Musashi Province. Kaede's Village.
The open ground outside the shrine was packed with people. It was not merely the villagers of this hamlet. There were also commoners who had fled from over a dozen villages in the eastern reaches of Musashi, seeking refuge from the chaos of war.
They pressed close to one another, their hands clutching hoes, pitchforks, or sickles, their faces tilted upward toward the sky. Yes... refugees. Fleeing the ravages of armies.
At the outermost edge of the crowd, Momiji and Botan stood on opposite sides. Momiji's black hair was bound into a neat ponytail. The hem of her red-and-white miko robes snapped sharply in the wind.
She gritted her teeth, her hands forming seals, the talisman paper burning at her fingertips with a faint glow.
Botan's blue-and-white miko robes were already smeared with mud and dust. That round face, which usually carried a trace of timidity, was drenched in sweat. Her hands trembled as she maintained the incantation.
A white barrier of light spread overhead like an overturned, translucent bowl, covering the entire village and its people within. Outside that curtain of light, to the northwest, a dark, seething army was crossing the ridgeline. One glance was enough to tell, this was no ordinary army.
Human ashigaru and samurai in tattered armor were mingled upon the ground. But above the military formation, colossal moths blotted out the very sky. Their bodies were the size of oxen. Their wings were covered in eerie, eye-like patterns. With every beat of their wings, they shed golden, toxic powder. Wherever that scale-dust fell upon the grass and trees, the leaves instantly withered and curled.
Those were yōkai. Moths, great and small, in a dense, writhing swarm. An entire legion of moth demons.
Naoe Kanetsugu stood beneath the torii gate. The girl's petite, slender frame was wrapped in deep blue light armor and a white jinbaori. Her dark brown hair was bound in a high ponytail.
She had no supernatural power. Beneath the skin of her neck still lay the blood-mist brand Shinji had implanted, restricting her within a fifteen km radius. But at this moment, she was the only commander here. Even if only temporarily.
She directed the able-bodied villagers to form the most basic spear formation behind the barrier. Her gaze was fixed upon the distant horizon, her expression grim.
"How much longer can the barrier hold?" Kanetsugu asked.
"Half an hour… maybe." Botan's voice carried a trembling fear she couldn't conceal. Cold sweat poured from her brow. Her legs wouldn't stop shaking. The humans aside, there were simply far too many of those moths. Dense and seething. A single glance was enough to make one's scalp crawl.
Though individually they were not overwhelmingly powerful, neither were they weak. Their combined yōki surged toward the heavens, enough to make one's gall bladder rupture from sheer terror.
Naoe Kanetsugu, however, remained calm. As the former chief administrator of Echigo, she had witnessed far more brutal scenes than this. "Hold it whether or not you can," she said.
Momiji could only grit her teeth harder. Amidst all this, Kanetsugu was inwardly cursing. Cursing these northern opportunists for striking when they were most vulnerable. And cursing even more, the fact that Shinji had granted her temporary administrative authority, yet given her no army!
As the shōshin of two provinces, though she had been granted the power by the Hōjō clan to nearly directly govern Musashi, the Hōjō military was not within that jurisdiction.
There had been far too little time to assemble a "Shrine Guard Army." Facing the armies of the northern provinces and their yōkai, surging from the northeast of Musashi, all she could do was hastily organize the villagers for defense. Yet a single glance was enough to see, it was nothing but a desperate, dying struggle.
The northeastern lands, bordering the barbarian tribes, were a place where men and yōkai mingled as a matter of course.
They had always lingered beyond the "barrier," never venturing south. It was as though something had held them back. Now, that barrier seemed to have shattered.
SHATTERED! BOOM!
The footsteps of men fell in chaotic, disordered rhythm. The banners drew near. The droning buzz of wings swelled, and the moths soared skyward.
But at that very moment....
A long, drawn-out horn call sounded from the northeast. Low. Resonant. A great banner, white with the black character for Bi, Bishamonten, rose from the other side of the ridge, unfurling in the wind.
The Uesugi army. Hundreds of impeccably armored elite cavalry surged forth like a tide of white. But their bearing was different from the rumors. The suffocating, corpse-like religious fanaticism from before was gone.
They were more… alive. An army composed of living people. People who spoke. Complained. Looked after one another. Their faith was still fervent. But the foundation of that fervor had changed. It was no longer blind devotion to a god or buddha. It had become a willing, heartfelt following of a single person.
Several warrior maidens rode at the front, arrayed in formation. The weapons in their hands radiated the golden light of divine-buddha power, forcibly tearing open a pocket of pure land amidst the yōki-choked flank of the battlefield.
With murderous, unyielding momentum, they halted the advancing tide of the moth legion. Uesugi Kenshin rode upon a white horse. She wore white, short battle armor, with blue-violet patterns tracing along the collar and cuffs. The hem of her battle skirt fluttered on either side of the saddle. Unlike the previous generation's monk's robes, this attire was sharper, more efficient, revealing her calves wrapped in white leggings below the knee.
A sword hung at her waist. Small bells were tied to the scabbard, chiming softly with each step of the horse. A white band across her forehead gathered her long hair. Strands of deep indigo fell from either side of that band, so long they nearly brushed the horse's back, their ends swaying faintly in the wind.
A pair of deep-colored pupils. If Shinji had been present, he would have recognized at a single glance how different she was from the previous Kenshin.
