Chapter 82 - nnn

𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝟑. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒚 𝑶𝒇 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑹𝒊𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍

.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.​

The cold that came with morning bit the girl's ankle until the skin cracked.

Exaggerate cold. Mean cold.

Still, Kaneko moved through the cold and mist with mild irritation. Tap, smooth, tie, scoff. Tap, smooth, tie, scoff. She pressed barrier talismans to tree trunks in a wide ring around the new clearing they had found on their way, flattening each one with two fingers and securing it with a pin of cursed energy, then moving on before she could admire her own handiwork. Each talisman exhaled a glassy shimmer into the morning air before going still. She was making a wall out of air, pretending not to care for the people inside it, probably hoping no one would notice.

Kuroe noticed. Kuroe noticed everything, which was the problem with her. She sat cross-legged in the leaf-duff, very un-miko-like, behind Shirae, who sat in front of her with her legs stretched out straight and stiff. Her white hair spilled down her back in ruin while she maintained her judgmental, vacant expression. Behind Kuroe sat Omi, her tongue caught between her lips in concentration while she was carefully braiding Kuroe's black hair as if it were a sacred duty.

Kuroe, for her part, was braiding Shirae's hair, or, more accurately, she was fighting it. The ambush last night had thoroughly ruined the presentation of "holy miko of great ritual dignity," and their precious ceremonial braids had not survived, nor, frankly, had their dignity.

Ugh.

Kuroe grabbed a section of Shirae's white hair and tried to force it into order, but it resisted. "Really," she muttered aloud, because inner restraint had never once been her strength, tugging left, then right, then left again, "your hair is made of straw."

"Mn," said Shirae, which in Shirae-language meant: Please stop attacking my scalp, you savage.

"There," Kuroe declared at last, tying off the end with a thread she had torn from her own sleeve and giving the finished braid a slap so it flopped over Shirae's shoulder.

Shirae turned just enough to look at her with her violet eyes narrowed. "It's crooked," she mumbled with imperial resignation of an empress.

Kuroe squinted critically at her own work and, well. It didresemble a rope made by a drunk farmer, and several smaller strands had already escaped and flung across Shirae's face. "Eh," Kuroe said generously. "I don't think Yamata no Orochi will care. Or you can do it yourself, if Your Majesty prefers." 

She stood and reached back to pat her own braid. Ah, now that was satisfying. Omi's work was neat and symmetrical. Kuroe tugged one loose lock free and let it fall down the center of her face, straight between her eyes and over her lips, to hide the ugly seam beneath her fringe. So good. Shirae might be a natural-born little arson saint with talismans, but Kuroe had better hair today, and a victory was a victory. Her yukata, however, was another matter; she brushed leaves and bits of twig off the front, then checked the hem. It fell shorter now than the other girls', above her knees, where she had torn off a strip in the night to wrap a certain stolen knife.

Kuroe slipped a hand inside the fold at her chest. There, her treasure. The knife, bundled in that ragged strip, warm from her skin, and alongside it, tucked flat, a fan of fire-starting talismans hidden from Kaneko's hard eyes and hidden from Takamitsu's... "confused" ones. If they expected her to die quietly, they had badly misjudged their Moon.

"Up, up," Kuroe said, bouncing lightly on her toes as she offered Omi a hand.

Omi stared at it for half a breath, then took it. Kuroe hauled her upright with enthusiasm and half-carried, half-steered her to a fallen trunk where she could sit without toppling over her injured ankle. Kaneko arrived at once and knelt like a field medic or like a mother hen who would absolutely deny being one. She took Omi's injured foot in both hands and began unwrapping the bandage to inspect the wound.

Kuroe leaned in, openly and greedily, with all the bright, shameless interest. How tight? Where did she knot it? How many wraps? Which hand steadied the heel? Information now might become survival later, especially if one woke up nameless, child-sized, marked for sacrifice.

No one spoke because Kaneko worked in silence. Shirae wandered a few paces away and began gathering fallen twigs in silence. Omi, for once, was not crying and was also sitting in silence. Takamitsu had gone out at first light, supposedly to "encourage breakfast out of the forest," and had taken all his endless talking with him.

After fourteen seconds of silence, Kuroe failed at it.

She leaned forward until her nose nearly touched Kaneko's black shoulder plate. "Hey—"

"Don't," Kaneko snapped at once, still working. "Can you be quiet for a single moment in your life, moon-child?"

Moon-child again. Not Kuroe, not her name. Sure, she had received that name merely days ago, but she was stupidly affectionate to it by now. Kuroe's pout arrived immediately and in full. "I have a name, you know," she announced with great dignity. "Kuroe. Ku-ro-e!" She enunciated it carefully, as though speaking to someone who had recently been hit in the head and was therefore stupid. "Taka-niichan gave it to me the other day. Perhaps you missed it because you were busy glaring at villagers for speaking badly of him."

A vein pulsed once at Kaneko's temple as the bandage tightened a little more assertively than Omi probably deserved, and her ears turned pink.

"Stop calling him Taka-niichan," Kaneko said through her teeth. "It is indecorous for a shōshō of the Radiant Guard."

Kuroe smiled sweetly. Oh, so innocent. "But he told me to call him that!" she cried, scandalized. "Wouldn't it be more disrespectful to ignore a direct instruction from a shōshō of the Radiant Guard? Besides, I was born with a mouth, so clearly it ought to be used. Otherwise, why bother putting it on me? It'd be wasted, don't you think? I can't help it, I was built for talking."

"That," Kaneko grumbled, tying off the bandage, "is painfully obvious." 

She stood in a single straight line and looked down at Kuroe from the slope of her armor and a height that was taller than Kuroe's future. For her part, Kuroe put both hands behind her back, widened her black eyes into maximum innocence, and stared up at her. They held the pose for a full count of eight. Then Kaneko turned away before murder happened, sat beside Omi on the log, planted both feet, crossed both arms, and shut her eyes as though this might allow her to stop perceiving Kuroe at all.

Kuroe, out of pure respect for the effort, stepped closer. One eyelid twitched. She took another tiny step. It twitched again.

Wonderful!

"Tell me, tell me," Kuroe said brightly. "Are you absolutelysure there is no other way?"

Kaneko did not open her eyes.

"Other way for what?"

