The rain came down harder. Typical summer, isn't it.
Across hectares of cypress forest, the wind tore through—tens of thousands of trees swaying as one, millions of branches crossing and interlacing, hundreds of millions of leaves keening like the song of devils.
Raindrops hammered the mud. What bounced back wasn't water but slurry. The rain chewed the hillside apart and tore a landslide loose—nearly a thousand tons of mud, rock, and boulders, spilling down the slope in a dark avalanche.
Hoshino Ei was hidden inside a shallow cave. She watched the waterfall of mud and rain roar past its mouth, and drew her collar tighter.
Clutched to her chest, wrapped in the lining of her inner robe, was a slender, pale-skinned hand.
Rrrip.
Her face blanched in an instant. The agony of being torn open came up from somewhere deep in her soul. All the feelings, all the sensations of a death that was not her own—amplified thousands of times over—flooded her senses.
And with them, a grief that could drown the whole world.
"To kill you."
"Repulsive."
"Curse user, Hasegawa Kaede."
When she raised her head again, her eyelids were rimmed red. She wiped at the corners of her eyes, forced herself back onto her feet. The landslide outside had ended. She had to move—now.
She staggered, steadying herself against the wet stone of the cave wall, and step by step she made her way to the mouth.
She knew this new body carried no trace of Hanami's cursed energy. And the forest was vast. Hanami would struggle to find her.
Get out. Get out. I have to get out of here.
Rrrip.
She stared at her own arm in disbelief. A green sphere had punched straight through it, blowing a massive hole through the flesh. Blood and torn hunks of limb spun through the air.
She whirled. A shadow was bearing down on her, growing in her vision.
Boom.
She couldn't dodge in time. The strike took her squarely in the stomach—a small seed, the size of a bean. The instant it met her cursed energy it bloomed. It tore through skin and muscle. Its roots plunged into her marrow. Red petals unfolded in wild abandon. At the flower's heart was a tiny human face, laughing in delight.
"You. I've found. Finally."
Finally, I've found you.
Hanami broke through the cave wall and stepped out of the cloud of dust.
She stood behind Hoshino Ei like a mountain lifted onto her shoulders.
Concealment.
Ei pressed her soul harder, mouthed the word silently—but halfway through, the cursed energy locked up, jammed, detonated inside her own body.
Pain lanced through her stomach.
"The seeds I plant—the more cursed energy you use, the faster they grow."
Revealing One's Hand. Effect amplified.
Hoshino Ei spat out another mouthful of blood. Her whole body was shaking. She glared at Hanami through her bangs, pupils glittering with killing intent.
"Bitch."
"I don't like the way you talk."
Hanami disappeared. In the next heartbeat she was behind Hoshino Ei, droplets of blood running between her claw-like nails, trailing strange arcs through the air.
Ei clutched her throat, clutched at the wound gushing blood, her eyes beginning to empty. She bit her tongue.
"Concealment."
Boom.
The attack came from behind. Hanami's right leg swung up high and cracked down across Ei's lower back, cursed energy exploding on impact—so much of it that the air around them audibly warped and tore. The blow drove all the way through to the marrow. Hoshino Ei hung suspended for a breath in the air, then sailed back, spinning, straight through the mouth of the cave.
Straight out. Straight into the chasm below.
She fell like a bird with broken wings. The rain slammed against her cheeks. Each drop catching the light, splashing at the corners of her eyes—each one holding, for an instant, a reflection of the world. Traffic streaming through the streets. A distant city ablaze with light. Neon reds and blues burning along every road.
A great tower rose through the storm, its middle half swallowed by clouds, silver light flickering on every floor. From a distance it looked like a single enormous bolt of lightning struck down out of the sky.
Hoshino Ei knew the name of that tower.
The Tokyo Skytree.
The fall stretched on forever. Really it was only seconds—but it felt like she was living out a whole life.
If she could do it over, Hoshino Ei thought she would rather be back in the coffin than be picked up by Nanami Kira.
That way she could have been a small, obscure cursed spirit. Committing every manner of evil, without a care in the world. Finally exorcised by some anonymous sorcerer. Dying like a stray cat on some nameless street.
If only. If only it could have been that.
Wouldn't she have been less desperate then, in the face of death?
As she fell, it felt as if she had been folded back into that basement. That empty, empty basement, full of beautiful flowers that would rot in the end. Where no one could find her.
I could have made my peace with the dark.
She struck the ground. Every organ inside her shattered, her whole body smashed apart from the impact.
The rain pattered down on her. Her eyes cracked open, just a little.
She tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. So dim. The treetops bent low under the wind. The branches above her were broken—a hole she'd made, apparently, on her way down.
A silhouette appeared above her. Hoshino Ei couldn't make out his features anymore. She only felt the presence: familiar, calming.
"A miserable sight."
A cold, sharp thing. An arrow, glinting with a cold light.
Punched through her chest. Through the hand held against it. Blood sprayed in every direction.
The figure bent down. Whispered against her ear:
"Now. We're even."
Boom.
Hanami landed behind him, blasting a crater into the earth, throwing up a wall of pressure that lifted the hem of his coat.
"Nanami Kira—"
As if facing a mortal enemy. Every nerve in Hanami snapped to full alert.
Kira straightened and checked his watch.
Ten minutes left.
Black cursed energy churned up off his shoulders. From the depths of his shadow a pale-pink shikigami rose into view, its scarlet cat-eyes fixed unblinking on Hanami.
Thunder—lightning that had been sparking between the clouds for hours—finally lanced down. The sky went white. Every object in sight went white. For one heartbeat the world existed only in black and white, with a peal of thunder reverberating through every eardrum.
"This world is about to be reshaped," Kira said quietly, his back to Hoshino Ei.
"But fate won't change. Your soul will find its apotheosis inside the Arrow."
"Once, you pushed me to the edge. You stabbed the Arrow into me. Now I've done the same to you."
He looked at Hanami. At the sunken, roiling sky. At the thunder.
"From here on we are even. Let us wish each other well."
Hanami opened the cloak at her shoulders. A deep-brown arm slid free. Where the shoulder met the air, an unbloomed flower was nested.
Across the entire forest, tens of thousands of trees—the lifeforce flowing inside their branches—began to pour inward, gathering into that one small flower.
Rot spread out from her. Decay. Yellowed leaves. In a matter of seconds it had reached out for kilometers in every direction. The whole forest looked as if it had died.
This was her theater. She had drained half a forest of its life, and that was a force great enough to shake the world.
"Domain Expansion."
Palms together. A hand seal formed.
"Shimmering Forest of Myriad Phenomena."
The world began to transform. Life stilled as death. Life bursting with new breath. Nature's tail brushed across every heart.
Kira opened his arms in greeting to the all-enveloping domain. Under Hoshino Ei's gaze, he said, calmly:
"Looks like I'm putting in overtime."