Please pay attention as this chapter has some dark themes; your well-being comes first.
TW: Genocide, Implied Child Death, War Crimes, Implied Sexual Violence, Burning Alive, Implied Violence Against Pregnant Woman
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October 1599, Nagoya-go, Zenin clan estate
Wind direction: southwest. Altitude stable. Two hours and twenty-seven minutes.
It was enough time to imagine every possibility. Kaoru had counted each one because it was what she did to reduce the world to variables, to measurable facts. Wind. Time. Distance. The exact angle of Nue's curvature under her grip and the way her left leg had started to go numb sometime after the first hour, comforting in its predictability. The shikigami's back still burned under her grip, from the cursed-energy infusion she'd forced into it to keep its stamina from collapsing mid-flight.
And still, with that same numb certainty with which she had left Iga, she had known she'd be arriving too late.
The black column had risen into the sky long before Nagoya-go came into view, a vertical fact against the now blue horizon. It didn't look like ordinary smoke, even.
When she crested the ridge, Nagoya-go did not look like a battlefield anymore. It did not look like Nagoya-go anymore either. It was the aftermath. There was no sign of jujutsu sorcerers' activities still ongoing, no curtain, no barrier; whatever battle had happened had already burned itself out.
The entire compound had been burned down to its bones; the outlines of the walls still existed in places, with charred posts, collapsed beams, and sections of stone that had endured, but the roofs were gone, the courtyards were black, and even the watchtowers were half-slumped. Smoke still rose from active fires, where embers had found something left to feed on. All over the ruin, ash fell in an obscene drift, too dense to be only wood. It dusted Kaoru's sleeves, settled into her hair, and clung to her eyelashes, leaving behind a nauseating sweet-bitter stink.
Kaoru did not exactly understand what she was smelling.
She dismounted the moment Nue cleared the ridge and hit the ground in a crouch, weight forward more like a hunter, not like someone returning home. She dismissed Nue into shadow with a thought, tucked her katana into her belt, and started walking. The closer she got, the worse it became. Nagoya-go should have sounded like life, even in crisis, even after a siege. Dogs barking, men shouting, someone crying. Something. Instead, the silence was terrible.
Kaoru tracked the old defensive lines, following the scorched-earth markings that showed where walls had once been anchored. The outer palisade was gone, felled in more than two places, three, maybe. She catalogued everything, believing she could reconstruct the assault if she tried hard enough. Frontal pressure from the south; a coordinated breach from the west; a closing trap on the north. There were drag marks in the dirt where someone had been hauled away; there were darker streaks where blood had pooled and then been smeared by boots or by hands.
Someone had started cleaning, not thoroughly, probably trying to prevent rot, plague, flies, and curses. A stack of bodies had been piled near what used to be the southern gate, half-covered with mats that did nothing to hide the shapes or the stenches; the corpses were charred enough that she couldn't tell at a glance whose mon they'd worn. Zenin. Gojo. Farmers. Retainers. Everyone had been reduced to the same blackened anatomy. Someone had probably been sorting them anyway, or trying to, because there were separate piles arranged by whatever logic made sense.
Kaoru noted it all with detached interest; too much blood on the ground for it to have been only those piles. She reached what used to be the outer gate that wasn't a gate anymore. It was a heap of splintered wood and twisted iron studs, warped by heat. It had stood for centuries. Now it was just… material. Someone had fought back here, judging by the scattered arrowheads near a brazier's remains. Not well enough.
How long had they held? Three hours? Four?
She stepped over it and entered Nagoya-go.
Inside, the stillness broke into motion. People moved through the ruins, frantic; sorcerers and fighters and men with shovels and buckets. They hauled timbers, pried debris from collapsed engawa, stomped at embers, passed water in lines, and faces smeared with soot.
No one noticed her, or they did and chose not to. Either way suited her.
None of them was a former inhabitant of Nagoya-go. They were built like warriors and fighters, wearing armor. To the north of the compound, an encampment had been erected on the open stretch of ground that hadn't burned. Date banners drifted lazily in the wind. Zenin banners, too.
So, the Eastern Army marching on the Tokaido had reached Nagoya-go. For one stupid, painful instant, Kaoru allowed herself to hope as her pace quickened. The hope lasted exactly as long as it took for her to see the first line of bodies.
They were arranged with care. It was the handful of Kukuru fighters and low-ranking sorcerers she had left at Nagoya-go as Tatsuhiro's first posting as an heir. Because she thought a child could learn best in a peaceful place. She had been wrong. Now, they all knelt in a row near the perimeter where the outer wall had once been. Their backs were straight, and their hands rested on their thighs. Their throats were cut cleanly, and blood had flowed in a single spill down their chests and into the ground. Execution, not battle. Some Date men were already moving among them, dragging the bodies away one by one. The corpses left long red trails over the dirt.
