Heian Kyo is the largest city on the island; it's not like the ones on the continent, according to people who have crossed the sea, but it's still beyond anything that Michizane imagined.
In the valley, most people worked in fields, and the connection to the land was quite strong. Their lives were built around planting seasons and livestock work. They woke up when the sun rose and went to sleep when it set most of the time. All year long, they diligently worked to preserve food for the winter.
People living in the city were living completely different lives.
There were timekeepers at temples and shrines that would ring bells at a specific time of the day when everyone would awaken, and bells that would ring to tell them when midday was, and evening.
Rural places were quiet and still during winter because they worked hard all year to prepare for the unproductive time, but city dwellers were considerably more active. Instead of chopping their own firewood, huge carts would come through stacked high with chopped, dried wood, and people would buy it in bundles, perhaps only enough for a day or two at a time.
There were public bathrooms and bathhouses where anyone could go for a hot bath, even in winter.
The market had plenty of preserved food for sale, because city dwellers didn't stockpile months of food and instead bought from stockpiles run by merchants with their earnings from whatever trade they did. None of them are farmers; they are all doing something: metal workers and smiths, store employees, silk spinners, cooks, ink masters, paper makers, craftsman that sold all kinds of pottery or wooden bowls or knot ornaments.
Since people were busy rushing to their work, there were places to buy prepared food, and it seemed normal and common for people to do that. A man working on the side of the street was selling meat skewers and rice bowls, so Michizane sat and ate at his stall only to find the gold coins that he was sent with were very high denomination currency and he had to trade some for lower denomination currency just to pay the cook, who was very forgiving about everything.
The people in the city seemed a lot healthier than the people in the valley, maybe because they were encouraged to have miso soup and an egg at every meal, and meat once per day. They were also able to buy different preserved fruits and vegetables. There were little dried, sweetened yuzu snacks that everyone seemed convinced kept people healthy.
Lord Tanashiro's pet pigs certainly looked vibrant, so Michizane was willing to believe it.
As a sorcerer, he'd always eaten better than any of the peasants because the lord didn't want his prize fighters to be weak or small, but he was well aware of the fact that basically everyone else suffered from varying restrictions on their diet.
Keeping slaves was evidently against the law and punishable by death in Katsuragi's lands, so when he said he was a sorcerer-slave to the inn keeper, he was informed that he was only a slave if he went back home. If he simply never returned to Tanashiro's lordship, he was free.
Surely, Tanashiro knew that when he sent him, but Tanashiro also knew that he was deeply connected to many people in the valley and that he would never abandon them.
He checks into an inn, where he receives a room to himself with a fireplace at the center, access to shared toilets and a bath, and two meals per day.
After arriving, he washes his other change of clothes in a tub offered by the inn and hangs them up by the fire in his room.
It's comfortable, and since he receives dinner with his room, he heads to the main hall and eats again, a hearty stew with fish with rice and pickled vegetables. As a teenage boy, he would accept any extra food offered.
After a long, deep sleep in a comfortably warm room, full of good food, he awakes and prepares for the task of delivering Tanashiro's letter to Lord Katsuragi in the castle at the center of the city.
He's freshly bathed, puts on his clean clothes, has his breakfast, and then bundles up and heads out into the cold in order to head to the castle. Thankfully, it's so tall that it's easy to spot from anywhere nearby and getting there is just a matter of navigating a few stone-lined streets.
When he arrives, guards at the big gate ask him who he is and what his business is, and when he tells them that he is Lord Tanashiro's armor bearer and he has come with a letter from his lord, he is granted access to the castle grounds and taken to a tearoom with a big irori at the center, quite grand and incredibly warm.
He waits so long that he ends up putting a few more pieces of wood on the fire and stirring it occasionally.
Since he's shown up without an appointment, it's not surprising that people might have been busy doing something else. Besides, after a long journey in freezing weather, sitting next to a fire is quite comfy.
