A/N: Apologies for my absence. I lost the last member of my family in 2022 and it took the wind out of my sails. Happy New Year, everyone.


Hidden from the eyes of mortals, in the deepest section of the forest below Koyasan, slept an ancient magnolia tree, a rare survivor of the Age of the Gods, child of Nenokuni itself. Unbeknownst to the nearby temple of human monks seeking the wisdom of time slept a reliable keeper of knowledge, an observer of many ages, counsel and confidant of the late Dog General of the West. The tree whose roots ran deep into the earth, so deeply that he could communicate with the world underneath and overhear secrets whispered by the souls of the long dead.

Bokusenō.

Sesshomaru did not stop Rin from running to the simple marker in the grove that noted the final resting place of her first caretaker. Long protected by the magical soil that flourished around Father's most trusted advisor lay Jaken's bones. The lifespan of a demon kappa, even a loyal one, was greater than a human's but could never have matched that of a great demon. He approved of the restored human woman rushing to her side to dry her tears. There was a bright flash of light as the human adolescent boy waved his torch carelessly. The fool nearly touched him with the flame when he ran forward to cast light on Rin's kneeling form. Kagome's younger brother was eager to voice his concern to his young human ward, he was afraid she had fallen down. It was a necessary reminder that the mortals' vision was struggling beneath the Black Sky.

Sesshomaru looked past the thick boughs of the tree to witness yet another light darken, another Maiden begin her descent from the sky. He tilted his ear to listen to the grating pitch of his father's second which was bound to wake his sleeping infant.

" - then you two come back from the dead! What kind of damn deal did you make, stupid?!"

"There was no deal," Miroku proffered defensively. "Sango and I were taking a walk to the old tree for our health when we saw that demon underneath the Goshinboku. She already knew our names, she knew about everything."

"His mother?"

"Totosai said the Great Dog Demon called her 'Inukimi'. We were alarmed but she was only passing through the territory. She had come to indulge her curiosity. It was very strange. Apparently her son was still melancholy over the memory of some 'lost mortal child'."

"Uh-huh. So what did she get in exchange for that magic potion?"

"...information? Nothing particularly secret. Inukimi knew the secret about the Bone Eater's Well. She knew Rin had disappeared to the other side. Sesshomaru wandered by the village occasionally for the demon slayers' network. We asked why she would want to help mortals but her only response was that it 'amused her to test her theory' that the minions of the Underworld cannot reap a soul that is neither dead nor in its body."

"You let yourself be used for a fucking test?!"

Sesshomaru closed his eyes when Kagome and her infant came forward to investigate the old tree with the mask carved into its surface. The smell of the blood from her death was so strong he could taste blood when he inhaled. Mother's declaration that Kagome would defy death many times intrigued him. Inuyasha's first lover had died, and her body burned, but her spirit had resisted the vacuum of death and the minions of the Underworld. Now, he wondered, if Kagome's body were destroyed, would her spirit be reborn a third time? Would it take decades to find another suitable vessel? Would she remember this life? Or was her mortal body finding alignment with the rare magic she possessed and would therefore be revived?

Kagome's infant was the greater mystery. What powers could this Moroha possess to summon his disinterested Mother from her palace among the clouds? His Mother whose feet could touch mortal soil but three times in a century? Despite her age and her mother's aura, the child possessed a pure and formidable spirit. Through the layers of blood and dirt and sweat, graveyard and forest, the sweet smell of fresh baby skin cut. It taunted him. Other demons would be lured to seek out such a smell to gain the powers of her growing life force. Even standing in this dormant grove, his proximity to mother-and-baby soothed his spirit. His musculature pain resulting from years spent in a lesser form were beginning to mend. Memories of those years were thankfully few. The clearest memory showed him Kagome sitting in the forest with her child – recently, then – while she beckoned him forward.

"You have questions about the infant's blood."

"Yes," Sesshomaru did not question how the demon knew about Inuyasha's daughter. "What do you know?"

An extremely deep voice rumbled the very ground when it chose to address him, a voice that echoed through its roots into the ground.

"The Daughter of Heaven has survived her thirtieth day and inherited Heaven's Mandate. Her existence is connected with the fate of all living things in this realm. Such is the burden of all Heirs. However, this Heir was born with human, demon, and celestial blood." The old voice paused. Sesshomaru took note of the new flowers coming to life through the field, particularly around the ankles of the young priestess. Kagome plucked a single bloom to offer to her daughter. The petals were bright and soft when crushed in her little hand. As they did in the graveyard.

