Darkness.
Not void—this time, there is texture to it. A cold breath. A weight.
I am no longer falling.
I am not rising either.
I am simply… there.
Lying flat. Lifeless. As if on display.
A faint platform of light supports my body, drifting over an endless sea of black. I try to move, but my limbs refuse. My breath does not come. I am aware. But powerless.
Above me, like mountain peaks breaking through a sunless sky, three chairs emerge from the darkness. Not simple thrones. These are divine seats—formed from pure concept. Power shaped into structure. Will given weight.
One is made of golden sunfire, radiating warmth that does not comfort.
The second is sculpted from storm-cloud stone, thunder locked in every carved line.
The third is hewn from midnight obsidian, draped in coin-shaped talismans and the scent of incense and rice.
And on each throne sits a god.
---
Amaterasu.
The sun incarnate. Radiant. Still. Her eyes are embers, half-lidded with ancient fatigue.
Susanoo.
Storm god. Warrior. Wild. Restless. One hand grips the hilt of a blade that hasn't been drawn in centuries.
Daikokuten.
He of fortune and harvest. Calm. Massive. He watches with unreadable patience, stroking his dark beard as the echoes of fate play behind his eyes.
They speak.
But not to me.
About me.
As if I am not there at all.
---
> "He spits on our name," Susanoo growls, voice like crashing tides. "And yet stands here—because we let him."
> "He was chosen," Amaterasu replies softly. "And he repaid light with blasphemy."
> "He was betrayed," Daikokuten mutters, shaking his head. "Not by us. By man."
> "He cursed me, Daikokuten," Amaterasu says. Her voice remains gentle, but the heat behind it scorches. "He stood in my shrine, spilled blood on sacred stones, and damned my name with his dying breath."
> "Perhaps he believed he was already damned."
> "Then he should have kept his silence."
Their words roll across the void like thunder on a battlefield. I can't speak. My jaw won't move. But inside, my mind is screaming.
You abandoned me.
You watched.
You let it happen.
---
Susanoo leans forward, snarling. "His anger was true. So let it burn him."
Daikokuten sighs. "We must decide. Will he be cast into Yomi as a soul lost? Or given over?"
Amaterasu does not look at me. She doesn't need to.
"I will not speak for him," she says, folding her hands. "Let the Queen of Endings decide. Let her walk him through the silence."
For the first time, fear curls in my gut.
Amaterasu speaks again.
"Izanami-no-Mikoto."
The name is a blade. Cold. Absolute.
And then—
A new presence enters the chamber.
---
Izanami.
Death incarnate.
Not a monster. Not a demon. But no longer a goddess of life.
She arrives not by foot, but by presence—like rot slipping beneath the door, like sleep dragging down the mind.
She does not appear from shadows.
She is the shadow.
Her body is robed in funeral white. Her face is covered in a veil of black gauze. No light touches her. Her voice is dry wind through autumn trees.
She does not look at the gods.
Only me.
> "So small," she murmurs. "So loud."
> "Come, little prince of flame. Let us walk the bones of your fate."
And before I can protest, her hand reaches through space and touches my chest.
It is not cold.
It is the absence of warmth.
Izanami's hand touched my chest—and the world shattered again.
Not violently. Not with light and fury.
But with memory.
The divine platform beneath me crumbled, and I fell—slowly, softly—into a stream of everything I was.
---
We stood at the foot of a hill. The sky was dusky gray, clouds stitched with crimson. Crows circled above.
Beneath us, the past unfolded like a painted scroll.
Izanami did not speak. She walked beside me, quiet as a grave.
The first image appeared.
A child, hunched in the dirt of a temple courtyard. His hands were bleeding from too much training, too many failures. Wooden swords lay broken beside him. Monks whispered from the shadows—about disappointment, about lineage, about how "he lacks the fire."
That child was me.
I reached out to him, but Izanami caught my wrist.
> "Only to see," she murmured. "Never to touch."
I watched as the boy rose and tried again.
And again.
And again.
Bloodied palms, bruised ribs, no father to guide him—only silence and expectation. He fought not for greatness, but to be seen.
---
The scene shifted.
A mountainside in winter. The boy was older now, wrapped in a wolfskin cloak, barely clinging to a ledge.
