[Kiyono Raimei]
[Remaining Lifespan: 219 days]
[Host is unfit for prolonged combat]
A waka by Minamoto no Muneyuki once described winter thus:
山里は / The mountain village grows
冬ぞ寂しさ / lonelier still in winter
まさりける / for when I think on it
人目も草も / both human eyes and grasses
かれぬと思へば / have alike withdrawn and withered
Kiyono pulled his heavy fox-fur coat tighter around himself. His snow-white robe trailed across the even whiter snow. He pressed his palms together and breathed a puff of warm air, watching the vapor slowly dissolve into nothing — and at last, he felt the cold.
[You do not have to do this]
The voice of the Human Principles System sounded in his ears.
"Someone has to do these things."
"And compared to a young man, a dying old man is better suited."
Kiyono paid the System's voice no mind. He continued walking forward. Snowflakes landed on his shoulders, melting into water, and the chill seeped through the gaps between fur and cloth, penetrating into the marrow of this aging body.
Contrary to what the Narukami imagined — that he was lounging in comfort within the Grand Pillar's Residence —
And contrary to what Sara hoped — that he was resting by the hearth with warm sake, recuperating in peace — the Grand Pillar had long since left the residence, and was no longer in Inazuma City at all.
He was on the distant Narukami Island, this place where the Sacred Sakura bloomed.
How does one describe winter on Narukami Island?
Perhaps the azure sea lanes smooth as mirrors, the gentle wind and ice crystals slowly brushing against each other, singing a rustling waka.
Perhaps a stroke of indigo mountains at the far horizon, or snowflakes drifting like gemstones, and the Sacred Sakura, beautiful as a painting through all four seasons...
For a young person, full of fire and vigor, such florid words might come easily to praise the scenery before them.
But if you let an old man hold the brush, Kiyono would write only one word across the entire page:
Cold.
Cold into the marrow, like serpents coiling endlessly. His lungs convulsed violently, feeding poison to his heart — every breath he drew was laced with shards of ice.
Parched lips. Stiffened limbs.
But still he kept his hand upon the scabbard. The tachi was sheathed within a scabbard carved with intricate patterns, forged in layer upon layer of hammered steel, the blade bearing a pattern like lightning serpents.
The tachi — Hebikiri.
Long ago, in the prime of the Grand Pillar's life, it was with this blade that he had slain the great serpent of Watatsumi Island — Orobashi. The blood of the god still clung to it, dried and dark.
And now, Kiyono Raimei intended to use this blade for something else.
He exhaled slowly once more, and walked deeper into the mountain forest.
In the place he had left behind —
The snow was stained. Red blood and black ichor mingled together, dyeing great swathes of the snow a murky dark. Piled together were corpses, heaped upon corpses, stacked into a mountain, their eyes already glazed and empty.
Kiyono's snow-white coat dragged through blood. The trail of red wound its way deep into the forest.
This was the Forbidden Grounds.
The contamination of the great serpent had never dissipated. Even after so many years, the vengeful spirits of the fallen god still lingered upon this land — a gangrene embedded in Inazuma's bones for centuries, a hidden peril buried at the very foundation.
Even now, this contamination had not been removed.
Every year, Inazuma dispatched samurai of the Shogunate to purge the filth. From time to time, the Sacred Sakura Cleansing Ritual was held to purify the defilement. But Inazuma's contamination was like grass after rain — cut it down, and the spring wind would blow it back to life.
It was not only the vengeful spirits of the fallen god that occupied this place. There was also the contamination from Khaenri'ah, five hundred years past... Inazuma's sickness was born in its very bones.
Kiyono had once said: Inazuma's predicament was not merely a matter of national policy.
Within Inazuma's soil, the calamities wrought by man were secondary. The calamities wrought by heaven were eternal.
And he, the Grand Pillar — in the lingering days of this life — the last thing he could do for Inazuma, for her, was to tear out these rotting roots.
Purge the filth.
Or rather — slaughter every last trace of it.
"Cough, cough, cough..."
He coughed up blood.
The cold wind pressed the surrounding treetops low. Leaves scraped against each other, hissing like serpents. More filth surged out from both sides — their forms indistinct, vast as mountains, their eyes red as blood.
Kiyono did not draw his blade. He merely watched those monsters with his silver-grey eyes, his mind perfectly clear.
