At the base of the mountain, a row of black vehicles sat in the dark.Headlights off. Doors sealed. The suited figures stood scattered around the entrance to the stone steps, silently guarding the area as though determined that no one passing by would notice what was happening.Kujou Renya stood beside the lead vehicle, looking up the stone path leading to the shrine.His suit was as impeccable as when he had left. Collar undisturbed, shoes untouched by dust, hair combed so precisely that not a single strand was out of place. But the composed smile from earlier had faded considerably.He did not like what had just happened.Not because of Hikaru's resistance.A young disciple with some ability, some pride, willing to stand before him and say a few cold things. Renya had encountered this kind of person before. They usually believed they had a backbone, but as soon as family connections, legal pressure, money, and authority came down simultaneously, even the hardest spine eventually cra

The sky turned red.Not the red of fire.Not the red of dawn.But a deep, dense, cold red, like blood that had clotted beneath the fingernails of the dead. That red light fell across the old roof tiles of the shrine, the Torii gate, the cherry blossom tree that held not a single flower, pulling the entire mountain out of the world of the living.A foul smell poured out.Dense.Cold and sharp.Like hundreds of corpses buried long underground being unearthed simultaneously, the rotted mud and dark blood from their coffins spilled open under this dying light.Hikaru stopped breathing immediately.He had smelled this before.At the summit.Inside Shime's coffin.But Miyuki had not.She stood behind Hikaru, one hand still pressed to her chest, her face drained of color from the old wound. When the Yin Energy swept across the shrine courtyard, her cherry-blossom colored eyes contracted sharply. Not because she failed to recognize what had just appeared.But because she recognized it far too

The night had returned to normal.The blood-like red faded from the sky. Mountain wind moved through the treetops again, carrying the early-night cold and the familiar smell of damp grass. Only the dark streaks still clinging to the stone steps, a few talismans half-burned before the Torii gate, and the Black-Eyed Soul-Summoning Banner sealed within white cloth reminded Hikaru that what had just happened was not a nightmare.Urakami Shime had disappeared.No one knew where she had returned to. Perhaps the grave at the summit. Perhaps some darkness that the living could not see. Or perhaps she had never truly left, only standing somewhere just beyond sight, silently watching him the way a bride who had waited too long would watch.Just thinking about that last possibility made the back of Hikaru's neck go slightly cold.He carried the Black-Eyed Soul-Summoning Banner into the storage room behind the main hall, pressed nine additional evil-warding talismans onto the outside of the white

Hikaru returned to his room when the night had grown very deep.The old shrine was completely still. Mountain wind moved through the wooden corridor outside, occasionally causing the small chimes beneath the eaves to brush together and produce a few thin, threadlike sounds. The smell of old wood, faint incense, and the early-night cold mingled together, bringing a rare sense of quiet after a day that had been far too long.Unfortunately, Hikaru's mind was not willing to settle.He had barely set his pack down beside the door when the image of Miyuki leaving the main hall surfaced in his thoughts again.The flushed face.The ear redder than usual.The hand that had rested on his shoulder longer than necessary.And the footstep that had paused in the corridor for one beat when he said he wouldn't let her run away so easily next time.Miyuki was not refusing.She was only running.Recognizing that, the corner of Hikaru's mouth curved slightly without his realizing. He pulled at the colla

The place where Momiji lived looked nothing like the residence of someone connected to an unorthodox Onmyoji.No underground rooms.No altars covered in blood.No sound of souls weeping, no smell of corpses, no black talismans plastered across every wall.Only an old Japanese-style villa set deep within a maple forest.Black roof tiles spread under the moonlight. A wooden corridor ran around a quiet garden. Stone lanterns along the path cast a dim yellow glow, enough to light the red leaves scattered across the white gravel.At the center of the rear courtyard was a natural hot spring.Thin mist lay over the surface of the water and drifted slowly through the night, making the maple trunks in the distance shift between clear and obscured. The sound of water flowing over stone came at a steady pace, soft enough to feel like music composed specifically to make one forget the world outside was still full of frightening things.Momiji was submerged in the spring.She leaned back against t