The moment Sesshōmaru's words fell, Jaken was already dragging something out from behind him.
A corpse.
It was wrapped in white silk, its shape intact, roughly the size of a boy of fifteen or sixteen. The silk was high-grade Sichuan brocade, originally from the another empire across the sea.
Flawless and pure, it gleamed with a soft luster under the moonlight. Such fabric was so luxurious and costly it ordinarily circulated only among the nobility of Kyōto. Now, it was being used as a burial shroud.
Jaken huffed and puffed as he dragged the wrapped body before Shinji. His sharp-mouthed, gaunt little face was twisted with reluctance, but he dared not defy Sesshōmaru's will.
"Here. This is that half-baked brat," Jaken said, prodding the edge of the shroud with his Staff of Two Heads, his tone dripping with disdain.
Shinji crouched down and reached out, lifting the white cloth aside. A young face was revealed. Silver-white hair spread across the ground, though it was far duller than Sesshōmaru's, tinged with an ashen gray.
On either side of his head, a pair of triangular dog ears drooped lifelessly. His features were sharp and defined, still carrying the defiant edge and untamed pride of a boy on the cusp of manhood. Even in death, his brow was furrowed, wearing an expression of stubborn refusal. He wore white clothing… not red.
Shinji's gaze swept over the body. He remembered clearly, Inuyasha's attire should have been a red outer robe. The Robe of the Fire Rat. It was a memento Tōga had given to Inuyasha's mother.
Fire and water could not harm it. It shared its name with one of the five legendary treasures brought by Princess Kaguya in the old tales, a formidable treasure in its own right. But it was nowhere to be seen now. Lost in the chaos? Damage was impossible.
The Robe of the Fire Rat was a treasure even daiyōkai would collect. Far tougher than any mortal cloth, it couldn't be torn. A pity. But Shinji swiftly reined in his thoughts, his expression betraying nothing. He knew Sesshōmaru could not have made a mistake. The body before him was Inuyasha. Tōga's second son. Half-human. Half-demon.
Shinji studied the corpse. It was, all things considered, relatively intact. Better than he'd expected. He'd originally assumed that a half-demon who'd died in the chaos of battle over two months ago would have long since rotted away.
But Inuyasha was, after all, of the bloodline of the great daiyōkai Tōga. Though the yōki within his half-demon body had gradually dissipated after death, the lingering power deep in his bloodline had preserved his physical form.
And after Sesshōmaru had found the body, he'd wrapped it in silk and used his own yōki to halt the decay. The corpse's condition was… acceptable. At the very least, his features were whole, his limbs intact.
Shinji straightened up. He didn't begin right away. He turned his head, and behind the crimson demon mask, his demon eyes fixed upon Sesshōmaru, standing three paces away.
"One last question."
Sesshōmaru's golden, slit-pupiled eyes shifted toward him. The gaze was as indifferent as ever. He simply waited for Shinji to speak.
"In what state do you want Inuyasha resurrected?"
It was Jaken who reacted first. "What do you mean?! The way he was before, of course—!" Jaken barely got the words out before Sesshōmaru's peripheral glance silenced him. He promptly shrank back, neck retracting.
Shinji ignored Jaken and continued. "The souls of humans and yōkai are different. I don't think I need to elaborate on that. Inuyasha is a half-demon. Within his body are two souls, a demon soul and a human soul."
He looked straight at Sesshōmaru, speaking plainly, holding nothing back. "And according to what you've said, these two souls clearly do not blend. Otherwise, Inuyasha wouldn't suffer such a sharp decline in yōki on the night of the new moon, to the point where his human side suppresses him. Under these circumstances… I can't guarantee I can summon back a complete Inuyasha. It's more likely… I'll summon back two."
This was his "limitation." His soul-calling could indeed summon back the dead. But one was one. Two were two.
He couldn't fuse them together. In other words, if he called both back and placed them into the same vessel, the resulting Inuyasha would, in all likelihood, be split. Truly, utterly mad.
In this matter, Shinji was actually inclined to summon only one. This was precisely why he couldn't avoid helping Inuyasha become a pure being, even if he wanted to.
Still, he was here at another's invitation. Even if he had his own aims, some things needed to be made clear.
"The human soul. The demon soul. Or an Inuyasha who remains half-human, half-demon… but with a fractured mind. Which do you choose?"
His words fell. Silence lingered over the hillside for several breaths.
Jaken's mouth opened first, as though he wanted to answer on Sesshōmaru's behalf but didn't dare. He held it in for a long moment before, in the end, he couldn't help himself and muttered under his breath, "As expected of a half-breed. Even his soul's a mess!"
Sesshōmaru glanced sidelong at Jaken, expressionless. Jaken's mouth snapped shut instantly. The young daiyōkai of the Inu clan turned his golden eyes back to the silver-haired corpse, pausing for just a beat.
On that face, which had shown hardly any fluctuation from the very beginning, there was no trace of hesitation. Because there was no need for hesitation at all.
"It makes no difference," Sesshōmaru spoke. "You decide."