When Lord Katsuragi joins him, he comes with an entourage of advisers and staff, and Michizane bows very low as he holds the still-sealed scroll up for Katsuragi to receive.
Katsuragi is younger than Michizane expects, maybe only in his thirties, and someone who inherited these lands rather than building them through conquest. His inky hair is pinned up with jeweled hair sticks with a crane ornament, and his robes are deep purple, a sign of extraordinary wealth considering the cost of purple pigments.
After introductions, they all take places on the mats surrounding the irori, with Michizane directly across from the lord. He is flanked on each side by military officials, and the rest of the spots are filled with political advisers.
Lord Katsuragi breaks the seal on the scroll and then unrolls it and begins reading it rather than having it read aloud to everyone there.
Michizane feels quite tense and nervous because he doesn't know how the letter is going to be received. Just from staying one single day in Heian Kyo, he knows that Katsuragi is just a very different sort of person than Lord Tanashiro.
When Katsuragi finishes reading, he rolls the scroll up and bursts out into almost uncontrollable laughter.
His laughter means no one is going to save Tanashiro from Fujiwara and the Ten Shadows.
Katsuragi tosses the scroll into the irori and says, "I hope those monsters kill each other. It would be the best outcome for everyone. I will pen a reply to send back with you. What a waste, to make someone come all this way in the winter to deliver such an absurd request. Do you have lodging here in the city? We can provide accommodation."
"I appreciate the offer, but I am staying at an inn."
More out of curiosity than anything, Katsuragi asks, "You seem disappointed. Are you loyal to your lord?"
Michizane answers, "There are many people in Tanashiro's lands who will suffer as the war spreads into the interior."
Katsuragi finds this answer surprisingly thoughtful, and then, watching the boy with his bandaged face, says, "Are you Tanashiro's little monster?"
"Excuse me, Lord Katsuragi?"
"Let me see your eyes. There is a rumor that Tanashiro has a very powerful young slave with an unusual ability involving his eyes, which are typically covered in bandages."
The teenager pulls at the cloth and as it falls around his neck, his piercing, glowing blue eyes meet the lord's.
Katsuragi says, "Is it true that you're able to see things that others cannot?"
"Well, these eyes don't just make me handsome," he quips, unsure if this crowd will be amenable to his usual tactics.
Katsuragi laughs. "Why not stay here in lands where you are free?"
"I have people back home who need me. I grew up at Tanashiro's castle, so if he is overcome, most of the people that have been part of my life would perish."
"Does that include your lord?"
Sugawara knows if intelligence about Six Eyes made it to these people, there might really be spies around, so he's not willing to reveal his true feelings about Tanashiro, instead answering, "I am a slave. Tanashiro owns my life and therefore does not require my loyalty."
Katsuragi couldn't be less interested in extending a lifeline to Tanashiro, but he'd certainly like to save this young sorcerer, a rising star in a falling kingdom.
Katsuragi asks, "I want to tell you a story, about something that happened in the time of our great grandfathers. The elder of the Fujiwara clan at the time had the same technique as Kenji Fujiwara, and my ancestor possessed the Dragon's Breath technique as I do. Do you know all of the Ten Shadows?"
After considering it, Michizane answers, "I've seen military reports. There are two demon dogs, a toad, a bird, a deer, a tiger, a serpent, an elephant, rabbits, and an ox?"
"The dogs count as one. That only brings you to nine."
This time, he counts on his fingers.
"Lord Tanashiro probably doesn't want anyone to know about the Tenth. But we saw it here in our lands back then."
Michizane has looked at Fujiwara from very distantly and was well aware that there was some very large part of his technique that didn't seem to be accounted for in intelligence reports, but it seemed like that information wasn't a secret to everyone. These people know about whatever it is.
