, shaking you more violently then before, his eyes hopefully searching everywhere for any bit of movement.
But you simply just wouldn’t move a muscle.
He looked down at the big pool of blood in your lower belly. Rage consumed him as he violently moved his hand to pull your shirt upwards, raging at your stupid circulation system that pumped blood out of you instead of your veins and arteries, angry at the the glass that dared penetrate your beautiful skin without his consent and take you away from him.
“No, no, no, no…” He couldn’t believe he allowed himself to think such a thing. You? Taken away from him? Like this?!
An idea rose to his mind as soon as he thought of that idea.
This was all caused by him. His negligence, his sadism, his lack of empathy and sensibility, his obsession, his thirst of blood, his obnoxiousness.
“Y/N, wake the fuck up!” Scaramouche’s patience was wearing thin. “For Tsaritsa’s sake, no..!” And his lips were starting to shake with his rising rage.
How could’ve he ignored your pleas yesterday?
How could he feel pleasure when he saw all that blood and all those tears coming out of you? His precious princess that he had fallen in love with so badly? That mere common girl that he transformed into a public figure by being his wife.
“You hid this away from me… YOU DID THIS TO ME!” Finally, his voice couldn’t be held back to a normal volume anymore as he begun shaking your shoulders up and down too. “WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?! WHY, WHY, WHY, WHY?! I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING THAT YOU WANTED!” His own Electro delusion even tinkled in purple as he raged on you.
You were actually dead.
You had actually distanced yourself away from him to a place he couldn’t reach.
But Scaramouche was fighting his best to not accept it. It was written all over your face that your soul was gone, but he wanted to gaslight himself that you were still just asleep.
Although his hopes were admirable, it simply didn’t work. It would never work for someone as pessimistic and honest like him.
In search of comfort, he threw himself against your body and finally let those hanging tears in the corner of his shiny purple eyes to fall, and he begun whimpering nonstop like a little kid on your and screaming in your shoulder.
“Please, please, please, please..! You can’t go, YOU CAN’T GO! Not yet, please! Not yet!” He rubbed his forehead in the crook of your neck, wiping his salty tears in you mercilessly, but no sign was returned to him. “Oh, Archons, please! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Anything but her, please! ANYTHING BUT HER! My love… oh, my love..!” His hands slid under your back and he hugged your body like a piece of wet porcelain as he pathetically abandoned his hatred for the Gods and begged for their mercy upon his sins.
But at the same time, he couldn’t help but claw his fingernails into your skin. But he immediately regretted it as soon as he realized he was hurting you even after you died of pain. Scaramouche gave up, and instead one of his hand climbed up to your head and started fixing your hair that was so ruthlessly ruined, trying to somehow bring your dignity back.
“Don’t leave me, please..! Don’t leave me! I’ll fix you, my love… I promise! I’ll fix everything!” What was he thinking would happen as he talked to your dead corpse? That the ‘power of love’ would suddenly make you awaken again and forgive him?
Has he just realized how much your words and your forgiveness truly mattered to him? Or was it that now that he didn’t have access to it, he was starting to crave for it like a drug-addict?
He didn’t mean it. He swore on his pathetic life. It was an accident. It wasn’t his intention hurting you. It wasn’t his intention hurting you enough to permanently take you away from him.
“I’m so sorry I left you here, darling…” Just to imagine the weigh of his actions and its consequences… you in an agonizing pain, thrown in a freezing-cold floor, completely unappreciated and unloved by him despite all your previous efforts… it made something inside his chest, right where his so-desired heart was supposed to be at, to burn. “Oh, Archons!” How human of him to be unable to bare the power of his own imagination. Could he even call himself a failed puppet project anymore? What kind of puppet, especially a flawed one, cries and grieves death like this?
How come does his sister, the Shogun herself, view death as simply the end of life, while he interpreted death so much more dramatically?
After all, he could’ve avoided it. Scaramouche could’ve saved you like a true hero.
If he decided to open the door to your chamber, bring some towels and force your bleeding back to your belly, called an ambulance, and let some group of surgeons do their job, instead of neglecting you for his own pleasure, you’d still be alive. Your chest would be moving up and down to breathe, your eyes would still be blinking every few seconds and your arms would be embracing him back at this very moment.
Maybe you would’ve even learned how to be more grateful to him, or suffered some sort of amnesia that would’ve let him rebuild your relationship with him but by bit in a natural way without needing to use any sort of violence.
“Thank you for saving me, my dear!” Your voice sounded so sweet in his imagination compared to how he heard you crying last night.
Were your last words pathetic begs for help? How undignified of you. How could’ve he ever let those be your last words? You died hating him instead of loving him.
Scaramouche attached and curled his limbs all around your body like a parasite. He knew it would probably take hours for him to find energy to get up again, so at least he wanted to spend those house by your side, mourning and grieving his own choices. It didn’t matter to him if it was creepy to cling to a cold dead corpse, he still held you tight if he needed you to live. It didn’t matter if your body’s warmth had ceased long ago, or if your arms wouldn’t even try hugging him back, he could still perfectly imagine himself being hugged by you thanks to the few memories he has of you doing so.
To him, you were wearing his favorite nightgown and acting very passionate about being his ‘head-patter’, caressing every inch of head, down to every tip of his purple locks while your mouth whispered sweet words, while the both of you laid down in his bedroom’s bed, instead of the situation you were actually in at the moment. All of your hair and clothes stained and ruined, your skin smelling like raw, bloody flesh, and your unresponsive and unloving to him.
Why would he ever want to leave that beautiful, utopian dream? Only to face the reality right in front of him? No. He didn’t want that.
Could he just die there? Never open his eyes again and let himself rot with you? Could he set fire to that beautiful mansion given to him by the Tsaritsa and let himself agonizingly burn to death with you and finally find peace after centuries of suffer? Compared to the burning pain in his chest, at this point, he believed the fire wouldn’t be enough to make him feel no more pain. But he probably wouldn’t be able to anyway. Now that he’s a Fatui Harbinger, his life wasn’t as useless as before, and while he was weaker than Dottore, he’d never die and rest in peace.
More tears ran down his cheeks. He truly had no other option rather than accept all that fire in his chest and let it consume him.
Maybe he could temporarily give you away to that scientist scum, Il Dottore, and beg for his help in exchange of anything, even his own life. In the end of the day, he would prefer you living without him, rather than letting himself live without you. His preference didn’t matter anymore, though, he was already living that dystopian situation of living without you. It has been a matter of minutes and he’s already finding himself developing a depression. Was that how bad it was to be without you? Was that how the rest of his pathetic life would be like? Wanting to die every day?
Why? Why did he ever chose to hurt you in the first place? This was all his fault. The memory of him willingly grabbing that glass of wine and smashing it against your head couldn’t stop playing itself over and over again no matter how disgusted he was of it or how much he tried to replace it with better thoughts.
How ironic. He promised himself he’d hate humans forever, that he’d never succumb to the mere bits of humanity inside him, and yet, he had made the most human mistake of his life, and having the most human reaction because of it.
Not even the incoming flies that flew around the room felt comfortable of taking advantage of your dead corpse with him nearby you.
At first, Scaramouche barely noticed you.
You were just there—quiet, persistent, irritatingly kind. He had no reason to pay you any mind. A harbinger had no use for mortals who smiled at him as if he were something more than what he was.
But then… he started to notice.
The way you always seemed to wait for him, even when he didn’t ask you to. The way your laughter slipped through the cracks of his carefully built walls, soft and warm, refusing to be ignored. The way you looked at him—never with fear, never with reverence, but with something simple and impossible: trust.
He hated how it made him feel at first.
The strange heaviness in his chest when you weren’t around. The way his eyes searched for you in a crowded place without him realizing. The way your absence lingered like a missing heartbeat.
One evening, he caught himself staring.
You were humming under your breath, mending a small tear in your sleeve. Nothing special, nothing extraordinary—and yet, Scaramouche found himself frozen, memorizing the curve of your lips, the glow of lantern light painting your hair, the sheer serenity of your presence.
Something inside him ached. Something fragile and dangerous.
“Why are you always here?” he asked, voice sharp, defensive.
You looked up at him with a small smile. “Because I want to be.”
That was all. No grand declaration. No expectation. Just quiet certainty.
And Scaramouche—who had been abandoned, discarded, cursed to believe no one would ever choose him—realized with dawning terror that you already had.
Days passed. He stopped questioning why you stayed. He stopped pushing you away. He even let himself laugh once, and the sound startled him as much as it startled you.
Little by little, he softened. He caught himself reaching for your hand without thinking. He caught himself remembering your smile when he closed his eyes. He caught himself whispering your name in the dark when he thought no one could hear.
And then, one night, when you almost stumbled on the path, he instinctively grabbed your wrist, steadying you.
Your fingers lingered against his, warm and steady.
He didn’t let go.
Scaramouche lowered his gaze, heart pounding against ribs that weren’t supposed to feel. “…Stay close,” he murmured, almost embarrassed. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”
You blinked at him, soft surprise turning into a smile so radiant it made his chest ache.
And Scaramouche realized then—quietly, terrifyingly, beautifully—
that he was already in love with you.
scaramouche has always believed fate and life were odd things. strange in their nature and somewhat eerie. he never really understood people who had so much optimism in either of those elements, often rolling his eyes at the irritatingly embarrassing quotes somehow landing on his page whenever he’d scroll endlessly on his socials instead of fixing his terrible sleep schedule.
the notion of fate was uncomfortable. knowing that his life was taking turns he barely had any control over and that even the choices he makes have been written in stone long before he even came to life – awful mistake his mother committed, by the way.
he had always longed for freedom. always wanted to grow his own wings and disappear in skies his mother could never reach. that none of his acquaintances could ever dream of ascending to.
maybe, that was why he had so foolishly fallen for her.
it was so easy, falling in love with her. like a slope he was going down on, growing steeper and steeper the closer he would get to her.
the first time scaramouche had ever thought of fate with no disdain at the back of his mind was when he had gotten out of a coffee shop he was a regular at.
getting his coffee was a normal part of his routine, and so was walking down the street on the way to the tattoo shop he worked at.
bumping into strangers that were blindly skipping to a song playing loudly from their headphones and spilling his beloved beverage all over them, however, was not part of his day-to-day life.
he didn’t even find it in him to curse the girl out, standing still at the apologetic smile she was offering him and stupidly handing her over a pack of tissues he had found in his bag.
and when she jokingly asked for his number before considering forgiving him when he apologized in return, he found himself unable to laugh along. he had simply stared at the brightness of her smile, imprinted the sweetness of her laughter into his brain and wished he could record it so he could hear it over and over again.
and so his number did find its way into her phone.
scaramouche didn’t know how he ended up in the whirlwind of her life.
she didn’t take long before confessing to a lot of her heartaches. a couple of weeks in, and he was already growing a sense of attachment to her, unfamiliar yet surprisingly not as terrifying as he had imagined it’d be. a couple of months after, and he was growing a feeling of hatred towards her parents and friends and an even stronger sense of protectiveness towards her.
he didn’t know everything, of course he didn’t. but he knew what the bruises on the inner side of her elbows were and he knew what the bandages around her arms and thighs were for.
she liked that he never questioned it. she liked that he didn’t look into her stuff and didn’t try to take away her last thread of sanity away from her. and she liked him.
“you’re pretty and you let me do what i want,” she had simply told him when he asked her why. a giggle slipped past her lips and that was enough for him to press his lips to hers, tasting the remnants of beer on her tongue as they melted into each other at the back of his car.
the warning signs were glowing at the back of scaramouche’s head, but he didn’t find it in him to put a stop to her descent. he didn’t want to be another controlling figure in her life but he didn’t want to let her go so easily.
and the fear paralyzed him. he didn’t mind the blood at the bruises, didn’t mind caring for her and uplifting her when she needed it the most, spending most of his nights by her side in fear of not finding her knocking obnoxiously loud on the door of his apartment the next morning.
it tore his heart apart, really, the crying and the begging and the spiraling.
it wasn’t like she never tried. she made an effort. a noticeable one. but she was so fragile, so breakable, it only took a little push for her to fall into her past patterns again and he was left picking up the pieces and mending her back again, praying this time would be the right one.
it had never been.
running into the hospital has become an oddly common thing for scaramouche, crouching on the bedside and holding her hand tightly into his own while he prayed for something. anything.
granting her wishes had become his routine as well, folding to her demands and handing over her dreams on a silver platter with ease – hell, a golden one even. he’d do anything to bring back the brightness he had fallen for in the first place, his gaze softening as he watched her from a distance.
“i’ve always seen this in movies,” she had confessed, out of breath from running around the flower field, letting herself fall on her back, her head resting next to his as he closely studied her.
she looked carefree, for once. like all her worries and torments had melted under the setting sun.
“always wanted to run around flowers,” she laughed breathlessly, turning to look back at him.
scaramouche had smiled at her, sitting up so he could pick a flower and put it in her hair.
“you look pretty,” he told her, finger tracing each of her features. etching them into his memory. and it was almost as if she could read his mind, as if she could tell he was trying to engrave everything about her fleeting existence before she would eventually disappear from his own.
“i don’t wanna become a hot topic when i’m gone.”
when.
scaramouche always knew her choice was definitive and that he couldn’t do anything about it. but he couldn’t help the fear and the tears and the inability to imagine a world without her. he couldn’t figure out how he’d come to live once she wasn’t there anymore. she hadn’t been in his life for long yet he couldn’t go on in a world void of her.
“you’re selfish!” she yelled at him, crystal drops spilling down her face furiously.
grabbing the closest thing to her, she threw it at him in a fit, followed by another. and another.
