Kaede Village.
Nightfall.
The moon was smothered behind heavy yōkai clouds, and the entire village was wrapped in a stifling gloom.
The barrier was still up.
The barrier Kikyō had laid down before leaving was still intact, draped around the village and giving off a faint white glow.
But that glow was dimming, little by little.
"How many of them are out there?"
At the village entrance, a middle-aged man gripped a hoe, his voice quavering.
He was a farmer of the village. On normal days, all he knew how to do was till the soil; he had never dealt with yōkai in his life.
But tonight, he had no choice but to step forward.
Because — there were too many yōkai.
Outside the barrier, dense crowds of shapes writhed in the dark.
There were wolf-yōkai loping on all fours, fanged demon-faces, snake-yōkai dragging long tails behind them, and monsters whose names no one could even put to a word.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds.
All of them prowling outside the barrier, staring at the people of the village with those inhuman eyes.
"What about the shikigami Lady Kikyō left behind?"
Someone asked.
"Over there."
Another person pointed toward the center of the village.
There, three paper-doll shikigami stood upright, spiritual power coursing through them, sustaining the barrier's operation.
These had been left behind by Kikyō just before her departure.
She had said these shikigami could hold for half a month.
But it had not even been seven days, and already cracks had begun to appear in the barrier.
"Too many…"
The man with the hoe muttered to himself. "There are too many yōkai…"
"The barrier… it won't hold…"
The moment those words left his lips —
Crack —
A fissure spread out from the barrier's edge.
The sound was like shattering glass, all the sharper in the stillness of the night.
"Charge —!"
The yōkai let out a roar and surged toward the crack.
The first wolf-yōkai came barreling in.
Then the second, then the third.
The barrier was like a dyke giving way — it could no longer hold back that black flood.
"Take up arms!"
A man's voice rang out through the chaos.
It was one of the village's young, able-bodied hunters.
"Protect the children and the elders — every young one among us who can fight, come with me!"
"Lady Kikyō isn't here, but we — we cannot just sit here and wait to die!"
Though they had long lived under Kikyō's protection, as people who scraped a living from this age of chaos they were hardly lacking in the blood and grit to fight to the death!
…
The fighting began.
If it could even be called fighting.
Farmers wielding hoes, sickles, and wooden poles faced down those fang-and-claw-bearing creatures.
The first young man rushed forward; a wolf-yōkai batted him aside with a single swipe, three bloody gouges across his chest, and he collapsed twitching on the ground.
The second young man raised his hoe — before he could bring it down, another yōkai had its teeth in his throat.
Blood spurted forth.
Screams rose one upon another.
The shikigami were fighting too.
Those three paper dolls launched into their attack, their spiritual power turning into white light that drove back any yōkai that came near.
But there were only three shikigami.
And there were hundreds of yōkai.
One paper doll was surrounded by five or six yōkai at once. Again and again it broke through the encirclement, only to be surrounded again — and after it had put down twenty or thirty yōkai, it finally could hold no longer; its paper body was torn into shreds.
The spiritual power dispersed, dissolving into tiny motes of light that drifted away into the night sky.
Another paper doll fell.
The last one was still grimly holding on.
After all, Kikyō had come from a rural country shrine — a wandering shrine maiden without a head priest of her own, and certainly no specialist in shikigami. The shikigami she had left behind ran entirely on her own immense spiritual power; without her there in person to feed them more, they couldn't have lasted very long to begin with.
But even so, by all common reckoning, these shikigami should have been more than enough to deal with petty yōkai and small spirits.
Ordinarily, when Kikyō had to go out from time to time, leaving behind a single shikigami as guardian would suffice to hold the village for at least half a month or more.
The present situation had already gone beyond anything before — and even so, it was still not enough.
"Uncle!"
A child's voice rang out.
It was Kaede.
She stood in a corner of the village, watching a man with a hoe be pounced upon by a yōkai.
He went down.
Someone else stepped in to take his place.