Katsuragi adds, "If Fujiwara becomes certain that he will fall in battle, he will call the Tenth, Mahoraga, and the Tenth will destroy everyone present. Whoever is fighting Fujiwara, all the soldiers on the battlefield, innocent civilians nearby, even Fujiwara himself. Ten Shadows is possibly the oldest sorcery technique known to exist, and most of those who are born with it die in this manner."
When he goes on to describe Mahoraga to the teenager, Michizane realizes that even if Tanashiro was able to overcome Fujiwara, the instant that the tide turned hard enough, Fujiwara would summon what Katsuragi described as a 'harbinger of death' and everyone will die.
If that happens in the valley, Tanashiro's stronghold, it would mean widespread civilian casualties. According to Katsuragi, there's no mathematical path to victory for Tanashiro. No one can defeat Fujiwara without being able to push him to the limit and then being willing to die with him. No matter what, Fujiwara will win his final battle.
It is only during this conversation that Michizane learns that Katsuragi and Fujiwara have had only small skirmishes and no full-blown wars because they agree on many things. According to Katsuragi, Tanashiro was the one who started with Fujiwara, who had been content with the state of his lands when he inherited them. It was Tanashiro who crossed the border and started a lot of trouble.
Tanashiro allowed his soldiers to commit unspeakable atrocities in their lands because at the moment that Fujiwara inherited his lordship, Tanashiro thought he could just conquer him because he was young.
According to Katsuragi, Fujiwara's blistering hatred of Tanashiro and his generals over these atrocities is the key reason he turned out to be such a monster.
Katsuragi finds it interesting that Tanashiro's own armor bearer has been kept in the dark about Mahoraga, and says, "The fact that you do not know about the Tenth should concern you."
"For what reason?"
"Because you are powerful. Probably the only viable means of escape that Tanashiro has is if he raises another sorcerer who is powerful enough to force Fujiwara to summon Mahoraga. If you became that powerful, Mahoraga would kill Fujiwara and it would kill you, and Tanashiro and his sons would still be alive and well. I doubt the fate gave you those eyes just so you could die a pawn in an evil man's game."
Michizane is well aware of the fact that Katsuragi is just another powerful man who wants to use his power, or, at the very least, deprive Tanashiro of its use. Yet it is actually startling to find out that at least according to Katsuragi, Tanashiro is worse than the other lords and no one else in power on the island is so cruel to their subjects.
That's not just propaganda; Katsuragi's people seem happier and healthier and compared to them the people of the valley almost live like animals.
When he inquires about the atrocities that Tanashiro's generals did, he learned that nice old guys that had always been nice to him burned children to death to 'send a message.' They plundered people's homes, murdered men, sold young people into slavery and pocketed the gold for it.
It's only after he leaves the castle that he starts putting things together and realizes that Tsuki, Kyomaru Tanashiro's concubine, probably came to the castle as a result of these raids. When he put together everything he'd heard her say, and things he'd learned about her mother over the years they grew up together, he believed now that her father was probably killed during an invasion and the wife and child were carried off to serve Tanashiro at his castle.
Then as soon as she was kind of a woman, Tanashiro's son 'promoted' her without her asking to a concubine so he could beat her for not doing whatever weird and gross things he wanted to do to her.
Michizane felt like he had failed her when she asked for help, but he still didn't know a better way that he might have answered her.
Maybe Tanashiro really was just the villain?
Katsuragi's reply won't be ready for one week, and Michizane had other things he wanted to do before he left anyway, so he followed the directions he was given to a big archive and presented his letter of recommendation to a young priest, the successor of Master Haru's teacher.
The warning that Tanashiro might try to use him to force Fujiwara to call his harbinger of death was worrisome because Michizane knows that this is exactly the kind of thing that Tanashiro would do. If he could spend the life of one of his subjects to ensure his own survival, he would do that, absolutely, without hesitation or regret. He would create circumstances to try and make it happen.
Michizane focuses his energy on other things, because short of defecting and abandoning everyone, there's not much he could do.