A soundless blade fell within his heart, and what erupted was thunder.
Countless monsters passed him by. Countless heads flew skyward.
Tumbling through the air — the red was blood, the white was snow. Snow and blood churned together, all of it splashing across Kiyono's white coat.
The coat that had been clean was now drenched in crimson.
"Cough... cough!" He covered his mouth. Blood came up.
[Host is unfit for prolonged combat]
Kiyono was old. So old he could no longer draw his blade. But even without drawing it, he could still kill.
It merely cost him his life — what remained of it.
He continued walking forward.
[Your lifespan has decreased by one day]
...
More great beasts fell. More filth dissipated. But the blood Kiyono coughed grew ever more.
Time passed slowly. Gradually, dusk settled in.
[You truly do not have to do this]
The voice of the Human Principles System echoed in Kiyono's ears:
[The filth cannot be killed to the last. Every year a new crop grows. And you are old now. There is nothing you can do. Your new body has not yet matured. If you continue like this, you will only harm yourself. This is meaningless]
Listening to the System's words, Kiyono paused.
"Meaning. What is meaning?"
He stood among the corpses, drew a rolled cigarette from his sleeve, struck a flint to light it, took a light drag, and felt the smoke circulate through his windpipe:
"System — what do you think the meaning of Kiyono Raimei's life is?"
...
[To fulfill your mission of safeguarding the Human Principles]
[And you have already succeeded. And you are old now]
"No. That is not Kiyono Raimei's meaning. That is your meaning — the System's meaning."
The Human Principles System fell silent.
Kiyono extinguished his cigarette. In his field of vision, more filth surged forth.
Blood, terror, hatred, power — thick layers of grudge piling into a tidal wave, threatening to swallow the old man's body whole.
It was the great serpent.
The grudge of the great serpent.
He gently closed his eyes.
Breathing in the stench of blood so close at hand, he felt as though he had returned to the battlefields of his prime. His heart pumped boiling blood. His lungs exhaled powerful breath. His soldiers stood at his side. Behind them stood the people of Inazuma —
He was not a decrepit old man. He felt it once more — the vivid, living pulse of being alive.
"The death Kiyono Raimei seeks is to die alone, in solitude, of old age."
"But he does not want to die in bed."
"He does not want to die amid the weeping of those dear to him. Does not want to be watched as he dies."
"He does not want to sit by the hearth, warming himself by the fire, eating and sleeping each day, plodding along in mediocrity, until at last he is too old to leave his bed and dies in disgrace."
"He was strong-willed his entire life. He was proud his entire life. And so he does not want to die a mediocre death."
Kiyono opened his eyes. Before him — a towering wave of grudge, vengeful spirits massed like mountains, a blood-red stain across half the sky.
He slowly tightened his grip on the scabbard that had not left its sheath in ten years, and his aged heart — for the first time in so long — beat like thunder!
"Kiyono Raimei should die on the battlefield."
The mountain of filth converged, and a faint outline emerged — the shape of a great serpent.
"To die like lightning — blazing across the night sky, brilliant, if only for that single fleeting instant — then vanishing, as though it were a dream."
"The life of lightning was always meaningless and brief. It changes nothing. The night remains dark. Lightning is as small as a mortal. As small as my life."
He held the blade level. His silver-grey eyes reflected the shadow of the lingering will of the god.
— "But after the lightning dies, the thunder echoes through the valley."
He smiled. His face was no longer young, yet the smile upon it was a boy's smile.
"Kill all the filth, and sooner or later it will return."
"You ask me what the meaning is —"
"The meaning is this: someday, when the snow melts, when I am no longer here, when Ei walks out of the Plane of Euthymia — when that time comes,"
Kiyono Raimei smiled — the smile that belonged to the Grand Pillar alone. Bold, free, the kind of great laugh that could rally the hearts of all who heard it.
Even though his entire body was drenched in blood, his lungs seizing in agony, the cold penetrating his marrow.
"She will see a clean, unblemished spring. Days without filth — those must be beautiful."
"The young soldiers sent to purge the filth can go home. This winter, no more lives lost."
"Wives can reunite with husbands. Children can see their fathers."
"The people of Inazuma can have a full and joyous New Year."
"That is my last gift to them.
The final two hundred and twenty-one days of Kiyono Raimei —
that is the meaning of those days."