“you’re just like the rest of them,” a sob tore from her throat, the glass in her hand shattering on the floor as she let go of it.
a small sigh was the only response scaramouche had given her, taking a hold of her wrist and pulling her into his chest. his face buried in her hair, he rocked the both of them back and forth, his throat constricted with words he knew would only enrage her more.
so he remained quiet, shushing her sobs and cries, hoping that maybe, just maybe, if his arms tightened a little, if his cold body could warm her aching soul a tiny bit, then she would stop fading away from him.
“i just want you to stay with me,” he finally confessed, his hands gently holding onto her shoulders, eyes searching for hers. “i know it’s selfish, but y’know i can’t just lose you, yeah?”
at the pout forming on her lips, he could only smile fondly, pressing a kiss to the top of her head before drawing her into him again, hands running up and down her back.
“you won’t let me die, right?” she had asked him, unable to fall asleep, laying in each other’s arms. she didn’t really let him answer, humming under her breath before continuing : “you can’t let me go. please?” and scaramouche caved in, again, the hold he had on her almost suffocating until the next morning.
and she got better. she did. for some time, that is, but there was hope growing in scaramouche.
her syringes were gone and her pillies were forgotten at the back of her cabinets. he didn’t find himself examining how deep and how concerning her injuries were for a while and, God, was she blindingly bright now.
walking ahead of him as they found themselves near a beach on their impromptu road trip, hands in his pockets while she ran on the sand, screaming when the water creeped too close and twirling to whatever music was playing in her head.
“feels like you’re healin’ my inner child or somethin’,” she giggled in between bites, squealing happily as he fed her more barbecued meat.
“don’t talk with your mouth full,” scaramouche had scolded but he couldn’t deny the warmth engulfing his heart. he was doing something right. whatever the hell it was, it was working. and he hoped it’d remain this way forever.
it was short-lived.
back from their road trip, she found herself in trouble with her parents. and he found himself patching up her forearms and wrists and failing to hide away her little bottles.
and while he had gotten used to the mess of her life, it had never felt so decisive. so… final. like her decision was made. like she was following a detailed plan. no amount of begging and fighting her over this would ever work anymore. and for the first time ever since he had gotten wrapped up into this whole thing, scaramouche was feeling hopeless. there was no escape route, no exit door.
“oh baby,” she had cooed, finding him biting harshly on his bottom lip while scalding tears ran down his cheeks, gripping onto the kitchen counter so tightly. “‘m really sorry,” she whispered, hands holding onto his face adoringly. it was so cruel of her, he found himself thinking, letting a first sob fall past his lips. with a tender smile, she wiped the traces of his sorrow away with her thumb. so loving and sweet.
he hated her for it.
“y’know i can’t do this,” she murmured into his hair, holding him to her chest as his nails dug into her t-shirt and skin. because maybe, just maybe, if he carved himself into her, if he merged their beings together, then she’d never find a way to dig a chasm between them both. “y’know i can’t stay.”
not even for me? how can you leave me here? y’know i can’t do this without you.
but that would be heartless of him. so scaramouche didn’t say that. he simply lifted his head to look into her eyes, finding nothing but endless love in them.
yet it wasn’t unconditional, and that was probably more painful than anything else.
“at least make it through tonight?” he pleaded weakly, his voice shattered and shaky.
“promise.”
the next morning, scaramouche woke up to a cold bed, a note, and a hole in his heart.
she didn’t even leave much. just a small i love you, a badly drawn heart and a cup of coffee, way too sweet for his liking.
and him.
she left him navigating his life blindly, like his only source of light had been taken away from him. he couldn’t see ahead of him, couldn’t perceive anything around him. he didn’t even find it in him to hate her for breaking such a hastily made promise.
“you’ve always been a liar,” he told her, gently settling a bouquet of chrysanthemums in front of her. sitting on the grass cross-legged, he huffed fondly at all the times he would catch her red-handed, twisting the truth to her favor and burning in shame when he’d narrow his eyes suspiciously at her.
“didn’t think you could be so good at it, though,” scaramouche sighed, tracing the petals in his hand. he scooted over next to her, leaning his back onto the large tree trunk behind them, barely able to make out the colors of the endless flowers blooming ahead of them, the moonlight not doing much to help him out.
“hope you like this place, i picked it out for you,” he chuckled, leaning his head onto the freezing stone sitting by his side. and he wished that this time, when sleep takes him away, it’d never let him go.
✧ you were born hearing what the world buried. he was born becoming what the world feared. somewhere between ghosts , curses , and the sea , love learned to stay ― kunikuzushi x reader ⋆ incl. fluff, angst, death, rituals (i rewatched midsommar as i wrote this, so. . .), ghosts, reader is blind, reader is referred to as she/her, but no mentions of female anatomy, this is after scara tried to reset himself in sumeru and so he knows the truth of what happened in tatarasuna, he's just here to make amends, not marry someone. also, he has the personality of wanderer here, i just called him kunikuzushi because it's sexy. ❃ ུ ۪ wc. 18k (i'm sorry) 𝜗ৎ thank you to @kominigiru for proofreading this silly story. i hope you all enjoy c:
PROLOGUE — THE FAIRYTALE OF TATARASUNA
They say the boy had no heart.
Not because he was cruel, though cruelty came easily to him in the end, and not because he was unfeeling, rather he felt too much, too deeply, until the world itself seemed to tear at the seams of his chest.
Long before his name was forgotten, before the storms swallowed his shadow and the centuries ground his memory into dust, he walked the iron hills of Tatarasuna. They remember him there the way the wind does, whispering through broken foundries and hollowed shrines, carrying the remnants of metal and his sins.
The story has many versions. In one, he was a wayward puppet abandoned by a god, who learned what sorrow was before he knew what breath felt like. In another, he was a trickster spirit sent to test the greed of men. But in every telling, the story ends the same way, with blood on the ground and the sky as red as molten ore.
He had been betrayed once, then twice. By trust, by kindness, and the illusion of belonging. They say the second betrayal broke him. That he laughed as he wept, and wept as he burned the city down. That no one survived to tell his name, save for a single man trembling, desperate, caught at the edge of death.
The man begged. He offered anything, everything, and the boy who was not a boy paused, if only because mercy had long been foreign to him.
“If I spare you,” he said, “what will you give me that I cannot take?”
The man, in a fit of panic, in error, or perhaps in prophetic madness spoke words that would haunt his line forever, “The first daughter born of my blood. Let her be yours, whenever she comes.”
It was absurd, monstrous even, and for that reason alone, the boy smiled, “Very well. But take care, for the gods are not fond of waiting.”
No one knew that the man’s family had never borne daughters. For generations, the curse slept, waiting for a loophole, a fracture in destiny’s careful weave.
Centuries later, a child was born. A girl, against all expectations. Blind, but as bright as dawn.
And so, the tale began again, whispered through streets, embroidered in everyone’s hearts. The family was marked, half-revered, half-reveiled. Mediums, devil-kin, keepers of some old sin, all titles the family was called. People left offerings at their gates yet crossed the road when they passed by. All the while, the portrait of the nameless boy painted in trembling detail by some terrified ancestor watched from the family altar. His violet eyes never faded.
They called him ‘The Demon of Tatarasuna.’ The one who would one day return to claim what was promised to him.
PART I — THE RETURN
The sky over Tatarasuna was leaden when he came back.
It had been five hundred years, though time had always been a joke to him. It was elastic, meaningless, a trick the living played on themselves to create order in their insignificant lives. He walks the same path he had once drenched in blood, and finds it eerily quiet. The air still carries the tang of old iron and the hum of static from the day he lost control. The sea below murmurs like an old wound, like a reminder of the sins he had committed.
Kunikuzushi, or whatever name he had borrowed this century, stands at the cliff’s edge, gloved hands clasped behind his back. His expression is unreadable, save for a faint shadow beneath his eyes.
He had come, he told himself, to pay respects. To make amends, if such a thing were possible for him. But ghosts do not forgive, and gods do not forget.
He had failed at godhood, failed at redemption, and perhaps it was fitting that he return to where his story had first rotted.
Down in the valley, the villagers go about their morning. Among them, a tall, young, sharp-eyed man cuts timber, humming under his breath to drown out the unease that always clings to this place. He pauses only when his axe misses its mark. Then looks up at the cliff, at the rustling sea and blazing sky ahead.
Something…no, someone stands on it, still as a statue, indigo hair whipped by the sea wind. Recognition passes by the man like a welt that had been researed into his skin. That face. Those violet eyes. The image burned into him from childhood, since his father made him memorize it for the day he returns. The man’s breath catches in his throat.
He runs.
By the time the door slams open, his voice is breaking.
“He’s here!” he gasps, “the ghost! The one from the painting!”
Inside, the family freezes. The man’s hands tremble where they rest on the table. The woman goes pale as salt. And in the corner, the blind girl turns her head, her blank gaze soft and composed.
You. The first daughter of the cursed line.
PART II — THE OFFERING
They argue, of course.
Your mother wants to hide you. Your brother wants to take up the axe. Your father prays aloud for the gods to reconsider their cruelty.
But you only listen, head tilted, fingers brushing the rim of your teacup. Your voice, when you speak, is soft, but it does not waver, “If he has come for me, there’s nowhere to run. The curse was made long before we were born.”
Your tone is not despairing, merely factual, as if you were discussing tonight’s dinner. Your calmness unsettles your family more than your words.
“Then what are we to do?” your father whispers.
“We go to him,” you say, “we face what’s owed.”
And so, holding their offerings saved for this very day, as well as holding their tears back, your family goes up the hill with you.
He hears them before he sees them, footsteps crunching on the gravel path, a low murmur of voices, the heartbeat of fear in the air. Kunikuzushi turns, irritation flickering across his face, and then stops.
You are beautiful, in an otherworldly, ethereal way that draws the breath from one’s lungs before they know it. Hair shimmering in the light, a poised gait, and eyes that do not see yet seem to look through him all the same. You move with a careful grace, guided by your brother’s hand.
Your family kneels.
“Lord of Tatarasuna,” your father begins, voice shaking, “we beg your forgiveness. Five centuries ago, our ancestor made a vow—”
Kunikuzushi’s brows draw together, “Lord? Forgiveness?” His tone is edged with disbelief. “What are you—”
The man gestures toward you, “He promised you the first daughter born of his line. We have come to honor it.”
There is a long silence. Even the constant noise of the sea seems to hush. Kunikuzushi stares at them, then at you. At this trembling, blind creature standing before him like an unwilling offering.
“You can’t be serious,” he sputters, voice too desperate for someone who claims to be a god.
But the terror reflected back at him is real, and when he looks at you again, he sees not fear, but acceptance. A calmness so steady it almost makes him angry.
He should laugh. He should walk away. Instead, a sharp and sour guilt twists low in his chest like a memory he can’t scrub clean.
“That was a lifetime ago,” he mutters, “I’m not here for that.”
Yet they keep bowing, their voices shaking, begging him to take her. To spare them. The absurdity of it scrapes against something inside him. For once, he had come to make peace and they were determined to give him another sin to carry.
Then you speak.
“If you refuse,” you say softly, “they will never rest. Let me go with you. It is easier this way.”
Your tone was too calm, too knowing. It makes Kunikuzushi want to contradict you, to be cruel, if only to see you flinch.
Instead, he finds himself saying, with a sardonic curl of his lip, “Fine. Have it your way.”
The words came out like a challenge. But beneath them, a twisting branch of something (perhaps guilt, pity, or worse fascination) roots his gaze to yours with a softness that shouldn’t exist in the eyes of someone as cruel as him.
PART III — THE CEREMONY
You walk beside him, your hands lightly brushing against the folds of your clothes, your steps measured, as if the short length of your steps will somehow delay your arrival to fate. The wind off the cliffs is sharp, tasting of salt and iron, and the town below stretches like a dreamy memory. Every shadow along the path feels alive, as if it waits to speak. And yet, despite the centuries of fear, you do not tremble. You have known for all your life that this day might come. Still, knowing does not make Kunikuzushi, the Demon of Tatarasuna, any less staggering.
He walks ahead of you, shoulders rigid, gloves catching the light in sharp angles. His eyes scan the horizon and though his jaw is set, there’s a pull of hesitation in his body, a ripple of memory he does not share. You know it without needing to name it. You have felt the same emotion in the voices of your family countless times. Guilt. Regret. The ghosts of his own making.
Your family follows behind, silent and bowed in the shrubbery of the cliff path. You keep your head raised, holding yourself as if the centuries themselves depend on your posture. You have spent your life being careful, being strong, being the child who can face things unseen and unheard by the ordinary world. And yet, here, none of it serves a purpose. You are the nothing but a thread between him and the lives he ruined, living upon the bones of the massacred.
When he glances in your way, it is as if the trees lean in, as if some secret is held in his gaze, one so old that even they do not know. You are not afraid; you do not retreat. You are the first daughter of a cursed line, the anomaly he never expected, yet here you are. Standing tall, unflinching, and beautiful enough to make centuries of solitude feel unbearable.
For the first time since Tatarasuna, he hesitates.
“You… you are her,” he murmurs, voice low, almost lost in the wind.
You nod, faintly, deliberately. There is no flinch, no plea for mercy, no illusion of subterfuge. You are exactly the living consequence of the promise made in fear that he had forgotten, and the first human eyes to meet his own in five hundred years without terror.
He clears his throat. “This is absurd,” he mutters with the brittle edge of a man who has been forced to ruin a life for the millionth time, “You are real. This place has survived.” His eyes have a distant, faraway look in them as he walks with his hands clasped behind his back.
You offer a small, calm smile, “I am. And so is what must be done. I will not hide. I will not run. It serves no one, and it only prolongs the burden you carry.”
For a long beat, he says nothing. You feel the wind slicing through your hair, tugging at the hems of your sleeves. Then, with a careless flick of his hand, he allows the words to leave, “Very well.”