Two words. Clean and crisp. Though they amounted to saying nothing at all… Shinji clicked his tongue. But it didn't matter. This was exactly Sesshōmaru's attitude toward Inuyasha. Hardly a surprise. Still, he had delivered his piece. And since the other party had said as much—
"Fine."
Then he would be the one to decide.
As Shinji's words settled, his right hand rose. Slowly, his five fingers spread open.
The Soul-Chasing Bow-arm Change. Spirit Affinity. Soul-Calling.
A dark green, phosphorescent light seeped from his fingertips. It didn't disperse, instead, it dropped like threads of silk, draping themselves across Inuyasha's forehead.
Yōki poured into the corpse, tracing along the lingering veins of demonic energy, reaching inward. Searching. Searching for those fragments of Inuyasha's soul, scattered, nearly dissipated entirely.
Over two months. Under normal circumstances, two months after an ordinary human's death, their soul fragments would have long since scattered into nothingness. Not even dregs would remain.
What little lingering spirituality was left would have already entered the underworld and reincarnated into the cycle of rebirth. Only the rarest of the rare could persist to the three-month limit. But as Shinji had frankly told Sesshōmaru, Inuyasha was no ordinary human.
He was a half-demon. Half human.
Within his body dwelled two forces, two souls. Much like a human's three kon and seven haku, while he lived, both souls had cycled and intertwined within him.
Under normal circumstances, the demon soul, born of Tōga's bloodline, held sway. Only on the night of the new moon, when the turbid energies of the world were at their faintest, would the demon soul sink and the human soul rise to the surface.
And after his death, those two souls had remained tangled, intertwined, yet utterly severed from one another, unable to unify. As a result, the rate at which they dissipated differed greatly.
The demon half, though stronger, had scattered faster. Demonic energy, by its very nature, was more prone to "sinking", it was part of the cycle of worldly corruption. The human half dissipated more slowly. Human emotions were richer. The soul's attachments, deeper and more stubborn. Stickier. Harder to let go of.
That was precisely why, in this world, the dead who rose as demons were so often human, while mere beasts rarely did. Out in the wilds, the lingering souls of yōkai were truly difficult to find.
Given the two options, Shinji was more inclined… to resurrect Inuyasha in a human state.
The reason was simple. Too little of the demon soul remained. If he forcibly dragged it back, the result would be either a witless fool or a frenzied beast ruled by pure instinct. Besides, if Shinji recalled correctly, in the original story, the demonic transformation Inuyasha underwent when pushed to the brink was precisely the latter.
And he, Shinji, was still here. He had no desire to invite trouble. By comparison, though the human soul was weaker, it would still be a complete Inuyasha, one with a clear sense of self. Someone who could be reasoned with. Who could communicate.
So,
The dark green, phosphorescent light at Shinji's fingertips flared twice, then carefully bypassed those demon-soul fragments, too faint now, too blurred to even properly recognize.
He seized hold of the human half. And with everything he had, he drew it together. Fragment by fragment, he gathered the pieces of Inuyasha's human soul, scattered throughout the corpse, picked them up, pieced them together, compressed them, and pressed them back into that lifeless shell.
"…It's done."
Shinji drew his yōki back and glanced at Sesshōmaru. Sesshōmaru asked nothing further. He truly did not care whether Inuyasha was complete or not.
His golden, slit-pupiled eyes settled on the faint silhouette of dark green light coalescing at Inuyasha's forehead. They lingered for only a single beat. Then he drew his sword.
The sheath was ancient and unadorned. The blade was narrow, its edge soft, its entire length gleaming with a pale blue-white luster.
Tenseiga. The other of Tōga's two legendary blades. It could not harm the living. It cut only death. It allowed its wielder to see the underworld's messengers coiled around the deceased, and with one stroke, sever the chains of death, pulling the soul back to the realm of the living.
But until now, Sesshōmaru had never once used this blade. There had never been anyone worth resurrecting. And this sword… could only be swung with a heart that knew compassion. This was the first time.
In other words, though Sesshōmaru unquestionably looked down on Inuyasha the half-breed, though he did not consider him worthy of being called a brother and cared nothing for what state he returned in, to say he felt no lingering sentiment at all… was not necessarily true.
Shinji even suspected that this young lord, who had traveled so far seeking him out to resurrect Inuyasha, besides wanting to obtain Tessaiga, did, in fact, harbor some wish to bring him back. He was simply far too much of a tsundere to ever admit it.
The young daiyōkai of the Inu clan stood with blade in hand. His golden beast-eyes gazed down at Inuyasha's corpse. Within his field of vision, in a sight no one else could see, countless chains of dull gray extended from every part of Inuyasha's body, stretching into some invisible depths.
The pull of the underworld. The proof of death. The messengers of the realm beyond.
His gaze settled. The blade fell. A pale, cold arc of light flashed.
Soundlessly, visible only to the one who had drawn Tenseiga, the chains were severed. Every last gray chain shattered in the same instant, dissolving into pinpricks of light that scattered into the air.
