Chapter 9: What Lurks Beneath
I hope you enjoy! This is my longest chapter so far!
The air feels different when they return to the village. Not tense—but hollow, like something sacred has been disturbed and left to rot in silence. Kagome slows as she walks directly behind Inuyasha, her gaze flickering over his shoulder in the direction of the small shrine they had gone to the previous night. She can only see bits and pieces of it hidden through the trees, but the parts she can see, don't look the way she remembers. The place looks more put together, like a facade to hide its true conditions. Grass has withered in a neat circle around it. The air hums faintly.
"That's not how we left it," Kagome says quietly.
Inuyasha's ears twitch. "Something was here."
Before they can go further in to find the group of villagers they talked to yesterday, to discuss last night's events, shouting breaks through the village's morning calm. A man stumbles into view, clutching his bleeding shoulder, his eyes wide and wild. He heavily pants as he reaches them.
"Please—you have to help us! It's attacking my village—just north of here! It's already destroyed half of it—people are—"
He doesn't finish. Kagome's breath catches.
There it is again—that pull. Not the same as the well or the sacred tree. This one is jagged, urgent, like something ripping through time and memory. Kagome feels her chest swell with blind rage, but from whatever she is feeling and not her own emotions. Whatever it is, it is angry.
"I feel it," she whispers. "It's coming from there."
Inuyasha catches the scent of blood on the wind. Human. And a lot of it. A strong whiff of a demonic presence coats it, the scent eerily similar to what he has been smelling since they arrived.
With no hesitation, Inuyasha crouches down in front of Kagome. "Hang on."
She climbs onto his back without question, arms tightening around his shoulders. Sango and Miroku are already mounting Kilala. Sango notices a villager peeking out from behind a door, and locks eyes on them.
"Please, take care of this man while we go help the village!"
With that, the group descends in the direction of Kagome's feeling and Inuyasha's smell. Kilala, Sango, and Miroku follow directly above.
"Let's move."
The smoke reaches them first.
It coils above the treetops in thick, ugly plumes—black against the blue sky, staining the horizon like a wound. The village is too quiet.
Inuyasha lands at the village's edge in a low crouch, Kagome still clinging to his back. Even before they step past the line of broken fencing, Kagome knows something is wrong. She holds tighter to Inuyasha's haori as he slows to a halt, the scent of smoke and scorched earth drifting through the air.
There's no sound at first. Just the crackle of burning wood. The silence is worse than screaming.
The houses closest to the entrance are half-collapsed, their thatched roofs blackened, beams scorched down to their skeletal frames. The wind carries the sharp, acrid smell of burning wood—and something else, something metallic and foul that curls in her nose and turns her stomach.
Blood.
Inuyasha stiffens beneath her. "It's fresh," he mutters. "They weren't gone long."
Buildings are broken, some still on fire. Roofs caved in. Fences shattered. A cart lies overturned in the road, a single wheel spinning lazily. The scent of blood clings to everything, thick and metallic and impossible to ignore.
Kagome covers her mouth. "This is horrible…"
Kagome slides off his back, landing on shaky legs. She steps forward cautiously, eyes scanning the village. She doesn't see bodies yet, but she sees the signs. Gouges ripped into the earth. Claw marks shredded into the wood. Pools of dark red staining the dirt paths where people should have been walking.
Her hands tremble slightly. Not enough to be visible—but enough for her to feel it.
She hasn't seen something like this in years. Not since Naraku. Not since the battles that used to leave her breathless and bruised, clutching her bow with trembling fingers, praying she could do something to help.
And now… it's back.
Kagome swallows. Her heart beats a little faster. She didn't expect it to feel this real again, this raw. The shards, the power, the echo—it was all theory until now. But this? This devastation is what she remembers.
Kilala touches down a breath later, her paws skimming ash as Sango and Miroku dismount. Sango and Miroku dismount from Kilala, their expressions tight and serious.
They move forward cautiously, stepping over debris, eyes scanning what's left of the village. A body lies near a doorway—an older man, his hand still reaching toward the inside of the home he'd never make it back to. A child's toy is crushed beneath a collapsed beam. There are no cries for help. No survivors in sight.