There is no ceremony yet. Only the affirmation that the first act of this strange union has begun.
Your house is warm, scented faintly with herbs and firewood. You hear the younger members of your family scuttle about, anxious and whispering, and for a moment, you sense the difference in their manner. Not merely frightened, but alive, curious, human. He watches them. Kunikuzushi, ruin and shadow incarnate, as if measuring the innocence of a life he cannot destroy.
He does not speak to them. He does not need to. His presence alone is enough to bend the air. And yet, as the hours stretch into preparation, you sense the tension in his hands, the careful modulation of his steps, the unspoken effort to restrain his instincts.
When he finally glances at you, it is different. Not the cold, sardonic tilt of lips, not the cruel humor or disdain. There is an edge of something softer, “You are.. blind,” he murmurs, hand slowly cupping your face, “yet you have more courage than those that have fought to kill me. To defeat a demon is one thing,” his thumb brushes against your lip, resting there to feel the heat seeping through his skin, to feel the vitality that he loathes so much, “to accept one as your husband is another.”
He’s silent for a moment, and the air fills with a heavy emotion, as if he’s about to say something to contradict his spirit, yet it bursts unceremoniously when he pulls his hand away and scoffs, “Yet you’re still far too weak. A liability.”
To fill the silence you speak quietly, tea in hand, explaining traditions, rituals, the way your ancestors recorded every detail of a wedding long past. He listens as if the world itself were paused, waiting for your voice to draw it back into motion.
At one point, a jar tips, spilling red powder across the floor. You bend after some fumbling to find the jar and the powder, collecting it clumsily, humming under your breath a tune your mother once taught you. Kunikuzushi watches, and for the briefest moment, his expression shifts. He leans down near you and pushes your wrists away, “Foolish girl. Why don’t you call someone else to do it? You’re only making a bigger mess.”
It’s almost obscene, Kunikuzushi, the man whispered of in the streets still, on his knees before you. The same hands that once painted Tatarasuna red now move with deliberate care, gathering what remains, sweeping fine scarlet dust into a jar. You can hear the soft scrape of the jar’s rim, the hush of his breath. For a brief moment, you forget who he is, or perhaps, you remember too well. In the stillness, something ancient stirs, a thread crossing another, unseen. The universe, in its quiet cruelty, begins to sew two fates together.
When the ceremony begins, it is strange, ethereal, like a memory half-remembered. No guests, no music, only the wind, the stones, and the unraveling of a waiting that’s lasted centuries. You stand before him, dressed in a gown that hints at your form without ostentation, and he looks at you with something that is not ownership, not desire, not cruelty, but awareness. Acknowledgment of a life he is suddenly aware he must protect.
“You do not need to do this,” he says softly, voice almost swallowed by the wind.
“I know,” you reply, reaching your hand out, “but it must be done.”
As he watches you stand beside him, a warm yet tangled and ugly feeling festers inside him, swells, reaches its ugly arms out to wrap around his body and take his heart captive until he feels nothing but that overwhelming warmth. He wants to protect you.
Not because duty commands it, but because he cannot abide the thought of what might happen if he fails. Not because he promised. Not because centuries have drawn the path. But because you are here. Standing before him, unshaken. And for the first time in five hundred years, he is not certain what he is allowed to do—only that he cannot harm you.
PART IV — THE NIGHT AND THE VOW
They whisper before you have even left the threshold.
Soft, vicious sounds like moth wings brushing together and threading through the walls.
The cursed thing is gone, someone breathes. At last. The bloodline may yet be spared.
You do not turn. You do not need eyes to know where each voice comes from, nor to recognize the shape of their relief. It drifts after you like smoke, faintly sweet, faintly bitter. You feel Kunikuzushi’s hand twitch at his side. A pause. Then the hush of his exhale, sharp, amused in a way that hurts to hear.
“How touching,” he murmurs, low enough for only you to catch, “how kind of them to mourn.”
And that is all he says. But when he turns, the air shifts. You feel the weight of his stare fall over the room, heavy as thunder. The whispers die at once. No apology follows. Only a thick, uneasy silence like the settling of air after a funeral. You imagine the way his eyes must gleam when he looks at them, violet and terrible, and though you do not see it, you know enough of fear to understand that every throat in the house tightens beneath it.
Then he moves toward you. “Let’s go,” he says, voice clipped, restrained. And before you can reach for your walking stick, his arm slides beneath your knees, another supporting your back. You gasp softly, instinctively, hands curling in the air between you, but he only adjusts his grip, steady and unyielding.
You have never been carried like this. You feel the cold embroidery of his coat against your fingers, the hum of strange energy beneath his skin, as if he is a storm barely contained by the fragile imitation of flesh. He does not speak again, and you do not ask him to. The quiet night folds around you both, wet with sea wind. As he carries you to the inn where you will stay, the curse feels less like a burden and more like an inevitability that has arrived too gently to terrify you.
The innkeeper does not charge him.
You hear the tremor in her voice when she bows, hear the way the key trembles in her hand. “For the night,” she whispers, “no payment, my lord.” Although he finds it strange, although he wishes to rectify her and plead that he is no longer the cruel demon who would destroy this place in seconds, he doesn't. He takes it and says nothing of correction or courtesy because even he can recognize when argument is futile. He walks towards the room and the door closes behind you with a hush like the quiet rustle of leaves outside.
The room smells of cedar and dust. A single lamp burns, its flame low and tired. He sets you down carefully on the edge of the bed, and the mattress dips beneath your weight. For a moment, you feel his hand linger at your shoulder as if uncertain whether to let go, and then he steps back, boots scuffing the floor.
“Get some rest,” he says shortly, “I have… matters to attend to.” And then he is gone. The latch clicks and the night settles around you like a warm cloak.
You unpack your small bag slowly, tracing each item with your fingers. The diary with its soft worn cover, the needle you use to make raised marks along its pages, and last of all, the little wooden doll.
She is smooth with years of touch, carved in simple lines. You run your thumb along the curve of her head, her tiny hands, her smile that never fades.
“Still with me?” you murmur.
The air shifts. A faint hum trembles at the base of your skull—the light vibration that means you are not alone. Then, a giggle. Light, mischievous, echoing as if from the far corner of the room.
Always.
You smile, small and weary, “You saw him, didn’t you?”
The bridegroom? Oh yes. He is quite handsome. I’m sure he would’ve made a few nobles abandon their titles back in my day. But it’s strange. He looks at you as though you are the last candle in a storm. As if you’re worth more than you truly are.
Your throat tightens. “He pities me,” you say, though you are not sure whether you believe it.
No. He fears you. Because you are not afraid, even though you have every reason to be. You are far too kind to him, a puppet without a heart.
You do not reply. The doll hums again, tilting in your palm as if nodding, and if you close your eyes for long enough, you can feel the faint shimmer of the other presences, the soft shapes that have followed you since childhood, threading the line between the living and the dead. They are your friends, your unseen companions, the voices that visit you when the rest of the world averts its eyes.
Tonight, though, they are restless. The doll wriggles, stretching in your hand like a living thing.
It is your wedding night, she teases. Tradition must be kept!
“Tradition is cruel,” you murmur.
So is fate, another voice answers, higher, distant, but you are too beautiful to greet it in plain robes.
You sigh, half amused, half exasperated, “You sound like my mother.”
They laugh, a chorus of whispers, delighted even through time. Before you can object, the air cools, brushes of unseen fingers trailing through your hair, along your wrists. Fabric rustles, laces loosen. The ghosts move with practiced precision, dressing you in silk so light it feels like water. You do not see the mirror, but you feel their satisfaction, hear their pleased hums as the scent of dried flowers fills the room.
Perfect, says the doll, now he will see what the living see. Perhaps you will be the first to make the fearsome Kunikuzushi surrender to his desires.
A few giggles fill the room. You do not answer except for a scoff and a small playful swat to the doll. You sit quietly on the bed, hands clasped in your lap, heart beating too fast. You tell yourself it does not matter. That this is duty, and nothing more. That you are not nervous, only… uncertain. Yet the air around you thrums with expectation. Somewhere, outside these four walls, thunder strikes.
An hour slips by. Then another.
You sit waiting, half-convinced he won’t come, that a creature like Kunikuzushi would find no purpose in honoring something as human as a wedding night. You almost rise to extinguish the lamp when the door groans open.
He steps in. The door clicks shut behind him. The floorboards creak as he turns around, and then they stop.
You cannot see him, but you feel his eyes all over you. Your heart hammers against your ribs, the silk of your lingerie feels suddenly suffocating, clinging to your perfumed skin like a second layer of flesh, outlining every inch of your body.
His presence becomes stronger, heavier as he steps towards you. The weight of his unrivaled attention settles onto you like a magnet, like the quiet charge of a storm remembering itself, and the only thing it circles is you.
To Kunikuzushi, you look stunning. He has to close his eyes to distract himself from the sinful sight in front of him. Not now, he thinks. No matter how badly he wishes to pin you down onto the bed, rip those clothes off, and take what’s rightfully his, he cannot. Even if his heart’s sole burning desire is to bury himself in your wetness until it’s impossible to escape your warmth, to please you until you gain sight and lose your voice, to—no. He cannot. Because he came here to repent and ended up marrying some daughter promised to him centuries ago, and doing this to her, to you, when you do not truly love him is crossing a line even the cruelest would not dare. So, instead, he takes a deep breath, too deep with the weight of his emotions.
When he exhales, it brushes your cheek. His voice comes low, strained, rougher than usual, “So this is what you think I came for.” Despite himself, his hands reverently trail up your arms and onto your shoulders. He guides you back just enough to face him, and you cannot tell what emotion he is feeling.
You don’t answer, even though your breath hitches at his soft touch. A demon should be harsher, should plunder and ravage, and take—yet he doesn’t. He holds you as though you’re made of porcelain, a delicate thing that would crack with the weight of his palms. And so, you don’t know what answer would be right. The world narrows to the warmth of him in front of you, the weight of his gaze, the tremor in his hold, and the soft, quickened rise and fall of your chest.
The lights flicker, and he lets out a sound almost like a laugh, but without mirth. He leans closer; the air tastes of rain on stone. For a heartbeat, you feel the full force of his focus on you, and then he stops.
The silence after is unbearable. “You’re frightened,” he says at last. “You don’t want this.”
“I…” Your throat tightens. “I don’t know. Married couples should—”
The words break off when his breath hisses sharply through his teeth. The silence turns darker, heavier. You feel it ripple through the room like heat. “Should?” he repeats, and there’s something poisonous, angry (on your behalf?) in the way he says it, “Who told you that?”
You can’t answer, instead fidgeting with the hem of whatever it is you’re wearing, and suddenly you feel very small and very embarrassed. The sound of his boots pacing away, then back again, fills the space between you. He stops again in front of you. You can sense him bending closer, his presence dense and suffocating. And yet, when he speaks, the words tremble with something else entirely.
“You think your purpose is surrender. That I would like you to please me even when you don’t want it. Hah. Pathetic. I am not bound by your rituals. I outlived the need for them centuries ago,” his words sound almost like a pained confession, as if they’re being dragged from his lips.
Your breath hitches. The room feels too small for his presence. That strange heat returns, not desire, not kindness, but something that’s taken the two and warped them into something only he can feel, something itching at the edges of his control. He is angry at them, at himself, at the shape of this night. Angry that you sit before him, gentle and blind and willing to be broken because the world told you it was proper.
You hear him breathe again, slower now, as if he’s wrestling his will into submission. “You are not an offering,” he says finally, “and you are not a curse. You are allowed to simply exist. With me, in this room, you do not have to pretend to be anything.”
The mattress dips slightly; he’s kneeling now. His gloved hands hover near your arms but never touch, as if he’s afraid his skin could bruise you. When he finally moves, it’s only to pull the blanket higher around your shoulders.
“You’ll sleep,” he says, “that’s all. We will depart once you have fully rested.”
You can feel the heat of his hand still near your face, the ghost of contact not yet made. For a moment, you almost wish he wouldn’t pull away. But time is cruel, ripping these tender moments out of your desperate, clenching hands (it does not linger where it is not invited). Kunikuzushi rises. The chair creaks as he sits apart from you, deliberate in the distance he keeps. You lie back, pulling the blanket to your chin, listening for his breath. It doesn’t come, and you remind yourself that he is not living, that he is a cruel demon with an even crueler destiny. Somehow, that makes this all easier—hating him is easier than facing the idea that he who has been called the ‘Demon of Tatarasuna’ may not be as heartless as they say. It’s easier than admitting that between the silence, you hear the strange, soft hum of a man whose heart has remembered, for the first time in centuries, what it means to ache.
PART V — THE BEGINNING, ONCE MORE
Morning does not arrive gently.
It seeps in through the cracks of the room like a cautious intruder, carrying with it the muted sounds of the city waking, wooden shutters creaking open, distant voices calling prices, the soft clatter of carts rolling over stone. You surface from sleep slowly, limbs heavy, thoughts drifting like fog across water.
For a moment, you forget. Then you remember the weight of a presence in the room that is not your own. You sit up, careful not to tangle yourself in the blanket, fingers grazing the edge of the mattress as you orient yourself. The chair creaks faintly.
He has not yet moved. You can feel him there, still as a blade set aside. The air around him hums with restrained pressure, like something coiled tight beneath skin that is not quite human. It prickles at your awareness, a constant reminder that you are not alone, that the man sharing this room with you is no ordinary husband.
“You’re awake,” Kunikuzushi says.
Not softened by sleep. Not unguarded like your thoughts. His voice is still clipped, controlled, held at arm’s length from anything that might betray him.
“Yes,” you answer. After a pause, quieter, “Good morning.”
Silence stretches, “We’ll leave before the inn gets busy.”
You nod, “I’d like to go to the market first.”