"For the entire Yamata no Orochi nonsense, obviously!" Kuroe flung both hands out toward the cast of sacrifices around them; at herself, at Shirae, who paused mid-twig and tilted her head, at Omi, who startled merely from being indicated. "I mean! We're children! It isn't our fault that we can see what others can't! You, Fujiwara Nanke, see the same things as we do, don't you? And yet I notice none of you are being sacrificed to a saika!"

That did it. Kaneko went fully rigid, not angry first, but her eyes snapped open and wide; then came the rage, and the look in them could have sliced bamboo with a glare. 

Kuroe pressed on anyway, because once she began generating ideas, they came out in bunches, and kicking them back down felt a waste of energy. "We could use bigger barriers!" she said, counting on her fingers. "Or a net of talismans across the river. Or trenches. Or lure it with pigs and then drop a mountain on it! Surely someone in the Radiant Guard can drop a mountain out of nowhere, right? Or we could make the court send fifty soldiers instead of three children! Maybe we can trap it in a shrine with a thousand—no, screw that—ten thousand talismans! Or teach me how to walk on light like Taka-niichan, and I'll stab it in the face—"

"No," snapped Kaneko.

Kuroe ignored her. "Or get the Hokke to be useful for once—"

"No."

"Or bells. Twelve bells! Maybe it falls asleep—"

"No. No. No!" Kaneko's voice rose a fraction each time, toward the hard underside of fury pressed down for too long. "You have no idea what failure looks like! You have no idea what happens when Yamata no Orochi breaks its leash." Her jaw tightened. "I was there the last time it happened. You were not."

Kaoru considered for two full seconds. "With all due respect," she said, "which is none. You are not thinking creatively."

Kaneko rose slowly and with the contained violence of a woman who still wished to be patient. "It is this way," she snapped, "because it has been this way for centuries." And suddenly the words were coming out of her like floodwater. "Because the ritual holds the line, whether we like it or not. The duty of the Radiant Guard, whether the Hokke sneer or not, is containment and protection of the mundane world. We will not stain the Southern House further, and we will certainly not risk another incident like twelve years ago—"

She bit the end off, but too late.

Kuroe's head tilted instantly. She let the grin drop for it; that usually helped. "What happened twelve years ago?"

Kaneko looked away and sat back to end the conversation. "Nothing."

Wrong answer.

"You were saying something about the ritual of twelve years ago," Kuroe pressed. "That was the last time Yamata no Orochi woke, right? What happened that was so—"

"I said nothing!" Kaneko snapped, eyes not on Kuroe at all. "Now, moon-child, help star-child gather wood. We eat, then we move, and we—"

Thunk.

Both of them stopped and looked down. Omi's head had tipped sideways and settled directly against Kaneko's shoulder plate with the full commitment of a child whose body was too tired to keep up and had made a decision. Her mouth had fallen open slightly, and a tiny line of drool shone where cheek met iron. Her breathing had already evened out into the sleepy purr.

Kuroe blinked once while Kaneko went absolutely still, the stillness people reached only when trapped between duty and unwanted tenderness; one hand lifted by reflex and then stopped an inch above Omi's hair, hovering there helplessly as slowly color climbed into her ears again.

Oh. Kuroe's delight arrived fast. Soft. Soft! A grin arrived before she could stop it. "Well, well," she whispered, rocking back on her heels. "Look at you! Standing there like a statue, so you don't wake a useless little sacrifice. Not convincing, Neko."

"You—" Kaneko hissed, furious from the collarbone up while keeping the rest of herself absolutely motionless so Omi would not slide. "Do not call me Neko."

"Why?" Kuroe sang, skipping back two small steps in case Kaneko's tessen suddenly flew for her head. "Taka-niichan always does. Ah! Don't tell me he gets to because he's special? Or that you only allow it when—"

Kaneko's face became something very interesting, between a tomato and despair.

"Aaand there it is!" Kuroe crowed, gliding neatly to Shirae's side. Shirae looked at her with a tiny frown that had appeared between her brows, and Kuroe could tell even without words that this one meant You are about to die for being unbearable, and I do not intend to stop it. She caught Shirae's wrist anyway, cold as always, as if the world reached her always too late, and tugged her closer. "I knew it! Neko-oneesama has a crush on Taka-niichan!"

"I swear, Kuroe, if you dare—" Kaneko made a complex, murderous gesture with one hand while the other remained perfectly still for Omi's sake.

At that exact moment, Omi let out the tiniest snore against her shoulder plate, and Kuroe nearly fell over laughing.

"See? You finally called me Kuroe!" she said, glowing with triumph, dragging Shirae along with her. "Come on, Shirae."

"Wait!" Kaneko snapped, whisper-shouting now so as not to jostle the sleeping child. "Do not wander too far—"

"Yes, yes," Kuroe called sweetly over her shoulder. "We're gathering wood, as you ordered. It's not as if we can run far with Taka-niichan somewhere out there, and there's a barrier keeping us safe, right? Now don't move too much, Neko-oneesama, or you'll wake Omi."

Kuroe plunged into the underbrush, dragging Shirae after her as twigs rattled from the bundle in her arms and fell behind them.

"Kuroe," Shirae murmured flatly. Ignored. "Kuroe," she said again, a little stronger. Still ignored. "Kuroe—!" Kuroe stopped dead, and Shirae nearly walked into her back; she had to take a half-step away, hand hovering. "What," she asked, "are you thinking?"

Kuroe turned, and her face was three parts grin, one part trouble. "Isn't it obvious?"

A pause from the white-haired girl. Then, "No."

"Taka-niichan isn't here!" Kuroe groaned. "Neko-oneesama is pinned down by kindness. This is our chance!" She tightened her grip on Shirae's wrist. "We're leaving. Now."

Kuroe turned and started pulling again, but for one instant, Shirae did not move. Then, she did; not willingly, exactly, but not unwillingly either. Good. 

"Leaving—?" Shirae stumbled after her, catching her breath. "And Omi? We can't leave her—"

"They need three," Kuroe said briskly. "They won't feed her alone to the saika if we vanish. They'll chase us, yes, no, fine! Then we make it difficult. No—better—we make it impossible!" She yanked open the fold at her chest just enough to flash the white-wrapped knife hidden there beside her talismans. "Look," she grinned over her shoulder. "I have this! You still have talismans! We're not dying in their stupid ritual, we leave this valley, and then we choose." She turned fully then, eyes bright. "You andme!"

