A1969: yo! God, it's been ages since I've been on this site. First and foremost, an apology—I had to medical internship last year, and let me tell you, I had no time to sleep or eat, much less do anything else. Well, here I am. Alive. This story has been circulating in my head the whole of last year, and it feels good to get it out.

This is the first time I'm dabbling in sci-fi, so please go easy on me. Corrections and constructive criticism are very much welcome!

Note: For those following my "The Reincarnation of Miko Midoriko" fic, I am in the process of updating it. I'm already seven pages in. I hope you enjoy this story, and my foray into the world of science fiction.

Summary: the year is 3999 AD. Demons are a fiction or a legend, and humanity has rose to become a Type II civilization. Lead scientist, Lunafreya von Silas, and architect Joharis de Lanfranya unearth the tomb of a silver haired demon lord long thought to be legend. When shadows from Sesshoumaru's past threaten a peaceful future, will the former Lord of the West rise in a world no longer his own, or will he usher in its fall?

Chapter 1: Area Twenty-nine, Sector Three

October 1st 3999 AD

Earth

Area twenty-nine, sector three

Joharis de Lanfranya was not a big fan of the dark.

Unfortunately for him, that was exactly where he was.

Running a hand through his messy mane of dark hair, the archaeologist let out a sigh as lights flared around him, illuminating the damp cave. He looked up at the dark cave walls lit up by the dozens of flare lights hovering in the air. The cave had been an accidental find, he admitted.

And what an accident it was.

Though no stranger to the gloom of caves and tombs, it was rare for him to find such places as yet untouched by other people. In all honesty, there was very little for archaeologists to do these days, and most places on Earth had been catalogued and explored.

Most.

Glancing around him, there was no doubt in his mind that he and his team were the first to set foot in this tomb. It was strange, he admitted, for a tomb to be set so deep underground. Up ahead, at the far end of the cave wall, was an opening blocked by a boulder on which was draped thick ropes of shimenawa. He frowned.

Prior to opening the cave, he and his team had dispatched scanner droids around the area. The droids had definitely revealed the outline of the cave to be that of a tomb. Taking a step closer to the shimenawa, he wondered…Was this a tomb or the shrine of a kami?

He heard soft steps behind him. "Ris? Will we open this today?" a feminine voice asked.

Ris turned to find a slim, dark skinned woman approaching. "Edea," he greeted.

Edea los Iris was his colleague. It had been she who had accidentally stumbled into the entrance of the cave in the first place. "Bri was wondering if you'd be opening this today," she tilted her head of thick black hair towards the boulder in front of them.

"Ah." Brilliane la Constantine, the overall site manager, was not known for her patience on digs, preferring to get things wrapped up as quickly as possible. But, like what Ris had told her a thousand times, you can't rush greatness.

"'Ah' isn't an answer," Edea said, grinning.

Ris turned back to the boulder before them. In truth, the cave—the so called ante-chamber—was barren. It was filled with neither treasures nor jewels, but a creeping chill, and a lingering black. It was, in truth, foreboding.

He checked his watch. It was a little after noon, but being down in the dark made him feel like it were later. "We could open this today," he said, gesturing to the boulder. "That'll make Bri happy, I suppose."

Edea reached into the pocket of her jacket and retrieved a blue, glossy sphere that fit into the palm of her hand. She tapped a button on it, and the sphere—a bot—lit up, casting her face with a muted light.

"I've done a preliminary scan on the main chamber of the tomb," she said. There was a hint of intrigue in her voice. "You might want to take a look at this."

She tapped the bot, and a holograph appeared above it. It was a layout of the cave, the ante-chamber they were in, and the main chamber beyond them.

Ris frowned as he stared at the layout of the main chamber. "Is that…?"

Edea grinned. Lifting a finger to the holograph, she tapped the main chamber. It zoomed in and he could see the outline of a red blur. "A heat signature," Edea said. He could hear the excitement in her voice.

Ris frowned as he stared at it. The red blur was right in the middle of the chamber. There were no other heat signatures leading to it, which excluded sources from the outside. He whistled. "What do you think that is?" he wondered aloud.

"My guess is as good as yours," she said. "Ris, we've dated this cave to the exact year it was closed—it was 1545 AD. This cave has been sealed for more than two thousand years. If that thing is giving off a heat signature, you can bet it's been around since then."