The words hang between you.
The chair legs scrape back an inch, “Why?”
It is not quite a question. More a challenge, as though you have proposed something foolish or dangerous.
“I need to say goodbye,” you reply, “and… I need supplies.”
“For what.”
“For living,” you say simply.
You feel his gaze on you again, sharper this time, searching for something—hesitation, deceit, fear. Whatever he expects to find, it is not there.
At last, he exhales through his nose, “Fine. But stay close.”
The market is already alive when you arrive.
You know it by sound first, by the layered murmur of voices, the rhythmic calls of vendors hawking their wares, the laughter of children darting between stalls. The air is thick with competing scents—fried dough, fresh fruit, oil and incense, salt carried inland on the breeze.
Your fingers brush the familiar edge of your walking stick. The stone beneath your feet is uneven here, worn smooth in places by centuries of passage. This is home. Or close enough to it.
Kunikuzushi walks beside you, close enough that you can feel the faint displacement of air when he moves. He says nothing, but his attention is everywhere at once. You sense it in the way the crowd subtly bends around him, the way conversations falter as he passes.
Fear follows him like a shadow. It bothers him more than he expected. He tells himself he does not care. That mortals have always been skittish creatures, easily startled, easily broken. And yet, he watches the way your steps never falter, the way you navigate the chaos with confidence, guided by sound and intuition rather than sight.
You greet people as you pass.
A fishmonger who presses something small, wrapped into your palm without a word. An old woman who squeezes your fingers and whispers a blessing meant to ward off evil. A child who bumps into you and apologizes profusely before recognizing your voice and laughing in relief.
This is not a place that merely tolerates you. This is a place that knows you. Kunikuzushi feels something twist, sharp and unpleasant, beneath his ribs.
You stop at a fabric stall, fingers trailing over bolts of cloth. The vendor chatters warmly, describing colors you cannot see but know by texture alone. You listen, nodding, asking thoughtful questions. You choose carefully, decisively.
“You’re good at this,” he says before he can stop himself.
You blink, then smile, amused, “At shopping?”
“At existing,” he snaps, then scowls at nothing in particular. The words linger, uncomfortably intimate. He looks away.
He should not be here. That is the truth gnawing at him as the morning wears on. You have a life threaded tightly into this place. People know the sound of your steps, recognize the cadence of your voice. You belong to this market in a way he has never belonged anywhere, and he is about to tear you out of it.
The realization settles in his chest, an old familiar weight dressed in new clothes. This is what he does. This is what he has always done. He arrives, and things end.
You pause near the edge of the square, head tilted slightly, “You’re angry.”
His jaw tightens, “No.”
“You are,” you insist gently, “your presence feels… sharper.”
He scoffs, “You mistake awareness for insight.”
“Maybe,” you murmur, “but you haven’t left my side since we arrived. Not even once.”
He has no response to that.
The crowd thins as you move toward the outer ring of stalls. The air opens up, cooler here, touched with the promise of sea wind. Somewhere nearby, you hear the crackle of sparks—a sound like distant embers catching.
“Oh,” you say, brightening, “she’s here.”
“She?” he echoes warily.
Before you can answer, a voice rings out, clear and delighted, “Hey! Over here!”
Footsteps approach at a run, light and quick. You turn toward the sound, smiling openly now.
“Good morning, Yoimiya,” you greet.
“Morning!” she chirps, “I thought I heard you! I was hoping you’d come out before—oh.” She stops short.
You can feel the moment she registers him. The hitch in her breath, the subtle recalibration of her stance. Kunikuzushi meets her gaze coolly, already cataloging her as a potential threat, an annoyance, an inconvenience.
Her surprise lasts exactly half a heartbeat, then she grins. “So this must be him,” she says brightly, “Wow. You really didn’t exaggerate.”
“I didn’t say anything,” you protest, flustered.
“You didn’t have to,” Yoimiya laughs. “You’ve got that tone when you’re sitting on a secret.”
Kunikuzushi bristles, “Watch your mouth.”
She squints at him, head tilted, “Huh. Grumpy. Figures.”
You suppress a laugh, covering it with your hand. He notices. Of course he does. Yoimiya claps her hands together, “Perfect timing, then! I’m testing a new batch tonight. Festival-grade. You should stay.”
“We’re leaving,” he says immediately.
“Leaving,” you echo, quieter.
Yoimiya’s smile softens, “Oh.”
The single syllable carries more understanding than he likes.
“Well,” she says, recovering quickly, “then at least let me give you a send-off. Fireworks are better when you have a reason to remember them.” She darts off before either of you can respond.
The sun dips lower by the time evening arrives, painting warmth across the sky you cannot see but can feel in the way the air cools. You stand at the edge of the hill overlooking the city, Yoimiya’s voice floating up as she sets things in place. Kunikuzushi stands beside you, arms crossed.
The first firework cracks the sky open.
Sound washes over you—sharp, bright, blooming into a cascade of echoes that roll across the land. Heat brushes your skin. You laugh softly, unguarded, tilting your face upward as though you might feel the colors.
He watches you instead. In the fleeting light, your expression is nothing like he’s seen before. You are alive. Rooted. Loved. Something in his chest tightens, warm and unbearable. This, he realizes distantly, is the true punishment. Not chains. Not vows. But the knowledge that for once, the world gave him something worth protecting, and he does not know whether doing so will damn him more than breaking it ever did.
The fireworks bloom again, and again, and again. This time, Kunikuzushi does not look away from joy.
PART VI — THE ROAD
Tatarasuna’s city does not notice when you leave it, that is its mercy. The road you travel on smells of earth and rain, of smoke drifting from distant blacksmiths—even after all this time, Tatarasuna still forges weapons. Your fingers trail along Kunikuzushi’s clothes, following the edge of fabric. It is the only line between you and the unknown. You don’t know which is scarier, trusting a demon who has no heart, or the unknown. The ghosts have been eerily silent, not responding to your calls. It doesn’t calm your heart.
He does not speak, but you feel him tense beneath your hand like a coiled snake that rattles in the lazy sun of the evening. His arm brushes yours as he adjusts your pace on a rocky incline. You flinch, startled by the sharpness in his movements, but he does not release you. Instead, he murmurs something you do not quite hear, and his touch becomes gentle, almost reluctant. It is not tenderness you feel, however, it is possessiveness, an insistence, a desperation that you stay within his grasp.
He keeps glancing back, his eyes sharp even in the early rays of dawn, scanning the horizon for threats he cannot always see. You are so small in his arms, so light, and yet the weight you carries—the centuries of a curse, the stories whispered into your cradle—press onto him as if it were his own burden. I cannot lose her. Not now. Not ever. The thought claws at him, sharpened by memory and guilt, a reminder of every life he has touched and torn apart.
He should be afraid of attachment, knows the cost of letting anyone in close. And yet, the idea of you alone, vulnerable, walking through a world that could swallow you whole makes his chest ache with something more than guilt. He silently vows to atone for his sins by protecting the one thing gifted to him in all his years, in every way he knows how.
He feels the taut line of control tighten in his chest, an almost unbearable itch, and it frightens him how much of his focus, his thought, and even his anger is already claimed by you. He does not yet name it. It is duty, it is a reversal of his commandment, it is obsession, it is all the dark and light tangled together inside him. But he knows one thing with certainty: no shadow, no curse, no village, no threat will ever take you from him, not while he draws breath.
Lost in his thoughts, he almost attacks when a sudden gust of wind carries a wet leaf against your cheek. You shiver. He flicks it away (it does not deserve the warmth of that soft flesh). The path steepens again, and the stones shift underfoot A distant, hollow sound echoes, like a boulder rolling somewhere far off. Your heart hammers in your chest. Before you can speak, his hand is under your elbow, keeping you upright. The heat of him presses into your awareness until you cannot ignore it. You want to tell him that you can manage, that the world is not so cruel to you, but the road is slippery, the dawn sharp, and his insistence is too frightening to confront headfirst.
Something rustles to your side, small, fast. You startle, gasping softly. Then, a low, pained whimper cuts into the night. Not human, not natural. Kunikuzushi’s hand returns to your side, this time wet with something warm. The road returns to its usual pace, only the distant wind left to carry your ragged breaths. You do not ask what happened. You only know that he dealt with it before it reached you. Once again.
You continue on in the hush of tension. Every now and then, he glances down at you, sharp and calculating, as if measuring your reactions, ensuring your safety. The possessiveness, the control, it prickles against your nerves. You do not move away or resist. You let your senses map this new world in faint traces, the scrape of his boots, the shiver of leaves, the weight of the wind against the hollow of your ear.
PART VII — DON'T TRUST THE FOG
The village rises from the fog, a memory half-remembered. Timbered houses lean slightly, as if bowing under the weight of centuries, their windows dark but for a faint, flickering glow of hearths that never seem to waver. The air carries a scent of damp earth and something sweeter, \perfumed, that prickles at your senses. Every footstep against the cobblestones echoes far too sharply, swallowed and returned by the mist. You lean against Kunikuzushi as he carries you, his fingers firm at your back, every movement of his rigid and unwilling. He doesn’t want to stay here, to trust these strange people, but you are too weak and too tired to continue, and sleeping even in a cot is far better than the earthy ground.
The villagers move with a deliberateness like characters within a play, as if they know every line, every act, everything that will happen in the future. Their smiles are wide, their bows careful, and their greetings carry expectation, expectation of ceremony, of attention paid to every word and movement. No one meets your eyes for too long, and no one falters. The fog clings to them like a veil, muting their voices and making them sound distant yet intimately close, whispering directly to your heart and mind. Doors open at your approach, the air inside is warmer, scented with the comforting smell of bread and herbs. They offer food, blankets, and strange reverence in their eyes. Kunikuzushi does not hesitate. He does not lower himself to their gestures. He accepts them silently. Pride and habit make him reluctant to respond with more than a nod.
Everything seems rehearsed. The village is far too still, too precise. There is a cadence here, a rhythm that crescendos beneath the cobblestones, beneath the fog, beneath the polite murmurs: observe, submit, maintain order. Even the animals seem complicit. A black cat slinks along the periphery of your vision, tail high, following you without sound. A dog lies unmoving, its eyes impossibly bright, its gaze sharp enough to pierce the mist. You feel them more than see them, the subtle brush of unseen things against the edges of your awareness.
You do not see, but the air tingles with unease. At night, when Kunikuzushi returns from whatever welcoming festival they had, the room is quiet, but the faint rustle of movement near the window—an animal? a shadow?—makes your pulse quicken. You reach for him instinctively, your fingers brushing the line of his side. He tenses, yet does not shift away. Instead, you feel warm arms wrap around your body, holding you close to his chest, where there is no sound, no heartbeat. You nestle into him, relaxing. The silence that surrounds him is something you've gotten used to.
The days stretch on. Mist curls around the edges of the village, clinging to your hair, your sleeves, your breath. Kunikuzushi moves beside you wordlessly, his hands constantly brushing your back, your shoulder, touching wherever he can as if needing grounding. Yet neither of you choose to acknowledge it. The villagers follow you with their eyes, polite and measured, their gestures smooth as water, but there’s something sharp, like knives pressed to ribs in an act of betrayal disguised as kindness.
At first, it was subtle. A smile too wide. A bow too low. Invitations to errands he does not trust, small requests meant to occupy him while you remain behind. “Please, Kunikuzushi-sama,” a woman murmurs, voice silk over steel, “would you fetch some bread? The baker insists it is freshest at this hour.” He refuses, silently. But the next day, another asks, “Could you accompany me to the mill? It is a long walk alone.” He refuses again, but you can feel him shifting. Every small request chips at him until he finds it hard to say no.
While you walk beside him, you feel unseen threads brushing against your awareness, the ghosts lingering near your heels, whispering warnings, tugging at your attention when the fog masks danger. To you, the village’s strange politeness is nothing more than a shadow against a candlelight. But Kunikuzushi’s centuries of instinct, his fury, his pride make him vulnerable. Far more than you.
One night, the manipulation crosses its threshold. You have been lingering behind him, hesitant, waiting for something only you can perceive, while he has been drawn to yet another of the villagers’ entreaties. The fog is thick, and the moon offers little light. He stops abruptly, turning, the sharp edge of his violet eyes cutting through the mist.
“Kuni..” you start, voice soft, “you know that this isn’t right, right? You don’t trust easily! These people cannot be trusted. My—My instincts tell me. Let me protect you, let’s leave this place. I would rather sleep outside with predictable monsters that you can handle than with these people who are manipulating—!”
“You do not understand,” he snaps quietly, low enough that only you can hear, a tremor of frustration undercutting his control, “I am fearsome. I am not… a creature who needs protection. I do not require your guidance, nor your interference.”
You flinch, not from fear, but from the weight of his words. The ghosts stir near you, restless, sensing the spike in his emotions. You can feel them pressing close, whispering encouragement, shielding you from the invisible current that now seeks to pull even Kunikuzushi’s will away. You sense his turmoil as keenly as you sense the dense, suffocating, inescapable fog wrapping around your ankles.
He takes a step closer, the air between you charged with tension, his hands clenching at his sides. “Do not think for a monet that I am…vulnerable,” he hisses, his voice a soft snarl, “do not assume I need you to shield me. You are under no illusion. I am the predator, not the prey.”
And yet, even as he speaks, you feel the tug at his consciousness, the itch of doubt, the haunting pressure of centuries of guilt that cannot be ignored. His pride flares, sharp as a blade, but the threads of manipulation have already begun their work. He does not leave you, but he steps back, forming a silent barrier that chills your skin more than the fog ever could.