Shirae blinked once at the knife, then at Kuroe's face. Her stillness moved at last in a kind of astonishment that bordered on wonder, as if no one had ever before put the word and between Shirae and a future.

"We go..." Shirae repeated, because Shirae was still Shirae. "...Where?"

"Anywhere we want!" Kuroe meant it with her whole small, furious chest. "Mountains. Forests. Lakes. The sea!" The word fell out with that strange, bright ache she felt for things she couldn't remember ever touching. The sea. She knew what it was, certain of that even. She was also, somehow, equally certain she had never seen it. Very unhelpful of her own mind. "Have you ever seen the sea?"

Shirae's mouth parted. "No," she admitted, reverent.

"Good!" Kuroe said at once. "Neither have I." That was almost certainly untrue; she knew the smell of salt, and that there were tides, she knew what gulls sounded like, and that the horizon was flat and big in a way mountains could never be. She laughed anyway. "Come on. Let's go see the sea together, Shirae! We'll steal a boat if we have to."

They reached the far edge of the barrier that lay almost invisible between the trees, only a tickle over the skin and a tiny tightening in the air marking where Kaneko's talismans had told the world to create a boundary. Shirae hesitated, and Kuroe felt through their linked hands the drag of fear, yes, but more than that.

The long heavy pull of this is how it has always been.

Then, suddenly, Shirae let go of Kuroe's wrist only to catch her hand properly. Her fingers threaded, cold and decisive as Shirae stepped past her, white braid streaming back over her shoulder, and eyes very much not calm at all. "This is stupid," she swallowed as she tugged Kuroe forward. "But."

Kuroe squeezed back, breathless with delight. "But?"

Shirae looked straight ahead. "But I want to see the sea," she said. "So run."

Kuroe grinned and ran faster, barefoot and laughing under her breath, dragged by another girl who had been spiritually dead for several days and now wanted to see the sea. "That's it," she breathed, cheeks aching from the force of her smile. "That's it!"

They ran under the shadow of trees and young bamboo, their white hems flashing through the green-dark undergrowth. Sometimes Kuroe led, yanking them around trunks, over roots, and through ferns taller than their knees. Sometimes Shirae led, finding deer-paths and trails that Kuroe's louder and faster brain had missed entirely. Once, they both nearly died because Kuroe tripped over a root, and Shirae, being attached, went with her. They recovered only by pretending they had meant to roll like that. A pigeon exploded out of a low branch above their heads, and both girls flinched. Kuroe laughed, which made breathing worse, then Shirae chuckled even so softly, which, to Kaoru's annoyance, made breathing better again.

Then Kuroe stopped suddenly, and Shirae bumped straight into her again. She inhaled in that patient way, already preparing to be annoyed, but Kuroe threw up a hand for silence, cocked her head, and closed her eyes.

"Wait," Kuroe whispered. "Wait, wait."

"What now?" Shirae panted, still gripping her hand.

Kuroe held up one finger and let her ears wake fully. Forest breath and leaf-drip; something small moving in the bracken; their own lungs; and farther—there! Her eyes flew open. "Water!" she said, grinning. "Hear it? Running water!" She pointed downhill. "Where there's a river, there's a village. And where there's a village, there's rice. And where there's rice, there's not being eaten by a snake-monster!" She yanked Shirae after her with renewed conviction. "Come on! Follow, follow!"

The last part of the slope looked manageable from above, but that soon proved to be a lie; the earth was slick with moss. Kuroe hit the incline at full confidence, lost all friction immediately, windmilled with great sincerity, and took Shirae down with her.

They skidded, tried to save it, and failed together. Both girls tumbled the last stretch down in a graceless knot of elbows, knees, white sleeves, ruined braids. Kuroe ended up sprawled across Shirae's back, wheezing into a faceful of white hair.

"Pfft—ugh—grass," Shirae said in a monotone, spitting a tuft of riverbank weed from her mouth.

"Shirae, look—!" Kuroe scrambled over her, enthusiastic, and staggered the final steps to the bank. 

There, a stream, narrow but lively, running clear over stones.

"Look, look!" Kuroe cried, dropping to her knees. She plunged both hands in at once and yelped, because it was still late winter and the water was icy. "Water! Cold water!"

Kuroe splashed it over her face, over her neck, over the back of her wrists. The shock of it was amazing, like being slapped awake. Then—because joy is a splashy thing—she flung the water upward and watched it burst apart in small droplets in the sunlight.

"Shirae?" she called, turning with both dripping hands spread wide in a full behold, river! gesture.

The smile froze on her face because Shirae was no longer moving. She still stood near where they had landed, her violet eyes huge, chin lowered, and mouth set tight. The expression on her face screamed I'm sorry long before her voice came.

Then a voice behind Shirae said, warm and utterly terrifying if one listened properly: "Going somewhere, Kuroe?"

Kuroe's stomach dropped out from under her. She did not even need to lift her eyes, but she did anyway. Takamitsu stood just behind Shirae, one hand around her wrist in a hold that was more no, little sister than prisoner, elbow bent behind her back, impossible to wriggle out of. His crimson overcoat stirred in the river-breeze, his spear easy along one shoulder. The talismans tied down the shaft breathed out a subtle light that counted as a warning.

And he was smiling. It would have been much easier to hate him if he had not always smiled like that.

Kuroe took one step backward, but her foot met a slick stone; her dignity departed her body at once as she crashed down in the stream with a humiliating splash that soaked up her back, into her sleeves, through her braid. Cold river water shot through every layer she had, and her entire line of thoughts became one long curse.

"Sorry," said Shirae flatly, still looking at the ground. "He was very... sudden."

"Up you get, Kuroe!" Takamitsu called cheerfully, not moving any closer and still holding Shirae in that impossible wrist-catch. "Why the long face? Did you think the barrier only told us when enemies slipped through? I noticed the moment you crossed it." 

 Kaoru wanted to punch him.

"You wound me," he went on, putting one hand to his chest in a performance of heartbreak. "I thought we had an understanding there. Now, now, back we go before Neko notices and gives all three of us the lecture of the dynasty."

Kuroe bit the inside of her cheek because she could feel the arithmetic. He was faster than her, much faster, probably more than anyone alive. And he had already caught Shirae without effort. He smirked at her in a way that made it clear he already knew every stupid plan she was halfway through having. Fine. If she could not outrun him, she would stab where he looked softest.

