The bones whispered beneath my feet.
Not loudly. Not in words. Just a low, groaning murmur—like the echoes of ancient prayers that had never been answered. I stepped cautiously, each movement reverberating across the marrow-white path that twisted into eternity.
Izanami walked ahead.
The hem of her black robes barely touched the bridge, yet the air trembled with every step she took. She was more shadow than goddess now, a silhouette framed by a sickly twilight that stretched above and below. No sun. No moon. Just that grey, dying hue that refused to become either day or night.
> "Where are we going?" I asked. My voice didn't echo.
> "Not yet," she replied. "You've only just begun."
My jaw tightened. "I thought this was punishment."
> "Oh, it is," she said without turning. "But not the kind you expect."
Behind us, the platform was gone. So was the shrine. So were the gods.
Only the bridge remained—carved of femurs and skulls, ribs interlocked like temple beams. Some still bore teeth marks. Others wore rusted armor.
> "Are these…?"
> "Daimyōs," she said, "Warriors. Priests. Betrayers. Believers. You're walking on the dead who came before you."
"And where did they go?"
> "Nowhere."
Her answer chilled me more than silence ever could.
---
We walked for what felt like hours. Or maybe it was minutes. In this place, time melted.
Around us, the void rippled. Sometimes it took shape—an image here, a flicker of memory there.
I saw myself as a boy again, standing over my mother's body.
I saw the battle where I lost my second-in-command—his eyes pleading with me to retreat.
I saw Sena, lying on her deathbed, whispering my name before the light left her eyes.
> "You carry ghosts," Izanami said suddenly.
> "They carry me," I replied.
> "You still believe that?"
> "I don't know what I believe anymore."
She stopped.
For a moment, only the groaning of bones beneath us filled the air.
Then she turned to face me.
> "You once prayed to Amaterasu with tears in your eyes. Do you remember what you asked?"
My throat felt tight. "I asked to save them."
> "No," she said softly. "You asked to deserve them."
Her words hit like a blade between the ribs.
I staggered.
I remembered now.
How I knelt on the temple floor, sixteen years old, barely able to hold a sword.
> "Make me worthy of the people," I had whispered. "Let them be proud to follow me. Let me not fail them."
> "That prayer," Izanami said, "was never answered. Not by her."
> "And you? Are you answering it now?"
> "No," she said, turning again. "I'm just walking you to the place where questions rot."
---
The bridge began to change.
The bones grew darker—more brittle. Ash clung to the marrow. A fire had passed through here once. A fire not made of flame, but of grief.
And then we reached it.
The Threshold of the Lost.
It wasn't a gate. It wasn't even a wall.
It was a field—miles wide, filled with mirrors.
Cracked. Stained. Floating mid-air like shards of reality, each one glowing faintly with violet light.
"What is this?" I asked.
> "Every regret you swallowed," Izanami whispered.
I turned. One mirror flashed.
I saw myself ordering an execution I didn't believe in—just to appease the Council.
Another flickered.
Me striking my own brother in a fit of rage during the siege.
Another—
Sena, crying in the rain as I chose duty over love.
I stumbled back.
> "Enough."
> "No," she said. "Not yet."
I spun toward her. "Is this your punishment? Humiliation? Breaking me down?"
> "This is your weight," she replied. "You must carry it, or die under it."
I breathed hard. The air here hurt to inhale—like sucking in old ashes.
"What if I can't?"
> "Then the bridge ends here. And you join the bones beneath it."
---
I don't know how long I stood there.
Minutes? Years?
Eventually, I reached for the mirror showing my brother.
I touched it.
It turned to smoke.
Then I reached for Sena. For the children I couldn't save. For the men I sent to death.
One by one, I touched them all.
The pain didn't lessen.
But I remained standing.
> "You are further than most," Izanami said behind me. "But not far enough."
I turned to her. "Where does this path go?"
> "To the moment before rebirth."
> "So you are giving me a second chance?"
She said nothing.
Instead, she raised her hand.
The mirrors shattered.
The bones shook.
The field crumbled—
And we fell.
---
I landed in a place without name.
Not a forest.
Not a desert.
Not a city.
But it contained pieces of all three—an ever-shifting ruin, a wasteland where reality itself had been wounded.
Ruined temples. Trees with ash for leaves. Mountains that pulsed like lungs.
And in the center?
A lake.
Black as ink. Still as glass.
> "Drink," Izanami commanded.
"What is it?"
> "Memory."
I hesitated.
Then knelt. Dipped my hand.
It was cold. So cold it burned.
I drank.
And the world… returned.
I remembered every heartbeat.
Every breath.
Every oath.
Every betrayal.
Every kiss.
Every scream.
Every moment from the first cry of birth to the final whisper in the shrine.
And then—
A new memory.
One I had never lived.
A city. New. Massive. Filled with cultivators in armor I didn't recognize. A land of floating towers and monstrous beasts.
A name I didn't know forming on my lips.
"Yume-no-Kuni…"
The Land of Dreams.
---
I choked on the water, stumbling back.
> "What was that?" I gasped.
Izanami smiled—not kindly. Not cruelly.
> "The world you are being sent to."
> "Sent?"
> "You are not done, Daimyō Akatsuki."
> "Why me?"
> "Because you cursed a god… and survived."
> "And that's enough?"
> "No," she said.
> "But you are."
---
The lake rippled.
And from its center, something rose.
A sword. Not the one I died with.
This one was made of black flame, with veins of violet running through its core.
It hovered before me—alive, humming, waiting.
> "Your martial soul," she said.
> "It's not the same."
> "No," she whispered. "It has changed."
I reached for it.
It burned.
But I did not let go.
---
Light exploded.
Not white.
Not gold.
Violet.
It tore through the wasteland, shattering the mirrors, the bones, the sky—
And in the silence that followed,
I heard the voice of Amaterasu.
> "You have walked far enough, child of war."
> "Then give me your wrath," I whispered back.
> "No," she said.
> "I give you a world."