"They didn't stand a chance," Miroku says grimly.
"Whatever did this," Inuyasha mutters, "it's still close."
Kaede's words echo faintly in Kagome's mind—about memory, about lingering power. Her fingers twitch. That pulling sensation is stronger now, sharp and disorienting, like it's tugging at something deeper than her bones. She can feel it here. The shards. Their residue. The energy is twisted, bitter, and wrong. And it's not just left behind—it's active.
Her voice trembles when she speaks.
"Inuyasha," she says quietly, "it's still here."
He doesn't respond with words. Just a small nod as his hand reaches for Tessaiga's hilt.
Suddenly, the ground shakes.
A scream cuts through the air—shrill and desperate—and Kagome flinches.
Then something crashes through the far end of the village, toppling one of the remaining homes. Wood splinters. Roof tiles explode into the air. A shadow moves—massive, hulking, wrong. The youki hits her in a wave, heavy and pulsing, tainted with something that feels too old to belong.
A low growl echoes through the village, rising from somewhere beyond the smoke. Trees crack in the distance. A guttural roar splits the air, and a hulking shape moves through the haze—large, fast, and definitely not human.
Sango steps forward, hand on Hiraikotsu. "Youkai."
Inuyasha bares his fangs. "About time it showed itself."
The trees at the far end of the village crack and splinter.
Then the creature steps out and shows itself.
It lumbers into view on all fours, its body twisted and misshapen. Limbs too long. Its face barely resembles anything human or beast—just a mass of eyes and jaws, all gnashing teeth and bubbling breath. Each eye is blinking independently. Blood stains its claws, and its back is hunched, its body bloated and slick. A patchwork of scales and bone covers its body that seems to shudder with each breath, twitching unnaturally as if the bones beneath it can't decide what shape they want to hold.
A hulking youkai with sinewy limbs and an unnatural number of eyes, each one blinking independently. And embedded in its chest—just below its throat—is a shard.
Kagome stumbles back a step.
It's not the size or the sound that stops her.
It's the glow.
The shard pulses from within the youkai's chest, just below its throat, throbbing like a second heart. The light spills through its skin—sickly blue and vibrant, like a heartbeat she can see.
There's a pressure in her head that makes her wince, like something trying to push inside.
Sango moves in front of her, protective. "Kagome?"
"I can see it," Kagome breathes. "The shard… it's completely taken over."
The youkai snarls again and charges.
Inuyasha draws Tessaiga in one smooth motion. "Get back—now!"
The group scatters as the creature slams through a burned house, sending shards of wood flying. Dust clouds the air. Kagome dives to the side, heart hammering. She hasn't seen anything like this in years—and never this close, this raw. Her senses are spinning, the old instincts returning like muscle memory.
Once it passes, the three look up to see what's going on. Kagome's breath catches.
It looks back at them with a grin too wide for its face. And suddenly, the last three years feel like a dream she's just woken up from.
The youkai rears back, eyes blazing, jaws opening in a guttural screech—
And it charges with a snarl, limbs skimming the ground as it barrels toward them. Its claws tear through dirt and ash, leaving deep furrows behind. Tessaiga hums as Inuyasha swings it up in a wide arc, intercepting the blow mid-leap.
Steel meets flesh.
The clash sends shockwaves through the ground. Inuyasha's feet dig into the dirt, skidding back as he absorbs the impact.
"Get behind me!" he shouts, voice edged with a growl.
Kagome stumbles back, bow half-raised, heart thundering. Her hands shake. Her arrows aren't ready. Her body remembers—but it's slower than it used to be.
Sango moves fast. She darts in from the side, Hiraikotsu already whirling through the air. It slams into the youkai's shoulder, sending it staggering with a guttural screech. A chunk of muscle tears free and splatters across the dirt, but the creature doesn't stop—it just shudders, adjusts, and keeps going.
"Watch its back!" Miroku calls, staff spinning in his hands as he charges forward. "It's regenerating!"
The creature lashes out, and Miroku barely ducks in time. A clawed limb sweeps overhead, taking a chunk out of a charred beam instead. Dust and debris rain down.
Kagome stumbles back from the force of the youkai's roar, fingers tightening around her bow. Her heart pounds. Her breath trembles. But her aim is steady.