"You sound very worried about her," Kuroe said brightly, squeezing water out of one sleeve. "Is Neko-oneesama your lover?"

Shirae made a tiny choking sound.

Takamitsu blinked before chuckling, delighted. "Lover? No, no."

"Then wife?" Kuroe pressed, devilish.

He actually considered that. "Wife? Me? What a waste that'd be."

Good. Very good. Go for the weak point. "Ah!" Kuroe cried, mock-gasping. "Then perhaps you ought to go tell her that instead of sacrificing children! Neko-oneesama, oh poor, poor woman! She looks so into you."

Takamitsu tilted his head, and the smirk never faded. Kuroe could tell at once that he knew exactly what she was trying to do. "Oh, trust me, I know," he said, just like that. "She'll get over it eventually. Neko knows my life belongs to the Radiant Guard. We're the longest-running shōshō pair for a reason." He shrugged, crisp. "This strategy won't work, Ku-ro-e!"

Kuroe wrinkled her nose and scowled because it was easier than admitting that, for one awful second, she had liked him more when he sounded like plain honesty and steel. Her eyes slid toward Shirae. We can still— If Shirae twists and I lunge—

Takamitsu saw the whole thought happen on her face, and the smirk kinked at one corner. Go on, it said. Try.

Of course Kuroe took that personally. You can do it, she told her cold, wet, furious self. She planted one foot and sprinted along the stones. Yet, she did not make it three strides before an innocent length of a spear's shaft appeared exactly before her legs. Kuroe hit it shin-first, made a sound, tripped, and went face-down across the stones. By the time she spat out river and swore, Takamitsu was already standing before her with Shirae slung over one shoulder.

When? How? The fact that his crimson overcoat was drifting at the hem was the only evidence he had moved at all, and under his boots, a skin of light dissolved back into nothing. Ah. Right. That again. He really did walk on light; how the hell was that fair? The tip of his spear came down and hovered one palm from Kuroe's nose; she went very still and glared cross-eyed at her own reflection in the steel, then up at Takamitsu.

"Now," Takamitsu said, lighter in the most dangerous way. "Breakfast. Then back to Neko and our injured little Sun. And I trust—" his eyes slid down to meet hers "—that you won't try your luck again. Right?"

Kuroe hated that smile, hated that she wanted to trust it. She scowled so hard her brows might never smooth again. "...Right," she muttered.

"Right," he echoed, pleased, shifting his gaze. "Shirae?"

"Right," Shirae said from his shoulder.

Satisfied, he set Shirae down and patted her head, which earned him a tiny glare, then he offered Kuroe a hand. Kuroe looked at it and considered biting it for a long moment; in the end, she did not. Instead, she took it and squeezed so hard her knuckles went white, but his fingers didn't so much as twitch.

"That's my little moon," he said, levering her up as if she weighed less than his spear.

"Not yours," Kuroe muttered, dripping water. She wrung out her braid with both hands, and a concerning amount of river water came out. 

Takamitsu laughed outright at that, threw his head back, then shrugged off the crimson overcoat entirely, leaving only the white kosode and the black light-plates of his armor beneath. He rolled his sleeves to the elbow and waded into the stream, humming under his breath in a cheerful tone. "Fish, fish, fish," he sang. "Let's be friends."

He braced his boots against the current until water foamed around his calves, lifted the spear, and leaned. The grin vanished as his mouth became a small, intent line with his tongue pooking out a little at one corner in deep focus, which was such a ridiculous thing for a terrifying man to do that Kuroe almost forgave him on the spot.

Shirae exhaled and smoothed down the wreckage Takamitsu's hand had left in her hair; she lowered herself to sit at the bank with her feet in the shallows and flicked the water once with her toes. Then again, tiny splashes. The face stayed flat, but the eyes woke up.

"Oh, great," Kuroe muttered, dropping down beside her in a patch of sun and hugging her knees while her wet yukata dried in the warmth. "Now she's having fun." Then, because truth should be spoken plainly: "Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiotidiotidiot—" She began chanting at Takamitsu's back so the river might carry the message to his ears.

"I can hear you, Kuroe~" he sang back without looking up from the water. "You're only mad because I'm faster than you." He snapped his fingers and flicked a line of water straight into her face with perfect aim.

Kuroe wiped at it with her sleeve, but the sleeve was also wet, so it did nothing. "Of course you're faster," she snapped. "I'm only a poor orphaned little child, and thanks to your ritual, I won't even get the chance to grow up!"

That got him a little. He glanced back over one shoulder, smirk crooked at a sad angle. "You aren't wrong," he conceded. He straightened and pointed with the spear down the valley, shifting into that infuriating mentor tone of his. "Look. Do you know what this is?"

Kuroe followed the line of the spear, where the stream ran on between green banks, widening here and there and disappearing between hill folds. "A river?" she guessed.

"Water," Shirae offered helpfully.

"Mm." He smiled. "A river, but not just any river." He added a tiny flourish, like a traveling storyteller. "The Hiikawa River. The river where Yamata no Orochi sleeps."

Shirae and Kuroe bolted backwards in synchronized panic and ended up shoulder to shoulder, which was not dignified but comforting. Both glared at him, and Takamitsu, incredibly, seemed entertained.

"Calm down," he said. "Its lair is farther on. Where the current swells into Lake Sakura Orochi." He dipped the blade into the stream and lifted; a fish wriggled helplessly from the point, and his grin faltered into a scrunched nose. "Ugh. Figures."

"What?" Kuroe crept closer despite herself, and Shirae followed two beats behind, because this had become a pattern of theirs. 

Takamitsu stepped from the river, water pouring from his boots, and crouched to show them. "See?"

The fish was as long as Kuroe's hand, which was to say: not long at all. Its scales were pale like rice washed one time too many, and its eyes had gone cloudy. Its whole body had that thin, wrong look that starving things get just before they turn from living creatures into dead ones.

"What happened to it?" Shirae asked quietly.

"Yamata no Orochi," Takamitsu said with no performance. "Even with the rite tomorrow—according to the court onmyōji and all their careful astrology—the stirrings begin well before the day itself. These days, the closer you get to Lake Sakura Orochi, the sicker the fish. Yamata no Orochi's cursed energy leaches into the water, then into the fields." He let the fish slip back into the stream with a sad flop. "Rice dies standing, and children cough black."