"Is that so, Bokusenō?"

"Oi, tree. You mean our daughter is literally linked to the land? What's with these flowers?"

"The stronger the life force of the child, the more fertile the land. I was in a deep slumber before you arrived after mortals poisoned my ground many decades ago but now I grow stronger. The flowers are proof of divine power. In the hands of one such as Amatsu-Mikaboshi, that power could be made to drain life. Death without death. An abomination. Those that seek her will try to make claim on other realms and tip the balance."

Even Inuyasha could not refute his suggestion. New vines were growing abundantly underfoot. Sesshomaru was forced to step aside to avoid his legs being caught in the mass of golden flowers punching their way through the soil. Bokusenō did not balk at the magical vines beginning to creep around his trunk. The central point of the aura dominating the grove was the happy baby in Kagome's arms being soothed against a temper. The aura of the tree demon increased in pulses while the vines wound around his wood. Scratches, cuts, gouges and scrapes from their battle under the eclipse had disappeared. Shippo's burned fleshed rippled and healed smooth.

I see. So this Moroha can heal demons. Even this Sesshomaru.

"Oh, Bokusenō...do you know the history of the first Emperor and Yatagarasu?" Kagome called out. "There is a human story that says when the first Emperor was traveling through the countryside, that the goddess Amaterasu sent him a guide - "

"Kagome, priestess of Edo, heed this warning: many millennia ago the great guardian crow of mortals was consumed by an empty, hungry spirit. It was powerfully sealed in an ancient crypt beneath Kōyasan. Not many would have known where to find the lock, nor have the power to slay the creature guarding it. Tread carefully. It is not a place for any living soul."

"When was the crypt reopened?"

Sesshomaru glared into the empty when Bokusenō answered: five hundred years ago, the cage had opened and released the creature from the deepest pits of the Underworld, from a sealed tomb within the mountain. He listened when the tree told them where to find a gate beneath the mountain.

"So someone cut down the spirit guarding the door and freed the damned beast from Hell? Then how do we put the thing back in its box?" Inuyasha's pitch roused the infant to cry. His idiot sibling slung Tetsusaiga over his shoulders with an impatient curse.

"You were to be taught a lesson about the desire to save the life of a loved one, and the sorrow and fear that accompanies that loss...To wield it as a weapon you must possess a compassionate heart while dealing with your enemies. That is the requirement of the wielder of Tenseiga, a sword that can save hundreds of lives while throwing its enemies into the Underworld."

Sesshomaru ignored the knowing look on Kagome's face. The mortal adolescent picking a bouquet of golden flowers for Jaken's grave was worth any price. Rin was the first life he had saved with Tenseiga's blade, the first soul he had recalled from the Underworld by cutting down the gathering minions of the Unseen. If by cutting down the Guardian of the Underworld he had released Amatsu-Mikaboshi from Yomi-no-kuni, only he could shut the door.

And yet, the scent on Tetsusaiga's blade, Inuyasha's Staircase Through Eternity…

Inuyasha's bride demanded to know why he was staring!

The Goshinboku had been filled with the spirits of the dead, summon by the priestess' dance, her power, because the gate to Yomi-no-kuni was unguarded. Inuyasha's mother, Izayoi, had traveled through the Underworld to seek reunion with her son but not his great and terrible father. In response to pure demon energy, the girl's powers of purification had risen and shattered the bones in his own arm.

"Moroha? W-why?" Kagome took an instinctive step back. The infant squirmed. He continued to extend his arm for the child. While Inuyasha continued to press Bokusenō for ways to conquer Amatsu-Mikaboshi, his wife shook her head. Did she not understand? If the child's body was host to this Mandate, it was the source of his mother's interest and the spirit crow's. The blood of a great demon, the blood of a twice-born priestess, the blood of a human cursed with one of the Nine Voids -

With great hesitation the child was finally placed in his hold.

A powerful aura indeed.