Kagome nocks an arrow with trembling fingers, trying to slow her breathing. The shard's glow pulses inside the youkai's chest—wild, unyielding. She narrows her eyes, heart hammering.
She draws.
Energy coils around the arrow in a burst of light—stronger than she remembers. The purified energy hums at her fingertips, the way it used to in battle, only now it feels deeper, richer. Like it's been waiting.
Please hit.
"Inuyasha—move!"
He doesn't hesitate. Inuyasha springs aside just as Kagome exhales and releases.
The arrow flies—white-hot and blinding, its energy crackling like thunder. The purifying light roars through the air, illuminating the smoke-choked village like a flare in the dark. It hits the youkai dead center, embedding in its chest—right where the shard pulses like a second heart.
Kagome stares.
For one split second, she thinks it's enough.
The arrow's impact sends the youkai stumbling back, screeching, claws scrabbling at its chest. Holy energy floods through it, searing flesh and sending a wave of heat rippling through the clearing. And Kagome feels it—feels the strength in the strike. Her power hasn't faded.
It's grown.
The heat of it surges through her, leaving her fingers tingling, her breath stolen.
But Kagome's breath quickly catches.
The shard doesn't purify.
The glow flickers but doesn't fade. The creature snarls, its body already beginning to knit itself back together around the wound. The light from the shard pulses again—brighter, as if mocking her.
Her eyes widen. "That should've purified it…"
Sango's already in motion. She vaults off a low wall, Hiraikotsu raised high. She brings it down in a brutal swing—this time aiming for its exposed neck.
The blow connects before Kagome can process the rest.
The youkai collapses with a shriek that gurgles and dies in its throat. Inuyasha takes advantage of the moment and swings his Tessaiga overhead.
"Wind Scar!"
The youkai's body slumps into the dirt with a final, wet thud, steam rising from the wound carved clean through its chest by Tessaiga. Its many eyes go still. It's remaining body twitches once, then goes still—oozing dark ichor, the shard half-exposed and no longer glowing.
Everything goes quiet.
The air is thick with ash and blood, the village around them silent again—broken and scorched, but still. Only the crackle of fire and the soft hiss of the tainted blood on the ground remain.
Kagome lowers her bow. Her arms ache. Her knees feel weak.
Kagome steps forward slowly, her bow still in hand, breath ragged. She moves past the fallen beams, skirting debris and ash until she reaches what's left of the youkai's chest.
She hesitantly steps forward, toward the shard. The others don't move to stop her. She kneels beside the body, reaching out with cautious fingers.
The shard glows there—dim now, flickering like a dying ember. Her fingers hesitate just over the surface. The glow pulses once.
And then as soon as she touches it—
Something hits her.
A flash. A feeling. An image.
A sharp, sudden pulse behind her eyes—like something cracking open inside her head. Her vision blurs. Her legs wobble. For one terrifying heartbeat, she thinks she's going to collapse.
And then she's not in the village anymore.
She's somewhere else.
It's dusk. The air is warm. She smells rain on stone.
She's standing on the edge of a well. The Goshinboku rises behind her, leaves whispering in the breeze. And Inuyasha is in front of her—arms crossed, golden eyes fixed on her with that guarded look he always wore when trying not to say too much.
"You think I'll forget you."
Then he's gone.
The memory snaps like a frayed thread. Kagome gasps and falls to her knees, the bow slipping from her fingers. It's only a second—but it hits like a wave crashing through her. Her chest tightens. She can't breathe.
She doesn't know if she actually heard his voice in her head—or if it was something the shard pulled from her soul.
But the ache in her chest is real.
Inuyasha's silhouette cuts through the smoke, calling her name, panic rising in his voice. She hears the others, but it all feels distant, muffled. Like she's underwater.
The world blurs. Her eyes burn. She wipes at her eyes, blinking fast, but the tears slip through anyway.
"I'm fine," she says. Her voice cracks anyway.
But she's not. Not really.
She doesn't know why that memory surfaced. It felt far away, unfinished. Like the end of a sentence she was never meant to hear.
Something inside her has shifted. Not broken—just… unmoored.