Shirae's eyes followed the current uphill into the folds of the valley. Kuroe followed Shirae's gaze, then Takamitsu's face; his seriousness was different from his usual heroic speeches. Kuroe had learned by now that it appeared only when nobody was watching.

"What happens," Kuroe asked, and hated that her voice had come out that small, "if the ritual fails?"

Takamitsu looked honestly surprised that she had asked; his surprise then softened as he stood and turned the spear the other way, pointing downriver. "Past that bend," he said, "your village." He traced the curve farther. "And beyond it, more villages. Then the market-town. Then the road to the port. All of Izumo is tied to this thread of water."

Kuroe followed the line in her head: huts of packed clay and thatch, smoke holes. Children like them, women pounding grain and men bent in cold fields. Oba's bad mouth. The old little life of the valley, spread out along the river as if trusting it.

Shirae's hand rose and touched the crooked place in her braid where Kuroe had done a bad job.

"If we fail," Takamitsu said simply, "the river rises and eats all of Izumo. All of it. The water turns cursed, and the soil is poisoned for years. Hunger comes next, then sickness." He looked at them, caught whatever had changed in their faces, and tried to smile again. "There's a reason this is the saika the court fears most." He shrugged back into the crimson overcoat as though he might shrug the dread away with it, then glanced back down at the water. "Aah. No fish for breakfast."

Kuroe reached out and caught his sleeve before she could stop herself. "Is that what happened last time?"

He stilled long enough for her to see. "Last time?" he repeated.

"The thing you and Neko-oneesama were talking about last night!" Kuroe clarified.

To her surprise, Shirae nodded quietly, "Hn. What happened twelve years ago?"

That made Kuroe like her more, which was inconvenient.

Takamitsu paused halfway through tying the sash, and his stare snapped between them, eyes narrowing in a way that meant you two are trouble, and I am not as patient as I look. "You were eavesdropping," he said, sounding deeply wounded. "You little bandits."

Kuroe choked on a laugh, and at her side, Shirae's mouth actually twitched.

Takamitsu lasted three more seconds under their combined stare, then gave up spectacularly. "Fine!" he groaned, scrubbing both hands through his hair and looking for once exactly his age, which was older than them and younger than the weight of the years sitting on his shoulders. He dropped into a patch of shade with visible defeat and patted the ground beside him. "You win. Come here, troublemakers. Story time." Then he lifted one finger as a clear warning. "But if Neko asks, you say I told you about fish. Everyone likes fish."

Kuroe flashed Shirae a victorious grin, and Shirae gave her back the look, if not the smile. Both girls crawled forward at once and knelt in front of Takamitsu like two attentive students before a teacher who was also a terrible influence.

Takamitsu cleared his throat, and because he was apparently incapable of telling a story without becoming a performance, he planted one fist on his knee and drew himself up like a bard. "Twelve years ago," he began, "another Year of the Serpent. Neko wasn't even in the Radiant Guard yet. I was sixteen. Full of myself and intolerant of caution. The youngest shōshō the Radiant Guard had ever bothered to promote."

A brief self-mocking smile touched his lips before it dimmed.

"If I ever became anything worth naming," he added, "it was because of the taishō. So when he took command of the expedition to supervise the ritual that pacifies Yamata no Orochi, here, in these lands, I followed, naturally. Along with an entire squadron of the Radiant Guard."

"You found three sacrifices," Kuroe said at once, too quick and already angry for people she had never met.

Takamitsu's gaze slid past them, as if counting ghosts. "Oh, yes." His voice softened. "Two poor girls sold by their families, trembling and frightened, very much like Omi." He glanced at the stream, then back at Kuroe and Shirae. "And one from a noble branch of the Fujiwara Nanke. She volunteered for the greatest good. A girl straight-backed and proud, with steel in her eyes. More like you two." He chuckled. "She immediately gave me a look, you know? The one that said 'You're an idiot and I know it.'" He let out a breath. "Every cycle, finding three pure maidens with the Sight becomes harder."

"Why?" Shirae asked, drawn in before she seemed to realize she was.

Takamitsu reached out and tapped two fingers lightly between Shirae's and Kuroe's brows, then his own. "Because those with Sight are very rare," he said. "Most of them live among the noble houses and the old clans of Yamato, or in the shrine, but they grow fewer every year. Our kind thins while the saika grow bolder and stronger. The Fujiwara Nanke and the Radiant Guard remain the only arms effective against the saika, and we shōshō are the only ones left in the country who can stand in front of such things and survive. The rest—" He flicked a hand vaguely toward the forest, the roads, the realm beyond. "—can manage trinkets, a little smoke, and a few barriers. Like those masked men from last night. Which is why—"

Kuroe's temper, which had never been known for staying seated, jumped. "Which is stupid!" she cut in. "Why feed girls with Sight to a saika when you could train them and use them like you?"

"Right?!" Takamitsu blurted too fast, pointing a finger at the sky; then he seemed to hear himself and coughed into one hand. "The saika grow bolder," he went on more carefully, "and we won't be enough forever if we do not train, recruit, and keep our..." He stopped on the word kindling and cleared his throat again, smoothed his overcoat instead, trying to tear the revolutionary thought out of his mind.

Kuroe felt a small, wicked spike of triumph: ha! So you don't actually love human offerings either, you ridiculous sun of a man.

"At least," Takamitsu amended, with visible effort, "that is what I thought twelve years ago, when I saw three talented girls resigned to die as miko. I—" The word snagged. "I even hated them a little for it."

Shirae leaned in. "What happened?"

Takamitsu looked back at her. "When the ritual began," he said, "when Yamata no Orochi raised its heads out of the lake, I disobeyed the taishō's order." He smiled once without humor. "I attacked."

Kuroe's eyes widened. "To save the miko?" she asked with stupid hope.

"And," he said, "because I was sixteen, arrogant, idealistic, and absolutely convinced I could kill Yamata no Orochi outright and win."

"You... lost?" Kuroe asked, not even trying to pretend she wasn't dying to know.

"Oh, no." His grin flashed quickly and brightly. "I almost won. Taishō was both so proud and furious!"

