But no matter what kind of relationship Date Masamune was attempting to establish with that dark cloud pressing down upon the northeast or rather, with that sky, it had nothing to do with Shinji.
"Let's go."
Shinji rose from the tiles of the tenshukaku roof and dusted the debris from his gray robes.
"Time to head back."
There was still a pile of matters waiting in Kaede's Village.
The demon organization in Mutsu had been handed to Ruri and Hari.
The human side had Date Masamune to handle on her own.
He had no interest in playing father here.
"Back to Musashi."
His voice carried outward.
Tanuki Jūsaburō's great tail bounced out from behind the castle wall.
"Master! Departing?"
"Departing."
"Got it, full assemble! Hyaku Monogatari groups! Home!"
The order was transmitted with extreme speed.
From inside Kurokawa Castle to beyond its walls, from the castle town to the mountain paths on the outskirts, from the hills of southern Mutsu to the passes bordering Shimotsuke,
Demonic energy moved.
Eight thousand demons could not all follow.
Of the sixty-six groups, thirty percent remained stationed in the northeast, holding the newly conquered territory.
Those who followed Shinji south were the original core of over a hundred officer-level demons, plus the five commanders, and the remaining seventy percent of the demons.
A total exceeding five thousand.
Genuine, surging demonic energy.
Mighty and vast.
The night sky split open.
Demonic energy erupted from the direction of Kurokawa Castle, condensing high above into rolling ribbons of ink-black cloud and spreading southward.
Thousands of demons rode the wind, borne upon currents of condensed demonic energy.
They passed from the skies above Mutsu, across Shimotsuke, across Kōzuke, and straight toward Musashi.
The Yuki-onna Oikawa flew on the left wing, her ice-blue pupils scanning below.
Frost gathered on the clouds wherever she passed.
The kamaitachi's silver-white form wove at high speed along the right wing.
Occasionally, some witless wild demon would poke its head up from the ground to peek.
Upon seeing the flash of silver arcs, those heads would immediately withdraw.
The great kappa rode upon the back of a colossal turtle, carrying that moth antenna on his shoulder.
He kept saying he couldn't bear to throw it away.
Tanuki Jūsaburō rode a great eagle, clutching his bamboo scrolls and shouting group numbers down at the officers below as he flew.
And at the very front of the entire aerial column,
Shinji and Kikyō flew side by side upon the wind.
He used the demonic energy of the Shura Form to condense clouds.
The skeletal frame extended from beneath his feet into a pale white platform, large enough for two to stand upon.
Kikyō stood half a step to his left, her longbow slung behind her back.
Her black hair streamed backward in the high-altitude gale.
It was at that moment.
Shinji sensed movement at his waist.
Onikiri trembled first.
Dark crimson mist spilled from the mouth of its sheath.
Oboro's semi-transparent figure surfaced behind his right shoulder.
Dark crimson hair drifted in the wind.
Her narrow eyes were half-lowered.
Her bare feet tread upon the air currents.
She said nothing.
She merely flew alongside him.
Next came Yomi-giri.
Ghostly violet cold light seeped from its blade, condensing into a blurred outline at his left waist.
It was fainter and more illusory than Oboro, like a girl's profile barely sketched by thin mist.
Yomi-giri's blade-soul awakening progress was far lower than Onikiri's.
It had not even completed Phantasmal Form.
At most, under the vast surge of osore, it had produced an instinctive response.
But it was, indeed, moving.
Banryū did not directly take form.
The Earth-attribute greatsword was not suited to such flashy expressions.
It merely trembled slightly upon his back.
A pale white light flashed once across its blade.
Within it, one could faintly glimpse a slender, youthful figure with a rather bold bearing.
Consider it a greeting.
Raikiri's reaction was the most direct.
Violet-white lightning burst from its hilt, crackling and leaping twice around Shinji's right hand before falling still.
An existence of divine-artifact level needed no form to express itself.
The resonance itself was the response.
Suijin-kiri was last.
Dark blue death-energy and dark green living poison seeped simultaneously from its blade.
They intertwined in the air, forming a spiraling thread of mist that coiled once around his left arm before withdrawing into its sheath.
A newly forged blade, like a cub that had not yet opened its eyes.
Curious, yet not daring to stray far.
Five blades.
Five kinds of light.
Dark crimson.
Ghostly violet.
