43 The Eye of Izanami

  [Player: Kazuki Arata]

  [Level: 5]

  [Waza: Black Hand, Thread Cutter, Aura Sense, Dark Rider, Eviscerate, Adaptive Survival, Sword of Time]

  [Kegare: 10% → 2%]

  [Status: Crippled (Hands), Severe Burns (Healing), Exhausted | Ally Status: Kuro (Critical → Stable/Cat Form)]

  [Objective: Survive]

  ---

  The world was fire and pain. Smoke was an animal clawing at Kazuki's throat and lungs from the inside. Every part of him throbbed from fire, from bullets, from the final horrific struggle with Yumi that left him clinging to an exposed tree root at the edge of the ravine while she fell to the riverbed far below. But he was alive, somehow. And so was Kuro.

  He stumbled forward, cradling her limp form in his arms. She was so light. Her black hair tangled and matted with mud and blood, and her face - normally so sharp with secrets, was pale and slack. The bullet wounds across her side seeped blood, though the flow had slowed to a weak trickle. She was barely breathing.

  Behind them, the fox village was an offering to the flames, swallowed by the forest fire that Yumi had started to try and drive Kazuki to her. Ahead, the ravine yawned, nothing but a sheer drop to the riverbed. There was nowhere to run, nowhere but to the edge or into the blaze.

  "Hang on," he rasped. Bullets had pierced both of his hands. Adaptive Survival had sealed many of his wounds, but it hadn’t healed him and new agony flared with every movement of his hands.

  Kazuki brought Kuro back to the ridge where he and Yumi had tumbled simply because it was the only direction not yet on fire. Then he saw it - just to the side of the tree root that had stopped him from falling, a dark fissure in the rock face. A cave mouth, narrow and dark, partially obscured by scrub. Thin hope, flickered.

  He scrambled downwards, half-sliding, half-falling, cradling Kuro protectively as he used his legs for balance. Loose scree shifted under his feet, nearly sending them both tumbling straight down, but he reached the opening, gasping, and lurched inside, collapsing onto the cool, rocky floor.

  The cave was shallow, but it was an escape from the fire outside - and it was quiet. Kazuki could hear the harsh sound of his own breathing and the faint, shallow breaths coming from Kuro.

  He laid her down gently. The day was bright outside and enough light came in through the cave's narrow entrance for Kazuki to shee extent of Kuro’s injuries. Bullet holes gaped wetly in her side, the dark fabric of her clothing stained black with blood. Her face was deathly pale, her body unnaturally still.

  "Kuro?" Her skin was cold.

  Her eyelids fluttered open, golden cat-eyes unfocused, clouded. She tried to speak, but only a faint, wet gurgle escaped her lips. Her breathing hitched, then slowed further.

  She was dying.

  The realization hit Kazuki like a physical blow. After everything - the betrayal, the suspicion, the reluctant alliance, her last-minute confession and desperate intervention - she was dying here, in this miserable hole in the side of a cliff, while the world burned outside.

  "Just... let me die," she had whispered earlier.

  No.

  His Kegare pulsed faintly, faint shadow compared to the raging darkness he'd wielded before. He had used the power of his corruption to take the form that allowed him to survive the fire and absorb it. But every moment doing so had drained his kegare.

  [Kegare: 10%]

  Kazuki didn’t know how to heal Kuro. He paused the world and the now familiar timelessness set in around him. He looked through his Waza: Black Hand, Eviscerate, Retribution… almost all of them were the kegare skills of destruction. His own body had become superhumanly tough and healed from things that would kill a normal human.

  But true regeneration? True healing? Kazuki couldn’t do that.

  But there was one thing... one desperate, dangerous option. The fusion. Dark Rider.

  He had used it back at Karasu Peak with Fleet to join together into the meteoric Golden Fox and leap from treetop to treetop. But before that, the Waza had been taught to him for the first time by Kuro herself. She had shown him how to channel his kegare into her and join together into the form of a great panther. They had fought as one, two souls in one body, and survived together.

  He barely had any Kegare left. 10%. Activating it now might drain him completely, leave him hollowed out, vulnerable. And would it even help? Dark Rider wasn’t healing - it was joining.

  He knelt beside her, ignoring the agony in his own ruined hands. He gently placed one ravaged palm on her shoulder, the other on her chest, feeling the faint, fluttering heartbeat beneath.

  Kazuki took a deep breath.

  He closed his eyes, concentrating past the pain, past the smoke and fear, reaching for that fragile connection. He summoned the darkest corners of his heartbreak: the flash of Yumi's violence, the guilt of letting the fox village burn, the memory of Kuro's betrayal and her regret. That somehow familiar swirl of resentment, sorrow, and fear welled up, an old friend in his bloodstream.

