44 Family Reunion

  [Player: Kazuki Arata]

  [Level: 5]

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

  [Kegare: 2%]

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

  [Objective: Survive? Understand? Go Home?]

  ---

  The wind blew across the desolate summit of Mount Zao, thin and sharp. It tore at Kazuki's tattered and seared clothes, whipping strands of his own hair across his face, stinging the raw skin of his burns. Before him was the impossible: the Eye of Izanami.

  Not an artifact.

  Not a jewel.

  An actual eye.

  It was a colossal, living eyeball nestled in the caldera of the mountain. Its vast, milky surface shifted with the enormous dark pupil dilating and contracting and the eye itself twitching and moving, as if scanning fast moving realities unseen or unseeable to lesser beings. The air smelled of ozone and sulfur.

  But Kazuki barely registered the monstrous eyeball or the wind or the cold. His attention, his entire world, was fixed on the figure standing near the ridge of the caldera. It was a woman in a black cloak and simple dark traveling clothes, with her face hidden behind a blank, white mask, and deep auburn hair spilling out from beneath its edgest.

  Her voice... it was his mother's voice. Unchanged, achingly familiar, cutting through the years of silence and the roaring wind.

  "Welcome, Kazuki," she had said. "Welcome to the Eye of Izanami."

  The world tilted. The monstrous Eye, the impossible climb, the fire and pain below - it all receded. There was only that voice, that hair. A desperate, fragile hope bloomed in his chest, so intense it felt like another wound.

  "Mom...?" The word caught in his throat, barely a whisper against the wind, thick with disbelief. He took a small step forward, as the small, warm weight of Kuro - his betrayer and his friend; the little black cat - purred softly against his chest.

  She inclined her head, the simple movement so familiar. "Yes, Kazuki. It's me."

  He wanted to run to her, to tear off the mask, to see her face, to know for sure that it was her..

  But...

  "You... you left me," he managed, the words thick. "You disappeared... I looked for you...."

  You abandoned me.

  "I didn't leave by choice, Kazuki," the masked woman said, her voice softening further. "I was brought here. Taken. Just like you." She took a step towards him. "This world... it pulls people through cracks, sometimes. Violently."

  Kuro let out a muffled mewl, struggling weakly in his arms. Kazuki drew her closer, his heart pounding.

  "Come," his mother said softly, turning and looking up a stretch of rock-carved stairs towards the ancient shrine that stood sentinel beside the cairns. "Let's get out of this wind. There's much to explain."

  He hesitated, glancing down at the small black cat nestled against his chest. He held Kuro slightly tighter, a small, warm anchor, and followed the masked woman.

  They walked up the flight of rough stone steps leading to the shrine entrance. The building was old, incredibly old, its wooden beams warped and grayed by centuries of wind and snow. Intricate carvings, likely depicting gods or spirits Kazuki didn't recognize, were worn almost smooth. Dozens of cairns, small and large piles of carefully stacked rocks, surrounded the shrine like silent watchers.

  "Why the mask?" Kazuki asked as they reached the shrine's entrance, the wind lessening slightly.

  The woman stopped, her back to him for a moment. She traced a finger along a faded carving on the doorframe. "Time works differently here, Kazuki. And this world... it changes you. It leaves marks." Her voice shook slightly as spoke. "I've been in this realm far, far longer than you can imagine.. Time... hasn't been kind. The mask is... for the best. For both of us."

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  What had this place done to her?

  She pushed open the heavy wooden shrine door. It wasn’t an altar space. Instead the room looked like some biomechanical material had grown over and through the old wood of the shrine. Unlike the battered exterior, the interior seemed well-tended - swept free of dust, with an old kerosene camping lantern, from Earth, hanging from cross beams. And in the middle of the space was a bizarre console. It looked like a fusion of bone, sinew, and dark, oily metal. Embedded within the membranes of the console was… a glass touch screen.

  "What is this?" Kazuki breathed, stepping inside. The air was cool and still.

  "This is how I watch," the woman said, approaching the console. She placed her hand on a ridged, bone-like panel beside the screen. The screen flickered, then resolved into an image - a dizzying, high-altitude view looking down as if from a satellite. He could see the curve of the caldera, the surrounding peaks, the distant smoke plume from the burning forest far below.

  "The Eye of Izanami isn't just a passive observer," she explained, her voice flat. "It can be... directed. Focused. It sees across dimensions, recognizes patterns. It can track those who don't belong. Like you and me. Like the others who sometimes fall through."

  With subtle movements of her hand, the image shifted, zoomed, panned. She focused on the smoke plume, the resolution sharpening unnervingly. He could almost make out individual trees burning.

