Hello readers. Just so you all know, from this point, Chapters 1-6 have been given minor edits.

This is the story of All Gods; a comprehensive story of the village from beginning to end, with Ryokan Kurosawa (the Ceremony Master) as the major character. The stories of Yae, Sae, Itsuki, and others are explored as well.

Also, I think I should mention that this story is no longer my "brainstorm" for another story. That "other story" has since been scrapped, so that I could focus on this one. I've got other ideas for future fanfics instead.

I hope you all enjoy this story.

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Chapter 1: The Two Families

It had all started with the Tsuchihara family. Before All Gods, the Tsuchiharas were wealthy and influential, but not terribly special.

However, one day, their household was approached by a lone man and his small family. They weren't wealthy, but the family master, Mr. Kurosawa, had a silver tongue. He spoke as if he were familiar with the customs and courtesies of the upper rungs of society, and he looked...odd somehow. So he was able to convince the Tsuchihara family to hear what he had to say.

He told the family an odd tale, the tale of what would come to be known as the Hellish Abyss, and that he had the religious knowledge necessary to keep it at bay with rituals and sacrifices. The Tsuchiharas were enthralled, but wondered why he needed their help. Kurosawa responded by stating that he needed the power and influence of their family to gather followers and establish a village, that would act as a shield to keep curious eyes away. This would be their sole purpose, for all time.

But some of the Tsuchiharas were not convinced, skeptical of the man's wild claims. So Kurosawa offered to prove his point, and he led the doubters to the pit. At the time, it was uncovered and unprotected, save for the natural cavern it lay within, and the land around its surface was fallow and rotten.

To prove the truth of his claim, Kurosawa made the ultimate sacrifice. He turned to the Tsuchiharas, and asked them to observe his son closely, indicating the first born in his family. They looked into his eyes, which were full of vitality. The son had sharp vision.

Kurosawa then explained that his son would gaze into the pit. If his words were lies, and the abyss wasn't what he claimed it was, then his son would have nothing to fear from a simple glance.

The young man looked into the pit, and let out a scream the shattered the air around them. When he got back on his feet and opened his eyes, the Tsuchiharas crowded around him to look, and saw with horror that his irises and pupils had vanished, replaced with nothing but endless white.

The son was completely blind.

The suffering of the son, which convinced the Tsuchiharas to accept Mr. Kurosawa's offer, became the first partial sacrifice to please the pit, and the son himself became the first mourner.

And so it was that All Gods was born. The two families worked together to gather followers, convincing them to accept lives of hardship. The Tsuchiharas sold their old home and spent virtually all their family's savings to establish the new village. They built the homes of their family, and that of Kurosawa, which grew over time, and turned the natural cavern into a patchwork of tunnels, with the abyss at its deepest point. The common villagers lived in much simpler homes, located outside of central All Gods. Oddly enough, the main Tsuchihara household was located not far from the villagers homes, as the Tsuchiharas had taken the responsibility of enforcing law in the village, and opted to be close to the people they'd be observing, though the family maintained a few small buildings in central All Gods, including their jailhouse.

The Kurosawas, on the other hand, established themselves as the spiritual law of All Gods. They were the ones familiar with, and charged with, developing the rituals of the village. Their family was highly taciturn, never passing the innermost secrets of the rituals on, even to the Tsuchiharas. The Kurosawa family master was even more secretive, keeping secrets that were never shared with anyone, except for the elder son (who would become the next ceremony master). Violation of this secrecy was met with cruel retribution.

Soon, a series of arranged marriages between the sons and daughters of the Kurosawa and Tsuchihara families established a middle-upper class of families that would adopt their own names and change over time, coming to be known in the end as the Osaka, Kiryu, and Tachibana families. The rituals developed as well, and the village developed around them as the sacrifices piled up. Decades became centuries, and eventually All Gods distant past faded to memory, and then to history.

But all was not well. By the time the early 1800's had rolled around, the Tsuchiharas were becoming disgruntled. They, despite being the ones who founded All Gods, had found themselves playing second best to the Kurosawas.

But that wasn't why they were upset, as they understood the reason behind Kurosawa's status as the undisputed ruler of All Gods. They were the spiritual authority of the village. To the villagers, their voice was the voice of the kami; this gave them their power. Also, as odd as it was, the ceremony master was actually so vital to the rituals, that it had become apparent over time that they would always fail if the ceremony master himself were not present. No one knew why; it was one of the secrets the Kurosawa masters kept between father and son.

No - the Tsuchiharas were bitter for another reason. After providing the last shrine maidens, the Tsuchihara family was growing weary of the endless practice of bleeding for the pleasure of the pit. They had come to regret the actions and choices of their past ancestors, feeling shamed for letting the first Kurosawa to win them over. The family master, Eichiro Tsuchihara, became so bitter, he burned his own family altar; a rancorous and ominous act that he would come to pay for.

Despite the brutality of his actions, all of Eichiro's family members expressed the same strong feelings that the old rituals needed to be laid to rest, except one. Yuzuki Tsuchihara, Eichiro's beloved wife, was unsure if her family should be stirring up trouble, and begged her husband to consult with the current Ceremony Master, Sengoku Kurosawa, and work out their problems to avoid bloodshed.