Kuroe jerked forward with delight. "Then—"

"But that's the thing with Yamata no Orochi," Takamitsu said, and the grin vanished. He drew a line in the damp earth with one fingertip. "You do not win. You cut one head, and the wound becomes a floodwater that bursts outward. Paddies drown, and houses go under as people vanish in them." His hand closed on the ground, dragging dirt as if suppressing old rage. "And then, the head grows back anyway, now adapted to whatever cut it off the first time." He looked at them both. "The only way is to cut them all off at once, but if you cut all eight heads in one breath—which no one has ever managed, and no, Kuroe, do not look at me like that—then all you've done is drown the land in eight directions at once." He gestured toward the valley, toward the river. "No matter how brilliantly you 'win,' Izumo drowns under your victory."

Takamitsu reached out suddenly and ruffled both their heads as if he could lighten it by striking up their hair. 

"That," he tried for soft, though not very successfully, "is why we buy peace. Three sacrifices and twelve years of quiet. It is not noble, but our duty is to keep the peace of the living."

Shirae shifted nearer to Kuroe without noticing. "What happened after?" she asked.

Takamitsu's left hand moved to his right bicep and squeezed a little too hard. Kuroe wondered if he was even noticing. "Yamata no Orochi went on a rampage, and our entire squad was swept aside," he said. "Two of the three miko were eaten anyway, and the wrath we stirred destroyed the land, killed hundreds, and annihilated the nearest village of Unnan. Even now, the shores of Lake Sakura Orochi will not grow rice." His eyes dropped as his face twisted into a bittersweet smile. "Only the taishō and I walked back out. He paid for my disobedience, in his body and in his name. My insubordination didn't save anyone. It made the price worse.

Kuroe swallowed, but the stubborn little animal part in her would not lie down, would not lie still, would not quietly let fate put a hand over her. "Even so," she said as she lifted her chin to meet his eyes, absolutely not giving him peace. "Even so, I won't lie down and accept death."

Takamitsu grinned, too delighted and entirely unreasonable. He reached over and wrecked her hair again. "Well said," he said. "Wouldn't expect less." He rose, straightened the crimson coat, and lifted the spear back onto his shoulder. The story-face slipped, and the command-face returned. "And even so," he repeated, "I will do my duty. I will not let you run. I made a vow, and I won't drag the taishō down a second time. I will oversee this ritual, keep Yamata no Orochi pacified, and see it finished this time."

He took three steps toward the trees and stopped to glance back over his shoulder, smiling again, challenging. "And," he added, "I will intervene only if the valley is truly in danger."

Kuroe and Shirae's eyes widened together. Ah. Oh. Oh, you sneaky bright bastard. Kuroe sprang to her feet so fast she nearly tipped over. "Wait!" she said, crushing a grin that wanted to eat her whole face. "So, if, purely by accident, and by coincidence, and perhaps because fate made a mistake, Yamata no Orochi went berserk and threatened the valley—" She fluttered her fingers innocently. "—You would step in and stop it?"

Takamitsu hummed, feigning musing. "That," he said blandly, "is what I said. It is my job." His mouth flattened before his laugh burst out, too loud, sunny, and kind in exactly the same breath. "But there will be no need! Because you three helpless little offerings will be eaten neatly, in order, and I will go home and take the glorious nap I deserve."

Kuroe scowled on principle, but she also hurried to his side, shortly followed by Shirae. You brilliant, ridiculous Taka-niichan. Not heartless at all. 

"Is that why you taught us to channel cursed energy?" Shirae asked, catching at his sleeve and tugging.

"And why you let me keep the knife?" Kuroe added immediately, catching at his other sleeve and tugging harder.

Takamitsu arranged his face into the most innocent smirk that was almost convincing. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said as he flicked his wrist in an easy follow-me motion. "Come on. Back to Neko and Omi. Tomorrow's the big day."

Kuroe took three triumphant steps beside him before the thought finally arrived, hopping belatedly: Wait. What happened to the third miko of twelve years ago?

.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.

By midmorning, they had left the last cedar grove and taken a path overlooking a long spread of fields. The land looked tired; too many gods and too many taxes. Ridges and dikes had been hand-built and rebuilt for generations, and tiny shrines were set at awkward field corners. Beyond all that, under the strange low sky of serpent-year Izumo, there was thin smoke rising from distant huts; Kuroe wondered if people living there, near the lake where Yamata no Orochi rested, had no choice or too much hope in the ritual. 

A small procession passed the ridge above them; farmers in faded hitatare with their cheeks hollow and eyes reddened from poor sleep. A packhorse was swaying under too heavy a load of tied bundles of straw, and a shrine-boy with a gong strap across his narrow chest.

Paesants fleeing before the ritual began.

One woman in a patched kosode, carrying a baby wrapped in cloth, slowed and looked down; and just like that, the whole procession halted, and their stares tipped over the edge of recognition all at once. White yukata; bare feet; two figures in red and black; a spear that carried daylight with it.

Whispers scattered down their line like dropped beans.

"Are they the miko...?"

"It's the Radiant Guard..."

"You mean that's the Bright Spear?"

An elder bent double suddenly in a violent coughing fit as if his ribs were trying to get out. When he straightened, black drool was smeared around his lips as he pressed both palms together and bowed toward Kuroe, Shirae, and Omi, lips moving in a prayer.

Kuroe's body almost bowed back by reflex, then remembered what she was, to them, what she was being made into. A holy girl, an offering. Food with a title. She swallowed and looked away because the closer they came to Lake Sakura Orochi, the more the world forgot how to be ordinary.

Grass gave up first, its greenness gone, leaving space for dried, yellow, brittle underfoot. Trees held up blackened fingers, stripped of leaves not by season but by the slow leaking touch of cursed energy. The river, which until now had merely been a river, picked up speed, and ahead, a storm front crouched over the lake, black on black.

Even Takamitsu's lightness thinned; the smile was still there, but one finger tapped nervously against his own bicep as he walked, and a line formed between his brows.

Omi began hiccup-crying again the moment she saw the storm-wall in the distance, while Shirae went even quieter in a way that was not peace but resignation.

Meanwhile, Kuroe's mind started spinning possibilities. Inventory. Ten talismans between her and Shirae, minus the one Shirae had turned into a tiny sun and thrown at a man's face two nights ago. One stolen knife, wrapped in her torn hem and tucked against her ribs. One human wall in black armor. One overpowered light-wielding big brother who would not betray his taishō but might, if maneuvered cleverly, accidentally betray an entire system. 

Maybe enough. Enough if—

The lake came into view, and her knees threatened to give out.

No. No, no, no. Kuroe locked them on principle as Omi's crying pitched higher.