The suddenness of the memory disarmed him. His ears were filled with noise, his nose and throat filled with the stench of powder and death. Sirens filled the air. There was no time to do else but race to the Higurashi tree to save Rin. If Kagome did not fall through the gap in time on her fifteenth birthday, she would never free his irritating half-demon brother from the prison of his own making, he would not be defeated by Tetsusaiga in battle -

Rin, I must save Rin -

Blinding light followed by unbearable pain. Despite his power and will, his body was broken. Form and higher thought were stripped from him as he was reduced to a canine form, his memories faded. He remembered Shippo struggling to contain the rabid creature despite the burns on his face, the smell of blood driving him to a frenzy. The hound knew something was gone.

"Sesshomaru?"

A cocoon of light wrapped around his body but it was not the purifying power of a priestess. Strings of many colors tied him to the infant whose birth his sacrifice had inadvertently made possible, a tangled weave of Fate, past and future. He touched a single chord to hear its melody sing to his soul. Moroha heard the lilting chime and kicked her feet. A distant memory of a voice echoed in his ears.

Kagome threw herself at Inuyasha to stop him charging to repossess their daughter. "Inuyasha, wait!"

"Something to protect…"

"What did you say? Give her back, Sesshomaru! If you hurt my kid - "

It was an odd thing to stand in his father's place, to understand the willingness to sacrifice for a weaker being, an inferior creature. He tilted his head to consider the unlikeliness of Moroha's life while she tried to capture a single string of light in her uncoordinated hands, always too slow - the babe settled for grasping onto his finger. At the center of Moroha's right hand was unfathomable heat and light which she pressed against his skin. It was not a Void of light and life, nor a dangerous weapon of hungry wind.

The Wind Tunnel was a cursed weapon too powerful for a single mortal generation. Why would Mother ever give such a dangerous thing to one who did not understand its value? That fool Naraku gave a portal to one of the Nine Voids to his enemy. One of her games, perhaps, granting a seeker what they ask at their own peril.

"Sesshomaru, I swear - " Inuyasha's threat was more quietly uttered. He cut his eyes upwards from the infant's face while he recalled slaying the faceless dark giant on the path to the Underworld, the Guardian feeding the wretched dead to a black sun burning red at the edges...

"Sesshomaru-sama? Your eyes!" Rin clasped her hands together. Her fear stirred him. The priestess held up a looking glass from her pack. The irises had darkened to pure red and pulsated on the edges. His teeth had grown past his lip, cutting into his flesh. The child had caused him to partially transform, a feat which normally took considerable energy.

Yet I feel restored...curious.

To avoid triggering the prepared attacks of those surrounding him, Sesshomaru kneeled slowly. Shippo came forward to take Moroha as he commanded. His vision changed once the child was separate from him, once Moroha was shielded behind the others. The wildness of his appearance withered without his consent, his hair falling flat against his armor, his claws shrinking to their normal size. Inuyasha did not relax.

"The demon tried to eat the child!"

"Wait a minute...Mother - " Miroku kept the Maiden from fleeing. The Maiden was afraid that he was hungry, that she would be eaten next, that without her hagoromo she would be helpless against the vicious demon on the mountain unable to resist the Black Sky, that he would kill Miroku and take his skin. She invoked one of his mother's honorifics to ask for her protection. Something about his aura kept them alarmed. The fire-cat still had her hackles raised. The younger Higurashi was pulling back on his sister's kimono saying it was not safe.

The elder sister was a warrior priestess skilled enough with a bow, skilled enough to shoot the buckles off his armor from across a field, but the Higurashi boy had the look of one with no knowledge of demons or spirits. This 'Souta' did not know how to navigate the forest or hold a weapon. He could sense none of the spiritual powers of the monk within the youngest son.

The monk sired two daughters. Perhaps the trait is passed through the female heirs? A peculiarity of the Maiden's blood in their line.

"One does not expect, at such an age, to encounter something new," Bokusenō pondered. The mighty voice of the magnolia quelled the humans' fear temporarily. The upper boughs shifted. If he listened, he could hear the great roots under the ground stretching and twisting. "Ninety-nine generations between the cursed great-great-grandfather and the princess? What blood games are these? Hmm-hmm..."

"Silence." Sesshomaru commanded when the group threatened to bay again. He closed his eyes to listen carefully to the wind and the roots. Father had warned him not to disturb Bokusenō when the spirit sought fresh answers from the bones and souls of the dead. It could feed on the knowledge and energy of generations but eons had made him tired of the answers it found.

