The mountain path bit at them from the first step.
What had looked like a simple trail on Jiro's water-stained map turned out to be little more than a suggestion—a line of flattened undergrowth and ancient stone markers so weathered their kanji had been eaten by moss and time. The trees pressed close, cryptomeria and hinoki cedar that blocked the sun and turned midday into perpetual dusk. Rain from the previous night still dripped from branches, a constant percussion that set Taro's teeth on edge.
"This is a pilgrimage route?" Mika picked her way over a fallen log, grimacing as mud sucked at her sandals. "What kind of pilgrims used this? Masochists?"
"The desperate kind," Jiro said from behind her. The monk moved with surprising grace for someone who'd been spear-struck two days prior, though Taro noticed how he favored his left side. "Most people take the main roads. But there were always a few—criminals, runaways, those fleeing debts or marriages—who needed to reach the temples without being seen." He gestured at a moss-covered marker. "See that? Jizō statue. Protector of travelers and lost souls. Someone maintained this path once."
"Once being the operative word." Kenta supported Sora with one arm, the shrine maiden's feet barely touching the ground. She'd insisted she could walk, but after the third stumble Kenta had simply scooped her up. She'd protested weakly, then gone quiet, conserving strength. The jade amulet pulsed faintly against her chest—not the vibrant green of active power, but something dimmer. A pilot light in a lantern running low on oil.
Taro led, short sword drawn, eyes scanning the dense forest for movement. The path climbed steadily, switchbacking up the mountainside in lazy curves that added hours to their journey. His legs burned. His lungs worked like bellows. But pain was good—pain meant alive, meant moving, meant distance between them and whatever forces pursued.
They'd been walking for three hours when Mika raised her fist—the signal for stop.
Everyone froze. Taro's grip tightened on his sword. In the sudden silence, he heard it: voices. Male. Multiple. Coming from up the trail, growing closer.
Kenta lowered Sora behind a boulder, drawing his katana with barely a whisper of steel. Mika melted into the undergrowth like smoke. Jiro fumbled for his prayer beads, lips moving in a silent chant. Taro pressed himself against a tree trunk, breathing shallow, listening.
"—waste of time, I'm telling you. Nothing comes up this trail except ghosts and fools."
"Boss says check it anyway. Some merchant reported seeing people heading this way after the Magome fire."
"Merchant probably saw his own shadow and pissed himself. You know how townfolk are."
Three voices, maybe four. Heavy footfalls suggested armed men, not concerned with stealth. Bandits, most likely. The mountains were infested with them—ronin, deserters, peasants driven to outlawry by failed harvests or crushing taxes. Desperate men who'd kill for a handful of copper, let alone whatever valuables a group of travelers might carry.
Taro caught Mika's eye across the trail. She made a series of quick hand signals: Four men. Armed. Swords and clubs. Not expecting trouble.
Good. Surprise was worth more than numbers.
The bandits rounded the bend—and Taro revised his assessment. Not bandits. Or not ordinary ones, anyway. Three wore the remnants of ashigaru armor, foot soldiers' gear scavenged or stolen, but functional. The fourth was older, scarred, with the bearing of someone who'd actually been trained to kill rather than just mugging travelers in alleys.
Their leader, probably. And the way his eyes swept the trail—quick, professional—said he wasn't as careless as his companions.
Those eyes locked onto Taro's hiding spot.
"Well," the leader said, hand dropping to his sword hilt. "Looks like the merchant wasn't lying after all."
No point in hiding now. Taro stepped onto the trail, sword held low but ready. "We're just pilgrims. No money, no trouble. Let us pass and everyone lives."
The leader laughed—a sound like stones grinding. "Pilgrims, he says. With a samurai, a shrine maiden, and that one—" he nodded toward where Mika had been, but she was already gone, vanished like morning mist, "—who moves like an Edo cutpurse." His grin showed teeth gone brown with decay. "Try again, friend."
"Not your friend." Taro shifted his weight, ready to move. "Last chance. Walk away."
"Can't do that." The leader drew his katana—good steel, well-maintained, which meant he knew how to use it. "Orders are to check everyone on this trail. Especially anyone matching descriptions out of Magome. Five travelers, one with a jade amulet. Sound familiar?"
Taro's stomach sank. Not bandits. Worse.