Kaoru walked past without stopping, trying to keep her increasing breath steady. In. Out. In. Out. Her fingers flexed once inside her sleeves, then went still. She stopped next to the koi pond. There were bodies along the edge. Older women, younger women. All of them face-down in the water with their hair floating around, half-submerged. Their garments had been torn, but not like battlefield damage. Her eyes filed it away, and refused to linger on what it implied; she shoved the thought down. Later, she told herself, with a coldness that bordered on cruelty. Later, you can afford to understand. Right now, you need facts.
She stepped over a broken hairpin. Then she saw a child; the boy lay face-down with his small arms tucked under his chest. A spear had been driven through his back and pinned him to the ground. Kaoru recognized him; he was the same child she'd seen running through the kitchens, laughing as he tried to flee the consequences of accidentally smashing a clay jar. She remembered the scolding.
Kaoru kept walking. Decapitated bodies appeared next, collapsed near a half-burned corridor, heads missing. A lost hand lay a few steps away, fingers curled. Further in, limbs. Arms and legs were separated from bodies, torn, broken, and then burned. She saw seppuku, interrupted. She recognized two of her retainers near the ruins of a doorway. One was split open from abdomen to ribcage, the blade still there. The other had collapsed with his intestines spilled onto the stones. Both had arrows in their backs, as if someone had decided their final act of dignity was funny.
Kaoru's throat tightened, but not from exertion. She had counted, without meaning to. She always counted. Twenty-seven bodies, so far. Twenty-seven was unacceptable, but Nagoya-go had held, what, around two hundred? Civilians, children, farmers, old clan elders, tool-handlers, cooks, scribes. Fighters, yes, but not enough fighters to account for the emptiness she was walking through. She did a rough tally in her head, and her stomach went strangely cold.
Two hundred people. So why did she keep thinking of only three names? Tatsuhiro. Hajime. Harunobu.
Her pace accelerated again, too fast to be called a walk but too steady to be called panic. Ash kept falling as she moved south, toward the source of the largest smoke column. The smell worsened, turning sweeter, and she swallowed it. Her mouth felt coated in it.
Kaoru reached the pyre.
It was an enormous, ugly mound of timber and bodies built high enough that the smoke rose in a constant column. An organized destruction.
She stopped at the edge and stared. Only then did she notice the man standing near it, arms crossed, watching the flames with a flat expression.
Date Masamune.
The One-Eyed Dragon of Ōshū wore a long, dark-blue sleeveless haori, the fabric hanging clean despite the ash storm. Four swords were strapped across his back, and the golden crescent crest of his helmet caught what little light the smoke-covered sky offered, hair bound in a short tail beneath it. The patch over his right socket made him unmistakable.
Kaoru halted a step away just as Masamune turned his head, not dramatically; he simply acknowledged her presence like a fact that she had finally arrived. "Zenin-dono," he greeted, voice even.
His attention returned immediately to the pyre with an expression that wasn't exactly grim; more like a man who had watched an ugly thing happen and hated every second of it, but then kept breathing anyway.
Kaoru forced her spine straighter as she reassembled herself with the speed of habit. Clan head. Zenin-dono. It was her home burning, and she needed answers, and she would not get them by panicking. "Date-dono," she greeted back, voice carrying over the roar of the pyre. "I apologize for my absence and for my delay. And—I thank you for the support you provided to my clan—"
"Support?" Masamune cut in. A short chuckle left him, blunt. "No support, Zenin-dono. When we reached Nagoya-go yesterday, the Gojo retreat had already started." His single eye slid toward the ruin with a dispassionate sweep. "This is cleanup. We put out what we could and moved what was left." A small shrug. "There wasn't much to do anyway."
Whatever fragile sliver of hope Kaoru had allowed herself collapsed. They hadn't arrived in time; they had only arrived to pick through the remains. She tightened her hands behind her back so hard her nails bit skin. "Still," she said, carefully, "I appreciate that you began burning the bodies. The risk of disease—"
Masamune cut her off again. "It wasn't us." He nodded toward the pyre. "It was already here when we arrived. Someone had already given orders to dispose of bodies." He turned his head toward her then, finally. "Clever thing, your boy. Considering his condition, he made the right calls fast."
Kaoru blinked once as her mind snagged on the words. "My… boy?"
Masamune lifted two fingers to tap the edge of the patch over his missing eye, as if that carried its own grim explanation. He didn't wait for her comprehension. "Your heir," he clarified, voice still flat. "He had guts. Didn't even scream when I cauterized the eye. A shame."
Kaoru's mind refused, for one slow second, to place cauterized eye and Tatsuhiro in the same sentence, but the refusal did not change reality. Masamune's gaze went back to the pyre, and Kaoru didn't understand that either; his technique was pure fire, and his very presence smelled of burned air. Fire should not have unsettled him.