But then even thought it was never suggested, but a little voice suddenly whispers that hecando something. If he became strong enough, he can break his own chains and then use them to strangle his master.
If Tanashiro died, wouldthatsave everyone from Fujiwara? If Fujiwara just wants vengeance, would he go home if the people he wanted to kill were held accountable for their actions?
That was probably a question that only Fujiwara could answer.
Was he a traitor? An assassin? A murderer?
What if he went to speak to Fujiwara?
With his movement ability and Six Eyes, it probably wouldn't be impossible to approach him when he is alone. Of course, Fujiwara might use the opportunity to kill him, and it was betrayal, and Michizane doesn't think everything is about him.
He lacks the imagination to see himself as a decider of fates and still, in his mind, sees himself a young slave. And that being the case, he knows every slave probably thinks about killing his master sometimes.
So for the moment, he pushes all of that out of his mind since he will only have a few days to absorb all the information that he can from the vast library of knowledge in this place.
When he unrolls the first scroll concerning the peculiar nature of everything, he's not sure what to expect, and he was worried that he might not be able to read older texts. But somehow, it works, and his mind starts to open.
As it turns out, this weird 'everythingness' he seems to sense is a very real thing that intelligent people have theorized about.
It is here that he first sees a symbol inked on the page in relation to this, one that might just mean a really big number or something that goes on and on. It was a little difficult to write, lots of strokes, but that somehow seems appropriate for something that means…
Limitless.
He was expecting a long and arduous search, but the first scroll he opened blew his mind wide open to all the things he'd been trying to explain. Well, maybe not all of them. He still couldn't convince anyone that everything in the world was made from little dots that he could very clearly see or that the sun also had special invisible energy, but things were happening for him.
XXX
On the same day that Michizane begins to achieve enlightenment that will lead to his ascension, life at the shrine takes a sudden and sharp turn in the middle of the night.
After going to bed early the prior evening, citing a sense of malaise, Master Haru died in his sleep.
His death was discovered immediately, instead of in the morning when he might have been late for breakfast.
The idol's powerful aura caused Momo to awaken quite suddenly and concerned that sorcerers or cursed spirits might be attracted to the idol, she runs to the chamber in her socks.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows that the only way for the barrier to fail would be for Master Haru to release the barrier from the world or for Master Haru himself to have been released from the world.
"Please go check on Master! And don't come any closer to the idol!" she calls to Ayame.
Ayame can feel her heart pounding in her chest, probably due to whatever was happening in the room at the of the hall. She knows that Master Haru will know what to do, and after knocking on his door and hearing no answer, decides she will enter anyway.
"Excuse me, Master! I am entering!"
When she slides the door open, he doesn't move, and when she kneels beside the bed and gently shakes him, nothing happens. Reaching for his hand, she finds it completely limp, although still warm, because he has been deceased only for a few minutes.
Was he breathing?
Her mind plays tricks on her at first, and she would swear she could see his chest rising and falling, but the movement is just her own, as her breathing speeds up.
And then Ayame's mind goes for another loop, and she thinks about how he said he wasn't feeling well before bed, so all he needed was a hot cup of tea. There were some dried healing herbs from the mountain.
Ayame is wandering to the kitchen in the dark when it suddenly hits her, and she looks down the hall, to the room where Momo is chanting like her life depends on it.
He's dead. Gone. The man who took her in, took her sister in, and lovingly raised them even though they were worth so little to whoever brought them into the world.
It's not just that—scary things are happening now.
She doesn't have the power to help Momo, and Master can't be helped.
What is she supposed to do, exactly?
Since she doesn't know, she goes and sits down beside Master Haru's bed, pulling the covers over him as if she's worried that he'll get cold, even though she knows that's what happens when people leave the world.
In the chamber, the eyes the dark idol glow red, and Master Haru's seal papers, now torn, blow all around the room like there is a tornado.