"Flame Bearers?" Sora's voice, weak but clear, came from behind the boulder. She stood, leaning heavily on the stone, the amulet blazing green despite her exhaustion. "You serve them."
"Serve? No." The leader's grin widened. "But they pay well for information. And they're very interested in shrine maidens who carry stolen kami-touched artifacts." He gestured, and his men spread out, flanking positions. Professionals. "Now, you can come quietly, or you can make this difficult. Either way, we're taking that amulet and collecting our silver."
"Third option," Kenta said, appearing at Taro's shoulder, katana already drawn. "We kill you all and keep walking."
"Bold words for a boy playing samurai." But the leader's confidence had cracked slightly. Four against five, except one of their five could barely stand. Still favorable odds. But he hadn't expected resistance.
Taro made the calculation in a heartbeat. They could fight—probably win, though someone would get hurt. Or they could run, but Sora couldn't manage the pace, and being pursued was worse than being surrounded. Which left—
"Jiro," he said quietly. "Tell me you have something."
"Maybe." The monk was already fumbling in his robes, pulling out a paper talisman covered in cramped kanji. "But it's going to make a lot of noise."
"I can live with noise."
"Hope so. Because this is one of the loud ones." Jiro stepped forward, raised the talisman, and began chanting in a voice that seemed too deep for his frame, words that buzzed in Taro's teeth like hornets trapped in his skull.
The bandits shifted uneasily. Their leader raised his sword. "Whatever you're doing, stop—"
Jiro slapped the talisman against a tree trunk.
The world went white.
Not light—not exactly. More like the absence of everything else, a void that swallowed sound and color and left only ringing silence. Taro felt the concussion in his chest, his bones, his teeth. The bandits screamed—he saw their mouths open, saw them clutch their ears, but heard nothing through the overwhelming nothingness.
Then the world snapped back, and the bandits were on the ground, two unconscious, one vomiting, and the leader on his knees with blood streaming from his nose.
"Run!" Jiro's voice was hoarse. "That won't hold them long!"
They ran.
Kenta grabbed Sora, tossing her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Mika reappeared from wherever she'd been hiding and took point, knife drawn. Taro brought up the rear, glancing back to see the bandit leader already staggering upright, rage twisting his features.
The path climbed steeper now, rocky and treacherous, and Taro's lungs screamed for air that wouldn't come fast enough. Behind them, he heard shouting—the bandits recovering, giving chase. And worse: a horn, long and mournful, echoing through the trees.
Calling for reinforcements.
"There!" Mika pointed ahead where the trail split. One path continued upward, clear and obvious. The other vanished into a tangle of bamboo so thick it looked impassable. "The bamboo!"
"That's not a path!" Kenta shouted.
"Exactly!" She was already pushing into the thicket, bamboo stalks parting reluctantly. "They'll take the main trail! Trust me!"
Taro hated trusting people. But Mika had kept them alive more than once with her street thief's instincts, so he followed, shouldering through bamboo that clattered and whispered and seemed determined to reject their intrusion
.
The grove swallowed them whole.
Light died. Sound became muffled, filtered through thousands of hollow stalks that creaked and groaned in wind Taro couldn't feel. The ground beneath his feet was soft with years of fallen leaves, deadening their footsteps. And the air—the air was wrong, thick and humid and tasting of green growing things and something else. Something older.
"Keep moving," Mika hissed. "Straight through. Should come out on the other side."
"Should?" Kenta echoed.
"I've never actually been here before. I'm improvising."
"Wonderful." But Kenta kept walking, Sora a pale burden in his arms.
They pushed deeper into the bamboo forest, and Taro felt the world outside recede—the bandits' shouts fading, the mountain's presence dimming, until there was only the grove and its patient, vegetable silence.
Minutes passed. Or hours. Time felt negotiable here, stretched thin and folded double. Taro's sense of direction, usually reliable, began to slip. Had they been walking in a straight line? Or were they circling, trapped in green walls that all looked identical?
"Mika," he said quietly. "You sure about this?"
"No." Her voice was small, stripped of its usual bravado. "But I don't hear the bandits anymore. So that's something."
"Or we're lost."
"Also possible."
Jiro stumbled, catching himself against a bamboo stalk. The plant bent—too far, far enough that Taro heard something crack—and then snapped back with force enough to knock the monk off his feet.
"Jiro!" Taro helped him up, but the monk's face had gone pale.