Ris could feel his own excitement stirring. "Right," he said. "Get excavator droids here. Let's crack this thing open."

"On it," Edea said.

En route to Titan

Aboard Starship Erasmus

"Incoming transmission, mistress."

Lunafreya von Silas, better known as Freya, looked up from the book she had been reading. She narrowed her violet eyes at the translucent control panel before her. "From whom?" she asked the computer, which she had set on autopilot no less than five minutes ago.

The computer, her own personal artificial intelligence retainer she had dubbed 'Turing', almost sounded amused. "A one Joharis de Lanfranya, I believe."

Freya closed her book with an audible snap. "I ought to put a censor on him," she muttered.

Turing's disembodied voice chuckled. "He claims it is urgent," Turing's cool male voice said. "His exact words were 'A life and career changing discovery like you wouldn't believe'."

Running a hand through her wavy blonde hair, Freya sighed loudly. "Those were exactly his words last week," she said, leaning back in the pilot's chair. She really ought to put a censor on him. He did nothing but waste her time every now and then with useless banter.

"He told me to tell you 'If I'm wrong, you can censor me for a month'."

Freya rubbed her temples. "Put him on, then," she conceded.

At once a holograph came to life in front of her, and she crossed her arms as Joharis de Lanfranya grinned at her. "Hello Looney," he greeted.

Freya's mouth was set in a thin line. "I've asked you never to call me that," she said, patience already growing thin. "You have five seconds to tell me what you want before I end transmission."

"Okay, okay," Joharis said, knowing she was dead serious. "We were excavating a site here on Earth, specifically in Japan"—how he had obtained clearance for that, Freya didn't want to know—"when we stumbled on a tomb. Untouched."

"Mummies?" Freya scoffed. "I'm an astrobiologist, not a—"

"It's not mummies," Joharis said, grinnigng. She was going to be speechless, he just knew it. "We opened the stone sarcophagus, and…let me just show you."

At once, Joharis vanished from the holograph. Freya found herself staring at a dark space illuminated by flare lights. She watched as the holograph shifted to a stone sarcophagus, roughly cut, and set in the middle of the chamber. Freya leaned slightly forward.

"We found this." The holograph focused on the contents of the sarcophagus.

Freya found herself staring at a man. She blinked. A…man. His eyes were closed, and he merely appeared to be sleeping. She narrowed her eyes as she took in the image. The man on the holograph was pale, with long silver hair. His bangs parted in the middle of his forehead to reveal a blue crescent moon, and two magenta stripes on each cheek. Ceremonial tattoos?

Next, she focused on his clothing. "It appears his garb is reminiscent of the Feudal Era of Japan," Turing offered. Freya studied his white and red kimono. She noted the black armor and spiked pauldron that he wore, a well as the yellow and blue sash tied about his waist. On his right shoulder there appeared what looked to be a white pelt.

Freya frowned. What caught her attention the most was the arrow. There was an arrow sticking out from the man's armored chest, embedded in the area where his heart would be.

"We've dated everything in this tomb to around 1500 AD," Joharis's voice said. "Specifically, 1545 AD. This tomb has never been opened Frey, and no one else has been here."

Freya leaned back and crossed her arms. "The joke's over, Joharis," she said, thinking she ought to censor him now. Really, what was Joharis saying? That the man in the tomb was more than two thousand years old? Impossible. Mankind had only learned to alter genetic structure to eliminate the aging process recently. The technology was only three hundred years old.

"What? You think I'm joking? Frey, I'm not," Joharis protested.

Freya could feel her temper slowly rising, but she pushed it back. "Bollocks. You'd have me believe that that man in the tomb is real? He doesn't look like a mummy at all."

"Nope, he looks like a fine piece of ass," a voice Freya recognized as Edea's interrupted. "I mean, I'm not into dudes, but even I would tap that one."

Freya rubbed her temples. "That cannot be a mummy," she muttered. Impossible. The man looked like he was asleep. And she had to agree with Edea's statement. The man looked as though he belonged on someone's bed than in a museum.

Joharis's face came back on the holograph. "I'm not saying he's a mummy Frey," he said. "That's not even the weirdest bit. Look at this, I'm sending you blood samples and preliminary DNA analysis. This is the reason I called you."

At once, microscopic slides filled the holograph before her. Freya frowned as she tapped on the image and zoomed in on the cells. Her eyes widened.