This isn't the default state of this object; when it was created, it was probably mostly inert, but two centuries ago, sorcerers in this area damaged it and since then, it has been sealed away in this shrine, kept by a succession of sorcerers and priests who dedicated their lives to containing the idol's power.
Master Haru's work is replaced by hers as she leverages all of her power and silences the dark idol once again, the pedestal replaced by seal papers inked in her penmanship instead of her master's.
It's more than two hours before the crisis passes, and when it does, her power is exhausted, as if she's never been so tired in her life.
With the immediate panic over, she walks to her master's room and finds Ayame kneeling next to his bed, holding one of his hands. Tears are streaming down her face, and down onto her sleeping robes.
"Momo?"
"I know," she rasps, her voice thin and ragged from chanting maybe louder than she needed to.
Ayame asks, "Are you thirsty?"
She nods.
"I'll get you something."
She brings cool water and hot tea to quench her thirst and sooth her throat, and they stay there, in the room, sitting with their master.
He was an old man, so of course they'd thought about what would happen whenever he wasn't around anymore, but they weren't ready for that time to suddenly arrive. It didn't seem fair, or right, or anything like that.
Master Haru spent most of his life helping others, and his later years taking care of them, two babies that were thrown away like garbage.
Momo lays down on the floor next to him and sleeps, and Ayame does the same, like they did when they were little.
They didn't have a father, but they had him, and to them, that was even better. He did more for them than most fathers did, allowing them to learn how to read and have their own dreams and personalities. With him, they were always free and safe.
When morning comes, they are left with the weight of reality. The only parent that they had ever known, who had loved them from birth and helped them grow and learn was gone. His corpse was right there, and they had to deal with it—they had to deal with their father's corpse.
Momo is still exhausted from her efforts to the point that she can barely move her body, and Ayame knows she has done so much already.
They cremated a traveler who died at the base of the mountain a couple of years ago; the shrine has the facilities to do this because the presence of the dark idol means that bodies might become tainted with cursed energy and shouldn't be brought down from the mountain.
Momo says, "Because he was a sorcerer, we should have cremated him right away. We can't wait. We have to. The death of a powerful sorcerer can lead to the birth of a vengeful spirit. Especially since after he died, energy from the idol probably tainted the body."
"Master wouldn't hurt us."
"The thing that would be born would not be Master. When a powerful sorcerer dies, it is a requirement that they be cremated right away or pierced in the head or heart with a cursed tool. We failed to do either. Let's use his dagger right away and then take him out and cremate the body," she says, her voice stern, but at the same time, shaking like her hands.
Momo knows they've made a terrible mistake, leaving a dead, powerful sorcerer close to a very dangerous cursed object that was actively able to affect them during a part of the prior evening.
Ayame knows Momo is absolutely right, and that doesn't make anything she's saying less difficult or traumatic. She doesn't have a technique, and there are many things she cannot help with, but they go together to where Master Haru's dagger is kept, usually a hidden compartment in the floor, but when they open it, it's missing.
The dagger is currently in Michizane's pack, just in case he needed it in his travels.
It's the only cursed weapon at the shrine, and they scramble, thinking they lifted the wrong floorboard even though they can clearly see where it usually rested.
If they can't find the dagger, there's not another weaponizable cursed object on the premises. The only usable source of cursed energy to damage a body would be for Momo to simply hit him with a burst of her cursed energy, which would be…horrific. It would probably make a terrible mess and do gruesome damage to the body.
In the back of Momo's mind, she knows she should turn down the hall and do it right away. She doesn't think that her master could become a vengeful spirit, but she knows the body was exposed to the dark idol.
Their delay is dangerous.
While they look for a dagger that's not there, they suddenly hear a scraping sound on the floor, coming from the master's room. The presence of the cursed spirit fills the space, and with it, a sense of horror and fear.