  [Waza Activated: Dark Rider]

  [Emergency Protocol Engaged: Vitality Averaging]

  [Kegare; 10%]

  Darkness surged, not a flood of destructive power, but a thin trickle. It flowed between them, a bridge connecting two fading lives. He felt Kuro's presence merge with his, not as an equal partner this time, but as a simple flickering candle flame.

  Kuro's body stirred in his arms, and a sickening, twisting pressure seized his limbs, as if something were forcibly blending flesh and bone. Kuro's body glowed with dark purple brilliance, threads of black weaving over her shredded clothes, her delicate cat ears twitching.

  [Kegare; 6%]

  There was no explosive transformation, no rush of strength. Instead, a strange, reciprocal exchange began. He felt the sharp, specific agony of her bullet wounds within his own body - tearing muscle, shattered bone - even as the pain of his own burns seemed to lessen, spreading outwards like blood in water.

  [Kegare; 4%]

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  They shifted, not into the powerful sabertooth he remembered, but into a large, wounded black panther, ragged and scarred, curled up on the cave floor. Burns patterned its dark fur where his own skin had been seared. It let out a low, pained growl, a sound that was both his voice and hers.

  The fusion held for only a few heartbeats.

  [Waza Disengaged - Kegare Critically Low: 2%]

  [Ally Status Updated: Kuro - Stabilized (Severe Trauma/Reduced Form)]

  Kazuki gasped, the separation leaving him weak and trembling. He looked down. Kuro lay beside him. She wasn’t the slim young woman he had met at the shrine on Tashirojima. Instead he saw a small, black cat, curled tightly into a ball. It was her. Her breathing was shallow but steady now, the bleeding from her wounds stopped. The little cat was still clearly injured but… she was alive and stable..

  He looked at his own hands. They were still a mess of burns and crudely sealed bullet holes, but the overwhelming, debilitating agony had subsided slightly, replaced by a deep, throbbing ache. He felt utterly drained…, but alive. They were both alive.

  He gently scooped up the small cat, tucking her into the relatively clean inner fold of his tattered shirt, sheltering her small, warm body against his chest. Kazuki noticed that the cat, previously all black, now had a small stripe of white next to her left ear.

  Kuro didn't stir, lost in a deep, healing sleep.

  Outside, Kazuki could hear the roar of the fire. There was nowhere to go - outside the cave was either a sheer drop or scrambling up to an inferno. Kazuki looked around the small cave, searching desperately. And then he saw it.

  Set into the deepest shadow at the very back of the cave, where the rock should have been solid, was a door.

  It wasn't made of wood or stone. It seemed… grown. Itt looked disturbingly like overlapping plates of chitin fused with veins of dull metal, ribbed and segmented like an exoskeleton. The surface was oily, catching the firelight with a sheen. Tubes and ridges protruded from its frame, reminiscent of bones sinew. It was as if someone had carved vertebrae and muscle out of metal, then welded them onto the rock.

  Kuro let out a faint mew, pressing her face against his arm.

  Hesitantly, Kazuki reached out with a fragile hand. The surface of the door felt cool and smooth. There was no handle, no knob, only a slight depression near the center the same size as a palm.

  The fire surged outside, a wave of heat reaching even into the cave. Cinders rained down near the entrance. There was no choice.

  Clutching kitten-Kuro closer, Kazuki pressed his injured hand into the depression. The door responded instantly. First, a soft, hydraulic hiss, then a sound like an opening mouth, the chitinous plates slid apart, retracting into the surrounding rock like an iris.

  Beyond was darkness and cool, stale air that smelled faintly metallic.

  [Aura Sense: Active]

  And yet... there was nothing. Not the silvery ghosts of human reishin, or the gold of fox magic or even the pale green of trees. It was just... dark.

  We can't go back.

  He stepped across the threshold. Behind Kazuki and Kuro, the entrance sealed with another soft, organic hiss, leaving them in near-total darkness… at first.

  Perhaps Kazuki’s eyes had borrowed something from the small cat in his arms but after a few moments passed he could make out faint shapes glowing ahead. Slowly, carefully, he began forward. As Kazuki walked he found that they were in some kind of a tunnel sloping upwards. The light, though still dim, gradually brightened until he could see.

  Oh my god...

  Instead of natural caves or man-made tunnels, Kazuki was a labyrinth of half-living corridors, full of ridges and cables that looked like gigantic veins. The rock was covered in a biomechanical material that formed arcs across the walls and overhead, extending into a walkway.

  Is it alive? At times, he swore the ridges twitched or contracted. A rhythmic sound, like a faint heartbeat or breathing, thrummed in the background.