The ghosts shift nearer, protective, unseen. You close your eyes, feeling the gentle brush of their presence and the subtle hum of their vigilance. You are safe, for now, even as the storm inside him rages. And somewhere deep in the tension, you sense the first true fracture in the village’s control. They can twist his pride, they can bait him, but they cannot bend the ghosts’ protection, nor the bond between you and the man who will never fully let you go.
A few nights later, the villagers offer him a hunt. “It is right,” they say, “that you contribute if you are allowed to stay. Only proper.” Kunikuzushi agrees, curtly glancing at you, and you feel the coil of tension tighten in your chest. You are left in the room, blind to what lies beyond the fog-laden streets.
PART VIII — RITUAL
The candle flickers against the thin walls of the room. Outside, the fog presses like a living thing, curling against the windowpane, brushing your hair with cold fingers. The night is thick, heavier than it has any right to be. Kunikuzushi has been gone for hours, drawn into the woods under the guise of “assistance.” You, of course, are forbidden to follow. He cannot let you get hurt. You should feel calm, but it’s suffocating. The hairs on your arms lift and the faint tingle at the base of your skull whispers of eyes on you. Even though you cannot see, you are not wrong.
A soft knock, then another. The sound is almost delicate and polite, but your heart hammers. You rise carefully from the bed, your fingertips tracing the walls of the room that have become so familiar to you (they shouldn’t have been; this was only supposed to be a one-day stay), your ears straining for any sign of suspicious activity.
The door opens silently. They slip inside before you can react—shadows in the candlelit room, whispering words you cannot understand but somehow feel deep within your chest. You yelp in panic, yet you do not know where to turn. A hand, rough with an unexpected weight, clamps over your mouth. A cloth, damp with the faint metallic tang of iron covers your nose and presses against your cheeks. You struggle, fists curling, heels bracing against the floor, but they are strong, and your legs are small against them.
“Shhh,” someone hisses, their breath sharp and cold against your ear. Their tone is soft, but it carries a hidden layer of menace that makes the hair on your neck bristle. This isn’t right. A sickening feeling runs over you, sweeping into your pores and rustling your senses. You need Kunikuzushi.
You kick once, twice, but their grip doesn’t falter. Panic scratches at the corners of your mind. Since the man you depend on isn’t here, you call on your one saving grace. The voices. The small, persistent presences that always linger in the edges unless called upon. A tingle, almost imperceptible at first, flickers at the base of your skull. The doll in your pocket vibrates faintly against your palm. You feel it, you always feel it, and through it, the faintest hum of life that is not yours, that belongs to those who have lingered in the space between.
They pull you upright. Your hands scrape against rough fabric, rope, and flesh that isn’t yours. The air is colder here, scented with smoke and wet earth, the dampness is nothing like the forest, it sinks into your bones and refuses to leave. You stumble, head spinning, trying to orient yourself, but your senses are pulled outward. There is a chant somewhere ahead, low and hypnotic. It sets itself under your skin and squeezes your lungs, and it’s very hard to breathe for a moment.
You are dragged through fog, thick and pungent. It presses into your skin from all sides. It’s almost living. You can hear it breathe, you can feel it curling around your ankles just like all those times before, tugging you forward. A fire crackles ahead, its orange tongues licking the night sky, the smoke burning your nose and making your eyes water though you cannot see it.
The voices close in, chanting, murmuring. Their rhythm is hypnotic, curling into your chest and tugging at your heart. “Come… come…” The words are almost lost in the wind, but you feel them, vibrating through the soles of your feet and up your spine.
“Where am I?” you whisper, though your voice is muffled by the cloth, more sound than question.
Someone answers. His voice is creaking wood, weathered by years and hardened by resentment. “You are here, child,” he says, “because fate remembers what has been done. Because blood once spilled cannot be forgotten. Because the kabukimono left ashes, and his shadow lingers. You… are the last step of balance.”
Balance? You try to make sense of the words, but the ropes biting into your wrists and ankles, the heat of the fire, the fog pressing on your chest, make comprehension impossible. Only panic, only the desire to run, to see, to call for Kunikuzushi. So, you scream. A short, sharp sound that carries no logic, only pure, frantic need. It doesn’t reach very far, not enough to penetrate through the thick fog.
The elder answers, voice softened as if to soothe you, but each word carries weight like stones. “Do you not know the story of Tatarasuna? The demon that burned men alive, the smoke that poisoned the air? You are… but a mere line in that story. And tonight, the moon rises as it once did, and all debts must be paid.”
The words make your stomach turn. You feel the smoke crawl across your tongue, taste it in the bitter tang of panic. You try to pull free, thrash, call the ghosts, but the ropes tighten.
Then, faintly, you feel them. A stir in the corner of your mind, the familiar pull of presence. Always there. Quiet. Patient. Waiting.
You call again, stronger this time, not with sound but with need. The doll vibrates in your pocket, and you swear it whispers, just for you, a thread of warmth in the suffocating night.
I am here. Always.
Something shifts in the fog. A slight ripple, almost like a pulse. You can feel them moving closer, brushing along the edges of your perception. They cannot touch you yet; their strength is faint, tethered to your life, but they are here. And that knowledge, no matter how weak and fragile, keeps your panic at bay just enough to breathe.
The ropes tighten. Someone steps closer, and the firelight bathes your gagged face in warmth and terror. You sense him lean down, just a whisper away. “The moon will rise fully,” he says, “and with it, the end of a line, the beginning of vengeance.”
You thrash again, but the spirits ripple around you, almost tangible, whispering encouragement, threading through the air like smoke. One small voice, tiny and familiar, brushes against your mind.
Call him.
You hesitate. The thought is dangerous. But the rope bites. The fire’s heat presses against your bare arms. The fog wraps tighter. Your heart races, a drum in the quiet terror.
Call him, the voice insists. Kunikuzushi.
The name trembles on your tongue, a prayer, a command, and as it leaves your lips, you feel a surge in the air. The fog convulses, the chanting falters, and the firelight flickers. Something in the distance answers. Something alive. Something angry, something burdened with guilt that stretches across centuries.
The same creaky voice pauses, noticing. “What—what is this?” he mutters, a falter in his otherwise steady voice. The villagers shift uneasily. The rhythm of the night feels wrong, unnatural.
You are gagged, tied, helpless—but you are not alone. The spirits surge faintly forward, their outlines almost visible against the fog and firelight, drawing closer. They do not speak. They do not fight. Not yet. They wait.
And the elder, the first of the villagers, tightens his jaw. The story he has woven for hundreds of years, the revenge he has planned, now feels… vulnerable. Fragile. Uncertain.
A scream of terror rips from your throat, muffled, a sound caught between panic and command. The doll in your pocket vibrates, the hum of the spirits swells. You feel the heat of the fire, the coldness of the fog, and the pressing, insistent presence of those who have always been by your side.
The ritual has begun, but the first move belongs to the unseen.
PART IX — THE STORY THE MOON WAS TAUGHT TO REMEMBER
“What—What is the meaning of all this?” you yell, feeling marginally more emboldened now that the spirits are around you.
Only silence and the sound of firewood crackling greets you at first.
The man who first answered you—the elder—lets the fire breathe, lets the fog coil tighter around the clearing, lets the night settle into the shape it has been waiting for.
You kneel where they have placed you, wrists bound, cloth rough against your skin. The ground beneath you is cold, packed earth worn smooth by generations of feet. Somewhere above, the moon is rising, inch by patient inch, though you cannot see it. You feel its pull instead, the way it presses on your chest, the way it tugs at something old and sore inside you.
The elder steps forward at last. His voice, when he speaks, is the voice of someone who has soothed children to sleep, who has known hunger and weather and loss. It carries no rage, only certainty.
“You feel it, don’t you?” he says quietly, “the weight of this night.”
You swallow, throat dry. The cloth muffles your breath, but not your fear. Around you, the villagers stand in a wide circle, their presence measured, deliberate. No one rushes. No one shouts. This is not a frenzy. This is a ritual.
“This is not the first time the moon has watched a promise come due,” the elder continues, “and it will not be the last. But it is the only time you will feel it.” He lowers himself onto a stone across from you. The firelight crackles, throwing warmth across his hands. You smell old incense on his sleeves, something bitter beneath the sweetness.
“You asked why,” he says, “because you are here, because the curse has finally taken shape—I will tell you.”
The fog thickens. You sense it curling closer, pressing in like a held breath. Somewhere at the edge of your awareness, something stirs, not voices, but something like a memory trying to wake.
“Once,” the elder says, and the word lands softly, inevitably, “there was a place where iron sang and the earth burned bright.”
A murmur ripples through the villagers. Reverent. Familiar.
“Tatarasuna,” he names it, not as a location, but as one might name a wound. “A land of work and pride. Of hands that shaped steel and lives that bent but did not break.” You feel the faintest tightening in your chest. The name carries weight. It is your hometown. Where you’ve grown, lived and loved. It brings back memories of your parents, of your older brother, of…Kunikuzushi.
“Our ancestors lived there,” the elder goes on, “fathers and mothers, brothers, children who learned to walk in ash-dusted streets. They were not perfect people. No fairy tale ever begins with perfection. But they were alive.” He pauses, letting that word linger.
“Then,” he says softly, “a boy came.” His tone shifts
“He wore kindness like a mask,” the elder continues, his tone gentle, almost fond, “he was an outsider, but he laughed easily. Learned quickly. He listened. He watched. He let himself be taught, and became a member of our community.”
You feel a strange ache bloom behind your ribs. It’s not memory, but something adjacent to it, like standing near a door you have never opened.
“They called him Kabukimono,” the elder says, “a wanderer. A stray. Someone who did not belong anywhere, and so was welcomed everywhere.” The fire pops. Sparks lift into the air, vanish.
“For a time,” the elder says, “he was a blessing.”
Your hands clench unconsciously. The bindings bite into your skin.
“But blessings,” the elder continues, voice steady, “are often just calamities waiting for the right moment.”
The villagers lean in, almost imperceptibly.
“There came a night,” he says, “when one of our people died. Niwa. A blacksmith” He does not say how. He does not say why. The specifics are unimportant to the shape of the story.
“One death,” he repeats. “A single loss. And the boy—the one who smiled and learned our songs, who mourned with us and laughed with us—could not bear it.” The fog seems to pulse. You feel the hum at the edges of your awareness grow stronger, a low vibration under your skin.
“He looked at the world,” the elder says, “and decided it had wronged him.” The fire flares brighter, heat washing over your knees.
“They say he rose into the sky,” the elder continues, and now his cadence shifts— slower, simpler, the rhythm of a story told so many times it has worn smooth, “they say the night cracked open to make room for him. The moon drowned in colors no human throat had words for. Red. Violet. Black.”
A shiver runs through the circle.
“And when he looked down,” the elder says, “he did not see people. He saw a debt.”
Your breath comes shallow. Somewhere deep inside, something recoils—not denial, but sorrow. This is the story of Kunikuzushi, the one you have heard a million times over.
“He was not human,” the elder says plainly, “he never was. He was a thing shaped to resemble us, and when it learned pain, it punished the world for daring to teach it.”
The villagers murmur assent, low and unified.
“They ran,” the elder continues, “our ancestors. They ran from fire and falling sky. Some fled to the sea. Some to the hills. Some were simply… gone.” His voice tightens, just slightly.
“Those who survived returned to silence,” he says, “to empty houses. To streets that remembered footsteps no one would ever take again.” The fog presses closer. You feel it brush your cheeks, your wrists, as if testing you.
“We carried that night with us,” the elder says, “we carried it into exile. Into children. Into grandchildren. Into stories told softly, so they would not burn the tongue.” He looks at you now, you feel the weight of his gaze.
“And we learned,” he says, “that monsters do not always look like monsters.”
The chanting begins again, low and slow, threading through the air like a heartbeat.
“You are not the first girl born into a cursed line,” the elder says, “but you are the first who lived after the disaster.”
A ripple of tension passes through the circle.
“We waited,” he continues, “we endured. We fed the land what it asked for. We preserved ourselves for this moment.”
Your stomach twists.
“You feel them, don’t you?” the elder asks suddenly. His gaze sharpens, “the ones who linger.”
Your heart stutters. The hum surges, stronger now, closer, but still indistinct. No faces. No voices. Just presence, pressure, like hands hovering just shy of touch.
The elder’s jaw tightens. “They should have rested,” he says, “we kept them bound to the island, bound to the memory. All for this night.”
The moon’s pull grows heavier. You feel time folding in on itself as the past presses against the present, repetition tightens its grip.
“The moon must be full,” the elder says, “just as it was then. Justice demands symmetry.” The fire crackles louder. Shadows stretch, distort.
“You are not being punished,” the elder says, almost gently, “you are being returned. Returned to a story that began before you were born. Returned to a promise made in fear and blood and desperation.”
The chanting swells. The fog thickens.
And the presence around you gathers closer, restless, waiting.
PART X — WHEN THE DEAD REFUSE TO STAY QUIET
The moon crests. It does not rush. It does not blaze. It rises the way rot spreads, slow, inevitable, claiming the sky inch by inch until the night can no longer pretend it is untouched. You feel it in your bones. The fire pops, embers hissing as they tumble to ash. The fog presses closer, clinging to skin, to breath, to thought. The chant falters even though the villagers have not finished. Something in the air resists completion.
Your wrists burn where the rope cuts deep. Your fingers are numb. Your throat aches from the scream you swallowed earlier, the one that still rattles in your chest like a trapped thing.
The elder raises his hand. “This is the hour,” he says, voice hoarse but resolute. “As it was then, so it shall be now.”
The villagers bow their heads. You don’t.
Your heart is pounding too hard, too fast with a terrible, defiant clarity. The fog does not touch your mind the way it touches theirs. It never has. You feel it trying, softening the edges of thought, dulling the ache of alarm, but something inside you refuses to sink.
The doll in your pocket hums violently.
Now, you think.
