The blank page stayed that way for days.
No ink. No messages. No whispered names in the dark.
Just silence.
But Sayo had learned by now that silence was never empty. It held things waiting to bloom.
So she waited.
It wasn't until she visited the Kamogawa River one evening, drawn there by a vague pull in her chest, that the Book stirred again.
She sat near the water's edge, the lights of Kyoto flickering behind her like the reflection of another world.
A breeze picked up.
And then the page filled.
Line by line. Delicate strokes of calligraphy ink formed a date. A place.
1615. The Siege of Osaka.
---
Ren found her minutes later.
"I felt it too," he said, holding his own copy of the Book. "A time of fire and broken kingdoms."
Sayo exhaled. "That's a lifetime I didn't want to remember."
"We have to."
---
They returned to the shrine—the one that only opened its gates between dusk and forgetting—and stepped into the river of time once more.
---
The battlefield was a haze of smoke and steel.
And Sayo... was a soldier.
Her name was Aiko. Her hair bound tight under a helmet. She stood among the last defenders of Osaka Castle, her fingers wrapped around a bloodied naginata.
Ren was there too.
A spy. A ronin. A double agent who had long forgotten which side he truly fought for.
But their eyes met in the chaos.
And even surrounded by death, they knew.
"You again," Aiko said through gritted teeth.
"I told you I'd find you in every war," he said.
She laughed. Then stabbed a charging enemy through the throat.
---
They were not heroes.
They had failed.
They had fought on the losing side. They had betrayed, lied, stolen. But even in failure, they had burned with something fierce and unrelenting:
Hope.
---
When the final wall collapsed, and the flames reached the inner courtyard, they didn't run.
They stood hand in hand.
"I'll meet you again," she whispered.
He kissed her blood-stained fingers.
"In another time. Another name."
The fire took them.
---
Back in the shrine, the air was thick with ash.
Ren stared at the blackened altar. "That life... it was the hardest."
"But we didn't die alone," Sayo said.
The Book flipped on its own.
A burnt petal fell from between its pages.
A violet.
"We were always finding each other," she said. "Even in the ruins."
Ren nodded. "That's what they don't understand, the gods. Love isn't always gentle. Sometimes it's fire and ruin and blood. And still, it survives."
A gust of wind swept through the shrine.
A voice—not Izanagi's or Izanami's—but something older, something deeper, spoke through the shadows:
"Three more memories remain. Three more threads, and then the loom will break."
Sayo turned to Ren.
"We're getting close."
He reached for her hand.
"Let's not waste what's left."
And together, they stepped into the light.