Inuyasha's corpse, cold, still, utterly devoid of life, shuddered violently. It moved. His chest, with a speed visible to the naked eye, began to rise and fall. From nothing… to something. Breath. Rough, ragged, gasping breath erupted from a body that had been still for over two months.
But the silver-white hair lost its original luster, darkening to a deep, raven black. The pair of dog ears shrank back, as though recoiling, vanishing into the hair, replaced by human ears. The nails, once sharp, rounded and blunted. The fangs receded.
And his eyes… opened.
But they were not the gold of Sesshōmaru's, the mark of the Inu clan's most noble daiyōkai bloodline. They were a deep, dark brown.
Human eyes.
With only his human soul returned, Inuyasha had naturally been resurrected in a purely human state, exactly as he appeared every night of the new moon.
The first thing he did upon sitting up was cough. Violently. His entire body convulsed with it, as though he was trying to expel two months' worth of deathly stagnation from his lungs.
Then his gaze met Shinji's, crouched right in front of him. Crimson demon mask. Pale, flowing white hair. Scarlet demon eyes.
"—A DEMON?!"
Inuyasha's reaction was immediate and extreme. He flung himself backward, hands bracing against the ground as he tried to leap to his feet but his body, freshly resurrected and utterly drained, buckled beneath him, and he crashed straight back down with a stagger.
"Who the hell are you?! Where is this?! How did I—?!"
He roared, his voice hoarse yet brimming with energy. A man who'd been dead for two months had no business possessing this kind of lung capacity. But Inuyasha was Inuyasha. His shouting, however, had barely begun.
A blade descended from above. Tenseiga's tip stabbed into the ground half an inch from his collar, pinning the pale fabric firmly to the earth. Inuyasha couldn't move. He looked up.
Sesshōmaru stood before him. Silver-white hair cascading down. Golden, slit-pupiled eyes staring down from above. That innate indifference, the condescension born of bloodline alone, told Inuyasha in an instant exactly who stood before him.
"S-Sesshōmaru?!"
"Where is Tessaiga?" Sesshōmaru spoke. Simple. Direct. An interrogation stripped to its barest form.
"In the place that can be seen yet not seen. The place the true grave-keeper can never behold… Where, exactly, is it?"
Those words pointed to the very place where Tessaiga was hidden, the passage to Tōga's tomb, sealed within Inuyasha's own body.
"What the hell are you babbling about?! How the hell would I know?! I just woke up, you bastard—!"
Inuyasha thrashed wildly, trying to pull out the Tenseiga pinning him down. His fingers closed around the hilt, only to recoil as a searing heat scorched his palm. Tenseiga would not harm the living. But neither would it permit the touch of one it did not accept.
Watching this, Shinji felt a faint pang of regret. It only confirmed what he'd already suspected: claiming Tenseiga for himself would be nearly impossible.
Even if Sesshōmaru agreed, the blade's own spirit would never allow another to wield it.
"Your eyes."
Sesshōmaru's voice suddenly dropped. He had seen it. Within the depths of Inuyasha's dark brown, human irises, something was glowing. Faint. Concealed. A light of deep, abyssal black.
Under normal circumstances, Sesshōmaru would never have noticed anything unusual. It was a remnant left by Tōga, hidden within Inuyasha's eyes, fused into his very body, belonging to the power that ran through Tōga's bloodline.
But now, with only the human soul returned and the demon soul gone, far more thoroughly than even the brief silence of the new moon, it could no longer hide.
Sesshōmaru reached out. His pale, slender fingers pressed against the edge of Inuyasha's eye socket without the slightest hesitation. Yōki poured in.
"Wait—what are you doing?! IT HURTS, IT HURTS—!"
Inuyasha screamed. Sesshōmaru, with a smooth motion, plucked something out from the inner corner of his right eye. It rolled into his palm. A round, pitch-black object, slightly larger than a fingernail. Its surface gleamed with a deep, light-devouring luster.
A black pearl. A black agate.
Inuyasha clutched his right eye, his other eye locked onto the bead in Sesshōmaru's palm. "What… the hell is that?!" His voice had changed. He seemed to have no idea that such a thing had been hidden inside him.
Sesshōmaru ignored him. He raised the black pearl before his eyes, his golden pupils studying it for two seconds. Then, on that face that had shown not a single flicker of emotion from beginning to end, the corner of his mouth moved. A cold smile. So faint it was almost imperceptible.
"So that's it… This is the answer to the riddle? The grave-keeper's own eye…"
"Hōsenki."
He spoke the name, recognizing the origin of the black pearl. Hōsenki, a daiyōkai who had served under Tōga in life. After Tōga's death, he had become the nominal guardian of his tomb.
And he was the one who had created this black pearl. This black agate gem was the key connecting the realm of the living to the space between worlds, the cleft between life and the underworld. And within that cleft… lay Tōga's grave.
In that instant, Sesshōmaru understood.
Tessaiga was there. It had been there all along. Inside his father's tomb, the grave of Tōga.
And the entrance to that grave… had always been on Inuyasha's person.
Inuyasha was Tōga's true grave-keeper.
Sesshōmaru closed his fingers around the black pearl.