He agreed, but the talks between the two men went nowhere. Sengoku, furious at the lack of the Tsuchihara's loyalty, reminded Eichiro of why they continued to offer their blood, and gave him a choice: continue to serve the gods, or meet those gods immediately.

The offer didn't seem unfair to Sengoku. After all, some day his own son, Ryokan, would carry out the ritual like all the others, and he had no problem with it, so why should the Tsuchiharas? It was called the endless ceremony for a reason.

Everyone lived for it.

Everyone died for it.

That was the end of peace. Eichiro made plans to sabotage the sacrificial chambers of All Gods and convince its people to abandon their cause, but Sengoku and his family acted first, making plans to carry out the most draconian punishment on the Tsuchiharas possible. However, touched by a sliver of compassion for the only Tsuchihara member still loyal, Sengoku convinced his wife to invite Yuzuki to have a formal get together with her, so that the woman could be kept safe from the coming abhorrence that would befall the rest of her family.

Once the women were socializing in the Kiryu house, Sengoku put his plan into action. Gathering the veiled priests (those not from the Tsuchihara house, anyway) and peasant villagers, and donning a suit of armor and a sword himself, the "spiritual voice" of All Gods spun an intricate lie of how the Tsuchiharas had sinned and become corrupted by the Hellish Abyss. The villagers, for lack of an ability to think for themselves, believed him, and the veiled priests, knowing that he was lying through his teeth, still weren't willing to defend the doomed family, for fear of sharing their fate.

The villagers marched on the Tsuchihara house with pitchforks and torches in hand. Cries of rage and agony rang out and reverberated through the house's halls as the Tsuchiharas fought a losing battle to stay alive. Suffering no delusions of mercy, the mob washed away anything that stood in its path. The battle finally ended when Eichiro was beheaded by Sengoku.

It seemed as if Eichiro's hasty actions had come back to haunt him, as well as the rest of his family.

As the crowd sobered and then dissipated, Sengoku looked around the room, admiring the results of his plan. But he didn't stay long, as he realized that there was one more loose end to tie. As he departed the burning manor, heading for the Kiryu house, Sengoku hoped that she had not heard the cries of her family.

The two houses were far apart, enough so that Yuzuki was blissfully unaware of any ill-doing, happily conversing with the women of the other upper class families.

Of course, that changed when the doors of the sitting room swung open, and Sengoku appeared, flanked by veiled priests. Looking around, Yuzuki saw the expressions all around her beginning to change, as the women she had been happily talking with were now grim and pensive. Something... was horribly wrong.

Choosing a direct approach, Sengoku admitted to everything he had done. As he told Yuzuki of her family's fate, the other women held her arms, trying in vain to comfort her. Sengoku, trying to ignore Yuzuki's tears, tried to appeal to what he considered to be her common sense, reminding her of how she had initially been against her husband's decision to "betray the village", and encouraged her to leave them behind. He would forget that she had been a member of their family, and take her in.

Sengoku Kurosawa stood calmly, sure that the women would accept his offer.

But, as awkward moments of silence began to tick by, it became clear to even the least sensible observers that the Tsuchihara woman's blood was beginning to boil, her sorrow quickly converting to raw rage as images of every cherished-every murdered-family member began to flood her fractured mind. Fearing what was about to happen, the hold that the other women had around Yuzuki tightened, their comforting gesture now forceful.

Yuzuki would not give Sengoku an answer, not a worded one anyway. No - her actions would speak for her, as well as for every innocent face that had been dispatched as a result of his barbarism. Drawing strength from the memory of her departed family, Yuzuki snapped herself away from the grip of her former friends, and tore a hairpin from her head, causing her long hair to cascade down around her. With an almost primal roar, Yuzuki charged forward and drove the sharp tip of the hairpin deep into Sengoku's chest. Before the crowd could react, Yuzuki barreled past the veiled priests, making a mad dash for the house's exit.

Sengoku, glancing down at his punctured frame, looked up and bellowed out his orders for them to disregard him, and give chase. As the veiled priests departed without question, the women of the other families came closer to inspect the wound. Sengoku brushed their concern off; the wound was small. He left the house and departed to Kurosawa manor in search of medicine, confident that nothing would come of his injury.

How wrong he was. Sengoku was ignorant of the fact that Yuzuki had, through a stroke of sheer luck, severed one of his major arteries. As he continued to walk back to Kurosawa manor, the mortally wounded man was being stalked by death itself.

Yuzuki, in the meantime, continued her attempted escape from the living nightmare that the village had become. But the main entrance of the Kiryu house was blocked by villagers, who were waiting outside. Eventually, the desperate woman found herself cornered on the heaven bridge-a long, thin bridge that connected the Kiryu and Tachibana houses.

As Yuzuki was approached from both sides by the enraged priests, she glanced over the edge of the bridge and, in the final moments that she had to think, decided that she would not give the priests the pleasure of dispatching her. In one clean motion, she leapt over the edge, calm in the assurance that she would soon be with her family again.

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