Momo says, "Ayame, take the horse, ride as fast as you can, and tell Lord Tanashiro what has happened. I will try to fight, and if I'm not able to do that, I will at least try to keep the vengeful spirit from leaving the mountain until he can send someone."
This is certainly a situation Lord Tanashiro can resolve. He is a powerful sorcerer, after all.
Momo's powers aren't really for fighting; she's good at barriers and concealment and all that, but she's not like Master Haru and Michizane when it comes to directly fighting. Vengeful spirits are powerful, frightening.
Ayame is once again faced with the fact that she is mostly useless and really can't help Momo do anything. The idea of racing down the mountain is actually quite scary and dangerous, but a vengeful spirit terrorizing the valley is much worse.
Right now, she can be helpful.
Getting her shoes on as fast as she can, she throws her coat on as she leaps atop Master Haru's horse.
She doesn't make it very far before a deafening sound comes from the shrine, and she turns to see pieces of it flying off the side of the mountain.
A piece of shrapnel hits the horse on the leg, and it tumbles as it throws her, both going down the side of the mountain. Momo senses that Ayame has stopped moving outside, further down the mountain than she could have ridden, which could only mean one thing: she fell.
She fell.
She fell off the mountain—the steep mountain covered in sharp rocks, ice, and snow.
Momo cares more for her sister than she does about anyone else, and even though she knows it is morally wrong to abandon the protection of the valley to help Ayame, she decides to do it anyway.
But the vengeful spirit won't let her flee from it.
At the castle, Lord Tanashiro senses an incredible disturbance coming from the mountain, and summons a horse right away. He has no idea what might be going on there, but it certainly wasn't good. The dark idol's keepers were not people who sought its power, so he doubted they'd done anything with it. The amount of cursed energy churning around the mountain really could only mean that a very powerful cursed spirit had made its way to the shrine, which might happen if the barriers weakened, or maybe a powerful sorcerer was fighting the priest for custody of the dark idol.
This was sorcery, so it was always possible that some other more horrible thing was happening.
When he got to the base of the mountain, he continued on foot because his super strength technique allowed him to ascend quickly and more easily than he might be able to go up on the horse.
At the top of the mountain, the shrine is totally destroyed.
There's a girl with brown hair hanging bent over from a tree branch, blood oozing out of a massive abdominal wound where a piece of a broken door has gone fully through her abdomen. There's powerful residue from her all over the area; her powers were significant, but not enough.
In the rubble of the shrine, there is a cursed spirit with a decidedly human appearance. It was ghastly, like a human with no skin, eyes out of its sockets and floating in front of its face, the hands deformed into strange claws.
"Girl, is that a vengeful spirit?"
Momo barely manages to nod.
She knows how long it takes to ride from the castle to the mountain, so she knows time has passed that she has been unconscious.
The lord pulls her down from the tree branch by the foot and lays her on the ground.
"Do not pull the wood from your belly. Based on where it is sitting, you will bleed to death immediately as soon as it comes out."
Vengeful spirits were not their former selves, but rather, vicious, feral echoes. What echoed from Master Haru's heart was a hatred for the cruel and cold lord for all the ways the people of the valley had suffered all those years as he stayed at the shrine.
He hated Tanashiro for the danger that his world posed to the people he cared about, for his callousness, for a world of horror and hopelessness that he carefully and purposefully made with his own greed.
Momo would sob from the pain, but she barely manages to take a hiccup of a breath every few seconds. She doesn't want to breathe. She's so cold, but she can feel the warmth of the blood as it oozes around the wound.
She thought she was getting strong, but right now, she just feels like a lost little girl on the inside, crying for her father to save her, even though all of this is happening because they failed him.
Tanashiro is ten times stronger than she is, maybe more, and he fights the vengeful spirit with no fear of death even though she had utterly failed. She was the reason the vengeful spirit had come into existence, she had not defeated or contained it, and she had not helped Ayame.
