"My name is Izanami. And I am your grandmother."
The words dropped into the dead silence of the church. They didn't echo. They landed, solid and heavy and impossible.
Aiko's brain simply… stopped. It hit a blue screen of cosmic error. Grandmother. The word was an alien concept. A piece of a life she never had. Grandparents were soft, smiling people in photographs. They were stories other children told. They were not ancient, terrifyingly calm women who appeared out of nowhere in other dimensions.
Zara, however, did not stop. Her blade, which had been lowered, was up again in a flash, its silver-black edge humming with menace. "Step back," Zara commanded, her voice a low growl. "Step away from her."
The old woman, Izanami, didn't even glance at the weapon pointed at her throat. Her ancient, obsidian eyes remained fixed on Aiko, filled with a profound, heart-breaking sadness.
"The little Reaper is protective," Izanami observed, her voice a dry rasp. "That is good. You will need protectors."
"I will not ask again," Zara warned, taking a half-step forward.
"I am no threat to the child, warrior of Heaven," Izanami said calmly. "I am the only reason she is still alive."
Aiko found her voice. It was a weak, strangled thing. "That's… that's not possible. My grandmother… my family… they're all dead." "My parents died in a car crash when I was seven. Everyone died."
It was the bedrock truth of her life. The foundational trauma. The event that had left her alone, broken, and cursed.
Izanami's sad smile deepened. "So that is the story they told you." "A car crash. A simple, mortal tragedy. It is a kinder story than the truth."
"What truth?" Aiko demanded, her voice gaining a sharp, defensive edge. "Who are you?"
"She told you who she is," Zara interjected, her eyes narrowed. "The question is, what is she? You radiate no celestial energy. No demonic taint. You are… nothing. A blank."
"Not a blank," Izanami corrected softly. "Just very, very old. Old enough that the universe has learned to look around me." She tapped her gnarled cane on the stone floor. Tap. The sound was small, but it seemed to silence the very air in the church.
"I am what my granddaughter is," she said, her gaze returning to Aiko. "What she was always meant to be." "I am a Tanaka."
The name, her own name, spoken by this impossible woman, sent a shiver down Aiko's spine.
"The Tanaka clan is not a family of simple mediums, child," Izanami continued, her voice taking on the cadence of a story told a thousand times. "Seeing spirits, speaking to the lost… that is a parlor trick. A side effect."
"Our bloodline does not merely perceive the Veil between worlds." "We are the Veil."
The words made no sense. And yet, on some deep, intuitive level, Aiko felt a terrifying resonance. The power simmering in her veins, the chaotic storm balanced by Kael's golden light, seemed to hum in agreement.
"For generations, since the dawn of this age, one of our line has been born with the true sight. The true power." "We are not mediums. We are Guardians."
"Guardians of what?" Zara scoffed, though her blade did not waver. "The local cemetery?"
Izanami's dark eyes finally shifted to Zara, and for the first time, Aiko saw a flicker of immense, ancient power behind them. "We guard the barrier. The fundamental wall between what is and what was. Between the living and the dead." "We are the keepers of the boundary. The menders of the cracks. The first and last line of defense against the things that slip through."
She looked back at Aiko. "A duty that has fallen to you, child. Far too soon."
Aiko shook her head, a violent, jerky motion. "No. No. You're lying." "If I was some… some magical guardian, why was I left alone? Why did no one help me?"
Her voice cracked, the raw pain of a lonely, terrified childhood breaking through. "A spirit attacked me when I was seven. It killed my mother. It almost killed me. It's the reason I'm like this! It's the reason I'm a curse!"
The words she had never dared to speak aloud filled the silent church. It's my fault she died. My power drew it to us.
Izanami's face softened with a wave of profound empathy. It was so much like the empathy Aiko herself felt for lost souls that it made her ache.
"Oh, my poor, brave girl," the old woman whispered. "That is the greatest lie of all. The one you have told yourself."
She took a slow, deliberate step forward. Zara's blade hummed, but Izanami ignored it. She reached out a wrinkled, trembling hand, not to Aiko's face, but to the glowing, golden scar on her chest.
Her fingers, cool and dry as parchment, gently traced the celestial pattern. "You think your power is a curse that invites death." "The truth is, your power is the only reason you survived that day."
Aiko stared at her, her heart hammering. "What are you talking about?"
"The spirit that attacked you was not some random, hungry ghost, Aiko," Izanami said, her voice low and serious. "It was a hunter. An assassin sent from the other side. It was sent specifically for you."
"For me? I was seven years old!"
"You were a seven-year-old Tanaka Guardian who had just come into her power," Izanami corrected. "You were a threat. You had to be eliminated before you could learn what you were."
The memory, blurry and filled with the static of trauma, played in Aiko's mind. The screaming. The shattering glass. The cold, clawed hand reaching for her. And her mother… her mother throwing herself in front of Aiko.
"My mother died protecting me," Aiko whispered, the words a sacred, painful truth.
"Yes," Izanami agreed softly. "She did. She was a brave, wonderful woman. But she was only human." "Her sacrifice bought you seconds. It would not have been enough."
"The hunter was upon you. Its claws were at your throat." "And then, your power, your true power, awakened for the first time. Not the power to see ghosts. The power to enforce your will upon the Veil itself."