He had survived three weeks in the wild with no tools, no fire, and no food except what he could kill.
He had done what no child of the temple had done before.
The monks called it "the proving."
But I remembered it as abandonment.
His lips were cracked. His legs numb. The last thing he said before passing out on that ledge:
> "Amaterasu… if you watch me, let me live."
He survived.
She never answered.
---
Another step. Another scene.
Now, a teenager, perhaps fifteen. Standing before a blazing pyre. A casket burning atop it. His mother inside.
Tears streamed down his face, but no sound left his mouth.
The monks had told him to be strong. To represent the clan.
He held the incense. He bowed.
But inside, he broke.
That night, he screamed into his pillow until dawn.
That night, he carved the first prayer to Amaterasu with his own blood.
I looked at myself—then turned away.
> "You begged her for guidance," Izanami said. "And gave her your grief."
> "I was a boy," I muttered.
> "Yes. But your faith was already stronger than your fear."
---
Another step. Another memory.
This time, it was not sorrow, but victory.
A battlefield, soaked in rain and blood. I was twenty—leading a unit three times my age. Our forces had been ambushed, outnumbered.
But I'd turned it.
With sword and flame, with fury and brilliance, I broke the enemy line and pushed through.
The generals called me a genius. The people began to chant my name.
Akatsuki.
Daimyō in waiting.
My blade shimmered with power that night. I burned a hundred candles in the Hall of Light, bowing to the sun, thanking her for strength.
> "You still believed," Izanami said.
> "I thought she gave me purpose."
> "Or perhaps… you gave her proof."
---
Another step.
A throne room, this time.
I sat on a raised platform. My robes were dark red, embroidered with the crest of our clan—a phoenix rising from a dying sun.
At twenty-four, I was named Daimyō of the Akatsuki Clan. My father's seat. My grandfather's dream.
I remember thinking: This is it. The gods have kept their word.
The temple bells rang. Priests chanted. I wept that day—not from sadness, but from fulfillment.
My hands trembled as I received the ceremonial blade.
And in private, that night, I bowed again to the altar.
> "You raised kingdoms in her name," Izanami said.
> "I would have died for her will."
> "You nearly did. Twice."
She gestured, and more scenes played.
---
My first betrayal—a clan retainer poisoning our stores. Dozens died.
My first heartbreak—a woman I loved swearing loyalty, then vanishing into the night with secrets and maps.
My first real war—when I was forced to burn an allied village to prevent an uprising.
The guilt. The prayers. The way I sat beneath the shrine lamp every time, whispering, Guide me.
She never spoke.
---
I clenched my fists. "Why show me all this?"
Izanami's eyes gleamed behind her veil.
> "You asked why she let you fall. You asked why she turned away."
> "Because I cursed her!"
> "No. You cursed her after she turned away."
She stepped closer.
> "You gave her everything. Even your soul. And still, the gods did not save your people."
---
Then the final vision came.
The night of the fall.
My capital in flames.
My sister's final scream as the gates fell.
My people crucified on the temple walls.
My brother's corpse beneath arrows.
My kingdom gone.
And me?
Dragged before my enemies. Sword broken. Faith broken.
Stripped of cultivation.
Mocked by the priests who once honored me.
Beaten in the same courtyard where I once trained as a child.
When they left me bleeding, dying, I crawled to the shrine.
And with trembling fingers, I made the final mark in blood:
> "Let the Sun Be Damned."
---
The vision faded.
I was back on the platform.
Still lying down. Still lifeless. Izanami stood beside me.
For the first time, I saw a flicker of something in her gaze.
Pity?
No.
Respect.
> "You are not the first to be abandoned by gods," she said. "But you are the first to curse one and live."
> "I died."
> "Not fully."
She knelt beside me.
> "You have walked your life. Seen your truth."
> "And now?"
> "Now we begin the part no one else remembers."
> "Which is?"
> "The journey through death."
---
The platform trembled.
And from the void below rose a bridge of bones—arching far into the distance, where no sky, no earth, no end could be seen.
Izanami extended her hand.
> "Come, Daimyō Akatsuki. Let us see what lies beyond death—for one who cursed a god."