For ten days, an unusual quiet settled over Kaede's Village.
No great yōkai descended from the heavens. No war god came riding in beneath the moonlight. Even the messengers from the Hōjō clan no longer came and went with their former frequency.
For the people of this village, who had endured battle after battle in rapid succession, days like these felt so luxurious as to be almost unreal.
Kikyō arranged this stretch of time with impeccable order.
Early mornings were spent on spiritual cultivation. Midday was reserved for instructing Momiji and Botan in their spellcraft lessons. Evenings were dedicated to maintaining the barrier. And when night fell—
What happened after nightfall was not something Momiji and Botan were privy to.
Though the faint flush at the rims of Kikyō's ears every morning, and the way her lips looked unusually flushed, as though she had applied rouge only to carefully wipe it clean, already said plenty.
And Momiji and Botan were tactful enough never to ask. At least, not to her face.
"Do you think Sister Kikyō last night…"
"Don't ask."
"But Lord Shinji's collar had—"
"I said, don't ask."
That night, Momiji pressed Botan's head down and shoved her back under the futon.
On the other side of the paper door, Kikyō, who happened to be passing through the side hall corridor, paused for just a single beat. Then she continued on as though she had heard nothing at all.
But the very next day, during their spellcraft lesson, Kikyō doubled their cultivation workload. Momiji and Botan spent the rest of the day clutching their shikigami dolls, practicing until sunset, their faces the very picture of existential despair.
"I didn't even say anything…" Botan crouched beneath the torii gate, muttering in tiny, aggrieved protest.
Momiji's face was blank. "But you were thinking about saying it. Sister Kikyō can sense that."
"Is a miko's intuition really that strong?!"
"No. It's just that you're so guilt-ridden it's written all over your face."
"…You're the guilt-ridden one!"
"…?"
Little Kaede, on the other hand, remained entirely unaffected by any of this. As always, she was the first to rise and the soundest to sleep.
The fruit trees in the back garden, under her devoted care, had yielded a fine autumn harvest.
One afternoon, she came dashing out from the backyard with a basket of persimmons cradled in her arms. Her twin-tails bobbed with every step.
She reached the entrance of the main hall and stopped.
Inside, Naoe Kanetsugu, still tied to the pillar, was dozing with her eyes closed. Her dark blue light armor had long since crumpled into something resembling a dishrag, and her white jinbaori was smeared with layers of grime beyond counting.
Her once-neat high ponytail had completely unraveled, stray strands plastered to her cheeks, making her look rather like a radish just dug out of the mud.
Kaede tilted her head. Then she walked over and held a persimmon up to Naoe Kanetsugu's mouth.
"Big sister, eat a fruit."
Naoe Kanetsugu cracked one eye open. She saw the persimmon. Then she saw the little girl's eyes, curved into happy crescents.
She was silent for a long moment. Then she lowered her head slightly and took a bite.
The taste was so sweet that she nearly wept right there against that pillar.
"…Thank you."
"Mm! When Big Brother forgives you, I'll take you to the backyard to pick fruit! There's lots and lots back there!"
Kaede scampered off, utterly delighted.
Naoe Kanetsugu watched that twin-tailed little silhouette disappear into the distance for a long, long time, barely managing to suppress the violent twitching of her brow.
Ten days later.
Kyōto.
Along the official highway from the Kantō to Kyōto, a lone rider galloped through the autumn wind. The messenger on horseback bore a bamboo tube sealed with lacquer, branded with the Hōjō clan's triple-scale crest.
Inside the tube was a formal petition. Its destination: the Jingikan in Kyōto, the supreme governing body of the land's Shintō faith, responsible for evaluating shrine ranks, certifying enshrined deities, and conferring divine titles across the entire realm.
In this age where gods, buddhas, yōkai, and demons all coexisted, the Jingikan's authority had been somewhat diminished by the chaos of unending war.
Yet its certification remained the sole official channel through which any shrine in any province could gain legitimate standing.
The contents of the document were simple.
On behalf of the rulers of Musashi and Sagami Provinces, the Hōjō clan formally petitioned for the following:
That the shrine of Kaede's Village be elevated to the status of central Shintō seat for both provinces.
And that its presiding deity, "Kishin Mikoto-no-Mitama," the August Spirit of the Demon God, be enshrined as an officially recognized shōshin of those same two provinces.
Kishin Mikoto-no-Mitama.
That was the divine name drafted by the Hōjō clan's retainers.
Translated plainly, it meant taking what had once been a demon spirit and, through the formal rites of Shintō, transforming it into a true deity worthy of worship and offerings. A perfectly orthodox, standard-issue Shintō formulation.
The messenger rode at full speed, within ten days, he would reach Kyōto.
But in truth, someone in Kyōto had already learned of this on the very first day the messenger set out.