It was a woman, with a kitchen cleaver.
She, too, went down.
Kaede watched it all, her eyes ringed red.
She wanted to rush out, but the old grandmother behind her clung to her tightly, refusing to let go.
"Don't go!"
The old woman's voice was trembling. "Your big sister said you must live on…"
"But…"
Kaede's voice broke. "But everyone's getting hurt…"
She looked at the people falling.
Kaede Village was not big, and there weren't many people — and all of these people were people she knew: the uncle who always greeted her in passing, the auntie who would weave flower wreaths for her.
Kaede was Kikyō's little sister, but most of the time Kikyō was not in a position to take her along, so in a sense, Kaede had grown up eating from a hundred families' rice pots.
And right now, those very people who had watched her grow up were all going down.
One after another.
The ground ran with blood, and yōkai were still pouring in.
The last shikigami was torn apart too.
There was no one left in the village who could fight.
Only the elderly. And the children.
They huddled in the center of the village, surrounded on all sides by yōkai.
"It's over…"
Someone said, in despair.
"Lady Kikyō isn't here… we're finished…"
The yōkai pressed closer, those inhuman eyes glowing greedily in the dark.
It was just then.
Kaede suddenly tore herself free of the old grandmother's grip.
She rushed to the very front of the huddled crowd.
Standing face to face with those fang-bared, claw-flexed creatures.
"Don't you come any closer!"
Her voice was trembling, but loud. "My big sister is coming back!"
"She said she'd protect us!"
The yōkai did not stop.
Either they didn't understand human speech, or they understood but did not care.
One wolf-yōkai sprang at Kaede.
"Look out —!"
Someone screamed.
Kaede shut her eyes, but she did not stop shouting.
"Big sister — Sister Kikyō!"
"And —"
"Kōbe Hikaru!"
She didn't know why she called out that name.
She only felt that she should.
That pale-faced big brother with the red eyes — the yōkai who had protected her big sister so well.
And her sister.
They would surely come.
Surely —
A voice suddenly rang out in Kaede's mind.
It was —
"Big sister, and… big brother!?"
…
A howling sound came down from the heavens.
White light tore through the night sky.
A single one.
Just a single arrow.
But that radiance, coming in from far away, poured down like the Milky Way itself spilling forth.
Every yōkai that had lunged at the villagers, the instant the white light touched them — all of them turned to ash.
And at that very same moment — the ground began to shake.
White bone spikes burst forth from the earth.
One, two, ten, a hundred — like a forest suddenly bursting into growth.
The bone spikes ran clean through the bodies of the yōkai still on the outskirts, those that had not yet made it into the village, pinning them where they stood — some pierced through the chest, some through the skull, some through the limbs.
Wails ripped through the night.
And then, abruptly, cut off.
Kaede opened her eyes.
She saw it.
At the village entrance, a figure in white robe and red hakama stood beneath the moonlight.
A longbow in hand, black hair drifting.
It was her big sister.
It was Kikyō.
And beside that figure, there was another person.
Grey-clad, white-haired, crimson-eyed.
His whole body covered in white bone spikes — like an Asura that had stepped out of hell itself.
Though she couldn't see his true features, Kaede knew — that was the handsome yōkai big brother. That was Kōbe Hikaru.
They had come back.
In the most desperate moment, the moment when everyone had given up hope.
They had come back.
"Big sister!"
Tears burst from Kaede's eyes.
She ran forward.
Running toward those two figures standing side by side.
Kōbe Hikaru watched the little girl rushing toward him, his gaze beneath the oni mask calm.
Then he raised a hand, and yet another bone spike burst from his palm, pinning the last yōkai that had tried to flee dead to the ground.
He cast another glance over the blood-soaked surroundings — some had died, but most were only gravely wounded, lying unconscious on the ground, or moaning in pain.
The truth was, they had not been late.
The ones who had truly been late had ended up like all those slaughtered villages they had seen along the road.
Not a single soul left.
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