You do not scream for the villagers. You do not beg the fire or the moon. You call for them. The sound that leaves your throat is not a word. It is a pull, a thread yanked taut between worlds. Your voice cracks, tears spilling freely now as you give yourself over to the one truth you have always known.
“I need you,” you whisper, “please.”
The fog shudders. The fire gutters, flame bending inward as if bowing, and then the air splits.
Not violent or all at once. It peels open, like old cloth tearing under careful hands. Cold floods the clearing, sharp enough to sting your lungs. The pressure around you surges, no longer diffuse but focused, gathering in front of you in shapes that resist definition for one long, agonizing heartbeat.
The villagers gasp in recognition.
Memory.
The elder stiffens. “What—” His voice falters, “what is this?”
The villagers murmur uneasily, some clutching talismans, others pressing palms together as if prayer might still matter.
Something steps forward.
A woman’s outline forms first.
She is incomplete—edges blurred, features hesitant, as if reality itself struggles to remember her correctly. Her hair hangs loose and charred, the ends flickering like dying embers. One side of her face is clear enough to recognize; the other dissolves into smoke.
She does not look at the fire. She steps between it and you.
Then another shape emerges.
A man—tall, broad-shouldered, his right arm severed cleanly at the elbow. The wound doesn’t bleed. It smolders, edges glowing faintly red, as though the moment of loss is eternally fresh.
Then more. Dozens more.
They emerge from fog and shadow, from memory and grief, their forms stabilizing slowly, painfully, as if existence itself resists their return. Some limp. Some are hunched. Some are little more than silhouettes, faces blurred beyond recognition.
A child appears last.
He is small. Too small. His features are clearer than the others, as if innocence anchors him more firmly to form. His clothes are singed, his hands clenched tight at his sides. A streak of red is in his hair.
The sound that erupts from the villagers is not a scream. It is the sound of breaking, of reunion in the worst situation.
“My wife—”
“That’s my brother—”
“No—no, you burned—”
Knees hit dirt. Hands reach out instinctively, then recoil as cold lashes back. Tears spill freely now, ugly and unrestrained. Names are sobbed into the night, names no one has spoken aloud in generations.
The elder staggers backward, staff slipping from his grip. His face drains of color, eyes wide and glassy.
“You’re dead,” he whispers, “you died.”
The woman turns her head slowly. When she speaks, her voice is layered—hers and something beneath it, something older and angrier.
“Yes,” she says, “we did.”
The villagers recoil as one, the weight of that truth crushing.
“It’s been five hundred years,” the elder stammers, “this isn’t possible.”
“And yet,” the armless man snarls, stepping forward, “you kept us close.”
Understanding flickers—then horror.
The woman lifts her hand, palm glowing faintly. The air hums.
“You drained the land,” she says, voice sharp with accusation. “You bled Tatarasuna dry, disaster after disaster, all to keep us tethered. All to save enough power for this one night.”
Murmurs ripple through the villagers.
“That’s why,” she continues, bitterness seeping into every word, “the earth cracked. Why the furnace never healed. Why the fog never lifted.”
A villager sobs, “We did it for you.”
A child steps forward.
“I was six,” he says quietly.
The sound that follows is raw, animal. A woman collapses entirely, keening into the dirt. The elder’s knees buckle. “We wanted justice,” he pleads. “He slaughtered us. He rose into the sky and painted the streets red.”
The spirits stiffen.
“A demon,” someone hisses. “A puppet.”
“A monster,” another snarls.
Their gazes flick to you.
“She carries his curse.”
“She is his promise.”
The woman’s eyes blaze, “She is not him.”
“She bears his curse!”
“She bears nothing of his choosing,” the armless man roars, “and killing her will not hurt him.”
The elder’s voice breaks, “Then what was this for?”
Heavy, crushing silence crashes down.
Then the villagers move. Hands surge forward. Torches tilt. The air explodes into chaos as the spirits scream—a sound like tearing metal and shattered glass. Cold slams into heat. The clearing becomes a battlefield of memory and fury.
Pain rips through you despite suffering no wounds. It is from loss. Something vital is being pulled away, thread by thread. Your heart stutters. Your vision darkens.
The woman turns sharply, panic flashing across her face. “Stop!” she shouts, “you’re killing her!”
“We don’t have a choice!” another spirit roars, “if we don’t—”
Another wave tears through you. Your scream is raw.
And then a gentle hand tugs at your sleeve. A boy stands beside you, whole in a way that hurts to look at. All you can look at is the simple streak of red in brown.
“I knew him,” he says softly, “before the sky burned.”
Your breath catches.
“I was his friend,” he continues, “and I can still reach him.”
Your heart pounds. Another wave of pain tears through you as the spirits cry out, struggling to hold the line. Despite it all, hope flickers within you.
“But only if you allow it.”
You nod, tears streaming.
“Please,” you whisper.
He smiles—sad, resolute, “Then hold on. Stay alive until I come back”
He vanishes into the fog.
PART XI — LIFEFORCE
The clearing is no longer a place, it is a wound.
Firelight fractures against the fog, shadows jerking violently as bodies move too fast, too desperately. The villagers rush forward in a loose, panicked tide, grief sharpened into violence, faith curdled into need. Torches swing. Hands grasp. Voices crack as chants dissolve into screams.
And the spirits answer with memory.
Cold slams into heat in violent waves, frost snapping across skin, fire hissing as it gutters and fights to stay alive. The air screams a high, shrill sound that makes teeth ache and bones vibrate. The spirits move as one now, no longer tentative, no longer restrained by hesitation.
They form a barrier around you. You feel it immediately.
Your chest tightens, breath stuttering as if your lungs no longer belong to you. Every heartbeat sends a sharp ache through your ribs. Something is being taken once again—time. The sense of it is instinctual, ancient, and wrong.
Your life. Borrowed.
The woman spirit snarls, eyes blazing as she throws her arm out, a wall of cold erupting from the ground and knocking villagers back, “Stay away from her!”
A man lunges anyway, face twisted with anguish, “She’s the only thing we have left!”
The armless spirit slams into him, the impact sending both sprawling. “You had five hundred years to mourn,” he roars, “you don’t get to damn her for it!”
“But he never suffered!” the elder screams, his voice hoarse, raw, “he walked away! He lived!”
“He is suffering,” the child spirit snaps, startling everyone—including you. His small form trembles, fists clenched. “Just not in a way you can see.”
“That’s not enough,” the elder whispers,“it will never be enough.”
The spirits falter—just a fraction.
The fog thickens, pressing in, swallowing sound, blurring edges. The moon climbs higher, its light pale and sickly, stretching shadows into long, grasping fingers that crawl across the ground.
You gasp. Your knees buckle, ropes biting into skin as the world tilts violently. Pain lances through your spine, white and blinding. The woman spirit turns sharply, fear flashing across her face.
“She can’t hold this,” she shouts, “if we keep fighting like this—”
“She’ll burn out,” another spirit says grimly, “she’s not meant for this much.”
A villager seizes the moment, grabbing your arm, fingers digging into your skin. You scream as the touch sends a spike of agony through you, not from the grip, but from the sudden strain on the barrier.
The spirits surge. Too hard. Too fast.
Your scream tears free—raw, unfiltered terror and pain. Something inside you fractures, a sharp, internal snap that leaves you dizzy, nauseous. Your heart stutters, missing a beat.
The spirits freeze.
The child spirit rushes to your side, small hands hovering helplessly near your face. “Stop,” he pleads, “please. You’re killing her.”
The villagers hesitate, horror flickering through their fury as they see your condition, your pallor, your trembling, the way your breath comes shallow and uneven.
“She’s dying,” someone whispers.
“Good,” another snarls, but the word cracks under the weight of what they’re witnessing.
The woman spirit turns on the elder, fury burning through her grief. “Is this what you wanted?” she demands, “to become worse than him?”
The elder shakes, tears streaming freely now. “We wanted him to know,” he sobs, “we wanted the world to hurt like we did.”
“And you chose her,” the armless spirit says, voice thick with disgust, “a blind girl who never touched the furnace. Never raised a blade. Never chose to exist.”
The villagers falter—not retreating, but no longer surging forward. Their faces are a battlefield of emotion, expressions of grief, rage, doubt, horror flickering over them.
You draw a shallow breath. The fire crackles loudly, as if offended by the pause.
The spirits rally around you once more, forming a tighter, thinner shield. Their forms flicker now, unstable, edges tearing as the fog gnaws at them. The villagers regroup, desperation sharpening their movements again.
The elder raises his staff with trembling hands.
“Finish it,” he whispers.
The moon crests higher.
And somewhere beyond the fog, beyond the forest, beyond five centuries of guilt and blood, a puppet stirs.
PART XII — THE NAME HE BURIED
The forest is quiet in the wrong way.
It is not the honest quiet of night settling into itself, not the hum of cicadas thinning or the breath of wind moving through leaves. This silence feels curated, pressed down, smoothed flat, like a hand laid deliberately over the mouth of the world.
Even the fire beside him burns wrong.
The flame curls inward, folding on itself instead of reaching upward, its light dulled by fog that creeps low along the ground. Smoke does not rise, it sinks.
Kunikuzushi sits with his back against a tree, one knee drawn up, arms folded loosely across his chest. His head is bowed just enough that the shadow of his bangs cuts his face in half.
He is not asleep. He has not been asleep since he left you behind.
His body feels… misaligned. Heavy in places it should not be, weightless where it should anchor him. His limbs hum faintly, a low vibration beneath imitation flesh, as though his joints have been wound too tightly and left to rattle.
Each breath feels shallow. Unfulfilling.
Annoying.
“Tch,” he mutters, tongue clicking against his teeth as he exhales sharply. He straightens, rolling his shoulders as if he can shake the sensation loose, “get a grip.”
He has endured worse than this.
Centuries of battlefields soaked in blood not his own. Divine experiments. The constant pressure of hatred—his, and the world’s in return. He has survived being hollowed out and repurposed, stripped of names and reforged into weapons. And now his body betrays him because of a village? Because of a blind girl he left sitting by a hearth, trusting him to return?
His jaw tightens.
You should not have followed me, he thinks, irritation curling sharp and familiar in his chest. I told you to stay put. I told you I would handle it.
As if you could hear him from across the forest. As if you would listen even if you could.
His mind drifts, unhelpfully, back to the villagers’ faces, to the way they smiled too easily, bowed too deeply. The warmth in their voices when they spoke to him, when they thanked him.
Too warm. Too eager.
They had looked at him not with fear, not with hatred, but with something like relief. Acceptance. As if his presence completed something they had been waiting a very long time to finish.
Protector, they had called him.
Guest.
Necessary.
The words itch.
Kunikuzushi’s fingers curl slowly into the fabric of his sleeves. He had accepted their hospitality without question, pride smoothing over instinct. He had allowed himself to believe—briefly—that he could stand at the edge of Tatarasuna without consequence.
Arrogant fool.
The fog shifts. Something in the air tightens, pressure settling behind his eyes like a headache blooming all at once. His thoughts drag, growing thick and syrupy, as though each one must be pulled free by force.
Ah.
So that’s how it works. Not compulsion. Not command. Just a suggestion. A gentle nudge to the left, again and again, until you forget what straight ahead feels like.
His lip curls.
Even so, the fog alone would not do this.
The weight in his chest sharpens, twisting into something colder, more precise.
Guilt.
It presses inward, a phantom hand closing around something he does not have the luxury to ignore. He closes his eyes, breath stuttering once before he forces it steady.
You were entrusted to me.
The thought arrives fully formed, uninvited, etched deep enough that it bypasses his defenses entirely. Not a vow he remembers speaking, rather a truth branded into him long before he had words for it.
I will not let you die because of me.
The promise tightens, becomes resolve—
And then falters. His eyes open, looking around.
Why do you feel so far away?
The dizziness hits him hard and fast.
The world lurches violently, vision streaking as if dragged sideways. He grips the earth instinctively, fingers biting into soil as nausea curls unpleasantly in his gut. The fire doubles, triples, its glow smearing into ribbons of red and gold.
For one terrifying heartbeat, he feels hollow again.
Empty.
“Tch—!” He snarls, teeth bared as he forces himself upright. “Enough.”
He drags power through himself like a blade through flesh, sharp and deliberate. Lightning crackles faintly along his skin, grounding him, forcing clarity back into his limbs.
That is when the forest moves.
The fog gathers, coiling inward with unnatural intent. Shadows stretch, knitting together into a shape that does not belong to the living—nor fully to the dead.
A figure steps forward.
Bare feet press into the damp earth without sound. Brown hair falls into eyes too familiar to be coincidence. The face is younger than Kunikuzushi remembers himself ever being—softer, unscarred.
A face he buried. Niwa.
The world stills so completely it feels like even he holds his (nonexistent) breath.
“Kabukimono.”
The name strikes like a blade driven straight through his core. Kunikuzushi is on his feet in an instant. Power explodes outward, raw and violent, fracturing the air with a shriek of displaced energy. The fire snuffs out immediately, sparks scattering as lightning tears across the clearing.
“Don’t,” he snarls, voice low and lethal, “don’t you dare call me that.”
The spirit does not flinch. “You used to answer to it,” the boy says quietly.
Something inside Kunikuzushi snaps. He lunges. The first strike cleaves through the boy’s shoulder in a burst of violet light—clean, precise, meant to obliterate. It passes through him like smoke, crackling uselessly as the spirit staggers back, form flickering violently but holding.
“You should have stayed dead,” Kunikuzushi spits, following through with another blow, “all of you should have.”
The boy raises an arm, barely deflecting the strike enough that it glances past him instead, tearing a smoking furrow through the earth.
“Is that what you think?” the spirit asks, voice shaking, “that we abandoned you?”