Not because of any leak. Only because… there was a certain thing that had been watching all along.
Beneath Kyōto.
Beneath the flourishing imperial capital lay another world entirely.
Deep, sunless tunnels stretched further into the earth, their stone walls coated in moss that had grown, over centuries without light, into a carpet of dark green velvet.
Here and there, ghostly green flames flickered at the ends of passageways, briefly illuminating corridor pillars carved with scenes of hell.
The palace lay at the deepest point.
To call it a palace was generous. It was more a lair.
The vast chamber was so saturated with yōki that the air itself had turned a translucent gray-violet. At its center, curtains hung low, and layers upon layers of silk and beast-hide cushions were heaped into a sprawling nest.
A woman or rather, a demon fox, reclined against those cushions.
Raven-black hair spilled behind her, threaded through with numerous golden hairpins, each an antique of immeasurable worth.
Her face was bewitchingly beautiful, the corners of her eyes tilted upward, her lips painted a vivid red, every feature curved with a shape meant to ensnare the heart. She wore a jūnihitoe, the twelve-layered ceremonial robe, its countless folds gleaming coldly in the light of the demon flames.
Her belly was slightly swollen.
This was the Lady of the Feather Robe, Hagoromo Gitsune, the great yōkai who lurked in Kyōto's shadows.
Compared to a few months prior, her stomach had grown visibly larger.
"The Tsuchigumo has returned."
Beyond the curtains, a low, squat figure knelt prostrate upon the ground. It was one of Hagoromo Gitsune's underlings, a lesser tengu tasked with relaying messages.
"He, too, is missing an arm."
That word, too, made Hagoromo Gitsune's fingers stop over her belly.
Her nails, lacquered in brilliant scarlet, traced slowly across the gentle swell of her abdomen. The motion was unhurried. Her eyes, however, turned cold.
The silence stretched for several seconds.
Hagoromo Gitsune sank back into her cushions, and at last, a trace of irritation surfaced on that bewitching face.
Kidōmaru had returned with an arm torn off. Now the Tsuchigumo had come back the same.
Every single one she sent out came back missing a piece.
"That miko… and that little brat…"
She murmured to herself, her voice soft and honeyed, yet laced with cold.
She was almost tempted to go herself.
The Shikon no Tama or whatever else, she couldn't care less. What bothered her was that the miasma of grudges seeping from the Kantō had thinned considerably of late.
Her child, growing within her womb, had slowed in its development as a result. And that displeased her greatly.
Her own strength was more than enough to settle the matter, at least in her own estimation. At the height of her power, that miko and that demon warrior could multiply their strength several times over and still not be worth a second glance.
She was a nine-tailed fox. One of the most formidable daiyōkai in all the land. Even in the yōkai-teeming days of the Heian era, that had remained true.
Even if they had repelled Kidōmaru and bested the Tsuchigumo, who had only just shaken off centuries of slumber, they would still be no match for her.
But she could not move.
The child within her was at the most critical stage of its gestation. Any violent disturbance could affect its growth. And beyond that, there was that thing weighing down on the Kantō, the deeper one's power, the heavier the suppression.
A wraith like Kidōmaru had needed to weave a shroud of grudges just to set foot there. Even the Tsuchigumo, diminished as he was, had only dared cut loose because his state was so far from its peak.
"Then set it aside for now. We'll deal with it later."
Hagoromo Gitsune closed her eyes. Her long, fine lashes cast shadows in the flickering light of the demon flames.
Behind the curtains, the crow tengu kneeling on the ground trembled and pressed itself even lower.
The Kantō. Far western edge.
Among the mountain ridges straddling the border between Musashi and Kai Provinces.
A woman stood at a fork in the road.
She wore a long black kimono, her features so exquisitely refined they seemed otherworldly. Her skin glowed pale as moonlight, while her lips were so faint in color they were nearly colorless. A pair of crimson, slit-pupiled eyes shifted faintly in the shadows.
This was none other than Kibutsuji Muzan.
As the Progenitor of all demons, Muzan possessed the ability to alter both form and sex at will. At this moment, she maintained a female guise, and without question, she had come from Kyōto.
Not at anyone's bidding. She had come simply to see for herself.
To witness the outcome in the east, the result of the great yōkai she herself had drawn there. To look toward the direction where she had lost subordinate after subordinate.
The result… had been far beyond anything she expected.
The Tsuchigumo had actually lost.
Muzan's slit-pupiled eyes swept eastward. Even across a hundreds of km, she could still touch the aura emanating from that place. Reiryoku, spiritual power, limpid as a deep winter spring. So pure it stirred in her an instinctive, visceral revulsion.
That was the miko. The one called Kikyō.