  Was this the Red Door? No... that was underground, weeks travel from Zao. But something was the same...

  Kazuki saw the beginning of a narrow staircase spiraling upwards, crafted from the same bizarre material as the door and corridors, hugging the inner wall of a vast, cylindrical shaft.

  And in the center of the shaft… something immense. A colossal column, wider than a house, made of the same fused chitin-and-metal substance, pulsing with a faint, internal luminescence. It plunged down and rose upwards, disappearing into the darkness above. Ribbed conduits and thick, vein-like cables snaked across its surface.

  It felt like stepping into the throat of some colossal, petrified beast. Or maybe into the workings of some alien machine.

  This didn’t feel like the Yokai Realm.

  But there was only one way to go - up. Towards the peak. Away from the fire. Holding Kuro securely, he began the ascent.

  The climb was eerie, disorienting. The stairs spiraled upwards around the colossal column. The air was cold, still, the silence broken only by the soft scuff of his worn boots and his own ragged breathing. Occasionally, the stairway would branch off, leading into dark openings in the shaft wall - rooms? He peered into one, seeing walls curving at uncomfortable angles, corners filled with motionless shapes that could be either machines or organs.

  Kazuki kept climbing, losing track of time in thet ascent. Kuro slept, a small weight against his chest.

  Then, far above, he heard it. The faint echo of footsteps. Someone else was here.

  He picked up his pace, ignoring his injuries. He had to see who it was. He rounded another curve in the spiral, peering upwards into the gloom.

  A figure, maybe thirty meters ahead, ascending at a steady pace. Female, judging by the shape. Kazuki's breath caught. He couldn't make out details in the dim light, but… the hair. It caught the faint glow from the column, revealing a cascade of deep auburn, just like…

  The thought slammed into him, illogical, impossible. She couldn't be here, in this impossible place. Could she?

  "Hey!" he called out, but his voice was still scared by smoke and it wasn’t more than a croak. "Wait!"

  The figure didn't stop, didn't turn. She continued her steady ascent, her form indistinct. Kazuki pushed himself harder, trying to close the distance, but she remained out of reach, always just around the next bend, a mirage.

  Finally, light appeared ahead – not the dim, organic glow of the shaft, but the pale, gray light of the outside world. The staircase ended at another biomechanical iris door, this one already open, leading out onto the mountain peak.

  Kazuki stumbled out into the cold, thin air, blinking against the sudden brightness of the overcast sky. He stood on a rocky summit, the wind whipping strands of his hair across his face.

  The view was staggering. He was on the highest point of Mt. Zao, surrounded by lesser peaks. Below he could see clouds of smoke from the ongoing fire he and Yumi had started.

  Fleet? Was he safe?

  Directly before him, the summit was dominated by two features. First, a weathered stone shrine, its carvings worn almost smooth by wind and snow. Around it stood dozens of small cairns, piles of carefully stacked stones.

  Second, the crater lake.

  It filled a vast volcanic caldera, easily hundreds of meters across. But the water… Kazuki's stomach lurched. It wasn't water. Not really. The surface wasn't the flat, milky blue-green typical of acidic crater lakes. Instead, it looked like… an eye.

  A single, monstrous eyeball, the size of a lake, lay before him - a faint ripple of movement playing across its surface. The "pupil" quivered, ringed by what looked like swirling vitreous fluid, as if the entire crater were a living organ turned skyward. It moved.Twitching, saccadic movements, as if focusing on things unseen, perceiving realities beyond what humans are capable of. The immense biomechanical column he had climbed within the mountain must have been its optic nerve, plunging deep into the earth, connecting it to… something else.

  Mew. Kuro buried her face in Kazuki’s arm.

  This was it. The Eye of Izanami. Not a jewel, not a mirror, not a metaphor. A literal, monstrous, lake-sized eye.

  A shadow fell over him. Kazuki turned slowly, his heart pounding against his ribs.

  The woman from the stairs stood near the ancient shrine. Her face was hidden behind a smooth, white mask, expressionless and unnerving, reminiscent of Noh theatre but simpler, starker. Her familiar auburn hair flowed out from under the mask's edges. She wore simple, dark traveling clothes.

  She regarded him, her masked face tilted slightly. Then, she spoke.

  Her voice... it cut through the wind, through the years of absence, and froze Kazuki in place. "Welcome, Kazuki," the masked figure said, her voice echoing his mother's perfectly.

  "Welcome to the Eye of Izanami."

  ---

  [Achievement Unlocked: None Are So Blind]

  [Next Chapter: Family Reunion]

  Thanks for reading!

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  Here’s a photo I took of the top of Mt. Zao: