“Who are you?” Sen shouted. “Why’re you following us?”
There was a great, impenetrable silence. The figure watched them, motionless, wreathed in a dark shape, a shadow that fluttered and billowed as though torn by wind: it tricked the mind, first seeming black as night, but then white, and red, and ochre, then a shifting color like soft earth, then black again.
Rui heard the ringing of a bell.
The creature came at them as one walking on uncertain ground. Leaves and branches hung about its body, and as it approached, it seemed to somehow unfold itself out of the ground as much as walk across it. Its face was a blank wood mask. Four eyes painted in thin lines.
“Rui,” Sen whispered. “That’s agod…”
A cavernous voice boomed over the path, coming from everywhere at once.
“I see you,” they said.
“Who are you?”
“One who sees in all directions.”
Rui gasped.Hososhi.What had the old woman said?The god is coming.The One Who Sees.
They come to warn us.
She stepped forward. “Calm, spirit, please…”
“I see evil coming for you, Sen-of-the-Starlight,” the god said. “I hold the gate no longer. The demon has blinded me… they have stabbed out my eyes… Where is your master, bird-child?”
Sen drew his sword, shouting, “Back!” in a wavering voice. The god knocked him aside as though he was an insect, moved in a great lumbering circle: “Where is your master?”
Sen lay on the path, leg wrenched beneath him. The god loomed over him, a horrible weight bearing down. He shouted, voice trembling with defiance, with fear. The world seemed to fall away. There was only this. These woods. This god. This malice, overwhelming.
“Sen!”
Rui moved without thinking. She found Sen’s sword in her hand, sharp, the handle dry as bones. She found it where he’d dropped it.
“What god are you, that treats us humans so?” she cried. “Get back!”
The blade stabbed in, bright, searing. And her arm seemed to burst into fire, the blow seemed to bite her when it hit. She fell as if thrown, smashing her head against a tree, and the demon-god began to turn, and the malice changed, and it all made sense.
“You,” they said.
I’m the one who’s cursed. Not Sen. It’s me. They came for me.
The world broke. A horrible screech pierced the air. Rui staggered, jarred, her arm burning with pain where she’d struck. “Get away!” she shouted. The god merely looked at her, and their strange, mask-like face stared back, blank, unreadable.
“Fool child.” The god’s words hissed like wind through leaves.
“What do you want?” Rui couldn’t stop her voice from shaking. Somewhere above her came a high, hollow sound, like far-off laughter.
“You,” the god whispered. “You.”
The god came closer, and stopped. The masked face paused, listening.
“I am too late,” they said. “The winds change. She is coming.”
“Get away,” Rui gasped. “We have nothing for you, please, go away…”
“I will have a use for you,” the god said.
And flew forward. Flew at her,intoher, a waterfall into her heart, and she fell, pain blooming, a cut, a cry, a splinter—