She looks down at the shard—tainted, stubborn, and still pulsing faintly in the dirt.
Whatever that was… it wasn't just her memory.
It was the shard's.
She sucks in a breath through her teeth, grounding herself in the smell of ash and scorched earth, in the weight of the bow still resting beside her hand. Her fingers curl into the dirt.
Footsteps crunch closer.
"Kagome!" Inuyasha drops to one knee in front of her, claws hovering just shy of touching her shoulders. "Oi—what happened? Are you hurt?"
She shakes her head, wiping at her damp eyes again, but the motion feels slow, disconnected. "No. I just… the shard."
Sango kneels beside her, gaze sharp and worried. "What did it do?"
Kagome forces herself to sit straighter, brushing the dust from her scabbed knees with unsteady hands. She meets their eyes, one at a time—Inuyasha's frantic, Sango's tight with concern, Miroku lingering behind them, watching her with that perceptive quiet he's always had.
"It showed me something," she says softly. "Just for a second. A memory. But it didn't feel like mine. Not completely."
"A memory?" Miroku echoes, stepping closer. "You mean… one of your memories?"
Kagome nods. "From before. Right before I left." Her gaze drops, her voice almost a whisper. "He said I thought he'd forget me."
Silence falls over the group. The look on her face tells them who he was in her dream.
Inuyasha's brows draw together, his voice low. "I said that?"
She doesn't answer right away.
The moment is too raw. Too recent.
Instead, she turns back to the shard still glowing faintly in the dirt. She decides against picking it up—because touching it again right now feels like too much.
"I think the shard did more than just strengthen that youkai," she says finally. "It remembered something. And it wanted me to remember, too."
Inuyasha watches her carefully, his expression unreadable.
Kagome stands, slowly. Her legs are steadier now. But the ache in her chest hasn't left.
And maybe it won't. Not until they understand what these shards really are—what they carry.
Because something about that moment wasn't just memory.
It was loss. It was grief. It was something unfinished.
The wind shifts, carrying the scent of ash and scorched earth past them. Smoke curls from the wreckage, soft crackles the only sound.
Miroku steps closer, eyes still on the shard. "That much power—corrupted, conscious… It shouldn't have been possible. Not for a single fragment."
"It's not just power," Kagome murmurs. "It's memory. Emotion. I felt it."
She looks down at the shard, still pulsing faintly in the dirt like something alive. "It wasn't just showing me something—it felt it. Like it was part of it."
Sango kneels beside her, resting a hand on her shoulder. "Do you think it was your memory? Or something the shard pulled from someone else?"
Kagome's lips part, but no answer comes. She swallows hard. "I don't know. But it felt… real. Like I was living it. Not just remembering it."
Inuyasha's gaze hasn't left her. Instead, his eyes are searching her face for more answers. His hands are clenched at his sides, jaw tight.
"Kagome," he says, voice low, "what did you see?"
She hesitates.
Then, softly: "The well. You. You said… 'You think I'll forget you.' And then it was gone."
The silence that follows is heavier than before. Like the air itself is holding its breath.
Inuyasha doesn't move. But his eyes flicker, just for a moment.
Miroku bends, wrapping the shard carefully in a cloth. "We need to take this to Kaede. Whatever these shards are, they're more than just echoes of the jewel."
"They're pieces of something bigger," Sango adds. "Something that might still be changing."
Kagome nods slowly. Her fingers curl into her palms as she gets back on her feet. "And if that was only one…"
She doesn't finish. She doesn't have to.
Sango and Miroku exchange a glance, quiet but concerned.
None of them say it aloud—but they're all thinking the same thing.
This is only the beginning.
Inuyasha steps closer, his hand brushing her arm—not quite a touch, but close enough to feel. His voice is steady, but quiet. "We'll figure it out. Together."
Kagome nods, blinking back the burn in her eyes. "Yeah."
The smoke rolls higher behind them as they turn toward the path back. The village lies in ruins, but the real wreckage feels deeper—older. Like it's just beginning to surface.
They walk in silence, the shard wrapped carefully in Miroku's hand, pulsing faintly like a second heartbeat.
And behind them, the wind whispers through the ruined village.