"What has happened?" Yorimitsu turned sharply, his silhouette a blur as he reached Watanabe's side. The elder did not offer an immediate answer. Instead, he seized Watanabe's hand and wrenched it upward.
Upon the skin, a mark was blossoming a pale, spectral flower whose petals seemed to pulse with a sickly, bruised light.
"Tch. It is exactly as it was with the others," the elder murmured, his voice sounding more like a funeral dirge than a warning.
"Wait, I am not dying, right?" Watanabe stammered.
"The... the others?" Yorimitsu's voice shook, his eyes fixed on the silhouette in the distance. The temperature plummeted, turning their breath into jagged plumes of frost.
"Ha..." Yorimitsu let out a long, heavy sigh. "Watanabe, you truly have an addiction to courting curses, do you not?" His fingers traced the edge of the floral mark without touching it.
"You can take it away, right? Like you did the other one..." Watanabe spoke with pleading eyes.
Yorimitsu turned his sharp gaze toward the elder. "There is a remedy for this, surely? Seeing as he has not yet been pulled into the depths."
"Mmmm. There is a way," the elder replied, though there was no comfort in his tone. He began stoking his beard. "But I have yet to see a soul survive it. Even those who perform the ritual with perfection find their minds shattered by the end. They go mad." The elder paused as the white burial kimono of the spirit caught the moonlight.
"When she reaches us, you must offer her your true name. You must declare, with a steady heart, that you agree to carry her child. And whatever transpires next, no matter what you see, no matter what you feel, you must not drop the burden."
Just then, the silhouette glided into the light. It was indeed an Ubume. Her face was hauntingly beautiful, her skin as pale as the finest silk from the Capital, but the ghastly, cloying scent of the grave betrayed her nature. She was not of the living world.
"You... would you help me carry my child through the river?" she spoke once more, her voice a soft, whimpering thread that seemed to pull at the very marrow of his bones.
Watanabe hesitated for a fraction of a second, the cold mist clawing at his lungs. Then, he drew a deep breath and reclaimed his spirit. He did not merely speak; he roared into the fog.
"I am named Watanabe no Tsuna!" he declared, his voice echoing like a temple bell. "And I shall carry your child across these waters."
"Ha... truly? In truth? Surely?" Her voice rose in a ghastly, melodic trill. She drifted forward, her fingers brushing his cheek with the sensation of mountain ice. Before he could flinch, she leaned in, her lips pressing a cold, dead kiss against his skin.
"Brave warrior... please," she whispered, retreating into the white veil. She extended the bundle. As Watanabe's hands closed around the tattered cloth, his knees buckled.
'What manner of babe weighs this much?' he thought, his muscles straining instantly. It was as if he were holding a boulder carved from the heart of a mountain. When he glanced toward the spot where the woman had stood, she was already gone, a flickering silhouette fluttering far across the water, reaching the distant bank with supernatural speed.
"Move now," the elder commanded.
Without a word, Watanabe stepped forward. He did not pause to remove his travelling silks; he simply marched into the current. The sand shifted beneath his sandals, and within moments, the dark, swirling waters of Kasumi-no-Kawa had submerged his knees.
"We cannot follow until his feet touch the far bank," the elder warned, his eyes fixed on Watanabe's struggling form. "To enter now would be the same as killing him."
"Mmmhpt. This is an ill turn, then," Yorimitsu remarked, crossing his arms and watching his companion. "I had hoped to offer him my strength, but it seems you are on your own this time, Watanabe." He let out a low, sharp chuckle.
'I am certain you can endure this,' Yorimitsu thought, his eyes narrowing as he watched the ripples in the dark water. 'If this were the place of your death, I am sure the heavens would have shown me a much more violent omen. Pull through, Tsuna.'
"Ahhhh... Ahhhh..."
Watanabe's groans were thick with effort, his sandaled socks sinking deep into the shifting riverbed. By the time he reached the centre of Kasumi-no-Kawa, the dark, frigid water had already claimed his waist.
Thud!
"Ha?!" He froze. Something hard and slick had collided with his ankles beneath the surface. 'What was that?' he wondered, his heart hammering against his ribs. He forced himself to push through the resistance.
"Tch... why does he hesitate now? He has no breath to waste on fear," the elder muttered, squinting through the mist, his fingers twitching on the bell's cord.
'It was but a fish... it must have been,' Watanabe told himself, though the thud felt more slick like a skull. He lunged forward. The water levels surged with unnatural speed, swirling hungrily around his elbows.
'What is wrong with this river?' The tide rises as if the mountains themselves are weeping,' he thought. He hoisted the bundle higher, desperate to keep the "babe" from the grasping current. But as he raised his arms, the bundle began to vibrate with a violent, jagged energy.
"Shit..." He gripped the cloth until his knuckles turned white.
Then, he heard it, the most ghastly, unsavoury sound he had ever encountered. It was a wet, guttural noise, somewhere between the croak of a bloated frog and a child's distorted laughter.
"Kekeke... ggggrggggppppp..."
The sound erupted from within the tattered cloth. The sheer foulness of it startled Watanabe, his grip slipping for a terrifying heartbeat. He nearly fumbled the burden into the black water, but he caught himself just as the silk began to slide.
"Huuuu... that was too close." He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. I must deafen myself to these sounds. I must only walk.
Watanabe hoisted the bundle above his head, pushing his chest through the heavy current. But that is when the true trial began. With every step he took, the weight increased tenfold.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
A raw, guttural cry tore from Watanabe's throat as he lunged forward. Every fibre of his muscles burned, screaming under a tension so great it felt as though his tendons would snap like overextended bowstrings.
"I... I cannot even feel the flow of my Reiryoku..." he spat, his sandals skidding across the slick, invisible stones of the riverbed. His spirit wavered. For a fleeting second, his body begged for the release of the dark water to simply let go and sink into the silence.
But the ordeal was not finished. A voice drifted upward from the shifting bundle in his arms, soft, intimate, and impossibly familiar.
"Tsuna... Tsuna-chi... Tsuna-chan..."
The sound devastated him. It was a tone and an inflexion that belonged to a memory he kept locked behind the iron gates of his mind. The tenderness of the call was a jagged blade, twisting in the very centre of his chest.
"What right do you have..." Watanabe's voice began as a low growl, vibrating with a lethal, righteous fury. He raised the bundle higher, his eyes blazing with a heat that defied the frigid mist. "What right do you have to mimic one whom I love?!"
His roar shattered the unnatural silence of the river as water rushed to his head.