Pale white.
Violet-white.
Dark blue.
They interwove and flowed around Shinji, encircling him.
Like five-colored ribbons.
More like the halo of a god.
And in addition,
Yura's comb, having taken form from her comb's true body, flew boldly alongside them.
All the artifacts, in this moment, had become demons.
The Hyaku Monogatari groups.
A true Night Parade.
Osore surged simultaneously from thousands of demons and the five blade-artifacts.
It converged into the black clouds overhead, then poured down from those clouds to shroud the entire flying column.
From Mutsu to Musashi, every village they passed, every roadside shrine, every person who lifted their head to the sky,
They all saw beneath that sky-covering black cloud the demonic army with five-colored radiance flowing through it.
Roadside shrines lit their lamps of their own accord.
In mountain hokora, the cloudy sake offered to the gods spilled without wind.
The Hyakki Yakō passed through.
All things made way.
Three thousands kms away.
The Kinai.
Deep in the mountains at the border of Kyōto and Ōmi, amidst the ruins of a broken ancient temple.
Within the temple, there were no monks.
No Buddha statues.
Only a single lantern.
A blue lantern.
Its flame was not the orange-yellow of fire, but a ghostly blue ghostfire burning quietly in the windless interior.
The lantern was held by a pale, slender hand.
The blue light illuminated the face of its bearer.
A young girl.
She appeared seventeen or eighteen.
Her face was eerily beautiful, almost unreal.
Her skin was pale as rice paper.
Her lips were faintly colored, carrying a blue-tinged chill.
Her narrow eyes had lifted outer corners.
Her pupils were the same ghostly blue-green as the lantern's flame.
She wore a kimono of pure blue, the collar and cuffs embroidered with pale silver lantern patterns.
Her hem dragged across the dusty floor, like a train drawn forth from the underworld.
Aoandon.
The manifested demon of the Hyaku Monogatari gatherings.
In the Japanese tradition of ghost stories, the core ritual of the Hyaku Monogatari was to light one hundred candles and tell one hundred ghost stories.
With each story finished, a candle was extinguished.
When the last was extinguished,
The demon descended.
And the Aoandon was that descent itself.
She was not a specific existence, but a "phenomenon" tied to the way ghost stories were told.
When the ghost stories circulating in the world reached a certain critical point, she would awaken.
When the number of ghost stories declined, she would return to slumber.
For a thousand years, she had cycled between awakening and slumber, never once participating in any conflict between demons.
Because there was no need.
She did not need to fight.
Did not need territory.
Did not need osore.
She was, in herself, the manifestation of osore.
But now....
The Aoandon suddenly opened her eyes.
The ghostly blue flame within her lantern leaped violently.
More violently than ever before.
She tilted her head and looked east.
From that direction, the total volume of osore transmitted had skyrocketed nearly tenfold over the past ten days.
Fourteen provinces.
A population exceeding two million.
Ghost stories passed from mouth to mouth, surging like a flood and converging upon a single name.
The Demon Who Split the Sky.
Nakai Shinji.
The Aoandon slowly rose to her feet.
The hem of her blue kimono drifted gently in the windless room.
The lantern turned half a circle in her hand.
She had existed for over a thousand years and had never seen a demon accumulate osore at such a rate.
Even more,
She had never seen a demon twist the application of osore from simple fear into monogatari.
Not through slaughter.
Not through terror.
Through ghost stories themselves.
Her ghostly blue pupils flickered within the lantern's light.
"…Someone is lighting the candles in my stead."
Her voice was exceedingly soft, like wind passing through paper windows.
The Hyaku Monogatari gathering.
Someone was already gathering stories on her behalf.
The lantern flame quieted.
But the Aoandon did not sit back down.
She lifted the lantern and stepped barefoot past the threshold of the ruined temple.
She stood beneath the moonlight.
Gazing east.
....
Further north.
Hokkaidō.
Deep within the ice fields.
In a secluded valley surrounded by mountains was a colossal cavern completely encased in ice.
The temperature within the cavern was, paradoxically, not low.
The existence slumbering in its deepest recesses radiated residual warmth from the demonic energy still lingering within its body.
Kirinmaru.
One of the ancient Four Sacred Beast clans.
Slumbering for centuries.
Still not awakened.
Outside the cavern entrance, a slender figure stood beside the ice wall.