"This place," Jiro whispered. "It's... awake. Aware." His prayer beads clicked frantically between trembling fingers. "Bamboo groves can be like this. If they're old enough, undisturbed enough, they develop a kind of consciousness. Not malicious, necessarily. But territorial. And we just—" He swallowed. "We just barged in without permission."
As if in response, the bamboo around them began to move.
Not wind. Not natural growth. The stalks bent inward, creating a wall, a cage, closing in with vegetable patience. Gaps that had been wide enough to pass through narrowed to hand's-width. The path behind them—if there'd ever been a path—vanished.
"Back!" Kenta drew his katana one-handed, still holding Sora. He slashed at the encroaching bamboo. The blade bit deep, and sap—thick and dark as blood—oozed from the wound. The other stalks recoiled slightly, then pressed forward again, anger in their creaking.
"Don't fight it!" Jiro staggered forward, hands raised. "Please, we mean no disrespect! We're travelers, seekers, just trying to—"
The bamboo seized him.
Stalks wrapped around his arms, his legs, lifting him off the ground like a child's doll. Jiro screamed—not in pain, but in wordless terror as the grove pulled him toward its heart, toward darkness between the stalks where light feared to reach.
"No!" Taro lunged forward, sword flashing. He cut through one stalk, then another, but for every one he severed three more took its place. Bamboo coiled around his ankles, his wrists, pulling him off balance.
Kenta roared and slashed in wide arcs, keeping the grove at bay through sheer ferocity. But he was slowing, burdened by Sora, and the bamboo was patient, tireless, infinite in its anger.
They were going to die here. Swallowed by a forest that predated their grandparents' grandparents, folded into green silence and forgotten.
Then Sora spoke.
Her voice was quiet—barely audible over the bamboo's rattling fury—but it carried weight. Presence. The jade amulet blazed bright enough to paint the grove in emerald shadows, and Taro saw her eyes had gone pure white, no iris, no pupil. Just light.
She wasn't speaking Japanese. Wasn't speaking any language Taro recognized. But the bamboo recognized it. The stalks froze mid-motion, trembling. Then, slowly, they began to withdraw.
Jiro dropped to the ground, gasping. The coils around Taro's limbs loosened, retreated. The grove opened before them like a temple door swinging wide, revealing a clear path through to sunlight and mountain air beyond.
Sora's eyes rolled back. She slumped in Kenta's arms, blood streaming from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes. The amulet's light guttered and died.
"Go!" Taro grabbed Jiro, hauling him upright. "Before it changes its mind!"
They ran—stumbling, terrified, alive—and burst from the bamboo grove onto a rocky outcrop high on the mountain's flank. Behind them, the grove closed like a mouth, bamboo stalks interlacing until no gap remained. No sign they'd ever passed through.
Taro collapsed, chest heaving, and looked at his companions. Mika was white-faced, her usual smirk nowhere in evidence. Kenta sat heavily, still cradling Sora, whose breathing was shallow and thread-thin. Jiro prayed in whispered fragments, his faith the only thing keeping him upright.
"What," Mika finally managed, "the hell was that?"
"Bamboo spirit," Jiro said hoarsely. "Guardian of the grove. We trespassed without offering respect. It would have..." He trailed off, unable to finish.
"But Sora stopped it." Kenta looked down at the unconscious shrine maiden. "Whatever she said, it listened."
"Not said." Taro stared at the sealed grove. "Commanded. That wasn't negotiation. That was authority." He met Kenta's eyes. "What is she? Really?"
"A vessel," Kenta said softly. "That's what the onryō called her. But a vessel for what?"
No one had an answer.
They sat in silence, high on the mountain, with enemies behind and unknown trials ahead, and a shrine maiden who bled divine power like a wound that wouldn't close.
Somewhere below, a horn sounded. The bandits, still hunting.
Taro forced himself to stand. "We keep moving. Find shelter before dark. Figure out our next move." He looked at each of them in turn—exhausted, terrified, but unbroken. "And nobody, nobody, goes into any more mysterious groves without asking permission first."
"Agreed," Mika said fervently.
They gathered themselves and walked on, leaving the bamboo grove behind like a fever dream that tasted of green and ancient warnings. The path ahead narrowed to a knife's edge between cliff face and empty air, and the sun had begun its slow descent toward evening.
The Twilight Band climbed higher, and the mountain watched with patient, indifferent eyes.