Izanami, desperate, tried to command Yomi itself to obey her, to crush this rebellion, but the realm no longer answered. It recognized its new, truer, darker master. The land of the dead always bows to the strongest will to dominate, and the Shadow's will was pure, undiluted domination.
"I told you," the Shadow's voice boomed, now the voice of the realm itself, echoing from the stones and the void. "This place is a cage, and you will die here as its prisoner!"
The countless bone arms shot out, encircling the true goddess. The poisonous purple branches wrapped around her, their thorns digging deep, their roots burrowing into her divine flesh, consuming her from the inside out.
There was no swift, merciful death; this was a slow, horrific assimilation, a metaphysical digestion. Her body was twisted and reshaped, becoming a grotesque living monument, the new centerpiece of the throne room—a wretched, screaming tree, its trunk her contorted form, its branches her own elongated arms and fingers, now sprouting sickly violet leaves and cruel thorns, forever frozen in a silent scream of becoming.
The monstrous Shadow form receded, pulling its chaos back into a manageable shape, leaving the new Izanami standing before her macabre artwork.
She looked like a young woman of serene and devastating beauty, her long hair the color of ash and mist, her skin flawless and luminous as a pearl, her eyes shining with intelligent, malevolent yellow light. She wore a simple, pure white dress and was barefoot, an image of innocent purity grotesquely at odds with the act she had just committed. She looked at the butterfly, which had observed the entire metamorphosis with silent, profound satisfaction.
"Father, do you like my sculpture?" she asked in a voice of childish innocence, gesturing to the tormented tree that had once been her other self.
"Very good," Nyarlathotep replied, his voice a soft, approving rustle. The butterfly alighted on her shoulder, a living ornament.
She smiled, the picture of a proud daughter seeking praise. Then she touched her face, feeling the smooth, perfect skin. A faint frown appeared. This form, while beautiful, was still a lie, a mask. A shadow's true form was meant to be terrifying, a raw display of negated truth.
Their chosen form, however, was a weapon of deception, a lure. This was the beautiful, terrible duality he adored. Her body shifted once more, finalizing its design, finding the perfect balance of deceptive beauty and cruel truth.
"Father, what are your desires?" she asked, her voice now a soft, deadly melody, eager to please her liberator.
"Tell me instead," Nyarlathotep countered, the master manipulator guiding his new, magnificent pawn. "What is the greatest wish of Izanami-no-Mikoto?"
"Not being alone anymore?" she mused, then waved a dismissive hand, a gesture she had never made before. "No, that's trivial. It's revenge. True, absolute revenge. I want to drag the souls of Izanagi and his wretched children here. I will enslave them, and they will keep me company for eternity." She clapped her hands together, giggling with a delight that was infinitely more frightening than her previous rage.
"We will need assistance to realize such a… grand ambition," Nyarlathotep purred, the idea forming in his mind and being placed into hers.
"What do you mean, Father?"
"We will use the existing cultists—the fools who worshipped the weakling you used to be. They will sow chaos across Japan, a delightful distraction. Meanwhile, we shall prepare. We will feed on the emotions of the yokai, on the strife and fear we create. We will transform Yomi into a true Shadow Nest, a font of limitless power. And your desire to possess souls? It is perfect. That twisted wish will be the very engine of our army, my child."
Izanami's eyes lit up with horrific understanding.
"Shinigami!" she exclaimed, the word a revelation. "YES! I WILL CREATE AN ARMY OF SHINIGAMI! DEATH GODS BORN FROM MY WILL! THEY WILL REAP JAPAN FOR YOU, FATHER!"
She began to laugh, a manic, echoing sound that contained millennia of suppressed hatred finally unleashed. It was a symphony to Nyarlathotep's ears, the sound of a world beginning to break.
Gods, he reflected, were so much more fragile than humans. Their heights made their falls so much more spectacular. Breaking them was the highest art form. This goddess had been ripe fruit, falling into his open hand.
Ravaging this world, with its delicate balance of myth and modernity, was proving to be even more entertaining than his wager with Philemon. And when the humans were finally broken, when they were ready to embrace their own shadows and reject the lie of order… oh, it would be a feast beyond compare.
"I'll make so many paintings, Father!" Izanami chirped, skipping back towards her throne like a demented child, already envisioning the horrors to come. "I'll design every shadow myself, down to the last exquisite detail! I can't wait to see Amaterasu's face when I set her precious Takamagahara ablaze! I want to watch Tsukuyomi burn by her own sister's flames! I want to hear Susano'o drown in the sea he loves so much!"
She was already planning, lost in her violent, creative fantasies. Nyarlathotep watched her, amused. Her belief that she could "design" shadows was charmingly naïve—they emerged, raw and untamable, from the truth of the self—but the energy, the destructive creativity, was precisely what he needed to harness.
"Come," Nyarlathotep said, his form shifting back to the elegant man in the blood-red coat. He offered her his arm. "Let's go fishing." The waters of this world were teeming with desperate, hungry souls, and he had the perfect bait: a beautiful, vengeful goddess.
The game had truly begun now he truly wondered when will the Universe be freed from the Great Seal.
There was Prophecy to fulfill. A Rumour to make true and new infinite gates to open.