The wind that curled around Yamaoka's ruins carried the smell of scorched wood and copper-singed taste of dried blood. Ash clung to charred carcasses of fine houses once, and stone-streets crumbled and were veiled in creeping moss, as though the village itself consumed its own pain. Hikari stepped daintily, her boots thudding softly in the dust, her cloak trailing sooty streams behind her.
She had walked this path a thousand times. As a child, as a soldier, as a daughter. But never thus.
"Is this all that remains…?" she breathed to herself, voice shattered.
Blackened beams thrust from collapsed structures like splintered ribs rent asunder. A doll—short an eye—sat at a tilt upon a porch, intact by fire, as though the specters had chosen to spare it for some sadistic reason. Quiet had descended like a second skin over the village, too heavy to remain quiescent. It waited.
When she arrived at the outer gate—the ancient torii that had stood originally as the sacred entrance—she stopped. Something was deeply carved into the wood, half-burned and wrapped in black vine.
Her breath was stolen.
A symbol.
She stepped closer, brushing the vine away. It wasn't just any sigil—it was the same one she'd seen scorched into the cave walls of Kurohana Shrine. The same one that burned into the collarbone of Hakari's neck when his power awakened. A ring of thorns around a single eye.
"Why…?" she murmured. "Why is this here?"
The wind answered with a long, hollow moan through the bones of the village.
Hikari stroked her hand against the wood, fingers trembling.
"Kurohana."
She retreated back, hesitantly, and looked across at the distant mountain. Her voice lowered, as though too loud would awaken something beneath her feet.
"Kurohana wasn't a village, was it." Her eyes dropped. "It was a vessel. A seal."
She backed away, looking down the road. "Not a home. A prison."
And then the whole thing snapped into place—the ritual in increments, the prayers long ago engraved in the shrine rocks, the freakishly ancient monks who never left. The way the Kurohana villagers talked in half-truths, never the past. The unease that had always preceded her down its streets. Not peace. Containment.
And Hakari.
"Hakari… You always told me magic wasn't evil," she breathed, recalling the way his eyes blazed when he spoke of judgment and its hypocrisies. "You were correct. They weren't a curse. They weren't a forbidden method. Its keeping us isolated from the world. They were keeping the world isolated from what they buried."
She looked once more to the torii gate, and this time she saw it for what it was.
This mark hadn't been a guidance symbol. It was warning. Warding.
And it was broken.
She moved away from it, heart thumping.
"They used us," she whispered, breathing lightly. "They used the tradition to harness something greater. Something that sustained itself on worship, on compliance. Something that observed. We were not guardians alone."
She closed her eyes, voice reducing to a shaken whisper.
"We were the sacrifice."
The truth struck with the force of a knife to the chest. All that pomp, all the ritual, all the blood spilled in the service of judgment—everything had been an illusion. Or worse, a half-lie. A lie intended to shape lives into cages.
And Hakari… he would have known it. Knew it, even her.
Was it why he defected?
She looked back once more at the mountains. Her hands trembled not with fear, but with the weight of all that she did not yet understand.
"Kurohana wasn't a shrine."
Her voice hardened.
"It was a gate."
And now… it was open.
The air around her became heavy. Cold. Still.
A puff of wind came the other way, curling snake-like around her. And then she felt him—felt the shift in presence. Felt Judgment's presence itself. Felt that the shadows seemed to pull in just slightly around one not of the living.
"Wrong," vibrated the voice right behind her, soft as dying embers.
Hikari froze.
Rinne leaned against the half-burned torii gate, lazily resting on the beam, arms crossed, his face as impassive as ever—half smile, half quiet. His red scarf thread danced in the wind, though the wind didn't exist to carry it.
"Kurohana wasn't a gate," he replied, his eyes seething with something that was not light, but memory. "It was a lock."
Hikari turned around, thumping heart ringing in her ears.
"A lock?" she whispered.
Rinne nodded, eyes drifting to the blackened debris.
"Gates are crossed. Locks. are meant to keep things from ever crossing to begin with. Kurohana was built not to hold a single monster, but to suppress the echo of hundreds—thoughts, memories, curses so old they didn't have tongues. That's why the mountain groans under the cover of darkness, why no elder would ever go beyond its shrine gates after dark.".
He crept towards her, boots never coming into contact with the ground. "They called it a shrine to instill respect. But it was a coffin. Brought low by tradition. Shrouded in blood." He stops for a moment.
"But also it was a gift."
Hikari's voice cracked. "Then why didn't you tell us?"
"I did." Rinne's smile became unforgiving. "In each lesson, in each riddle. But truth is bitter when you are young and still dreaming of virtue."
She rolled her head, barely able to look at him. "And now you come to mock me?"
"I don't mock," he said, standing beside her. "I haunt. There is a difference."
She clenched her fists. "Then haunt me with truth."
Rinne was silent for a moment. Then.
"The truth is," he'd growled, his voice lower, "Kurohana was not built to protect the world. It was built to silence the world. To make it obedient through fear. They needed watchdogs with restraint in their veins—immortals to be surrogates for their dream of control. And that's why you were chosen, Hikari. Not because you were the most fair."
