Dusk found them at the mouth of a valley where light refused to settle. The sky bled amber into a haze that never quite became night. From above, the clustered roofs below looked like shells left by a tide that had gone missing.
Ren felt it first—the faint hum beneath the ground, a rhythm like a heartbeat muffled under soil. "There are people," he said.
The Maiden nodded, though her voice came slow. "They move, but not as the living should."
As they descended the winding path, the air thickened with the smell of lamp oil and mold. Smoke rose from chimneys, yet the sound of life was absent. No dogs barked, no doors slid shut. When they entered the main street, figures moved through the mist: villagers carrying buckets, sweeping doorsteps, bowing before shrines—each gesture perfect, mechanical, unending.
Ren stepped aside as an old man shuffled past, eyes open but unseeing. The man poured water onto the same patch of ground again and again, whispering a prayer that dissolved into breath.
The Maiden watched, trembling. "They've forgotten themselves."
He crouched beside one woman kneeling before a child's toy. "Are they dead?"
"No. Just emptied. Yomi's breath erases names first." She knelt beside him, touching the woman's brow. "When you lose your name, the soul can't remember where to return."
Ren studied the woman's face—still warm, still human. "Can it be undone?"
"Perhaps." The Maiden's hand shook as she drew a sigil across the earth. The ink of her blood shone briefly, then vanished. The woman didn't move.
"Not like this," the Maiden whispered. "The curse runs deeper than flesh."
They pressed on toward the center of the village where a small shrine stood. Paper lanterns hung from its eaves, each flame steady despite the absence of wind. Ren counted thirteen. The Maiden's breath caught.
"Thirteen," she murmured. "The number of the forgotten gods."
Inside, the shrine walls were painted with fading murals—warriors kneeling before a mirror of fire, a maiden offering her heart to a beast of smoke, a bow strung with threads of light. Ren touched the paint; dust came away on his fingers, golden.
"This is older than the Gate," she said softly. "It speaks of the first sealing—the one lost to record."
Ren's gaze lingered on the bow in the mural. The linework shimmered faintly, alive for a heartbeat. "It looks familiar."
"Because memory circles," she said. "The relics remember before we do."
Outside, the villagers had gathered before the shrine, standing motionless, faces lifted toward the sound of the Maiden's chant. Their lips began to move in unison, echoing her words though they should not have known them.
Ren's hand went to his sword. "You're waking them."
"Or they're waking me," she said. "I can't tell."
The chanting swelled until the air trembled. Ren felt the Mirror Fire stir inside him, the pulse beating against his ribs. When the Maiden faltered, he reached to steady her, but the bond flared and he saw through her eyes—the villagers' souls flickering like fireflies trapped in glass. Then darkness, and her body sagged in his arms.
He carried her behind the shrine, laying her on the stone floor. Her breathing was shallow, eyelids fluttering with fevered dreams. Through the link came fragments of her mind: rain on temple roofs, a child's laughter, the taste of incense smoke. He felt her slipping.
"Stay," he whispered, though he didn't know which of them he meant.
The lanterns outside flared white. Every villager turned toward the shrine, heads tilting at the same unnatural angle. Their mouths opened together. What came out wasn't sound but pressure—an inward pull, as if the night itself were inhaling.
Ren stumbled back, drawing his sword. The sigils on the blade lit again, forming spirals that spun with the rhythm of his heartbeat. He swung once, twice—the air cracked, scattering the lantern light into sparks. The villagers halted.
Then all at once, they knelt.
Each pressed a hand to the earth and began to murmur a single word. Ren strained to hear it. The sound crawled under his skin: "Return."
He turned toward the Maiden. Her eyes opened halfway, pupils dilated. "The Gate's prayer," she breathed. "They're calling it back."
"What do I do?"
"Break the name."
"I don't—"
Her hand rose weakly toward a scroll mounted above the altar. "That parchment holds their memory. Burn it."
Ren seized the scroll. The paper was brittle, written with hundreds of names repeating until the ink bled through. He set it against the nearest lantern flame. The moment fire touched it, a scream rippled through the village—not from throats but from the air itself.
Light burst outward, washing everything white.
The sound faded slowly, like breath exhaled after too long held. When the glare dissolved, the village was silent again. The people still knelt, but the trance had broken. One by one, they blinked as if waking from a long dream. A woman looked at her own hands and began to cry without knowing why. Somewhere, a child called for its mother. Life crept back into the spaces it had abandoned.
Ren turned. The scroll was gone; only ash remained, floating upward before falling as gray snow. The Maiden lay still against the shrine stones, her skin fever-warm. He knelt beside her. Through the link he felt nothing at first—then a faint pulse, slow and uncertain.
When she opened her eyes, they were clouded, as if seeing him through water. "You broke it," she murmured.
"You told me how."
Her lips curved in the ghost of a smile. "Then the names will find their way home."
He wanted to believe her, but already the villagers were forgetting again—turning away from each other, drifting back to their empty houses. The curse had lifted, yet its echo lingered. Forgetting had become a habit the soul did not easily release.
Ren lifted the Maiden in his arms and carried her out into the cool night. The river shone faintly beyond the rooftops, calm now, reflecting a sky full of stars that seemed too many, too near. She stirred against his shoulder. "Put me down," she said softly. "The earth is steadier than your heartbeat."
He set her on her feet. The bond glowed once between them, a faint line of gold. "You shouldn't have tried to purify them alone."
"If I hadn't, you would have tried." Her smile was tired. "We share more than breath now."
They walked together through the quiet streets. Smoke drifted from the burned scroll's remains, carrying the faint scent of ink and prayer. At the edge of the village, an abandoned well caught Ren's eye. Water rippled inside though no wind moved. When he looked down, his reflection stared back, and behind it the yokai woman's face hovered—faint, patient, eyes shining like coins beneath deep water.
You can't burn what remembers, she whispered. Fire only teaches it to change shape.
Ren turned away quickly, but the echo of her words followed him. The Maiden did not ask what he'd seen. Perhaps she already knew.
They made camp beyond the last house where the fields began. Fireflies rose from the grass, their light gentle after so much brightness. Ren built a small fire; its crackle felt almost human. The Maiden sat nearby, unbinding her sleeves. Beneath the fabric her arms were marked with faint burns, lines that traced the same sigils as the ones under his skin.
He reached for her wrist. "When did this start?"
"When we crossed the bridge," she said. "The link draws what I give too freely."
"You're dying."
"We all are. I'm just listening faster."
Her calm unsettled him more than fear would have. He wanted to argue, but the words that rose were softer. "Then let me carry it for a while."
She looked at him, really looked. "You already do." For a heartbeat the bond brightened; he felt her warmth, her pain, her strange peace. Then she drew her hand away. "Rest, Ren. We'll need strength for the next shrine."
He lay beside the fading fire but did not sleep. The night hummed with quiet—crickets, water, the low murmur of human voices returning to the village. Somewhere in that sound he thought he heard the yokai woman singing, a melody without words, woven from the river's breath.
The Maiden's voice drifted through the darkness. "When I was a child," she said, "I thought the gods lived in rivers. My mother told me they only borrowed them to speak."
"What do you think now?"
"That they never left. We just stopped listening."
Ren watched the stars reflected in the firelight. "Then maybe this world still remembers its name."
"Perhaps," she whispered. "But remembering always asks for something in return."
Her eyes closed. The link pulsed once more, light fading with her breathing until only the night remained.
Ren looked toward the sleeping village—the flicker of lanterns reigniting, the echo of forgotten prayers reborn. The current beneath silence had begun to move again, carrying both memory and loss downstream.
He sat until dawn, listening to it go.