From the last fragmented memories transmitted by her eradicated demons before they disintegrated, that miko possessed a skill utterly detestable to Muzan, the ability to refract the light of dawn from below the horizon, redirecting the sun's rays onto the earth before the sun itself had even risen.
A spiritual lens. She wielded the sun itself as a weapon.
For a demon, it was the very definition of a targeted counter.
Muzan had lived for centuries. There were few things she feared. Sunlight was one of them.
And a miko who could summon sunlight at will, even if she could evade it, she still had no choice but to regard her with deep wariness.
And beyond that, the demon warrior was growing stronger.
Her senses, measured against the last images in her demons' memories, told her that the density of his yōki had surged several times over in the past half-month alone. Far too fast. That pace was unnatural.
A yōkai's growth was measured in centuries. Could the legendary Shikon no Tama truly possess such miraculous power? Or was it something else?
Muzan wasn't sure. But she knew that the pieces she currently had in play were no longer sufficient.
The ordinary demons she had created by casually dispensing her blood were mere ants before that miko. Even the stronger ones, those she had handpicked and endowed with a richer concentration of her blood, had been wiped out entirely in that region.
Lately, as Shinji and Kikyō traveled and purged together, the number of demons Muzan had seeded throughout Musashi Province had plummeted at a terrifying rate.
"I need stronger demons."
The thought had surfaced in her mind more than once. Not common demons, but powerful ones capable of holding their own, demons on par with high-ranking yōkai.
But demons like that were, even for her, not something she could simply produce at will. The raw material was rare. The human base had to possess a certain innate strength before being turned, special enough to withstand a high concentration of demon blood without disintegrating.
And they needed obsession. A fixation powerful enough to resonate with the blood, giving rise to a transformation beyond the ordinary.
Both were indispensable. And such vessels, she had found only a handful across five hundred years.
It seemed, then, that until she had demons of sufficient strength at her command… she could no longer afford to draw near the vicinity of that village in Musashi.
Having made this internal decision, Muzan withdrew her gaze, turned, and began retracing her steps. She had no intention of getting any closer herself.
But it was at that very moment that footsteps sounded from the darkened bend in the mountain path behind her.
Dragging footsteps. One heavy. One light.
Her left foot fell heavy against the ground; her right dragged behind, scraping across the loose stones.
And there was the smell of blood. Thick. Cloying. Sickly sweet with the faintest undertone of rot.
A figure emerged from the darkness. A woman. Perhaps a little past twenty.
She wore men's hunting attire, rough-spun tunic, tight leggings, and at her waist, a chipped mountain blade. The clothes were riddled with tears and caked in blood.
A gruesome slash ran diagonally from her left shoulder to her right ribs, crudely stitched shut, the thread ends fraying from the wound's edges, matted with congealed gore.
Below her left knee, strips of cloth wrapped around the leg had been soaked through layer after layer until they'd turned a dark, muddy brown.
Her injuries looked catastrophic. And yet, she was still walking, limping, stumbling, dragging herself forward with ragged, heaving breaths, as if refusing to give in.
The only thing that seemed out of place was her face. It was pale and fair, far too delicate for someone in such rough attire.
A face that belonged more to a nobleman's daughter than to a wandering brigand.
Then she saw Muzan.
She paused, bracing a hand against a tree trunk, stopping some ten paces away. The two women stood in the desolate mountain darkness, eyes meeting.
And then this woman smiled. A bloody grin that bared teeth stained crimson.
"Didn't expect to run into anyone out here. Looks like I won't die alone after all."
Muzan didn't move. She simply studied this strange, inexplicable woman and asked, "Who are you?"
"A bandit whose camp was torched by those self-righteous bastards of the Uesugi clan. No name worth mentioning." She spoke with a coarse, rasping laugh. "The Uesugi troops burned our hideout to the ground. My comrades are all dead. I've been dragging this wreck of a leg through the mountains for three days. But it looks like… this is as far as I go."
Uesugi's army had marched south under the banner of righteousness, wiping out lawless bands along the way. This woman was clearly one of their victims.
But she remembered, vaguely, that she had been on the verge of death, only to suddenly come back to life. In that hazy blur between worlds, she thought she had glimpsed a jewel… and a very handsome man.
Then something had drawn her, pulled her, and she'd found herself walking this way. But it was all like a fever dream now, she could barely recall the details, much less put them into words.
The woman gasped for breath, speaking in broken fragments. Then, as if a thought had just occurred to her, she added:
"If I have to give a name… call me Kumo-Oni. Spider Demon."
And then she drew the blade from her waist.
"Don't blame me for this, my lady. Blame yourself, for wandering alone into the wilderness. Let me savor one last taste of killing… before I die."
Such a posture. Such a gesture.
Kibutsuji Muzan let out a soft, amused breath.
How… interesting.
It seemed the raw material she had been searching for… had just delivered itself.