“Don’t speak to me like you know me,” Kunikuzushi snarls, “you don’t get to stand there wearing his face and pretend—”
“Pretend I didn’t die?” Niwa snaps, anger flashing suddenly, painfully bright, “pretend you didn’t run?”
The words hit harder than any blade. Kunikuzushi freezes—just long enough for the boy to close the distance, hands clutching his sleeves. The contact sends a shock through him, cold and burning all at once, memories bleeding through the touch unbidden.
Firelight. Laughter. A name spoken gently.
“You left,” the boy says, voice breaking despite his effort to hold it steady. “And the sky turned red. And everyone screamed.”
Kunikuzushi wrenches himself free with a snarl, stumbling back as if struck.
“I didn’t—” His voice fractures, rage warping instantly into something uglier, “I didn’t choose that!”
“Neither did she.”
The name does not need to be spoken. His breath stutters. “What?” he demands.
Niwa’s expression hardens, urgency flooding his features, “They have her. Right now.”
The forest closes in on him.
“That’s impossible,” Kunikuzushi snaps automatically, “I left her protected.”
“Protected by ghosts who are tearing themselves apart to keep her alive,” the boy retorts, “By spirits who hate you—who resent what you became—and who still refuse to let her die because of it.”
The fog presses closer, suffocating.
“She is bound,” Niwa continues, voice urgent now, “tied. Offered to the fire. They’re waiting for the moon—the same moon that watched Tatarasuna burn.”
Kunikuzushi’s hands curl into fists, nails biting into his palms.
“No,” he breathes.
“If you don’t go back,” the boy says softly, cruel in his honesty, “another person will die because of you.”
Images flood him. The blood-slick ground, screaming voices, the furnace roaring like a living god. Hands reaching. Accusations. Fear.
Your voice, then. Soft. Uncertain. Still trusting.
You haven’t left my side since we arrived. Not even once.
Something inside him shatters completely.
Power flares violently, the ground buckling beneath his feet as the fog is blasted back in a roaring wave. The haze lifts. The drowsiness evaporates, replaced by a cold, ruthless clarity that makes his vision ache.
He looks at Niwa—truly looks at him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Kunikuzushi says hoarsely.
Niwa smiles, sad and familiar, “Neither should you. But unlike me, Kabuki, you have someone to live for.”
Kunikuzushi turns. There is no hesitation now. Lightning splits the sky as he vanishes, a streak of violet tearing through the forest toward the village he should never have trusted, toward the fate he swore would never repeat itself.
Behind him, the spirit watches, relief and grief entwined.
“Don’t be too late this time,” the boy whispers.
This time, Kunikuzushi does not run from the past.
He runs straight into it.
PART XIII — SAVIOR
The fire was already lit when Kunikuzushi arrived, the flames roaring hungrily as if anticipating the girl’s flesh. Smoke tangled with the fog, curling upward like twisting fingers that clawed at the sky. He runs through the clearing, boots pounding the wet earth, every fiber of his being screaming at him to move faster. The air smells of burning wood and something fouler beneath it—the metallic tang of fear, of blood held in trembling hearts.
He sees you.
Bound, gagged, helpless—eyes wide, screaming through the cloth over your mouth—placed atop a pyre as the villagers circled, chanting in slow, precise rhythm. Their voices echo across the misty forest like a cruel lullaby, layered with a childlike cadence that made the whole scene feel perverse, like a fairy tale told backward.
“Kabukimono,” the boy’s voice whispers in his mind, urgent, sharp, “she is here. If you do not move, another death will stain your hands.”
Every instinct he’s built for centuries burns. The storm that lives beneath his skin surges outward, energy spilling into the air as the fog recoils. He does not pause to think. He does not hesitate. He launches himself forward, violet light trailing him like a comet, scattering the mist.
The villagers turn in alarm. Some raise their hands to strike, others freeze, mouths falling open in shock at the sudden apparition. Kunikuzushi lands before the pyre, the heat of the flames licking his coat and sleeves, his gaze locking onto you.
Without a word, his hands desperately tear at the ropes binding you with one hand. Even as villagers pile on him, screaming at him to stop, that he is ruining their lives a second time, he doesn’t stop. He lifts you from the wood as though you weigh nothing. Your muffled screams are swallowed by the roar of fire and the thunderous beat of your own heart.
The villagers retaliate immediately, advancing, wielding curved blades and ritual daggers. The air flares violently, a shadow storm that pushes them back, sending screams of confusion and fear echoing through the fog. But the fog itself—thick, insidious, steeped with the will of the land and the villagers’ centuries of obsession—slows him, pressing against him like hands trying to hold him down.
The ghosts come once again, faintly at first, shimmering in the edges of vision. You feel them wrap around you, tethering themselves to your trembling body, lending their strength to hold you steady. Their outlines solidify, flickering like candlelight at the periphery. Your pulse matches theirs, and in that shared rhythm, you hope with all your might.
A shock of violet tears through the fog. The ground buckles and caves. The villagers stagger, their chants faltering. And just like 500 years ago, the sky opens up in a hue of purple, and they run, scattering like paper in the wind. But just like 500 years ago, eternity shows them no mercy. The ground opens and swallows them whole. Smoke, sparks, fog, screams, and violet light intertwine, forming a chaotic, living storm around you. The ghosts surged forward, no longer restrained by fatigue—the villagers’ hold weakening with the waning energy of the island itself.
Before you could tell, Kunikuzushi’s hands are on you, holding you close as the fog lifts and the last of the villagers fall into the ground.
And then the dream begins.
PART XIV — THE TRUE TALE OF TATARASUNA
You feel a gentle pull, as if Niwa’s spirit had extended a hand through time itself, tugging you from the immediate terror into memory.
His form hovers above you, faintly glowing, the warmth of his presence soft against the chill of your unconscious body. He speaks, voice soft but insistent, carrying across the ether of the dream-space as if each word was etched into the very air. You cannot move, cannot respond, but your mind clings to his tale, his words pulling you deeper into centuries past, into a world you had only glimpsed in half-forgotten histories.
“Listen,” he says, “and you will understand. The Tatarasuna Mystery… it was not what the humans believe. Not the accident, not the furnace gone mad, not the sickness that took them. You deserve to know—your fate is intertwined with his, 500 years back. Before Kunikuzushi, before The Balladeer, before Scaramouche, before Wanderer. Before all of these names, he was known simply as Kabukimono. A name I gave him. Close your eyes, I will tell you the story”
You see it then, as if through his eyes. A land divided by jagged cliffs and molten rivers—Tatarasuna. The Mikage Furnace hissing and breathing like some slumbering beast. Workers labored beneath its weight, hauling coal and crystal, their faces etched with exhaustion. And in the sky above, a shadow moved—an impossible figure, young, golden-feathered, carrying the weight of centuries in his gaze.
“That was him,” the boy whispers, “the one they would later call Kabukimono. He was not yet the monster history remembers, but even then, the world could not understand him. You see… he was abandoned. Betrayed, first by his mother, then by the Fatui. Then, the people… the people who should have protected him failed.”
You saw a man called Katsuragi, alert and cautious, finding the young man collapsed at Shakkei Pavilion. You saw the confusion, the fear, the frantic care of Nagamasa and his retainers. The boy’s voice quivered slightly, and you understood it as grief for the lost innocence of someone who could not defend himself against fate.
“They took him in,” the ghost murmurs. “They taught him words, they taught him cooking, even the sword dance… but all the while, the furnace grew. The Tatarigami… the black gas… it seeped into the air, into the earth. It devoured the weak, it poisoned the strong, it turned friends into corpses.”
The scene shifts to smoke curling through hallways, men clutching their throats, eyes wide with despair. Kabukimono, young and terrified, stumbles through the chaos, hands trembling, his body glowing faintly with the unnatural energy he tried to contain.
“And they failed him again,” the boy continued, voice softening with sorrow, “Me… Escher, the mechanician who called himself The Doctor. Betrayal upon betrayal, hidden under the guise of duty and progress. The Shogun’s court had retreated; the humans who should have stood by him left, abandoned, or lied.”
You see it in flashes: Escher stabbing Niwa, the golden feather clutched in trembling hands, the furnace roaring louder, as if it knew its heart would be torn from it. And Kabukimono, golden feather in one hand, staring at the chaos, seeing death and despair layered on every face he had hoped to protect.
“But he survived,” the ghost whispered. “He entered the furnace itself. He absorbed the Tatarigami… the poison, the rage, the sorrow of that place… all of it. No one else could endure it. But he did. He carried their sins, their mistakes, their deaths, as well as the burden of his own heart, and he lived. That is why… why he is here. Why he walks still, even when history calls him a demon.”
You see him emerge, collapsed, exhausted, but alive. The furnace belches black smoke behind him. The world had tried to destroy him, tried to erase him, but he had become something else—something more. The boy’s form drifts closer to your ear, voice trembling with awe.
“Do you see? He was not a villain. He was a boy who had lost everything and was forced to carry the weight of it alone. And because of him, some things were never forgotten. The Tatarigami, the curse, the black fog… it all lingers. And some of us stayed, watching, guarding, waiting for the day someone like you would be caught in it.”
Your heart aches at the boy’s words. You could feel it, even in dreams, the centuries of guilt, the waves of despair that rolled through the furnace, through the people, through the land itself.
“They call him a demon,” the ghost says softly, “a killer. A monster. But he saved what he could, and he bore the rest. You… you must understand that the world is not as it tells its children. Sometimes the truths are buried in fire, and only those who survive it can see clearly.”
You see the figures of the workers who had fallen, frozen in the air as if time had refused to touch them, eyes wide, mouths open in screams silenced by the centuries. And through the black smoke and ruin, the Kabukimono moved, golden feather gleaming, eyes fixed on survival, on correction, on a future no one else could imagine.
“And that is why he fights,” the boy murmurs, “Why he risks. Why he bears centuries on shoulders too small to hold them. Because even when the world calls him demon, he knows the truth of himself. And now… you must know, too. For what is happening tonight, for what you are caught in, it is not vengeance, not malice. History is reaching out an olive branch for the one who walks through it all… Kunikuzushi. He is not the enemy. But he is alone. And you... you are the bridge.”
The flames of the ritual flicker, shadows of your dream spilling into reality, merging with memory, with ghostly presence. You shiver, a pull in your chest, a faint awareness that even in unconsciousness, the threads of past and present, spirit and flesh, are intertwined.
“And know this,” the boy adds, voice near a whisper now, soft as wind over leaves, “the choices he makes, the ones that seem cruel, that seem distant, they are the only way he knows how to protect those who cannot survive otherwise. Even you. Even now, even with the fire, even with the fog, he fights to save you. Understand, and do not fear."
And with that, the world shifts again—smoke, wind, the distant roar of a fire, faintly glowing eyes in the fog. The boy’s form fades slowly, leaving a trail of warmth, a thread of connection, as if the very memory of his presence could guide your heartbeat, steady your spirit, and prepare you for what was to come.
The tale lingers in your mind. You could feel it echo through every nerve, every cell, every breath, waiting for the moment when your eyes would open, when the fire would be doused, when the fog would part, and when you would see Kunikuzushi for the first time not as a monster, but as the boy who had endured centuries of blood and fire to stand by you, even if he did not yet know it.
And for once, your bloodline wasn’t a curse. It wasn’t something to hide under pretty robes and dread the coming of. It was something powerful, a thread that connects you to him. To the broken puppet who feels too much yet has no heart, who acts as if he is a monster yet is so painfully human.
When you wake, days later, the forest is silent. Dew clings to the leaves. Sunlight filters weakly through the trees. And there, scattered among the underbrush, are the statues of the villagers—frozen in place, eyes wide, expressions of horror locked forever as the moon had risen. The sacrifice had been averted, but the memory, the terror, the lesson remained.
Kunikuzushi is nearby, silent, watching you wake. The ghosts linger around you, still protective, still wary, still bitter toward him, but for now, you are safe.
And for the first time, the story of Tatarasuna felt alive in your mind, through the eyes of the one who had survived it all.
“Kuni..” you whisper hoarsely, once, as your eyes shut and sleep overtakes you again.
PART XV — MEMORIAL
You awaken once again to the gentle rustle of leaves, the damp scent of forest undergrowth filling your senses. The fire’s smoke has dissipated, leaving only the faint tang of ash in the air, a reminder of what transpired. Moonlight pours down through the branches, silver and cold, cutting across the shadows like knives of liquid light.
At first, your body aches, your limbs heavy as if the events of the night have weighed themselves into your bones. You try to lift your hands, feeling the grass beneath your fingers, soft and dewy, and the earth cold against your skin. The air is quiet, almost unnaturally so, broken only by the distant whisper of wind through the canopy.
You rise slowly to your knees, the ache in your muscles lessening as the realization of survival washes over you. The ghosts—the ones who had protected you, who had fought through centuries of pain and time—linger faintly in the periphery of your vision. Their forms are dim, wavering like mist, but you feel them, the thread of connection unbroken. Their whispers brush against your mind.
Then, you stretch out a hand and touch hard rock.
Figures, frozen mid-step, scattered through the clearing. Moonlight gleams on their faces, pale and unyielding, eyes wide in eternal surprise. The villagers… all of them, turned to statues. Some clutch implements of the ritual, others reach toward nothing, their mouths open in mid-cry. The forest seems to hold its breath around them, the fog lingering in wisps along the ground, curling like smoke from some ancient fire. You run your hands over their features, as if you could draw faces from them.
Your heart tightens. The presence of their pain is vivid in your memory—the pride, the fear, the twisted hope that their plan would succeed. Now they're… frozen, halted by some force beyond mortal comprehension. You feel the weight of their lives, the generations of grief and anger, pressed into stone. Yet there is no hatred here now. Only sorrow.