Izanami's fingers tapped the center of the scar, right over the pinprick of blackness. "You did not just scream, child. You commanded." "You commanded the thing to cease. And it did."
"But you were too young. Too untrained. You couldn't control the backlash." "You pushed the hunter back across the Veil, but in doing so, you pulled a piece of it into you."
Aiko looked down at the scar. At the single point of darkness. A wound made of pure Void. It wasn't from Yuki. It had been there for thirteen years.
"That thing… it left a piece of itself inside me?" she breathed in horror.
"A sliver of its essence," Izanami confirmed. "A seed of despair and nothingness. It has been dormant inside you ever since, a poison that has colored your entire life. It is the source of your trauma. The voice that tells you that you are unworthy. That your life must be spent for others, because it has no value of its own."
The words were a key, unlocking a dozen secret, painful doors in Aiko's mind. The constant, low-level self-loathing. The fatalistic need to sacrifice herself. It wasn't just trauma. It was a foreign entity. A parasite on her soul.
"The wound you received from the creature called Yuki did not create a new injury," Izanami explained. "It simply… found the old one. It fed the darkness that was already there."
She looked at the golden, celestial webbing. "And your Reaper… his essence did not just contain the new wound. It contained the old one as well. He has, unwittingly, put a cage around the very thing that has been poisoning you your entire life."
It was too much. Guardians. Assassins. Soul-parasites. Her entire life, her entire identity, was built on a foundation of lies.
"Why?" Aiko asked, her voice cracking. "Why didn't you tell me? Why did you leave me alone?"
Izanami's face clouded with a grief so ancient it seemed to belong to the stone of the church itself. "Because I was not allowed. After the attack, I was… exiled. Forbidden from interfering."
"By who?"
"By the same beings who just put you on trial," Izanami said, her voice laced with a cold, old anger. "The Seraphim Council."
Zara, who had been listening in stunned silence, finally spoke. "That's impossible. The Council does not interfere with mortal affairs unless they threaten the Veil."
"And what do you think a Guardian who can command the Veil is?" Izanami countered, her sharp eyes pinning Zara in place. "We are a check on their power. An independent variable in their perfect equation. They do not trust us. They fear us."
"When Aiko's power erupted, it sent a shockwave across the Veil. The Council detected it. They declared our family line too dangerous, too unstable. They put protocols in place." "They fabricated the story of the car crash. They placed Aiko with a mortal family. They suppressed my ability to reach her. They wanted her to grow up ignorant of her power, hoping it would remain dormant."
"They were wrong," Aiko whispered.
"They are always wrong," Izanami said with quiet venom. "They understand order. They do not understand life."
She turned her full attention back to Aiko. "I have been watching you, child. From a great distance. Unable to help. It has been the greatest torment of my long life." "I watched you struggle. I watched you suffer. And I watched you, despite it all, hold onto the heart of a true Guardian."
"You never stopped helping the lost. You never stopped fighting for those no one else could see." "Even when you believed it was a curse, you used your power for good."
Tears pricked at Aiko's eyes. To be seen. To be understood. After a lifetime of being a secret, a freak.
"When you and the Reaper tore a hole in reality, it disrupted the Council's containment protocols on this world," Izanami explained. "For the first time in thirteen years, I was able to find a way through. A way to you."
She looked around the empty church. "This place is not on your Earth. It is a pocket dimension. An echo. One of the old sanctuaries of my order. It is hidden, for now. A safe place to rest."
"A safe place to train," she added, her voice gaining a new, hard edge.
Aiko stared at her. Her grandmother. A being of immense age and power. The keeper of secrets that had just rewritten her entire existence.
A single, burning question remained. The one that mattered more than anything else.
"My parents," Aiko said, her voice trembling. "You said… you said the car crash was a lie." "What happened to them? What is the real story?"
Izanami's ancient face seemed to age another thousand years. The grief in her eyes was a vast, dark ocean.
"Your father was a Guardian, like you," she said softly. "But his power was weaker. He was a scholar. A keeper of our history." "Your mother… your mother was a human. A brilliant, brave woman who fell in love with a man who carried the weight of worlds on his shoulders."
"She knew what he was. She knew the risks. And she loved him anyway."
Izanami looked away, her gaze fixed on the shattered rose window. "When the hunter came for you, your father stood against it. He used his power to shield you, to buy your mother time to get you away. He… did not survive the attempt."
Aiko's heart clenched. Her father had died fighting. A Guardian's death.
"And my mother?" she whispered, dreading the answer.
Izanami's gaze returned to her, and it was filled with a terrible, fierce pride. "Your mother, the human, did what your father could not." "She got you to safety. And when the hunter came for you again, she stood in its way. She gave her life for yours."
"But the story doesn't end there." Izanami's voice dropped, becoming heavy, dangerous.
"The hunter was not acting alone. It was a tool. A weapon." "The attack was planned. Orchestrated."
"Your parents didn't just die protecting you from a monster, Aiko." "They were assassinated."
The word was a physical blow, knocking the air from Aiko's lungs. Assassinated. Murdered.
"They were murdered by the same faction, the same ancient enemy, that sent the Nox Lords to attack Heaven." "The same enemy that has been hunting your bloodline for centuries."
"The same enemy that is hunting you, right now."