Rin screamed when the ground began to crumble in a circle at the base of the trunk. There was a hollow, clinking sound while the roots raised a pile of bones to the earth's surface. Shippo hurried forward to save the shredded leather pack that arose with the human dead. The monk hurried to attention when they discovered the rolled animal parchments and stone tablets contained within. A copper sword was brittle from age and the damp. An oxidized metal bowl.

"This junk is pretty old, is that from the Continent?" Shippo scoffed. He snapped his fingers to make the floating fox-fire brighter.

"This is a star chart for divining the future, although I cannot read it," Miroku sighed. He was careful when opening a book crafted from refined gold. There was silence when he turned the bound stone page, then flipped to the next. The inscriptions were worn from time, but Sesshomaru's eyesight was perfect. The ritual inside seemed to beseech a deity to bestow a blessing on its servant in exchange for a price. The man lifted his hands in panic once he recognized the creature inside.

"Taizen Fukan No Sai," Bokusenō rumbled. "A cursed ritual for the desperate...yes. One of the Emperor's men was a practitioner of onmyōdō. He offered his life to whichever spirit fulfilled his request. He invoked Amatsu-Mikaboshi, god of stars, to guide their Emperor. The fool did not realize the request offers one's soul to the meidō, and the Dread Star who resisted Kuni-yuzuri has no use for anything in the lower realms. It accepted his offered to escape the Underworld, but they fought it…"

"They ask forgiveness here, because 'we could not force it back to hell, so we imprisoned it here in Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni'," Miroku finished. "'The spirit we encountered desires nothing more than to obliterate all souls in life and death and ascend back to Takamagahara to reek its revenge on the amatsukami who thrust it down into hell in the first place.'"

"Shit...yeah, that's the bastard," Inuyasha sighed. "Does it say anything about how they stuffed him in that mountain?"

"Not particularly...no."

Rin stood back quietly and patiently while the adults around her argued in the darkness, lit only by the eerie blue and green lights of fox-fire. The child he had guarded in the Warring Era had never liked to dwell in caves or wander away in the night. Rin noticed his attention and smiled reflexively, but it was forced from habit to please him, to cause him as little concern as a helpless human could. He did not like to see her looking so lost. Rin approached him with her hands folded nervously over her ribs.

"Did you ever miss me, Sesshomaru-sama?"

It was a simple question but it unbalanced him. He could do little more than stare into her hopeful brown eyes. Rin...the starving orphan child dressed in rags spying on a wounded demon in the forest. The girl who had returned to her village without raising alarm about the monster haunting the woods after seeing its true face. Stolen half-cooked fish had cost the girl a brutal beating from her caretakers. Then she had laughed. And died. The minions of the Underworld were poking their weapons at her mutilated corpse, waiting for her soul to emerge, to be reborn or lost to him forever. What would he do when she inevitably died her final death?

Sorrow and fear.

It was a mortal weakness to dwell on the fear of death and the hope of reincarnation. A human lived less than a single century.

"...she will defy death many times...A Suzaku is born with creation magic that extends her years."

The monk and his slayer wife had been older when last they had met. On his next pass, Kohaku reported them dead, and he had never questioned their fate. Did the young slayer know that a demon had somehow hidden their souls from the minions of the Underworld and preserved their bodies for five centuries? Their youth had been restored by drinking the fruits from Mother's garden.

Sesshomaru bent his ear when the women suggested the group break their fast. The timekeeper promised it was past mid-morning despite the light. Invitations of food were offered but he ignored all. Their provisions were meager but the mortals would live. The resurrected monk and slayer were glad to have a moment to interchange with their companions about the old village in Edo. Famine, war, drought, demons, foreign traders -

Shippo allowed the human pair to examine his tails and claws with pride. The kitsune had undergone many years of training to build his strength. He was a rare demon who had lived among mortals and knew their ways. Several generations of this Higurashi clan had accepted his role as Guardian to their brood. The boy was now a skilled illusionist with an excellent understanding of human warfare. A kitsune could gather an impressive amount of intelligence in silence. And if he had ever doubted the loyalty of Inuyasha's orphaned kitsune, decades of service had washed them away, although he did not approve being made nurse-mother to ordinary hounds.

It is good that the beast had the sense to follow Rin's scent to the shrine, to the graveyard. She is ours to protect in this world or the next.