This shrine is two centuries old, guarded generation by generation, by priests like Master Haru who basically dedicated their lives to protecting the world from the dark idol. That was his life's work, and even though he managed to die peacefully in his sleep, a good death, she failed him.
He had turned, the shrine was in ruins, and the dark idol's seal papers were simply blowing away in the wind as the idol was lost somewhere in the rubble.
Momo tries to crawl to where she knows Ayame is, but knows there's no way she'd get halfway down the mountain in this state, and even if she did, what then?
Her body fails her, and she slips from consciousness again while Tanashiro fights an evolving vengeful spirit whose rage is singularly aimed at him.
Yet, he is a powerful sorcerer, and he does win, despite injuries.
The battle is violent, and part of the mountain is knocked off, tumbling down toward the valley. Once the matter is settled, and reinforcements arrive, he sends the young sorcerer to the castle for treatment.
Tanashiro's best guess is the right one; the old priest died and turned. Maybe he died in his sleep, and they didn't know for hours, maybe his death caused the dark idol to awaken and that caused it. The lord was oblivious to the real and actual hate that the old priest felt toward him, so he did not consider the fact that perhaps Haru Tengen simply hated him that much.
While he is being bandaged at the site, one thing that he notes is that even though the seal was fully broken by the battle, he can't sense the dark idol at all. It has a very powerful and prominent presence to anyone inside of the shrine even while sealed, so it doesn't really make sense that unsealed, it would be so quiet.
Tanashiro searches for it and finds that the dark idol has been broken into two halves.
There's some lingering technique, perhaps whatever was used to seal away the terrifying power that used to be inside, but that power was gone.
What happened to the power that had been inside of the dark idol? Was it destroyed? Did it escape? Had it moved to a different vessel on its own?
Tanashiro orders his sorcerers to collect and seal the two halves of the broken idol, although it seems pointless.
It seems like the most reasonable conclusion is that the statue was broken and the power inside was released to the vengeful spirit, but Tanashiro didn't really feel like that curse wasthat powerful. The idea that priests had spent two hundred years fearing a power no greater than a strong vengeful spirit was a bit silly.
There's no dark idol to protect, and even if there was, there was no shrine to protect it.
The rumor was that there had been two girls on the mountain with Master Haru, but he can only sense the one that tried quite bravely to contain the vengeful spirit. There aren't any presences anywhere nearby, so the other girl either wasn't there or she died and was either eaten or her corpse is somewhere under the snow.
He doesn't know the other girl fell down the steep side of the mountain, so Ayame is left halfway down the freezing mountain where she landed on a huge rock and cracked her head open.
That night, after everyone has left the mountain, a fur trapper begins a difficult ascent up the mountain.
There is a breed of wild rabbits who live only in these mountains that grow long, snow-white plush coats in the winter. This isn't uncommon among rabbits, but the rabbits here and only here grow the most beautiful coats. Their summer coats are brown and quite unextraordinary, so trapping them in pleasant weather isn't particularly useful.
Called 'Silken Mountain Rabbits' as a tradeable commodity, part of what makes them so extraordinarily expensive is the fact that they don't tolerate captivity, they only live in these steep, dangerous mountains, special traps have to be used to not damage the furs, and once they are trapped, it is a race to get to them before the giant owls or wolves.
The mountain with the shrine is the best place to trap because the shrine maidens plant little gardens for the rabbits even though they sometimes find his traps and get rid of them.
The trapper has no idea what happened on the mountain, but there was some sort of fight involving a sorcerer and he saw the lord's flag, indicating he was up on the mountain at some point. A chunk of the mountain facing the village had completely come off and fallen into the valley, but the other side of the mountain where his traps were was mostly okay.
When he makes it to a narrow little rocky outcropping where some of his traps are, he is surprised to find that there is a woman there.
Just from the pink hair, he knows its one of the shrine maidens. He has seen her many times as he watches his traps. It looked like she fell off the seep side of the mountain and rolled until she hit the outcropping.