Ash drifted between them as Kaoru forced herself to ask the question pressing in her skull. "Date-dono," she started, slowly. "Where are the…." Survivors, she thought. She couldn't make her mouth say it.
Masamune hummed once, noncommittal. "About thirty were gathered in what's still standing in the central estate."
"Thirty," Kaoru repeated, flat. The number did not fit; Nagoya-go had housed more than two hundred, and thirty survivors meant she had been counting wrong, or it meant—
Her gaze drifted, slowly, back to the pyre. She stared at its scale, at the way ash fell heavier around it, at the nauseating sweetness in the air that she had been swallowing without understanding.
Masamune gestured with his chin toward the fire as if reading her thoughts and deciding to stop pretending she didn't already know. "I don't think the Gojo cared much that they were civilians."
Kaoru turned fully toward the pyre, the movement stiff, as she watched the flames collapse a section of timber inward. She watched familiar shapes shift in the heat and then vanish. Then she looked up at the ash drifting over Nagoya-go like snow. Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. "You mean… this ash—"
Masamune's silence confirmedfor him. "When we arrived," he said after a moment, and finally, there was a trace of irritation in the way his jaw twitched, "someone was still burning alive in there. The noise was…" He paused, searching for a word that didn't exist. "…unnecessary. We tried to put an end to it, speared what we could reach. Small mercy." Masamune went on, because he was a Clan Head too, and he knew Kaoru would want to know. "North side, someone had already built a smaller pyre for bodies. East, in the kitchens, we're recovering around twenty women. We tried to stop them when they cut their throats, but it was useless. They didn't want to live with the shame of what was done to them."
Kaoru's breath hitched, just one small betrayal, that she forced quickly back into a steady rhythm.
Masamune gestured west. "Over there, there are still woven baskets piled together. There were toddlers hidden inside, but they were pinned through with arrows. It's hard separating bodies from the wicker now." He pointed toward the remaining stretch of outer wall. "And there, some of your fighters with their throats cut are being recovered." He pointed toward an inner courtyard. "And there, a pregnant woman was—"
"Enough."
The word came out louder and harder than Kaoru intended; she realized only after she spoke that she was shaking visibly, in a way she would have never allowed herself. She did not want to hear another detail. It wasn't fair, she knew that; she should have listened, should have absorbed every fact, every crime, every name, because this was her clan and her responsibility, and she had not been here. But she could not take in any more while ash kept falling onto her shoulders.
Masamune looked at her for a long moment, then he turned his gaze back to the pyre, as if granting her the mercy of not being seen. "It's not my first war, Zenin-dono," he said, still blunt. "But I'll admit. I've never seen a siege like this." He exhaled once through his nose, releasing smoke with it. "The Gojo must have really hated you."
Kaoru did not know what to say to that. She swallowed ash again, and when she spoke, her voice came out weakly. "Date-dono… the survivors?"
Masamune lifted a hand and pointed vaguely toward the heart of the estate, toward the section still standing where tents and bodies and the living had clustered together. Behind him, Date men began to carry the corpses of women with throats cut and garments torn toward the pyre.
Kaoru forced herself to look at the fire one last time; she forced herself to memorize its size. The ash, the smell, the way the smoke rose. Then she turned away. Her steps were too calm, her face was too blank as she walked toward the survivors, feeling like she was walking to an execution. She did not yet know whether she was the one being sentenced or about to pass judgment. Maybe both.
Kaoru entered the main hall from the rear passage.
Only a portion of the roof had collapsed, miraculously. A jagged triangle of sky yawned above the center, letting ash fall in while smoke still threaded through the cracks. The doors had been unbarred. The tatami had been stripped and repurposed, stained with old and fresh blood, lined with improvised bedrolls and folded haori turned into bandages and blankets. Then, the smell hit Kaoru: sweat, burnt wood, boiled herbs, and then the copper scent of blood and bodies.
Survivors moved in silence.
A healer was bent over an old man whose arm ended in a stump. Another Zenin sorcerer from Edo hauled buckets of water with the stiffness of someone who had arrived to find their family gone. Date men were there too, their sleeves rolled, their faces impassive, doing the kind of work allies did.
There was an old woman Kaoru recognized as the wife of one of the elders, who fed rice porridge to a man who was missing both legs. In the corner, a child clutched a bokken in both hands and cried without stopping. A young woman sat upright against a wooden pillar and stared at nothing, eyes open and unblinking, murmuring prayers under her breath.
The greeting lasted exactly as long as it took Kaoru to step across the threshold.
Every head turned, and recognition rippled through the hall. A few men straightened instinctively; others trembled harder. The captain of the Hei squad bowed stiffly, and a handful of Zenin sorcerers from Edo dipped their heads in unison.