A familiar presence brushes against the edge of your awareness. Kunikuzushi stands just beyond the clearing, shadowed beneath the trees, his form impossibly still yet brimming with the sorrow that seems to follow him everywhere he goes. He does not speak nor does he move closer—he watches. The forest seems to be aware of him, trembling slightly under the weight of his presence.
Your fingers trail along the nearest tree, bark rough against your skin, grounding you to the present. The moon casts its silver gaze across the scene, and in the cold light, the tragedy of Tatarasuna feels both distant and immediate. You remember the tale, the black gas, the furnace, the betrayals, the sacrifices. You remember Niwa’s voice, soft and tremulous, telling the story of Kabukimono, of the one who bore centuries of sin to protect what little could be saved.
Your own heartbeat slows as Kunikuzushi speaks, "The villagers—though real in their anger and fear—were instruments of the past, bound by memory and vengeance," he pauses, his tone bitter, "they had tried to reach into the present, to exact justice on someone who was not the source of their suffering. But you have been spared, carried in the arms of time, protected by those ghosts."
Kunikuzushi shifts, a faint sigh passing through him. The forest shivers slightly at the motion. He does not approach you yet. You close your eyes and let the wind wash over you, carrying the faint hum of the spirits, their voices entwined with the rustle of leaves.
The statues of the villagers glimmer faintly under the moonlight, as though the world remembers them in frozen snapshots. The shadows shift gently as if to shield the scene from the eyes of anyone who would not understand. "Perhaps," he starts again, "history is not just a chain of horrors. It's a painting. Quite like the one your family has of me. It's a cruel painting of memory."
Days pass. You slowly gain your energy back, mostly laying on an abandoned cot inside the village. The forest is silent but for the creak of branches, a breeze that feels too deliberate to be natural.
You stand beside Kunikuzushi as he surveys the stone forms—villagers frozen forever in grief, terror, and vengeance. The moon has climbed higher, pale and detached, shedding silver light over their rigid faces.
He lifts the axe with deliberate care, the metal catching the moonlight as though the faint reflection were a memory itself. You do not flinch, though your hands tremble slightly as you clutch the small wooden doll in your pocket. The first strike cleaves a statue’s shoulder; the crack echoes through the fog, a brittle, haunted sound. Dust rises in the air, dancing in the moonlight, and you can almost hear the sighs of the spirits themselves, whispering through the particles like smoke.
“Stay close,” Kunikuzushi murmurs, voice low but not commanding. He swings again, splitting the torso of another, and the fragments of stone clatter to the earth. There is something ritualistic in his movements, the way he pauses between blows, measuring, remembering, perhaps punishing himself more than the frozen memories before him.
You kneel, hands pressed against the soil, and brush the fragments toward the center, where he begins grinding them into dust. The ash rises slowly, a thin, pale cloud that drifts around your legs and curls toward your face. Its texture is oddly soft, almost like the dust of old paper, and the scent carries a bitter tang, of stone weathered and sorrow solidified into form. You inhale it, and it makes your throat tighten.
He pauses, wiping the sweat from his brow, and you feel the tension in the air. Kunikuzushi’s presence is immense here, as if the energy he carries, the weight of his own history, hangs over the clearing like a storm waiting to break. For a long moment, neither of you speaks. The only sound is the whisper of ash against earth and the faint hum of the spirits, lingering at the edge of your senses.
When he finally speaks, it is not to you directly, but almost to himself, “Time cannot erase this. Neither can fire nor wind.” His hand hovers over the last fragments, brushing them lightly as though to bless—or to curse—what remains, “but perhaps… if you go to dust, you may finally rest.”
The final strike crushes the last of the figures. Ash rises in a soft cloud, and Kunikuzushi dips, gathering it into a small pouch. He taps you, you know he expects you to follow. Together, you leave the clearing, stepping lightly over the broken stones, the fog twisting around your ankles like fingers. The forest seems quieter now, holding its breath.
The journey back to Tatarasuna is slower, weighed with the gravity of your silence. Every crunch of gravel beneath your feet, every snap of a twig in the darkness, feels like a reminder of the lives that were taken and the lives you carry forward. Kunikuzushi walks beside you, occasionally glancing down to ensure you are still upright, still present, but his presence is distant.
When the ruins of Tatarasuna come into view, the skeletal remnants of stone and ash rising against the night sky, a strange hush falls. The city is abandoned, yet the memory of it pulses through the air, faint echoes of what once was, and the ghosts you sense in the distance stir, hesitant, wary. You follow Kunikuzushi to the heart of the ruins, where the furnace once roared and the disaster began. Here, the air is heavy with the residue of magic, of anger, of sorrow.
He sets the pouch down and slowly releases the ashes into the air. They swirl, caught in a sudden gust, and drift over the ruins, scattering across the remnants of walls and floors, carried by the unseen currents. The scent is sharp, metallic and bitter, and for a heartbeat you feel as though centuries have condensed into the tiny grains of dust falling over your hands.
Kunikuzushi stands back, hands resting lightly on the edge of the stone, eyes fixed on the ashes that swirl and settle. For a moment, he seems almost human in his stillness—not the killer, not the monster, but a puppet burdened by guilt that even time cannot absolve. He turns his gaze toward you, and for the first time since the ashes were poured, he speaks directly.
“This is what remains,” he says, voice rough, low, almost confessional. “This… this is what I could not save. What I could not undo. You should know, you deserve to know…” He exhales, a long, steadying breath. “Everything from the beginning. Tatarasuna. The furnace. My mistakes, my sins.”
And then he begins to speak, and you listen.
He tells you the story as he lived it—the fear, the fury, the betrayals, the twisted calculations of a life built around punishment and survival. He speaks of joining the Fatui, of rage that carried him forward, of discovering truths long hidden. He recounts the attempt at erasure through Irminsul, the fragile hope of leaving his past behind, and how the cycle of history demanded he confront it again, piece by piece, century by century.
You do not interrupt. You do not speak. You do not need to. Each word, each hesitation, carries the weight of his centuries, and the rhythm of his voice pulls you deeper into the world that existed before you were born into it, before the curse that binds your bloodline began. You can feel the power behind his words, tempered by restraint, by something human beneath the monster.
At last, he pauses. The ruins are silent around you, only the faint hum of magic from the land itself reminding you of what has passed and what endures. He glances at you, his violet eyes flickering with unspoken meaning.
“You hear the ghosts,” he says softly, “you know what watches over you. But know this—what you carry, you do not carry alone.”
Kunikuzushi steps closer. His hand brushes against yours, not forceful, not demanding, simply present. You look up at him, and for the first time, the centuries of fear and distance shrink into a shared understanding.
You swallow, steadying yourself. “You… survived all of it,” you murmur. Your voice is small, almost fragile, but it carries a certainty that surprises even you, “all of it… and you’re here. With me.”
He tilts his head slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching, the barest suggestion of a smile. “I am here,” he says quietly, “and I… will remain. Not for duty. Not for the curse. Not as a ghost to follow you endlessly.” He lets the words settle, each one deliberate, heavy, “I am here… because I want to be. With you.”
You take a step closer, “You’ve been so many things—so many lives, so many names—but right now… right now, I don’t care about any of that. I care about you. You, here, standing with me.”
He exhales, and the tension in his shoulders eases just slightly. His hand reaches out, brushing against yours, fingertips trembling against your skin. “Then call me what you will,” he says, voice almost a whisper. “I am… Kunikuzushi. For you, if you will have me.”
You smile softly, breath catching just a fraction. “Kunikuzushi,” you echo, voice certain. “It suits you. It’s the name I know… the one I want to know you by.”
He closes the distance, slow and careful, so deliberate it is almost ceremonial. His hand cups your face lightly, and your own rise to meet his. There is no urgency, no grand gesture, only a long, quiet connection as lips meet, tentative at first, then firmer, deeper. A promise, but not a vow. Just presence, just acknowledgment, just him and you tangled together, the only two living to remember the true tale.
When you pull back slightly, foreheads resting together, he murmurs, “I have carried centuries of mistakes, of anger, of… names. But I want this—this life, this moment, this name—to be ours. Only ours.”
You press a hand to his chest, feeling the steady rhythm beneath layers of history, power, and restraint. “Then we have it,” you say, “here. Now. No past. No debts. Only us.”
He brushes a strand of hair behind your ear, violet eyes shimmering in the moonlight. “I will be yours,” he says softly, “Kunikuzushi. Only yours. Forever, if you allow it.”
You nod, and a small laugh escapes you, quiet, almost incredulous. “Forever, Kuni,” you whisper, “I… I’ll stay. With you.”
The ghosts nearby giggle, faint and playful, their voices teasing but gentle. You and Kunikuzushi both flush, breaking the solemnity for the first time in centuries. He presses his forehead to yours again, a shared smile passing between you, and in that quiet, fragile peace, the weight of ash, of history, of grief, begins to lift—if only just enough to breathe.
But time reminds you once again of how cruel it is when the ghosts speak.
You know, it is our time to leave, they say.
You freeze. You wish to tell them to stay, that they can stay for a day, a month. But you see the weariness in their bones. It is too cruel a fate to make them stay here any longer.
So, you smile. Through tears, you smile.
The first shimmer fades slowly, a shape of a girl no older than your first memory of playing in the garden. She brushes your hair back, laughing softly.
“Remember when you made that paper boat, and it floated across the stream?” she whispers, “you were so proud, and I was proud of you too.”
You smile faintly, fingers brushing hers as she leans into your side, “I remember,” you murmur.
She hugs you briefly, a weightless pressure, and then dissolves into a trail of silvery light.
Another, older, taller, a friend who once scolded you for wandering too far in the fields, steps forward. “You always ran straight toward what frightened you,” he says, voice echoing faintly. “But you never gave up. Not once. That’s why I followed, and why I’ll always remember you.”
You nod, letting his words settle around you. He bends slightly, pressing a hand to your cheek before vanishing, leaving a warm emptiness in his place.
One by one, they come, each with a memory, a story they cherish, a fragment of the life you lived while the curse clung to your family.
The way you laughed when a stray kitten climbed onto your lap.
The first time you carved a mark in your diary, tracking the small victories of your day.
The way you whispered to the wind, as if even the air could be trusted with your secrets.
Then, a presence lingers, taller and heavier than the rest, familiar yet distant. One of Kunikuzushi’s oldest companions—Niwa, the one who came to warn him—steps forward. “I have never hated you,” he says quietly, voice steady, calm. “I have never resented you.” He looks into Kunikuzushi’s gaze, fingers brushing his hand. “You were a child who needed love. A pitiful puppet, I thought you were. Yet looking at you now.. you have grown so much. I am proud. I know Katsuragi would be too.”
Kunikuzushi looks away, nodding, feeling the weight of centuries lifted in the clarity of his words, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Niwa leans closer, resting a brief, almost protective hand on your shoulder, and then he too dissolves into the night air, leaving only the hum of the earth beneath your feet, “You are braver than any person I’ve known—living or dead.”
Finally, the last spirit steps forward: the little wooden doll, your most cherished possession, now glowing faintly with life. She is not a child’s toy tonight but a small girl, no older than you, with wide eyes and the softest expression of devotion.
“I… I always thought of you as my closest friend,” she says, voice trembling yet clear, “even when I was carved from wood, even when I couldn’t speak or move, I imagined being beside you. Watching over you. Helping you, in my small way.”
You press her to your chest, feeling the gentle vibration of her spirit through the carved wood. “You have,” you whisper, “you’ve always been here.”
She nods, tears spilling down her tiny cheeks, “I… I have to go now. But I will always be part of you.” She hugs you tightly, and you hug back, closing your eyes, memorizing the warmth, the weight of her care. Slowly, reluctantly, she pulls away, fading into a shimmer of light that drifts upward, leaving behind only the memory of her presence.
You lower your head, letting the emptiness settle around you. Beside you, Kunikuzushi’s hand finds yours, holding it firmly, quietly. You glance at him, violet eyes soft in the moonlight. He does not speak, and you do not need words—both of you understanding that the ghosts, the centuries of shadows, are gone.
Together, you walk toward the sound of waves, the ocean stretching into the distance, silver under the rising moon. The foam curls around your ankles as you step onto the sand, soft and cool beneath your feet. Kunikuzushi’s presence is steady beside you, solid, a counterweight to the fragile remnants of your past.
You pause at the edge of the surf, letting the tide swirl around your toes. The moonlight shimmers on the water, casting long, silver paths across the waves. You breathe deeply, letting the sound of the ocean fill the space where grief and fear once lingered.
He kneels slightly, brushing your hair back from your face. “We’re here,” he says softly, “no ghosts. No curses. Just… us.”
You glance at him, fingers brushing his. “And we stay,” you whisper, “we stay, together, without all the weight. Just us.”
He leans closer, brushing his lips against yours. You respond, pressing close, letting the warmth of him anchor you in this fragile peace.
When you pull back, you rest your forehead against his, letting the sound of waves, the pulse of moonlight, and the quiet stretch between you. “Do you think… we’ll ever forget them?” you ask, voice low.
He exhales, fingers entwining with yours, “No. And we shouldn’t. But we don’t carry them as chains anymore. They’re free, and so are we.”
The ocean licks higher along your feet, white foam curling and retreating. The night stretches infinite and soft, the waves constant, patient, and eternal. You inhale deeply, letting the scent of salt and freedom fill your lungs, letting the rhythm of the tides pull you forward.
Without speaking, you walk side by side along the shore. The moon rises higher, casting light on the two of you. You, the girl who survived, and Kunikuzushi, the boy who has no place in this world.
The quiet whisperings of fate fade away. In Tatarasuna, the painting holds no significance anymore. A new page is created on the weaving of the previous, a new story forged from the remains of the last. Some things cannot be undone, but they can be lived with, only if you stop trying to drown them.
