The Tsukimine Shrine at night was silent as it had ever been, miraculously untouched by the technological developments that had congealed in the form of infrastructure around it. The garden was all but wild, save for one corner where the elderly custodian would spend her mornings, tending to the flowers for as long as her brittle joints would allow her. People still came to buy trinkets and charms, their numbers slowly dwindling to a trickle of inquisitive tourists. It was becoming a deserted place, another location destined to be blacklisted by the government for high tech refurbishment.
He knew then, that he didn't have much time.
And he was glad of it. Generations of masters, spanned across continents, his attachment wasted as he outlived them, one by one; witnessing their use and abuse of the cards. He shudders as he recalls his last master, the one who ultimately plunged him into this, the lonliest of existences. Yet, ironically, it was redemption too.
He would finally be free.
He looks up at the sky, at the barely visible moon winking from behind the tallest of sky scrapers. Night was the time at which he was strongest, though his idea of strength was laughable now. The power of the moon wasn't enough to sustain him, it was too taxing a task to guard the cards. Not that he knew where they were exactly, not anymore. It was a cursed obligation anyway, he was never meant to guard the likes of that which Tristan had created. He realises with an echo of shame that he has given up, and worse that he no longer cares. Had Clow been there, Kinomoto, they would never have stood for it. His two most beloved masters; he could hardly remember them now. Perhaps, several decades ago, he'd have felt the imprint of their presences, their subtle auras around the cards, binding him to his duty.
But not now, not anymore.
He closes his eyes. By dawn, he would cease to exist. The thought was comforting. He reflects back on his existence, reeling back in time until he's found it. The mere outline of a memory; of a sensation that roused him from dormancy, that reminded him of exactly what he was. Winds, circling high and mightily above the city as ten year old Sakura Kinomoto unwittingly released the cards. Gradually, the sensation becomes more vivid as he opens his eyes and stares at the moon once more. A freak wind whips around him, forcing the trees to bend in its wake. A reawakening, he is suddnely filled with power, a clarion call that he knew well.
Someone had revived the cards.