"Zenin-dono," someone rasped.
"Zenin-dono—"
"Zenin-dono."
Too many voices; too many faces. Kaoru's eyes slid from one to the next, her mind still doing what it had been doing since the ridge: categorizing. Burns. Crushed ribs. Splintered fingers. Missing toes. A stitched gash where a jaw should have broken, someone's hair singed nearly to the scalp, someone's hands shaking so hard they couldn't lift them.
Kaoru did not say I'm sorry. It would have been obscene. So she made herself bow once, and she kept moving, because the hall was full of living bodies, but her mind only cared about three names, and she hated herself for it.
Only when she reached the far side did she stop, and her body stilled. A section of the hall had been partitioned off with woven screens and half-burned fusuma. The air there was cleaner, and incense was burning. A healer knelt with his sleeves tied back and his hands stained, working on someone propped against folded cushions.
Blanketed from waist to ankle, short black hair freshly cut badly and unevenly, as if whoever held the knife had been in a hurry.
"Tatsuhiro." Kaoru exhaled the name too fast.
Alive.
It almost didn't feel real. Her knees threatened to buckle. Kaoru inhaled through her nose and forced her spine to lock as she stepped forward. One name, she thought, and it was a stupid thought, a childish thought. One name down.
The healer crouched beside him, unwound a soaked bandage from Tatsuhiro's head. Kaoru's gaze dropped to his face, or what was left of it; where an eye should have been was now a cauterized ruin of blackened flesh, angry red beneath, the edges rough. Just as Masamune told her, fire had sealed what blood would have gladly kept spilling. The bleeding had stopped; that was the only comfort.
Tatsuhiro bit his lower lip hard enough to prevent crying out loud as the bandage was replaced. He made no sound. The only movement was a small, involuntary tremor of his hands. Kaoru recognized pain when she saw it. Whether the wound had come from an enemy's blade or the backlash of his own cursed technique, she couldn't yet tell. Both were plausible. Both were equally her fault. She said nothing of it.
The healer noticed her and paled; he bowed so low that his forehead hit the tatami, then scurried away, followed by the other retainers, their eyes down.
Tatsuhiro turned toward her slowly, his remaining eye glassy and ringed red, too old in his small face. There was no surprise in it. Then he said, "Kaoru-dono."
The formality, the distance; it stung more than it should have.
Kaoru wanted to ask immediately about Hajime, about Harunobu; she wanted to tear the hall apart and demand names, numbers, and an explanation for why there were only elderly faces looking back at her. She couldn't. The boy in front of her needed something first. So she defaulted to what she knew. Her hands formed a summoning sign without thinking, index and middle fingers pressed to thumb, and a wave of cursed energy, controlled and clean, filled the air.
Round Deer emerged behind her in a blur of shadow and kind radiance.
The reaction was immediate. Heads turned; a few survivors stared with awe, while others stared with dulled emptiness.
Kaoru didn't look at them. "You," she said, addressing the captain of the Hei squad and the Edo sorcerers in one sweep. "Coordinate triage with the shikigami's reverse cursed energy. Burns first; then active bleeding and mutilation; then smoke inhalation; then anyone with fever and anyone who can't walk." Her eyes landed on Tatsuhiro's bandages. "It can mend most injuries... though not all."
To her surprise, all eyes flickered toward Tatsuhiro. Waiting. Then, eyes returned to her, and people obeyed because she was still the Clan Head. That, she noted. Leadership. He's already doing it.
Kaoru knelt beside him slowly, keeping her movements careful, fearing what she might look like if she moved too fast. "Your eye," she began, carefully, "if it was lost to cursed technique backlash—"
Too flat; she had meant it gently, but her voice came out too detached for a thirteen-year-old with a cauterized socket.
Tatsuhiro's shoulders stiffened, and his fingers curled against the blankets. "I know," he said. "That's not what matters." He swallowed, throat working. "Nagoya-go fell. We lost the Mitsuboshi no Yari." A long pause, then, quietly: "I failed the clan."
Kaoru's throat closed. "No," she said firmly. She leaned closer, inspecting the fresh wrap around his head. "You didn't fail. You bled for them. And they see it." Her chin nodded toward the hall behind her, where Zenin retainers and Date men moved in tandem around the healing shikigami. She softened her voice. "They follow you. Not because of your name, but because you were here for them."
Tatsuhiro's eye narrowed. "Exactly," he said simply. "If you had been here, this wouldn't have happened."
One word. No raised voice, no melodrama. Kaoru froze because she had no answer prepared, no clever deflection or political phrasing. Her mind stuttered, and she hated herself for the weakness. There was no defense that didn't sound like a lie. She could have said I came as fast as I could. She could have said I was holding the line at Iga. She could have said I didn't know. All of it would have meant: I wasn't here anyway. He was right; she had already made her list, and it had started out simple and chronological.