"I don't understand," she said.

"I knew you'd be shocked."

The cells that Freya was staring at were…alive. She could see several going through anaphase, could see intact red blood cells and white cells. Impossible. If the man had been dead for more than two thousand years, there should be no more cells, much less actively dividing cells. What the heck was Joharis playing at?

"Are you saying this man is alive?" Freya snapped.

"In a way…he seems to be in a state of suspended animation?"

Freya shook her head. "His cells shouldn't be that active if he were."

"That's not the weirdest part, Frey," Joharis went on. "Look."

Joharis's face vanished and was replaced with a holograph of a single strand of DNA. "I did a preliminary DNA analysis, if you don't mind."

Freya frowned as the labels appeared on the holograph, indicating the phosphoric acid compound, the deoxyribose sugar, and…

"Wait," Freya said. She tapped on the DNA strand, and the image zoomed in. "Turing, run an analysis on the components of the base pairs."

"Of course," Turing said. A moment later, he spoke up. "My findings indicate inconclusive results, miss Freya. The base pairing of this DNA strand is congruent with neither adenine, guanine, thymine or cytosine. Though, it might interest you to know some of the structure is compatible with canine DNA."

Freya's mouth dropped open. Impossible. As an astrobiologist, one of her concerns was extraterrestrial life. Though humanity had yet to make contact with sentient beings, they had discovered prokaryotes on several of Jupiter's moons, most especially Europa. She had been one of the first astrobiologists to analyze them, and had found that their DNA structure was similar to that of life the Earth had harbored—adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine had been the base pairs.

But this…man.

She didn't know what to make of his DNA. Certainly, it had the deoxyribose sugar, the phosphoric acid, but…

The nitrogenous bases were…wrong. In fact, were they even nitrogenous bases?

She knew then that Joharis, smug as he was, was not joking. This was the kind of joke that was beyond him.

The holograph shifted to show the face of the man in the sarcophagus.

"What are you?" Freya murmured, tapping his image to look closer at it. She sounded both awed and disbelieving.

"Made you speechless didn't I?" Joharis's voice piped up.

Freya bit her lip. "Send me your exact coordinates, please," she said repentantly, thoroughly humbled.

"You're coming here?" Joharis said eagerly.

"Yes," Freya said. "I want to see him. Turing?"

"Yes, Miss Freya?"

"Set a course for Earth, once Joharis sends his coordinates," she said, leaning back in her seat. "And please send a message to Titan, to my mother and father. Please tell them I might not be joining them for dinner."

"Really? We've known each other three years, Frey, and you still call me Joharis," he said, interrupting her train of thought. "Why don't we change that, eh?"

He makes a mind boggling discovery, and already he's getting cocky, she thought. Men. She gave Joharis a small cynical smile. "We will see, Joharis," she said airily. "Send Turing the coordinates please."

"Right," the archaeologist said. "I'll see you in a while, my lovely Lunafreya." The holograph vanished as Joharis ended his transmission.

Freya placed her elbows on the armrest and interlaced her fingers, deep in thought. What on earth had Joharis uncovered? In fact, why Earth? Throughout the centuries, archaeologists had dug whatever there was to be dug on Earth. The last greatest discovery had been the ruins of an ancient city beneath the Philippine trench—Atlantis. And that was over a thousand years ago.

What was Joharis doing there in the first place? It was not easy to get clearance to excavate sites on Earth. Over the centuries, the Mother planet had suffered the consequences of pollution and human carelessness, and was only just recovering, thanks to terraforming. Clearance for Earth travel was severely restricted, much less an excavation which could damage the local eco system.

Whatever Joharis's reasons were, Freya shoved them aside.

"I've received coordinates, miss Freya," Turing said politely. The holograph flared to life, and showed her the destination.

"Area twenty-nine, sector three," Freya murmured. "Formerly known as Tokyo, Japan."

When humanity had begun its mass exodus to live on the different satellite systems in Solaris, the old Earth countries had been renamed according to area, and cities by sector while the planet was being 'rehabilitated'. Though humanity had kept its diverse culture, it had had to cede the homes that birthed them.

"E.T.A?" Freya asked.

"Two hours," Turing replied.

"Obtain clearance the moment we approach Earth," Freya said.

