The lantern girl's scream split the gorge, shrill and warped by the mask upon her face. The pale orb in her hand flared violently, brighter than moonlight, until even the mist seemed to boil away. Her undead, now turned against her, faltered mid-step as the lantern pulsed with raw power.
"You dare twist my flame?" Her voice was no longer lilting—it was fury given shape.
"Then burn in its truest light!"
She lifted the lantern high, both hands gripping it as cracks spidered along its surface. Blue fire poured out in torrents, scorching the air, searing through the onryō's miasma. The corpses bound in the onryō's hair shuddered violently, their forms splitting apart as if the very regret that bound them was being ripped free.
The onryō hissed, strands withdrawing, wrapping around her body like armor. Her shadow thickened, but even she staggered beneath the flood of blue radiance.
Then the earth split.
From the shattered ground, colossal bones clawed upward—skeletal arms as thick as tree trunks, ribs cracking stone as they emerged. One after another, titanic yokai skeletons rose, their skulls still bearing the horns and tusks of oni long forgotten. Their sockets glowed with baleful blue light, flames leaping between their ribs as their forms completed.
The gorge shook with their steps, every movement a quake. Each stood as tall as the cliffs themselves, their empty eyes fixed upon the onryō.
And then—the lantern shattered.
Its fragments dissolved into sparks, and in their place yawned a rift in the air itself. A gate. Its threshold burned with blue fire, its edges cracking reality, revealing a world of endless chains and shadowed figures writhing within. The Gate to Jigoku—the hell from which yokai are said to crawl, and to which cursed souls return.
The girl spread her arms wide, the mask tilting back to reveal nothing but void beneath. Her voice boomed from every corner of the gorge.
"Come forth, regrets without end! Tear apart this usurper!"
The giant skeletons roared, hollow yet deafening, and surged forward. Their claws scraped the gorge walls, their jaws snapping as the chains of Jigoku whipped behind them, pulling more twisted shapes from the gate—half-formed demons, shadows with teeth, arms dragging the earth as they crawled free.
The onryō's eyes glowed crimson, her grin savage. She raised her arms, her hair erupting outward like a tidal wave of night, each strand sharp as a blade.
"Then let hell itself come. I will bind even that."
Her miasma surged against the blue blaze, shadows and regrets colliding in an apocalyptic clash.