The lake should have been beautiful, and that was the obscene part. It was wide enough to deserve poetry, and long enough to reflect whole skies. On another day, in another year, perhaps it might have mirrored the clouds and birds, but now it moved like a predator's sleep-breath. Ragged, then suddenly deep, with cursed energy that rolled off it and pressed on their necks.

Three stone altars jutted into the lake like fingers with three vermilion torii that stood above them. The wind gained as birds, being sensible creatures, excused themselves.

The group stopped at the water's edge.

Takamitsu stood with his arms folded across the shaft of his spear, looking like one of those temple guardian statues. His tapping finger finally stopped. "Miko," he said, not teasing now. "You will stand upon the three stones beneath the torii. Then—" his gaze slid past them "—Neko will cast the containment barrier until the ritual ends." He moved behind them one by one, not touching until the last possible second. Omi first, a light pat between the shoulder blades, more a blessing than a push. "Miko of the Sun." He pointed to the center altar. "May your offering keep this valley in peace for another cycle of twelve years."

Omi stared at the stone, then back over her shoulder at him, searching for the grin that made things easier, but it wasn't there. She swallowed around a sob and limped toward the middle altar, small and trembling on her wrapped ankle.

Then Shirae, the same light touch, and toward the rightmost altar. "Miko of the Stars. May your offering keep this valley in peace for another cycle of twelve years." Shirae's face did not change, but Kuroe saw the tiny fold of lip caught between her teeth.

Then Takamitsu's hand landed between Kuroe's shoulders and pointed to the leftmost altar. "Miko of the Moon," he said. "May your offering—"

"Wait! Waitwaitwait—" Kuroe turned just enough to look at him; she aimed for a brave scowl but landed somewhere younger and more obvious than she liked. She looked away again fast, trying to recover. "One... last piece of advice, Taka-niichan?" Her voice didn't crack, and she considered it a win.

Her voice did not crack.

His expression didn't soften; he had never really lied to her, but for the first time, he wasn't reassuring either. Before he could answer, Kaneko's voice cut clean through them. "Close your eyes," she said, "and do not think too much, moon-child." Kuroe blinked at her as Kaneko's eyes went on the water. "Yamata no Orochi comes straight. To the tip of the stone. It is quick. You can feel the pressure in the air before it reaches you. He never rises fully from the lake. His belly is soft."

She delivered it like a scolding. Kuroe stared. Takamitsu stared too. "Mm," he said slowly, impressed and fake. "Neko. That's a very specific amount of firsthand knowledge. How do you even know that?"

lifted her chin a degree that counted as defensive. "I did not come unprepared."

Kuroe's brain grabbed the words and tried to fit them together: close your eyes, comes straight, soft belly. They didn't make sense to her. 

Meanwhile, Takamitsu's hand settled between her shoulders again, and this time he pressed. "Good luck," he said, far too cheerfully.

"Don't say luck," Kuroe muttered back, stepping onto the stone because, infuriatingly, her feet kept feeling braver than the rest of her.

The altar was cold under her soles, as the wind shoved at her. The lake heaved beneath all three stones. She looked right: Omi on the center altar, already weeping openly, arms locked around her own ribs. Farther beyond, Shirae: a white slash beneath red wood.

Far. Too far to touch, to drag, to carry. That did not favor their plan.

"Neko," Takamitsu called from shore.

"I'll cast the barrier," Kaneko replied.

She planted her tessen into the bank and raised two fingers. With one nail, she scribed a short arc in the air, leaving behind a seam of black, cursed energy so dark it seemed to pull light out of the storm. Then she began to chant, voice dropping low.

"Emerge from stillness, darker than night.

Close upon this place and hold.

What is impure, be bound."

The world tipped as darkness fell over the lake like a dome, solid black, translucent and soft, a midnight sky swallowing the storm's light and turning day into night entirely. The storm leaned against the barrier, and the barrier leaned back. Kuroe had just enough time to see Takamitsu flash Kaneko a sideways grin, mouth shaping what looked suspiciously like show-off, there was no need to perform the whole chant, and Kaneko's face returned, with perfect clarity, shut up, I want this done properly—

—before the dome sealed, and they were outside. No. She was inside, with Omi, Shirae, and the lake. Perspective, really.

Inside, the wind went mad, and suddenly rain came slashing down at an angle that made no sense at all, as if the storm had forgotten which direction to take. The surface of the lake drew downward and downward, sucked to a point by some invisible currents beneath it. Then the point opened, and a wave of cursed energy burst upward. Water spilled over the bank and climbed around the base of the altar, cold around Kuroe's ankles. The hairs at the back of her neck lifted so quickly it hurt.

It's not even here yet, she thought, with one honest stab of terror. And it already feels like this?

She planted her feet because her knees wanted desperately to become water, and absolutely no. 

A vast black shape moved below the surface as the lake slowly rose and turned, then peeled back on itself.

The first neck came up like a column torn from the bed of the world; it was scaled black-green, wet, and banded with old sutra-ropes and charms fused directly into the flesh after centuries of failed rituals, sorcerers, and Onmyojis working over and over without success. Then another neck rose; then another; eight in all. Each head was the size of a village hut, with water that poured from their jaws in sheets, streaming between fangs too long and mouths that opened wider than a beast should have been able to open. And people had the guts to call that monster a snake. Every eye was different; one burned swamp-green; one gold and slit; one milk-white as if blind and furious for it. One red at the pupil like blood. Moss clung to one skull while another had horns that had clearly been hacked off long ago and had grown back crooked. Overall, between the scales, the flesh pulsed with rotten, cursed energy.

It was like watching a dead mountain decide to be a serpent.

All eight heads lifted together and screamed. The sound was far too large for the air; it was not one sound but many all at once, coming from a place older than humanity, older than myth: landslide, temple bell, storm-snap, trees splitting, the throat of a monster who hates dynasties.

Kuroe clapped both hands over her ears and still felt it in her skull. Around them, the barrier cast by Kaneko trembled but held, and in that roar, with the whole end of the world towering above black water and red torii, a clean absurd thought cut straight through her mind: Ah. So this is what the end of the world looks like up close. Relax—awful, treacherous—went through her legs, and for the first time since waking into a white yukata and a name she liked, her knees betrayed her. 

How had she ever—

How had he ever—

How had any of them ever looked at this thing and thought a knife and a few talismans and a clever plan might be enough?