I should not have trusted Seijiro Gojo.
I should not have let him into Nagoya-go.
I should have allowed my father to imprison him.
I should not have spared his life in Fushimi.
I should not have left the spear in Nagoya-go.
I should not have left Nagoya-go.
I should not have left Tatsuhiro alone.
A lifetime of wrong choices and all of them ended here, with an entire village wiped out and a boy missing an eye.
Kaoru let out a slow breath. "Yes," she said softly. "You're right."
No excuses.
Tatsuhiro turned his face slightly, as if that confirmation had only made his wound deeper, but Kaoru forced her voice back into neutral clarity because she could not afford to spiral in front of him. "Did you organize the wounded?"
He nodded once, reluctant and admitting how much he'd had to do. "Yes."
"Date-dono told me you gave orders to burn the bodies."
"Yes." The answer came faster this time, harsher. "I didn't want to. But the others were scared, and the stench was—" He stopped. "I couldn't risk fever and disease. Date-dono helped. They stopped some of the fires from spreading. But when the Gojo retreated, there was still… work. I…I gave the first orders." He swallowed, voice cracking. "Someone had to."
He sounded like he was defending himself, and that nearly broke something in Kaoru. A child should not have to justify making logistical decisions about corpses.
Kaoru reached out and touched his shoulder. "Good," she said. She allowed herself the smallest curve of her mouth, the first smallest smile since she had set foot again in Nagoya-go. "It was the correct decision. You kept the living alive, and that is what matters. You'll make a fine clan head one day." She meant it, and she needed him to hear it.
Tatsuhiro looked up, startled, and finally something loosened in his shoulders, some knot of tension untied by praise. It didn't last. His mouth trembled. "I... I had to include Harunobu."
The words didn't even register at first.
Kaoru's brain processed the sound and grammar of it, but not the meaning. Then, her senses shut out one by one, and the hall went distant, the ash fell more slowly. Her mind produced a silence so deep it rang in her ears. An absence of sound, of sensation, of anything. Her hands curled over her knees; her mouth was dry. Her chest—bound tight beneath layers of cloth—refused to rise.
Harunobu?
He was always going to be there in her mind. She had planned for him to be there. A constant; her anchor; her shadow; her father in all but blood—
But the world did not allow constants. Kaoru knew, intellectually, she had known it since she was young.
Gone. Just ash. And something in her had gone terribly quiet.
"He died shielding me," Tatsuhiro said, not seeing her expression, or seeing it and misunderstanding it. "I was almost—he threw himself between me and—" His voice wobbled. "I made them burn him. Yesterday."
Kaoru heard the last word and nothing else. Yesterday. One day ago. The massacre ended, and she arrived the next day. She couldn't hear Tatsuhiro's voice anymore, couldn't feel the floor beneath her knees. She saw his face, that infuriating look Harunobu gave her when she risked herself. He had been so angry at her for leaving him behind in Nagoya-go, furious that she wouldn't let him shield her one more time. Of course, he had died protecting her heir; it was exactly what he would do, what he always did. Loyal to the end, and she—
She hadn't even said goodbye. And now—
Kaoru-dono.
She jolted at the sound of her name with an inhale so sharp that her body trembled, not sure if Tatsuhiro had called her or it was just her imagination. She almost missed that Tatsuhiro had reached out and was gently shaking her sleeve. He flinched, staring at her now like she had turned to stone before his eyes. Terrified.
"I'm sorry," he added quickly. "We couldn't wait. I had to—"
"No," Kaoru snapped, too hard. She rose to her feet slowly, and her body obeyed out of habit, not strength. When she looked down at Tatsuhiro, her voice came out hollow. "You did the right thing. Burning the dead is necessary. Harunobu died in duty. There was no reason to treat him differently."
"But—"
"There is no but." Her tone was flawless; the tone her father would have approved of. "He fulfilled his duty. You fulfilled yours."
Tatsuhiro stared at her, and Kaoru didn't know what he was seeing: a monster, a corpse, a clan head. He nodded, just once.
Then, Kaoru's voice barely rose above a breath. "Hajime?" She hadn't meant to ask, but the name slipped out before she could brace for it. She could not bear to add Is he alive? She could not make her mouth voice that kind of fear. She couldn't—she wouldn't—let herself imagine two of them gone in the same breath.
Tatsuhiro blinked once. Then again, slower in hesitation, enough to make Kaoru's stomach lurch. "He's alive," he said finally. "He… He said he was going to 'train.'" His eye slid away. "Probably in the northern woods. He hasn't come back since…Well. If he hadn't been there, I'd probably be dead."