The girl has a massive wound to her skull that is bad enough that if he met a wild animal with an injury like that, he would have put it out of his misery. Yet from the vapor around her mouth, he can tell that she is miraculously still breathing.
Unsure of what he should do with this information, he considers bringing her down the mountain and leaving her at one of the farms, but as a man who risks his life very day to collect find things for rich people, he knows that pink hair is so incredibly rare that he has never seen it before. Just her hair alone is probably more valuable than dozens of rabbit furs.
He considers cutting it and leaving her, but he also knows that if she doesn't die, she'd be even more valuable. While he's not into the trade of people, he knows that on a good day, this girl is one of the most beautiful people he has ever seen with his own eyes.
The trapper secures her to him like he would carry a larger animal carcass down a mountain and carries her back to his camp with the intention of selling her or worst case scenario, her hair, to the merchant who buys his fur.
XXX
When Momo awakens days later, when she tries to get up, the pain is unbearable. She remembers the pain of being stabbed through the middle and losing consciousness on the mountain. It's all very hazy for her at first, but then she remembers.
A nurse comes in to tend to her and tells her it would be good for her to get up and walk a little, but the pain is so intense. She's never experienced anything so terrible, and she wants Master Haru.
If he was there, he would know what to do.
Tears start to blur her vision, and she asks, "Is my sister well?"
"Who?"
"The other girl who was staying at the shrine. Ayame."
The nurse answers, "You're the only one that was brought back here."
"Was she okay then? Did she go to stay with someone in the valley, maybe?"
Since the nurse has no idea what she's talking about, she's somewhat dismissive, like maybe she's a little delirious.
Tanashiro wanted to speak to her when she woke up, so it's not long before he enters the room where she is being cared for. He wanted to know what happened, and more specifically, what had happened to the dark idol.
Momo tearfully tells him about the last night at the shrine, and he realizes that all of this happened because the girls were weak and sentimental. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he feels this reinforces his belief that women don't belong in any position of power. While he had previously had a strong interest in cultivating Momo Tengen's abilities because they were quite powerful, hearing what happened changes his mind.
To him, women born with sorcery abilities really were only good for building bloodlines, but with Momo's injury, he doubts she will ever fulfill that purpose.
Momo desperately wants to know what happened to Ayame, confirming that there was another girl up on the mountain when the attack started.
Tanashiro tells Momo that they didn't see anyone else, and no one had been brought in. It had been five days since the incident, with brutal freezing temperatures, and even a snowstorm a few days prior.
If the other girl fell down the mountain, if the fall didn't kill her, the cold certainly had by then. If she'd been able to move, she would have sought help at one of the farms at the bottom of the mountain, and if she couldn't move, she certainly died. The fact they didn't hear anyone calling for help while investigating the site meant that the girl was either dead or unconscious for a span of hours after the battle, and once again, regardless of cause, the cold would have killed her.
Momo begins to mentally unravel, realizing Ayame fell off the horse because she told her to ride for help, but that wasn't even necessary because Lord Tanashiro came anyway. In other words, Momo asked Ayame to risk her life forno reason, and she fell and either died from the fall or froze to death after.
And the only reason any of that happened was because she had been too weak to do her duty. Everything had fallen apart, and she didn't know if a person was aware of themselves when they turned into a vengeful spirit, but she hoped not. She hoped her master did not experience becoming a monster…existing in that vile state and hurting them.
In mere hours, all of it was gone.
Momo sobs uncontrollably, shaking, like her soul is trying to come out of her body, and it hurts her injury so badly, but she feels like she deserves to feel that pain.
When Michizane makes it back to the valley even days after that, carrying Lord Katsuragi's rejection letter and knowledge that will change his world and everyone else's, he is eager to visit the shrine and tell them all about his adventure in the big city.
Yet when he arrives at the shrine, he is shocked and confused.
Nothing is left.