Compared to the previous Uesugi Kenshin, with her silver-white hair and golden eyes, this was an entirely different person. Her features were still exquisitely delicate, yet they lacked that bone-piercing aloofness.
In its place was the warmth of humanity. Her stature was also not particularly tall, identical to the previous generation. Her frame was slender and well-proportioned. Yet because of that sharp, efficient battle attire and the sword at her waist, she did not appear frail in the slightest.
She reined in her horse and halted at the center of the standoff between the two armies. Her gaze swept past the moth demons and settled upon the barrier of Kaede's Village.
Naoe Kanetsugu looked at that silhouette. My lord. Deep indigo hair. Violet eyes. A white band across her forehead. The corner of her lips always curved faintly upward. Exactly as she remembered.
Kanetsugu let out a long, inexplicable breath. Kenshin dismounted. Momiji and Botan stared at this legendary God of War, the incarnation of Bishamonten, not daring to even breathe.
"My lord," Naoe Kanetsugu bowed her head in greeting.
"You've worked hard during this time, Kanetsugu. I'm sorry.... for making you wait so long." Kenshin spoke. Her voice was clear. Pure. Utterly without pretense. Kanetsugu paused, feeling that something seemed off, yet nothing seemed wrong. Her lord had always apologized like this. Pure and direct. Always had been.
"Why have you come? What of Echigo…" Kanetsugu hesitated.
"I've come to repay a debt," Kenshin said, lifting her head to gaze at the moths circling overhead. The shadows of their wings were reflected in her violet pupils. Her voice was soft, yet solemn.
"Before, some things were done that should not have been done. Forcibly bestowing names. Besieging this land. All of it… was wrong." She paused. Though those had all been the deeds of the previous generation, she, too, was Uesugi Kenshin. She could not separate herself from them.
"And the northern barrier has vanished. Before, that mountain, Mount Hakurei, kept the things from the north at bay. Now that the mountain is gone, the northern provinces and their yōkai have joined forces and crossed the border. Musashi is the first stone they intend to crush. In the name of righteousness, I must protect the people here."
The moth legion seemed to sense the threat of Bishamonten's power. It let out a piercing, grating shriek. Hundreds of colossal moth demons abandoned the barrier and dove toward the Uesugi army.
Kenshin's hand closed around the hilt of the sword at her waist. Yet, she had still not drawn it. She had not yet drawn the Hachika Celestial Armaments, that which the previous generation had only glimpsed in a fleeting instant, never truly wielding in battle.
The sky split open.
Violet-white thunder detonated across the highest vault of the heavens. The gray clouds seemed to be cleaved apart from their very center by an invisible blade. Sunlight and lightning intertwined, spilling down through the rift.
Two figures emerged from within that radiance. Kikyō landed atop the torii gate. Her white uwagi and crimson hakama were perfectly still in the wind. Her longbow was gripped in her hand. Shinji halted in midair before the two armies. His gray robes snapped fiercely in the wind. His white, flowing hair was whipped backward, the ends tinged with blood-red.
His gaze swept across the battlefield and settled upon that figure riding the white horse. Not silver-white hair. Not golden pupils. Deep indigo, waist-length hair. A white band across the forehead. Violet-colored eyes. A body clad in blue-white battle armor.
His crimson demon eyes narrowed faintly. Though this was their first meeting, he didn't need to think to know: the Uesugi Kenshin before him was no longer the one he had forced to kneel before her five hundred personal guards. This was the new generation. But there was no time to dwell on such things now.
He simply stood before the army. Facing a thousand soldiers. Facing a thousand demons. He drew his blade! Onikiri left its sheath. No extraneous opening stance. Only Extreme Will condensing upon the cutting edge.
Dark crimson blood-fire erupted from the Shura-Heart. Ghostly violet mist-light burst from the Shura-Lungs. Yang and Yin. Fire and ice. Fused into one. A single slash. Horizontal. Level. There was no roar. Only an arc of crimson-violet intertwined light, sweeping toward the northwest.
One slash. Kyokui: Hagun. Extreme Will: Army Breaker.
Shinji sheathed his blade. And in that very instant, the ground began to rumble and split open. Dense, spiderwebbing fissures spread for several km.
The wings of the moths ignited. Their bodies froze solid. Hundreds of colossal moths in midair, without even letting out a scream, disintegrated into ash. The rebel army and the lesser demons upon the ground, armor, bone, and flesh, crumbled like paper.
Uesugi Kenshin stood where she was. Her blade had not been drawn. Her violet pupils were locked dead upon that gray-robed figure. Her knees buckled faintly. Exceedingly light. Less than an inch.
The soul-seed that Shinji had left within the depths of her soul responded instinctively to his presence. It was not fear. Nor was it merely submission. It was closer to… confirmation. Confirmation that this was the one who had forced the previous Bishamonten incarnation, the previous Uesugi Kenshin, to kneel.
But what followed that confirmation.... was something entirely different. Her heart skipped a beat. Beneath the sundered sky.
The white, flowing hair, billowing within the lightning. The profile of him sheathing his blade. That image, struck her like a blade, piercing directly into a place within her chest that even the previous generation had never been able to touch.
Beautiful. Only one word surfaced in Uesugi Kenshin's mind. Then her face flushed red. Without the slightest warning. The color burned from the tips of her ears all the way down her neck. She attributed it to the heat of the burning moths upon the battlefield.
Those who witnessed this scene… The Uesugi army. The surrounding commoners who had gathered. All of them held their breath. Shock. Terror. And even more... frenzied, fervent awe.