Kaoru's breath left her in a soft, uncontrolled rush. Relief hit too fast, and she crushed it down before it could show on her face. Alive. Tatsuhiro and Hajime are both alive. She bit her lips hard enough that the taste of blood slid across her tongue, down her chin. Harunobu would have been so infuriatingly proud of them, those two reckless children with no sense of preservation. He would've folded his arms and grumbled about their survival instincts, but he would've smiled. Kami. He would've smiled.
She turned because she could not look at Tatsuhiro's ruined face a second longer without seeing every mistake she'd made reflected back at her. She crossed, and her voice came firmer this time.
"The shikigami will provide healing support. If you can move, you help." Her gaze swept the room, taking in the Edo sorcerers, the Hei captain, and the trembling old retainers. "Provisions. Salvage what you can from the outer storerooms. If the depot by the northern treeline still stands, there should be carts. Bring them here with weapons, cursed tools, and any documents that survived." A pause. "Anything that can move, moves. I expect readiness within the day."
Someone, a senior retainer, dared to ask, "Ready for what, Zenin-dono?"
Kaoru stopped at the threshold of the ruined hall, and she looked back over her shoulder. "We abandon Nagoya-go," she said simply. "There is nothing left for us here. To Edo, where our new home awaits."
A hush fell.
Far across the room, Tatsuhiro stiffened, and his remaining eye widened. "What—wait—Kaoru-dono, I—"
"Rest assured. You're in Tokugawa territory, and our men are here now. Date-dono will cover your retreat," Kaoru cut in. "No more threat lies between here and Edo."
That, at least, she could still promise. Tatsuhiro would make a better clan head than she ever had; he had already proven it. That should have been her first decision from the beginning: to take everyone north and keep the children far from war, to let Harunobu rest with his family, to let Nagoya-go become a memory rather than a mass grave.
Then, softly, from behind her, Tatsuhiro dared to ask, "And… what about you?"
Kaoru did not turn back because if she did, she might not be able to leave. The Gojo had retreated yesterday. Good. That was actually very good.
"I'm going to take Akiteru Gojo's head."
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
The rear northern quarters were the oldest part of the Zenin estate, no longer used and mostly forgotten. Once, they had belonged to Kaoru's mother. Kaoru herself had been born here, in blood and misfortune, on tatami that had never fully lost the stain. Later, the same corridors had carried Harunobu's footsteps, Tatsuhiro's laughter, Hajime's barefoot chaos, and—briefly, impossibly—Seijiro's voice.
She didn't look at any of it.
Now it was all broken out, cracked and collapsed inward. Soot climbed the walls in greasy handprints, and in places, blood trailed upward where fingers had dragged for purchase. The wind pushed through open frames and turned loose ash into a nauseating fall. It was all quiet in the particular way a place got after screaming had stopped.
She kept walking anyway; she was very good at that, or so she thought. Then, her pace faltered. She stumbled, and one hand shot out to catch herself on the rim of an old stone lantern. Her palm pressed into wet and sticky blood caked at the base. A breath caught in her throat and refused to move; her knees bent without permission as she braced herself, head bowed low.
When her lips parted, nothing came out.
Harunobu was dead.
The thought arrived late and soundless; her brain had delayed delivering it in the hope it would change on the way.
Harunobu is dead.
Her lungs forgot what to do. She could hear herself breathing too fast, as her mouth opened again, reaching for air, for sounds, but still no voice came. Her heart slammed once, hard, then sped up until her fingers shook.
What would she tell Miyako? How would she look Yoshinobu in the eye and say, your father died because of me? How would she say it without trembling? They had needed him. Tatsuhiro needed him. Hajime needed him. The survivors—what was left—needed him.
She needed him.
Kaoru squeezed her eyes shut as her stomach turned violently; she released everything on the ground, mostly bile since she had eaten nothing for an entire day. Her head felt slightly off-axis, as if the world had slipped half a step while she wasn't looking and now nothing lined up anymore.
Harunobu is dead.
Because she had trusted a Gojo. Because she—
Is this what I get for loving him?
She nearly doubled over again. No, not because of her, not because of love. It was the Gojo, it was Akiteru. Their hands, their fire, their decisions. The rage crept in cold at first, then hotter; it climbed her spine, and her eyes started watering.
It was their fault. The Gojo. All of them.
Every curse they'd unleashed on her clan, on her people—on him—she would take back in full. She would take everything from them in return, and if she had to stalk Akiteru and crawl all the way to Kyoto on her hands to make it happen, she would. Not one more drop of Zenin blood would fall, not until every single Gojo who was in Nagoya-go had bled dry.
Kaoru shut her eyes again, forced a breath in through her nose, forced it out through her mouth. Don't you dare, she told herself. He'd be so damned irritated if he saw you sniveling like a palace maiden. She could hear Harunobu's voice in it, irritated and familiar; she could picture him rolling his eyes, calling her a stubborn child.
She straightened and set one foot in front of the other. That was all that mattered.