His gaze had turned to hers.
"but because you would obey."
Her breath hitched.
The air tasted of ruin. Burnt soil and ash, broken prayers echoing in the wind.
She stood in the bones of Yamaoka, where the gates once stood proud. Now they leaned like drunken phantoms, scorched with the mark—the same twisted emblem she had seen etched in Kurohana's shrine, and along Hakari's talismans. A symbol not of worship, but of warning.
Her breath caught.
"You're close," Rinne murmured behind her, tone like silk pulled over glass. "But still. a few steps behind.
He stared at the broken fragments of the gate with a sigh, and then at her.
"They chose you not for being righteous, Hikari," he informed her. "They chose you because you are obedient, Hikari."
Her spine rigidified.
He continued, taking a step forward. "Do you think your brother would have been chosen? Hakari doesn't bow. He listens… then makes his own decision. Even when the world screams at him face-forward, he makes his own decision. That intimidates them."
"And now you mock me?" she spat, spinning away, eyes clouding over with increasing anger. "You think I wanted to be their puppet?"
Rinne blinked. Slowly. "No. I believe you were conditioned to want it. There is a difference."
Hikari's voice cracked. "I thought I was doing the right thing."
"You were," Rinne told her. "To them."
His gaze locked with hers—cold, calm, cruel. "You did not question. You judged when they told you to judge. You spared when they whispered mercy. And now that the seals are broken, the spirits unloosed, your hands are shaking because you still want to do what they would have told you to."
She stepped back, panting. "So what do you want me to do, Rinne? Let it all burn? Sit and decide if the world is worth saving?"
He half smiled. Not cruel. Just. tired.
"No," he said. "I want you to ask about who made this world in the first place."
Her teeth were clenched. "You speak as if there is an answer."
"There is," he said. "It's just not a pleasant one.".
Hikari shook her head, gazing at the ground as though it would grant her vision. "So I wasn't chosen because I was powerful."
"No," Rinne whispered. "You were chosen because you were. Pliable."
She cringed as though he slapped her.
"You needed to belong. And that made you flawless."
There was a silence. Then she said, voice sounding like broken glass.
"I didn't want to be their tool."
"But you were. You still are," Rinne answered pragmatically. "You were compliant, Hikari. You mixed the chains with responsibility."
Her fists were clenched. "Then what is your goal? If you're so free—what have you done that's so nobility?"
He tilted his head to one side. "I never claimed to be nobility. I claimed to be clarity."
And with that, he passed by her, his presence disappearing slowly like smoke blowing away under starlight.
As he disappeared into the debris, his voice lingered—just a last thread on the wind.
"When you finally stop trying to be good… maybe then you'll understand what it means to be just the one who bring judgment."
"You though Hakari left because he didn't like you?" Rinne asked. "He pitied you. Because deep down, he realized you were shaped to their design. He fought not to be a monster. You… fought to remain their angel."
She retreated, her voice rising higher. "I did what I had to! I—"
"Sustained judgment," he interrupted, his voice sharp now, metal on bone. "But at what cost? You never judge the judgment itself."
Silence again. Her throat tightened.
"You want to save the world," Rinne said gentler now, striding away from her, his back to her. "But do you even know what the world is anymore? Is it this ruin? These ruins? Or is it the deceit under your feet?"
She fell to her knees. Her hands trembled. "Then tell me, Rinne… who was I protecting? Who am I protecting now?"
He moved his eyes slightly, just enough that she saw the smirk distorting the corner of his mouth.
"That's the riddles, isn't it?"
He began to step away, dust lifting before his feet without touching.
"You are at very young age to start talking in riddles, Hikari." He chuckles. Almost like jokingly. "Your work is not to save them, Hikari," he said to her without glancing back. "Your work… is to decide if they're even worth saving. Like i said before. You can be the good one. Or the one who bring the blade of judgment."
She remained there, observing him disappear in the fog rolling up from the ruined village, her breath shallow, her chest hollow.
The wind whispered softly.
Wind blew through the ribs of Yamaoka, breaths that were not from living people.
Hikari didn't budge, her arms stiff at her sides, her breath fogging the icy air as a whispered prayer. Rinne's words had pressed their heavy weight upon her chest, like metal pounded into flesh. But before she could calm herself—
"Then say it to me, Hikari," Rinne's voice escaped once more, no louder than a breath, yet seemed to bloom within the wreck itself, as though the shattered stones listened in. "What path do you walk?"
She didn't turn to look at him this time. "The one I ought to have walked," she spoke softly, almost with a weariness. "The one set out for me.".
"Your walk to a path?" Rinne addressed her softly, his movements slow, almost languid as he paced. "Wandering where you were told to wander, standing where you were placed like a man on a board? That is not a path. That is called a script."
She gritted her teeth. "You sound like you didn't play the same game."
"I did," he said. "And I paid for it. Then I broke the board."