Not tall.
A white under-robe with dark patterns beneath a gray short haori.
Deep blue long hair nearly merged with the ice fields in the cold wind.
Her face was young, appearing no more than twenty-five or twenty-six.
But the light turning deep within her eyes revealed an age far beyond her appearance.
Zero.
Kirinmaru's elder sister.
The daiyōkai who, during the long ages of Kirinmaru's slumber, governed the remnants of the eastern lands' demonic forces in his stead.
Her fingertips rested upon the ice wall, sensing the demonic tremor transmitted from the south.
The residual fluctuation of the Five Elements unified slash had crossed thousands km to reach the northern sea.
Though exceedingly faint,
She felt it.
It was that demon who had killed the Menōmaru she had awakened.
Her purpose in awakening Menōmaru had been simple.
To send the moth legion south to throw the Kantō into chaos, to exhaust any power that might threaten her younger brother's awakening.
A chess piece used and discarded.
She had never intended for it to return alive.
But....
From the residual demonic fluctuation at the moment of Menōmaru's death, she had sensed several things.
The Five Elements cycle.
The Hyōi and Hatsu of osore.
And an exceedingly faint but undeniably present,
Human soul aura.
Both demon and human.
Such an existence...
She had seen only once in her thousand years of memory.
Centuries ago…
The Lord of the Chimimōryō.
Abe no Seimei.
Or rather,
Nue.
"Another one walking that path has appeared…"
Zero withdrew her finger.
She had no intention of going south.
Kirinmaru had not yet awakened.
She would not leave.
But that direction,
Her silver-white eyes gazed south.
The cold wind of the secluded valley swept fragments of ice across the ends of her hair.
She would watch.
....
Mutsu Province.
Kurokawa Castle.
The highest point of the tenshukaku.
Date Masamune stood by the window, one hand braced against the frame.
Her short golden hair was tousled by the north wind.
She stared at the black cloud receding on the southern horizon.
Beneath the cloud, hundreds of silhouettes of varying sizes could be faintly seen streaking through the high sky.
Winged.
Tailed.
Horned.
One after another, they trailed into a long, dark dragon.
At the very front of that dragon, at the center of the interwoven five-colored radiance, two figures, one in gray robes, one in white and crimson, flew side by side upon the wind.
Further and further.
Smaller and smaller.
Masamune watched for a long time, until the black cloud completely vanished below the horizon.
Then she turned around.
Behind her, upon the rooftop platform of the tenshukaku, several more layers of stone had been stacked atop the original highest point.
Atop the stone platform sat a lavish shrine.
Built overnight.
There was no divine image upon the shrine.
Only a wooden tablet inscribed with Kishin Mikoto-no-Mitama.
Beside it sat a bowl of freshly poured sake.
This was the signal she had given, telling all humans and demons of Mutsu that the Date clan stood on the same side as the Demon Who Split the Sky.
It was also the source of her confidence when she had declared her adoptive parents in the council chamber.
Of course,
Those two themselves had paid her no attention whatsoever.
Masamune pouted.
"Fine if you won't accept… it's not like I can't keep trying."
She patted the hilt of the tachi at her waist.
The bronze bell chimed.
Her amber left eye gazed at the now-clear southern sky.
The flecks of golden light within spun ceaselessly.
"As long as I become the hegemon of all under heaven—"
The ten-year-old girl clenched her fist.
"Lord Demon God will definitely accept me!"
Full of confidence.
Thus,
The Kantō and the northeastern provinces were linked as one.
Shinji's rear was stabilized.
Setting aside Kirinmaru, still slumbering in Hokkaidō,
The only hidden threat remaining was,
Within Suruga Province, deep within Mount Fuji, the celestial maiden demon who had once again gone dormant.
Kaguya.
Though it seemed that after being "frightened" by Kikyō once, she would not dare emerge for some time…
Though that time-frozen region was difficult for them to penetrate.
Even with the Shikon no Tama granting temporary immunity, they could not directly eliminate her.
But,
They could delay.
Set it aside.
Wait for a more suitable opportunity to eradicate her.
Wait for the awakening of the Bone-Eater's Well.
Until then,
Strict surveillance would suffice.
Beyond that, Some of the most important matters were also, at last, ready to be put on the agenda.
Shinji looked at Kikyō beside him and thought to himself.