North of the compound, the air shifted. Kaoru didn't need to see it to know what it was. That peculiar, cursed energy hummed across her skin like the echo of a thunder with no rain as static rose along her arms, and the hair at her nape lifted.
Hajime.
She turned toward the treeline, where the forest had been spared the worst of the flames, but not the aftermath. Ash drifted between branches as she moved deeper. The static densed unnaturally, climbing her forearms.
Something was off. It wasn't uncontrolled, no, it was focused.
That alone made her slow.
Then another explosion cracked through the trees as lightning tore a row of trunks apart with a clean sound, splinters raining down in a halo of blue-white sparkles. The scent of scorched bark reached her as Kaoru stopped at the edge of the clearing. The damage announced itself: blackened trunks snapped halfway through, soil scarred by arcs of light, bark peeled away. And at the center, always barefoot, wild-haired, and breathing hard, stood Hajime.
Blue lightning still licked up his arm, across skin, and his white uwagi, if it still deserved the name, was in torn strips with one sleeve blown off entirely to reveal an arm crowded with fresh burns. Blood had dried near his ear. He spun Nyoi once, resting it against his shoulder.
Idiot, she thought automatically. She always told him, don't overuse that damn charge, don't be stupid, don't be reckless. She stepped forward and let her presence fill the silence on purpose.
Finally, Hajime turned quick and his face shifted into a scrunch of recognition and annoyance. "Oh, you," he said flatly. "You're finally back."
Not Kaoru-sama. Not Zenin-dono. Just you. Kaoru blinked as the simplicity hit her in the ribs; somehow, it felt like the first real breath she'd taken since leaving Iga. She smiled and didn't recognize herself for it. She couldn't tell if she wanted to throttle him or thank the kami for his continued existence.
At least something hadn't changed.
But Hajime had.
Not in the obvious ways, the attitude, and the way he stood like the world owed him a fight was still the same. The change was in the way his cursed energy held its flow, still wild but no longer flailing. It was honed as if he had snapped it into obedience and found a purpose. Kaoru hated that he'd had to.
Her eyes rested on his arm, on the burns. "You're injured," she muttered. "You're going to kill yourself at this rate."
Hajime grinned, eyes bright, and didn't even glance at his arm. "You should've seen the other man."
Kaoru's eyes narrowed, but she didn't reprimand him. Not this time. That was Hajime; even when his arms were falling off, he had to get the last word in. Instead, she asked, "Who?"
He spun Nyoi lazily in his fingers, giving her a toothy grin. "Seijiro's father, I think. The old bastard with all the invisible arms."
Akiteru. Kaoru blinked slowly.
"He wasn't that scary," Hajime added, offhand. "Once I started ripping those things off his back, he squealed like a dying pig." The staff snapped to a stop in his hand, inches from her face with residual cursed energy, and he tilted his head behind it, half-feral, entirely too pleased with himself. "See? I figured it out. Just like you said."
Kaoru held his gaze a beat, then slid her eyes to Nyoi. "You killed him?"
The grin fell off his face as if someone had slapped it away. He clicked his tongue and took a step back, annoyed. "He got away," he huffed, like the words tasted sour. "Tatsuhiro was bleeding out, and that Date-Dragon threatened to set the whole forest on fire if I didn't get in line. That man has a terrible personality."
So, Akiteru Gojo was still alive. Bleeding, Hajime said, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Kaoru's fingers curled at her sides. "Good. They'll take the Tōkaidō to Kyoto. Fastest path back." Her mind slotted into motion. "I'll follow them to their estate—"
"I'm coming with you," Hajime cut in immediately.
"No." The answer came quickly.
His brows knitted, and his mouth twisted into a brat's scowl. "Why not?"
"Because," Kaoru said coldly, "I need you to stay with the survivors until they reach Edo. Tatsuhiro needs you."
Hajime's ears twitched visibly. "I have unfinished business with that man," he grumbled, voice rising. "You weren't there. I want another fight."
Kaoru stared at him, really stared. Her expression softened, barely. "It's not your fault, you know," she said quietly, "what happened to Harunobu."
Hajime blinked once; his hand tightened around Nyoi by a fraction. "I never said it was," he muttered.
"Then why—"
"He was strong," Hajime said. "And fighting him was fun."
The words sounded wrong. Kaoru's first instinct was to call him a liar and a brat. Her second was worse: to realize Hajime might not even know he was lying. He looked her straight in the eye.
"That's all," he added, simply.
Kami. This boy. Hajime—small, dangerous, brilliant Hajime—was already becoming something monstrous in his own right. Partly her fault; she had raised him into that and then acted surprised. "You're sad," Kaoru said flatly.
"No, I'm not."
She smirked. "Of course you're not."