She spun to face him, eyes aglow with a smoldering fire. "You died. You made the ultimate sacrifice. Red Blossom Technique everybody knows that. You can't stand there now and act like your hands are still in this."
He gave a slight smile, inscrutable.
"Too sure. Like death is the neat cutting everyone wants it to be."
"You don't exist, Rinne," she spat. "You're a memory. A ghost. I don't even know if I'm speaking to something that thinks it's you. Maybe right now im talking alone!"
He smiled, that unsettling calm never faltering. "And you, Hikari? Do you think exist?"
She stood frozen in place.
"What."
"As i right now. I think i exist because is stil can think like an person right?" He say but seems Hikari is confused what is he talking.
He stepped forward, his shadow seeming to stretch abnormally from the ground at his feet. "It is because I died that I'm not real, you say. But what is 'real'? Is it breath in your lungs? Blood in your veins? The prayers that you have followed? Or is it the choice of your soul?"
"I have a spirit," she whispered softly, to herself more than to him. "I have my own will."
"Yes, i am have spirit too." Rinne said, face calm. "And yet you cling to their words as if they were etched on you. As if you were never yours in the first place."
Her voice shook. "I can go my own way."
"Then why are you still trembling?" he said.
The words fell on her like pebbles cast into quiet waters, ruffling all that she cherished.
He walked past her again, slowly, eyes drifting to the shattered gate, the cursed seal. "You stand at the threshold of a world that is coming apart. And you keep asking what role you will play—judge, hero, daughter, sister."
He turned to look at her.
"But have you ever asked… who you are, without any of that?"
There was silence. Only the wind screaming through stone.
"I…" she breathed. "I don't know."
He smiled. Not cruelly. But with the shadow of sadness.
"Then find out, Hikari. Before someone else answers for you once more."
Cold wrapped around them like a second skin, clinging to the broken bones of Yamaoka's remains. Hikari did not move, her breathing shallow, suspended between fear and the reflection of her own mirror.
And then his voice came back. Rinne—neither man nor ghost, neither miracle nor memory. He stood as if cut from the black air itself, his presence silent and absolute.
"You can choose your path now, Hikari," he whispered, his voice silk on a blade. "No one is holding your wrist anymore. Not the Elders. Not your father. Not even I."
She closed her eyes, but he continued.
You stand where few ever stand—on the thin line between right and need. Between the light you hold in your heart and the shadow that maintains balance. You, child of Judgment, must choose—will you be loved by the world, or will you carry its weight?
His steps were quiet as he traversed the shattered earth.
"To be good is warm. Soft. It is flowers in spring and tender hands." But goodness alone will not still the rot beneath the roots. And to do your duty. He paused, tilting his head a fraction, his voice going lower, colder. "Duty is iron in the mouth. It is blood under your nails and silence when you need to scream. Duty is knowing that no one will thank you for what you did, but the world will keep breathing because you did."
Hikari's lips parted, but the words caught—what was there for her to say that hadn't already dwelled in the bones of her uncertainty?
Rinne's gaze softened, barely.
"You ask if I'm alive, if I'm dead, if I'm still important. But the question you should ask isn't of me. It's of you. Are you real, Hikari? Are you still someone's creation? Or have you finally begun creating yourself?"
The wind howled by, as if the world itself was leaning forward to listen.
"You might be the bright one. The redeemer. The soft sister healer. Or…"
He moved closer now, close enough that she could feel the cold lip of something half-alive.
"You might be the fire that burns the filth. The hand that brings the sword of Judgment no other will dare hold. The judgment none escape."
He stepped back, darkness rolling off him like the ink from water.
"But you can't be both. Not forever."
And then it was silence. No farewell. No firework disappearing act.
Just the silence in which his words hung—like ash. Like foretelling.
Hikari stood alone beneath the ruined arch of Yamaoka's old gate, the weight of Rinne's words shrouded around her like the dusk—quiet, heavy, and unerasable.
She stared at the ancient symbol etched into the stone, the same sigil that whispered through the Kurohana shrine, the same that burned into the back of Hakari's path. It was no village. It was never meant to be. It was a lock. A vessel. A prayer wrapped in deception. And now, it was broken.
The breeze shifted, carrying the scent of ash, old blood, and something older still—like the breath of long-dead gods.
She set a light hand on her chest, fingers following the site where her immortal bead pulsed dully. Was she still herself? Or only a very finely made tool by convention?
The road in front was colder now. Not for fear. But because it was gradually becoming hers.
Her voice, soft and unsure, broke into the silence.
"…I don't know what I'm becoming... P-please just tell me whay should i choose... Rinne..." She say. As no answer.
Her breath hitched. She wanting to ask order again. Rinne word was right. She all time waiting order from elder. To move. To act until now. And its nature enter her very soul.
There was no answer this time. Not from Rinne. Not from fate. Just the wind curling through the bones of Yamaoka like laughter without a mouth.
And with that, she turned away from the gate, her steps slow, eyes heavy.
Not back home.
Not to safety.
But forward—toward whatever lies ahead.