The shrine perched at the peak, indifferent, almost bored of devotion. Moonlight slid across its roof the wrong way — upward, against the night's gravity.
I ran, slipped, caught myself. Cold stones bit through my sandals; breath snagged in my chest. Beneath me, the earth hummed — more felt than heard — the shrine itself exhaling in its sleep.
Below, the festival shimmered like a constellation spun loose: laughter, bells, taiko drums rolling through the dark like distant thunder.
"Good evening, Miss Victoria. We knew of your arrival. A pleasure to meet you."
The voice pulled my attention before my thoughts could catch up. Gentle hands, cool and careful, turned my face toward her. I must have looked half-mad.
"Please, follow me," she said — voice soft as a fallen petal, soothing as rain.
You do not question the texture of the rope that pulls you from a river. I followed.
Inside, the air was thick: sweet incense laced with the metallic ghost of long-dried rain. Shadows rippled along the paper walls, breathing; the shrine's heart pulsed in rhythm with the world beyond.
She led me not to the inner altar, but to a smaller chamber lined with cedar and silence. Four figures waited — still as portraits, painted by patience. Tea was poured; steam rose in perfect white curls. Porcelain trembled faintly in my hand.
"I think there's… something wrong," I said, hearing my words fall like stones into water.
None of them looked surprised. Not even curious.
"Did you bring the blade?" one asked. Her voice quiet — like a prayer said over a sleeping god — yet sharp enough to cleave through thought.
"Uh—yeah," I muttered, setting the wrapped weapon gently on the low table.
"That blade could paint a target on your back," she said.
Unlike the others — whose presence felt like the seasons breathing through human skin — she was different. Her hair shimmered like starlight gone sour; fox ears twitched, subtle but unmistakable, listening to something beyond my hearing.
"As for what you saw," she continued, eyes closing briefly, "a leaf may curse the wind, but it cannot be a stone. You can only ride."
Her words landed soft — and final. When she opened her eyes again, they burned violet — not purple, but the strange, electric hue of candlelight glimpsed through tears. I nearly choked on my tea.
"So we're just going to sit here, then?" I thought, too loudly, apparently.
She smiled faintly. "You may ask your questions after the ceremony," she murmured. "Did you bring the bookmark?"
I clenched my fingers instinctively around the cup. Warmth bled into my palms. "Yeah," I whispered. The word felt small, fragile — unworthy of the air it took.
"Then all is as it should be," she replied.
The room thickened. The smell of blossoms and ozone — spring about to break, or rot about to bloom. Smoke curled from the incense dish, each wisp forming shapes that almost made sense, almost spelled words.
Beneath it all, the hum of the shrine deepened — as though something ancient was waking beneath the floorboards.
The Twilight Festival of Yako-no-Hoshimi
Night had fallen — then collapsed, drawn inward by a hush of gravity. Stars flickered, refusing to name the void. The hour between breaths.
Behind Victoria, the shrine gleamed as though half-erased from the world, its marble blurred beneath the lights' last gasp. Bells. Voices. Incense smoke curling like living script.
Her eyes followed the sound — lanterns housing summer stars swung lazily down the hill where stalls sold rice wine and ribbons, and children darted by with paper fox masks tied in red string. The scent of blooming camellia thickened the air like storm clouds about to tear open.
Beneath the hush of wind and festival song, the people whispered their blessing:
"May the Lady of Seasons dream kindly tonight — for concealment is an act of nurture."
The road ended where the pond began. No gate, no tower — only a shrine half-veiled by willow branches, its reflection trembling in still water. Hundreds of lanterns drifted atop the water, slow-turning — lost stars searching for constellations.
At the pond's center, five priestesses waited. Robes white as unwritten pages, edged with the seasons' colors: cherry blush, ember red, rust gold, frost blue. The fifth, draped in twilight grey, veiled in indigo mist, seemed woven from the dusk itself. They stood in a perfect circle, palms open to the moon — the only heavenly body still watching. Their murmurs wove through the air, a language older than thought — more wind than word.
The water stirred. First, a ripple. Then light — silver, soft, pulsing like a heart remembering its rhythm.
And then, as if spring had woken beneath ice, she emerged. Yako-no-Hoshimi, Mamorigami of Change and Concealment.
She breathed between worlds — a maiden with fox ears and moonlit hair one moment, a vast vulpine shadow the next. Nine tails unfurled across the pond like Milky Way ribbons, each shimmering with a memory not yet lived. When her paw touched water, it did not break. It bloomed — lotus after lotus rising to meet her, as if the earth remembered its own beauty.
Silence fell. Even the wind seemed to kneel.
Her voice came like a sigh between heartbeats:
"The wheel turns, yet the centre holds.
The blossoms fall, yet the roots endure."
Her gaze found Victoria — amber, knowing, unblinking — the warmth of fire that endures its own ashes. A smile touched her lips, small and heavy with prophecy.
"The veil is mercy… and the scale and death are heavy both, child of endings. The Arcana are omniscient and omnipotent — yet not in the manner mortals think. Their knowing is not thought, and their power is not motion."
The priestesses' chants deepened, rippling through the night. The pond mirrored not the sky, but memory — spring meadows, burning summers, blood-soaked autumns, silent snows.
Yako lifted her hand — slender, divine.
"Will you entrust the Balance to the Seasons, for a while?
The bookmark you bear — let it rest where moon and water meet,
until the cycle turns anew."
Victoria hesitated. The borrowed sigil of Justice glowed faintly beneath her skin, trembling like something alive. This was not an offering — it was a weighing.
She stepped forward. When the bookmark touched the pond, it drifted, buoyed by something unseen. From the ripples came a sound like the earth itself exhaling.
The Twilight Priestess bowed low. Yako-no-Hoshimi dissolved into mist and silver. Only the faint reflection of nine tails lingered — fading like afterimages on the soul.
Then, as the bells began again and laughter trickled back through the trees, Victoria whispered into the wind:
"You were waiting, weren't you… through the veil, through the silence."
For just a breath — the pond smiled back.
In the heart of the festival, two stood — looking to the hill.
Festival laughter dissolved into incense and bells. Victoria lingered atop the crest; the shrine gleamed like a dream made flesh, gold and silver threads stitched through shadow.
Below, Caelun lingered — a god unmoving, his presence coiling around the air like a thought too heavy to breathe. His words bloomed inside her mind, echoing through her skull:
"The Ouroboros devours itself not from hunger or ignorance. It acts because that is what eternity must do to remain whole. Even the High Priestess — that blind silver serpent — makes herself a moon by biting her own tail. She is not a god; she is what gods see when they dream too deeply."
Victoria's hand tightened around her chopstick. She didn't turn. Turning wouldn't change anything.
"Let's go, Atheron," Caelun murmured. Then a pause — deliberate, knowing.
No… before she takes interest in what she already is."
The shrine shivered beneath the moonlight. Incense smoke coiled into a serpent devouring its tail. For a single heartbeat, Victoria glimpsed why even gods — names etched like final verdicts — whisper in caution before her.