A beat passed. Hajime tilted his head, genuine curiosity in his expression. "You're stronger than that man, right?" he asked.
Kaoru didn't even think about it. "Yes," she said without a doubt.
Hajime nodded, satisfied with that answer. Then, he asked: "What about Seijiro Gojo?"
Kaoru hesitated. "I'm smarter," she said at last. "And faster."
Hajime's lip twitched. "Yeah," he said. "But are you stronger?"
Ah. That was what he wanted. Not comfort. Her eyes narrowed. "Gojo Seijiro is mine," she said, stepping forward and looming over him slightly. The difference in height was shrinking by the month; he was growing too fast. "You'll have to find another strong sorcerer to fight." She reached up and ruffled his already-disastrous hair. "Have you gotten taller?" she asked anyway, because she couldn't help herself.
Hajime swatted her hand away with immediate offense. "Almost as tall as you."
Kaoru's mouth curved. "You had your fun," she said, and let the warmth vanish. "Now let me take care of the rest and keep Tatsuhiro safe until he reaches Edo. You can follow me to the next battlefield."
Hajime didn't answer at first. He looked down, scowling, thinking, and Kaoru could almost see the war behind his eyes, the sheer injustice of being told to wait. Finally, he let out a loud, theatrical sigh that Kaoru took as agreement.
"Good." She turned and took a step toward the treeline.
"The spear," Hajime called after her. Kaoru stopped without turning. "When I used it," he said more slowly, as if choosing words annoyed him, "at first it pushed me back. Like—like a voice in my head. Told me to get lost."
Kaoru looked over her shoulder, surprised. "You...used Hiten?"
Hajime shrugged. "Had to. It was right there. Made a barrier, sort of. It worked for a while." He scratched the side of his head. "But the damn thing didn't like being touched."
Kaoru hummed, trying not to sound impressed and feed the ego monster. "Hiten is volatile and unstable. It requires perfect cursed energy control and unshakable will." Her eyes slid to him. "You probably faltered just enough for what's left of its former owner to resist. Happened to me too."
Hajime's attention perked up. "Oh? Who was the old guy?"
Kaoru's lips curved into a half-smile. "Ryomen Sukuna."
"Ryomen Sukuna?" Hajime repeated, testing the name.
"A walking calamity during the Heian period. Probably the strongest sorcerer to have walked the earth," Kaoru confirmed.
Hajime blinked, and then his grin widened, delighted in all the wrong ways. "And where do I find him?" he asked, eyes lighting up.
"You don't," Kaoru deadpanned. "He's been dead for six hundred years."
"Tch." Hajime scoffed. "Figures."
Kaoru didn't wait for him to say anything else. She moved toward the center of the clearing, hands rising and fingers entangling in summoning signs. She didn't need to look behind her to know Hajime was watching, curious despite himself, always greedy.
One sign. Then the next. Then the next.
Her shadow mixed with her cursed energy and stirred around her, pulled inward and upward until it choked the wind. Three shapes rose from her shadow. Mourning Tiger came first, its shoulders rolling under black smoke-like fur, tail low. Piercing Ox followed, nostrils flaring and hooves cracking the earth. And then Max Elephant rose as if it were a moving hill. They arrived without sound except for the low vibration in the ground. The cursed energy it had taken to summon them all at once left a metallic taste on her tongue.
They had followed her into battle; now they stood in the clearing, summoned to their own funeral.
Behind her, Hajime's steps crunched on blackened leaves. Kaoru didn't turn, but she could feel the squint he always got when something intrigued him more than he wanted to admit. He folded his arms over Nyoi and cocked his head. "What are you doing?" he asked. "That's a lot of cursed energy you are wasting."
Kaoru didn't answer. She just stepped forward. The Mourning Tiger growled low; the Piercing Ox dipped its horned head; the Max Elephant snorted with steam curling from its trunk.
They knew.
She approached Mourning Tiger first and lifted a hand, brushing her fingers through spectral fur. It leaned into her palm. She still remembered the first time she had summoned each of them, starting from when she was a child, standing ankle-deep in her own blood.
Family, in a way.
Koaru drew her katana slowly, and her voice came distant and explanatory. "You know," she said, "when a shikigami is destroyed, it can never be summoned again."
Hajime frowned, behind her. "Yeah? So don't get them killed."
Kaoru chuckled, a faint smile touching her mouth, then vanishing. "But when it's destroyed," she continued, "its strength doesn't vanish. It returns to the technique." Her hand stayed on the Mourning Tiger's flank. "You can forge it into something stronger."
Hajime went still for a beat. "…Wait," he muttered, brows furrowing. "None of them have been destroyed—"
His voice trailed off as Kaoru turned her head just enough for him to catch her expression, remote and utterly decided. It would hurt, but that was the price of strength. She raised her katana, turning her attention back to the three shikigami.
"Yet."