One head angled toward the center stone, where Omi sobbed, a small human sound crushed flat under the roar. One head's gaze—did cursed snakes have gaze?—tilted, attentive. The world, for an instant, narrowed to the space between Omi's mouth and the serpent's.

Then it struck.

Exactly as Kaneko had said, it lunged, a straight, brutal line, driving into the stone where Omi had been a moment before—where Omi still was—where Omi—

Stone shattered; spray, dust, and black water exploded outward. The impact flung water up in a sheet and threw Kuroe's breath back at her. The head jerked and settled with a grinding of teeth on rock.

Kuroe stared, black eyes wide. Shirae stared too, wide violet eyes. They looked at each other from across the central altar because there was nowhere else to look.

"...Omi?" Kuroe heard herself say.

They both looked down; in the rubble at the altar's end, a bare arm lay at a wrong angle, small hand lax, blood streaking down to the water. The mouth of the serpent moved, maybe chewing, definitely chewing. Hard to tell, enough to know.

Kuroe's body made a noise without asking her permission. She snapped her head right. "Shirae!" she screamed through rain and thunder. "Left—jump—left!"

Shirae did not move; she had folded to her knees on her own altar, eyes lifted but glassy, too full of shock to hold anything else. One of the outer heads turned toward her with interested slowness, so Kuroe did what she always did when plans failed.

Something stupid.

"Hey!" she shouted, jumping on her stone like a lunatic and waving both arms high, lungs tearing with the effort and words spilling out in nonsense. "Over here! Ugly! You overgrown, rotten centipede! Your heads look like turnips with delusion!"

One head turned; then another; the one following Shirae paused, and the one nearest Kuroe swung around, and its pupil—this one a thin horizontal slit—narrowed on her.

"Right," Kuroe muttered, because apparently she was either very brave or very bad at living. "That's right."

Time slowed as the head drew back and the pressure spilled into the air before the strike, just as Kaneko had said. A wave of cursed energy, forward, straight for the stone's tip. Kuroe squeezed her eyes shut, not because Kaneko had told her to, but because fear, at that exact second, was stronger than any strategy. She felt the strike coming, pictured stepping back now—

—the head smashed across the front of the altar exactly where she had stood a heartbeat before; stone burst under its jaws as the slab shuddered under her heels.

Kuroe landed on her toes, slid, caught herself, then lunged forward with everything she had learned in two days and everything she remembered from some dark corner of her mind that screamed she had already lived this. She tore the stolen knife from her yukata and forced cursed energy down her arm the way Takamitsu had shown them. Then, she brought the blade down with both hands into the neck of the saika.

The knife struck the scale and broke. The sound it made was pathetic.

Kuroe stared down at the two pieces in her hands, then at the thick scales beneath, then at the serpent head levering itself free of the shattered stone with what looked very much like irritation. Its eye was fixed on her; if such things could be called eyes at all.

"...Oh," Kuroe said.

The head thrashed, and the motion nearly took her with it. She let go of the useless broken hilt and sprawled backward across the fractured altar lip, palms scraping for hold as the saika gathered itself to strike again—

Fire hit it directly in the eye in a perfect, furious sphere. It burst on impact and hissed backward into the rain as the head flinched and screamed; waves smashed against the barrier, and water climbed higher around the bases of the stones. Kuroe twisted and saw on the far altar, Shirae standing and shaking, one arm still outstretched after the throw. 

Good news: the head was no longer biting Kuroe. Bad news: an enraged saika moved a great deal.

The blinded head went wild. One sweeping movement caught Kuroe across the ribs as stone vanished from under her. The world flipped white, then black, then cold, and the last thing she saw before the lake swallowed her was Shirae leaning forward over her own altar, mouth open around Kuroe's name.

Then: water.

The cold slammed her skull as the lake folded around her instantly, heavy and full of sickness. Kuroe tried to right herself and found the water thick with cursed energy, as if the lake itself had gone half-solid. She kicked for the surface and struck something that was not water at all.

Kuroe pried her eyes open and saw above her arched scales. A roof of them. The massive underside of Yamata no Orochi's body curved over her, creating a hollow where the current folded back into itself; she had been knocked beneath it, trapped in a pocket of churning black water with nowhere to go but sinking deeper.

Stupid, she thought furiously at herself. You won't even be eaten. You'll drown. Amazing. Wonderful ending, Kuroe.

She stopped thrashing because panic wasted air; she set one palm against the serpent's belly instead and felt it. Softer. Not exactly soft, but surely softer than the scales above, at least flesh that gave a little. Once again, just as Kaneko had said.

Useful, her mind said stubbornly, if you had a weapon.

Her lungs clawed for breath as blackness crowded the edges of her vision. So she let herself sink instead of fighting upward and forced herself to look, look, look for anything useful. If she could not breathe, she could at least look. Her toes touched muck, and silt puffed up in clouds around them. And there—

There.

Half-swallowed by weed and black lake-mud, something was on the bottom.

Straight and black, a line where her mind supplied there should have been a curve. Double-edged. A tsuba against silt and a hilt wrapped in black cord. A katana? No? A tsurugi? Black from hilt to kissaki, not a reflection but the color itself. A sleeping sword at the bottom of the lake as if it had been put there before humans, before villages, before anyone decided which kami belonged to whom.

Why there was a damn tsurugi at the bottom of a cursed lake was a perfectly reasonable question for later, for a future full of air. Right now, it was simply a fact, and a weapon was a kind of answer to her current predicament. Maybe she was delirious, maybe the lake was already in her lungs, and the world had gone mad around her.

Or maybe thinking creatively and sideways was all she had ever had.

Above her, the shifting shadows of Yamata no Orochi's moving heads blurred through the broken light, and somewhere very far away and very muffled, she thought she heard her own name—"Kuroe!"—and for once Shirae's voice was not flat at all.

Kuroe let go of everything that wasn't a hand and pushed herself through the sludge. Her fingers found the hilt. It was colder than the water, and beneath the cold, a vibration resonated that made her skin prickle even underwater.

Okay, she told in her head to the water, the saika, herself, the kami she didn't remember. Fine.

Kuroe did the only thing that had ever consistently worked for her: she held on harder, planted her feet in the muck, and drove cursed energy down into the black tsurugi with everything she had.

It burst through her, hot and blue-black, up her ribs, across her shoulders, down her arms, into her hands, and into the blade.

The tsurugi woke.