  Kazuki stared at the screen, then back at her. The connection slammed into place. "You were the Master," he said, the words flat, heavy. "You sent the Inugami after me. You sent... her. Yumi. She tried to kill me." The accusations piled up, fueled by weeks of fear and confusion. "Why? If you were looking for me, why try to capture me? Why send her?"

  The woman turned from the console, her masked face unreadable. She raised her hands in a placating gesture. "Kazuki, please understand. This world is dangerous. Power here is held by... monsters. Yokai, spirits, things far older and stranger. To survive I had to make alliances. Compromises."

  Her voice filled with genuine pain now, cracking slightly. "The Inugami... they were supposed to bring you to me safely. And Yumi..." She hesitated, a flicker of something – revulsion? fear? – crossing her voice. "She was human. I never thought she was capable of such violence. I never wanted anyone hurt, least of all you."

  She stepped closer, her masked gaze fixed on him. "I am so, so sorry, Kazuki. For the fear, the pain you've endured. This realm... it corrupts everything it touches. Even intentions. Even love."

  The idea of his mother, lost and alone for years and years in this hostile world, forced into terrible choices... Was he any different? Hadn’t he been struggling since his first day here with his own kegare, with his own darkness and corruption? How could he judge her? He wanted to forgive her.

  "I made mistakes," she continued, her voice slow and quiet. "Terrible mistakes. But everything I did, every compromise, every risk... it was all to find you. To take us home."

  Home. The word struck him like a physical blow. Earth. Sendai. His old life.

  "You know a way?" he asked, his voice barely audible. "A way back?"

  The masked woman nodded, a single, slow movement. "Yes. Now that you're here, now that I've found you... there is a way. For both of us." Genuine tears seemed to well in her voice. "We can leave this nightmare behind, Kazuki. We can go home. Together."

  For the first time since she spoke, Kazuki felt that this really was his mother. The longing in her voice – it felt real. The pain felt real. Now the hope felt real too. Just like he wanted; he could go home. With his mother. A family again.

  He thought of Suzume, her quiet strength, her conflicted heart. He thought of Fleet, his unwavering loyalty, his kindness like a gentle light, how he'd called Kazuki "Dad." He looked down at the small black cat resting against his chest - Kuro, the beautiful Nekomata girl who had guided, betrayed, and saved him more than once, now small and fragile in his arms.

  The woman led him to a wide, sliding door that opened onto a platform overlooking the crater once more. Below, the Eye of Izanami gleamed in the overcast daylight, its pupil contracting and dilating in subtle pulses.

  "This world isn't stable," his mother explained, her voice regaining some of its earlier composure, though still thick with emotion. "It has wounds, places where the barriers between realities are thin. Places where ancient powers leak through. The Red Door is one. This Eye is another. There are more."

  She stopped at the precipice, the wind whipping her auburn hair. The Eye, in the mid distance, looked less grotesque - more an incongruity than an impossibility. It twitched frantically then lay still, then twitched again. "The Eye of Izanami anchors this place, draws power from... somewhere else. But it's also a lock, a focal point. If it's destroyed..." She turned to him, the white mask catching the bleak light. "If its connection is severed violently enough, the resulting backlash could tear open a path. A way back to our world. For us."

  Kazuki stared down at the colossal, moving organ below. Destroy... that? It felt like contemplating the assassination of a god. "How?"

  "It requires immense power," she said. "I can’t do it. But you, Kazuki... you can. That kegare... it's entropy, dissolution. A fundamental power."

  Then the woman looked down at the small cat in his arms.

  Kazuki felt Kuro stir faintly against his chest, a low, rumble in her tiny throat.

  His mother looked back up at him, the white mask, matte, unreflecting. "There are steps. Rituals that can follow to channel your energy correctly, to take us home and not send us... elsewhere.."

  "Okay," Kazuki said, his heart pounding. This was it. The end of his quest - the journey home. "What's the first step?"

  His mother reached out, extending something toward him. Kazuki looked and at first couldn’t make sense of what it was. A handle. Of a short blade, etched with faint sigils. Her voice was sad but firm.

  "The first step…" she said, her masked gaze dropping to the small, sleeping black cat nestled in his arms, "is to kill the Nekomata."

  What?

  The woman took a step closer and whispered, "Kill the cat, Kazuki."

  Outside, the monstrous Eye of Izanami rolled in its crater, wide and unblinking.

  ---

  [Achievement Unlocked: Mommy Issues]

  [Next Chapter: The Bond Unbroken]

  Thanks for reading!

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  If you’re enjoying the story, I'd like to recommend one that I really like: "Hidden Systems" by Limli the Librarian. Check it out!

  Just a few more chapters to the end of the arc...

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