The holograph of the man in the tomb flashed before her, alongside an image of his DNA structure. She stared at the man's peaceful expression, her eyes fixed on the crescent moon on his forehead.

"I'll see you soon."

October 1st 3999 AD

Earth

Area twenty-nine, sector three

Ris took another drag of his cigarette and exhaled as he looked up at the late afternoon sky. What a day it had been, he thought. Who would have known he'd find something so unusual? When he and Edea had opened the tomb, and removed the heavy stone slab on the sarcophagus, he had reacted precisely as Lunafreya had—the man in the crypt couldn't be real. But he was, and he was a mystery.

A mystery he knew Lunafreya would love to sink her teeth into. She loved a good puzzle. Heck, the woman was a genius. But then again, she'd been made that way.

"Oy." He felt a light punch on his arm, and a moment later, Edea snatched the cigarette from his hand. "You know these are against the rules on Earth. Bad for you, bad for the environment." She tossed the cigar into a rubbish bin.

Ris shrugged. "Forgive a man for his little pleasures," he said.

"Speaking of pleasures," Edea went on. "Stop looking at the sky, she'll be here."

"Who said I was looking for Looney?"

"Shut up," Edea said, rolling her eyes. They walked back together towards the cave. The site was crawling with excavator droids, and other archaeologists who greeted them as they passed. "It's been three years since she turned you down, and you're not over her yet."

Ris shrugged. "We've got more important stuff to talk about," he said as they stopped at the hole in the ground that led to the cave.

"I'm just saying, I think Lunafreya can't feel love because she wasn't made to. Who knows," Edea said. They stepped onto the hoverpad and descended amidst the glare of flare lights.

"Of course she can," Ris said, grinning.

"Yeah, but unless you're a bacterium clinging to the side of an asteroid, she's just not interested in you," Edea said flatly.

"Ris!"

Both looked up as the hoverpad came to a stop at the bottom. A pretty girl, her dark hair in a ponytail, waved energetically at them.

"Ruriko!" Ris greeted as Ruriko So Hatsumoto came towards them.

"Any word from the ice princess?" Ruriko asked. She held a datapad in her hand, her bot hovering close to her shoulder.

"She'll be here soon," Joharis replied. "Getting clearance to land isn't really an issue for her, anyway."

Ruriko shook her head. "About Toby—"

"Toby?" Edea asked, raising an eyebrow at the Old Age name.

Ruriko gestured towards the tomb entrance with her datapad. "We don't really know that dude's name, and he seems to be…well…not dead, from a cellular point of view. Thought I'd call him Toby."

Edea and Ris stared at her. "He does not look like a Toby," they said in unison.

Ruriko ignored them. "I've catalogued the stuff down here," she went on. "From the boulder, to the shimenawa right down to the twin swords on Toby's waist. Those I had the droids take away for safe keeping. You won't believe it, but the steel on them are still sharp as the day they were made. Really, I'm not exaggerating."

She tapped her datapad, and a holograph of two swords appeared above it. "See? The edges are still quite sharp, not a hint of rust on them, and considering these are more than two thousand years old, and that is cave is a bit damp, well…that says something."

Ruriko frowned at them. "Brilliane was asking whether or not we should move Toby aboveground, on a medicapsule."

Edea shook her head. "No, let's move him later, after Freya sees him," she said. "You know how irritable she can get."

Ruriko nodded in agreement. "I've had a medicapsule brought down, just in case," she said.

"Incoming transmission."

Ris fished out his assist from the pocket of his jacket, where a message gleamed on the sleek metal's surface. "Freya's here," he announced. "Bri is sending her down."

"For the love of all things, Ris," Edea said as they turned to the hoverpad. "Try not to make an idiot out of yourself, yeah?"

Ris chuckled as the hoverpad came into view, and Lunafreya von Silas stepped off, her expression guarded.

Ah, Ris thought as he stared at the slender blonde approaching them. She looked both intrigued and annoyed. It wasn't hard to fathom the reason for her annoyance. Like him, Lunafreya did not relish dark and cramped places. Which was probably the reason why Freya chose to wear a white fostrom fiber suit under her white jacket.

"How is she going to keep that clean in here?" Ruriko muttered.

"Frey!" Ris said as Freya approached.

"Good afternoon," Lunafreya greeted, in her rich Titan accent. Her bot hovered close to her head. "Well, Joharis? Where is it?"

Always straight to the point, Ris thought as he led them all towards the tomb.

Lunafreya glanced around her as Joharis led them towards a hole in the far side of the cave wall. Beside it was a boulder on which hung a thick braid of rope.

"A shimenawa rope," Turing's voice said from the bot hovering near her head. "Used by Old Age Shinto priests for purification rituals."

"Thank you, Turing," Freya said as they followed Joharis into the tomb.

Flarelights blazed around them, and Freya shielded her eyes as her vision adjusted to the sudden glare. Beside her, Ruriko was mentioning all the items they had found with the subject. She paid her no mind. Cataloguing items did not interest her.

"Frey, honestly, thank you for coming on such short notice," Joharis was saying.

"You showed me an anomalous discovery I'd never seen before," Freya said as they stopped beside the sarcophagus. "Of course, I came quickly."

"And this," Ruriko said with a flourish. "Is Toby!"

Freya blinked. "She named it Toby," Edea said, sighing.

Freya peered into the sarcophagus, and her eyes widened slightly. Just as in the hologram, the man appeared intact, and at peace. What the holograph didn't show was how lustrous his silver hair was, or the richness of the markings on his face. It had also failed to show her the elven ears the man had.

Queer, she thought. She fished a pair of black gloves from her pocket and put them on. She placed two fingers on his neck, hunting for a pulse, but found none. She blinked, thoroughly surprised.

"No pulse," she said. "I assume he didn't have a whisper of cardiac activity?" She eyed the wooden arrow lodged in the man's chest.

"We only took blood samples," Edea said, crossing her arms. "We honestly didn't know what to make of him, Frey."

"Cerebral scans?" Freya asked. She gently opened the man's eyelid. His eye color was a beautiful shade of gold. Taking a penlight from her pocket, she shined it on his eye. His pupil constricted. "Brainstem function intact, at the least," she muttered, knowing Turing was noting her observations.

She withdrew her hands and stared at him. "Cerebral activity appears evident, as well as cellular activity," she said. "Which, considering the man is pulseless, should be impossible."

"Unless, you know," Edea said, "he's not really a man. Which is why we called you."

"His DNA structure is certainly puzzling," Lunafreya added. "It isn't made up of the same components as your typical nucleic acids. The base pairings are made of unknown substances—they aren't purines and pyrimidines. In fact…"

Her bot glowed and a holograph of the man's DNA hovered above them all. "The covalent bonds and hydrogen bonds that keep his DNA together is…non-existent."

Ris raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm not expert in astrobiology, but DNA can't exist without those bonds," he said.

Freya nodded. "No, normally, they can't," she agreed. "The strands are held together by an unknown energy force, the same force that is apparently keeping him alive despite the lack of cardiac activity." She ran a finger through the man's mane of silver hair, her expression thoughtful.

"With your permission," Freya went on, "I'd like to bring him back to Titan. Genetics are more my father's forte, and I'm sure his knowledge would be invaluable."

Edea, Ruriko and Ris glanced at each other. "The credit for the discovery would go to you lot, of course," Freya added. She knew how important credit was to them. For her, she hardly cared. She just wanted to get the man on her ship and back to Titan so she could solve the mystery of him.

Ruriko grinned. "Throw in a fancy dinner, and you can have him," she said.

"Really?" Edea said, sighing. "Probably the most important discovery of the century, and you're thinking about food?"

Ruriko shrugged. "Captain Von Silas is an amazing cook," she said, referring to Freya's mother.

"What do you think he is, Frey?" Joharis asked as Edea and Ruriko bickered.

Freya sighed. "I can't say," she said, but she felt a twinge of excitement through her. Was this man, perhaps, a sentient extraterrestial life form? It was certainly her current hypothesis. "He is very…intriguing."

Ris shook his head sadly. "Figures," he said, "that the first dude you'd be interested in is an anomalous mummy named Toby."

She raised an eyebrow, silently judging their choice of name.

"Ruri named him." Joharis shrugged. "Anyway…I'll have droids move him to the medicapsule, and you can transport him back with you to Titan. I'll talk to Bri about it, though. You know how touchy she gets."

Freya placed an hand on his sleeve. "Joharis, thank you," she said sincerely. "This…this man may be what I've been looking for my whole life—a sentient extraterrestrial. Not a prokaryote, for a change."

Joharis shrugged. "I knew you'd like him."

She gave him a genuine smile before she released her hold, and moved to supervise the droids as they gently lifted the man from the sarcophagus.

"Dude," Ruriko said, leaning over to him. "She's more interested in a mummy than she is in you. See?"

Joharis sighed.

En route to Titan

Aboard Starship Erasmus

"EKG readings indicate no electrical activity," Turing announced.

Lunafreya leaned against the wall of the Erasmus, her eyes fixed on the white medicapsule in the center of the cargo bay. Sighing, she approached the medicapsule, pressing her hand against the cool glass. She looked inside, at the unusual—creature? Man? Mummy?—they had found.

No. This was definitely a person. A man. She regarded his appearance, and the clothing he wore. Turing had pointed out that the man was most likely a Feudal lord or a warrior.

Still…

"He is, to all intents and purposes, dead," Freya said, frowning. "And yet, he is also very much alive."

"Are you considering an undead hypothesis, miss Freya?" Turing asked, amused. His voice echoed from the computer display within the medicapsule.

She scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous," she admonished. "This man is only a very intriguing puzzle we have yet to crack. Have you inserted the tag?"

"Done," Turing said. A tag was a chip attached firmly to the skin behind the ear. It was designed to monitor a subject's cerebral activity. "It might interest you to know that—"

"No brain activity," she guessed, and Turing made a small noise of agreement. She thought for a moment. "Brain stem function is intact. Higher cortical centers obviously are not. This man isn't breathing. The lack of cardiac activity has probably to do with the fact that that arrow is in his chest. Scan it."

She watched as white light slowly travelled from the man's feet to his head. "The arrow in itself is unusual," Turing said. "The arrow has no fletching, and no barb. It is composed from the wood of a magnolia tree—"

"It must have taken great skill to fire an arrow like that," Freya said. Though, in all honesty, she had never really seen an arrow, and the only ones that she did see came from books. Such weapons were woefully inadequate for the day and age.

She tapped her finger on the cool glass, a single hypothesis forming in her mind. And, as was usual with Lunafreya, all hypotheses had to be tested no matter how silly.

"Open the capsule," she said.

The glass slid back with a faint hiss and Freya leaned over the man, her eyes narrowing on the arrow. "Do you intend to pull it out, mistress?" Turing asked.

"It's incredible how attuned to my mind you are," Freya said, violet eyes glancing up at the computer. "But yes. I have a theory I want to test. No, not a theory…more like a feeling." She realized it sounded quite unscientific.

Turing must have realized it too, because he said, "I do not see the point in such an endeavor, but I will support you. The arrow shaft has been thoroughly disinfected."

Freya nodded. "What do you suppose is the outcome if you pull out the arrow?" Turing asked.

"I have a feeling that his heart will start beating," Freya said. "It's…a strange feeling, Turing. Yes, yes, it's mostly intuition, but a woman's intuition is seldom wrong. If I'm wrong…well, what harm can it do? The arrow is without a barb, so damages to the internal organs won't be significant."

"I have never heard you use the word 'intuition' before, miss Freya," Turing said.

She ignored him, and wrapped her slender fingers around the shaft of the arrow. She frowned. Should she, really?

"To hell with it," she said.

And she yanked the arrow out.

Lub…dub…lub…dub…lub-dub

The first thing he became aware of was the sound of something beating. It took his mind several moments to process that this beating was that of a heart—his heart. His heart was beating…? Was he…breathing?

Lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub

As his mind slowly emerged from the deep pit of unconsciousness he had been subjected to, his senses were assaulted by a barrage of scents and sounds all of which were foreign to him. He felt an immense weight above him, and realized that this weight was his body. A body which had not been moved in over two millennia.

Lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub

His finger twitched, and the action itself felt alien and slow. He slowly curled the fingers of his left hand, and became aware of a scent beside him—floral, feminine, human.

Lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub

"I was right," a voice near him whispered. It sounded both surprised and awed, and it was entirely unknown to him.

His left hand clenched into a fist as he felt two fingers gently feel the pulse in his throat. Enough.

He willed himself to awaken and, at once, youki surged through his body, banishing the weakness he felt. He heard a gasp from beside him, heard the sound of a foot as it stepped back…

And then, for the first time in two millennia, the daiyokai Lord of the Western Lands slowly opened his eyes.