The morning mist clung to the estate grounds like the memory of rain.
Iki stood in the garden, small hands pressed together in a pose Yaho had taught him, breathing in the cool air of early autumn. His breath formed visible clouds that dissipated slowly, as if reluctant to leave his presence. Around him, the grass sparkled with dew, and somewhere in the dense forest surrounding the property, birds were beginning their dawn chorus.
Three weeks had passed since his father's death.
Three weeks, and Iki still hadn't cried.
Yaho watched from the engawa—the traditional wooden veranda that wrapped around the estate's main building—with his acoustic guitar resting across his knees. His nephew had adapted to life here with unsettling ease, moving through the days with that same placid emptiness that made Yaho's chest tighten with concern.
He's too calm, Yaho thought, not for the first time. Six years old, both parents dead, and he acts like he's observing the world from behind glass.
But perhaps that distance was mercy. Perhaps whatever voice Iki heard, whatever presence resided in his lungs, provided insulation from grief that would otherwise break him.
Or perhaps it had simply replaced what should have been there.
"Yaho-san!" Yukina's voice cut through his contemplation. The girl appeared from around the corner, still in her nightclothes—a simple yukata decorated with cherry blossom patterns. Her twin braids were slightly mussed from sleep, and she rubbed her eyes as she approached. "Is Iki already awake?"
"He woke before sunrise," Yaho said, mustering his trademark smile despite the weight in his chest. "I think he sleeps less than I do."
Yukina's gaze immediately found the boy in the garden, and that same strange intensity from their first meeting returned to her expression. Over the past weeks, Yaho had observed her growing fixation with increasing unease. She followed Iki everywhere. Insisted on sitting beside him during meals. Fashioned elaborate stories where she and Iki were characters in fairy tales—prince and princess, hero and companion, always together.
Is this normal? Yaho wondered. Or is she sensing something I can't? Something in him that calls to her?
"Can I go train with him?" Yukina asked, already bouncing on her heels with anticipation.
"After breakfast," Yaho said gently. "And after you've changed into proper clothes. We have a lot to cover today."
"Like what?"
Yaho's smile faltered slightly. "Today, I'm going to explain what you both are. What we are. And why we have to be careful."
They gathered in the estate's main room after breakfast—a simple meal of rice, miso soup, and grilled fish that Iki had eaten with mechanical efficiency while Yukina chattered about dreams she'd had. Now the children knelt on cushions across from Yaho, morning light filtering through paper screens to paint everything in shades of amber.
"Do either of you know what a Fullbringer is?" Yaho asked.
Yukina shook her head. Iki simply watched, waiting.
"A Fullbringer," Yaho began, "is a human being with a special ability. We can manipulate the souls of matter—objects, materials, even the air around us. This power comes from our connection to something called Hollow reiatsu."
"Hollow?" Yukina tilted her head. "Like... empty?"
"No. Hollows are—" Yaho paused, choosing his words carefully. How did you explain monsters to children without giving them nightmares? "They're spirits. Dangerous ones. They look like monsters with white masks, and they feed on human souls."
Yukina's eyes went wide. "That's what attacked me! Before you saved me!"
"Yes," Yaho confirmed quietly. "And that's what killed Iki's parents."
The boy's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his dark eyes—brief as lightning, gone before Yaho could name it.
"Fullbringers are born when our mothers are attacked by Hollows while we're still in the womb," Yaho continued. "The Hollow's spiritual energy—their reiatsu—mixes with our developing souls. We survive, but we're changed. And because we carry a trace of that Hollow essence, we become..." He gestured vaguely. "Visible. Noticeable. To other Hollows."
"They hunt us," Iki said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes. Like predators drawn to prey. Your spiritual signature—your reiryoku—it smells like food to them." Yaho's fingers traced absent patterns on his guitar's neck. "That's why we live in hiding. That's why most Fullbringers don't gather in groups, why we keep barriers around this estate, why we have to be so careful."
Yukina's small hands clutched at her dress—today she wore something that looked like it belonged in a European fairy tale, all ruffles and ribbons. "But... but you can fight them, right? With your powers?"
"Some of us can." Yaho smiled, trying to inject warmth into words that carried weight. "If we train. If we learn to use our Fullbring properly. But it takes time, focus, and—most importantly—a catalyst."
"Catalyst?" Yukina echoed.
"An object that matters to you. Something you've formed a deep connection with through memory or emotion. For Fullbringers, these objects become the focus for our power." He lifted his guitar, running his hand along the worn wood. "This was my mother's. She played it every night before I slept, even when she was sick. Even on the night she died. Every note she ever played is stored in this wood. Every lullaby. Every moment of love."
The air around Yaho seemed to shimmer slightly, as if reality were holding its breath.
"Watch," he said softly.
His fingers found the strings, and he began to play.
The melody started gentle—a simple progression, major chords that rang clear and bright in the morning air. But as Yaho continued, something changed. The sound took on texture, on weight, on presence beyond mere vibration. Golden threads seemed to weave through the air, visible only at the corner of vision, carrying the music through the room like living things.
And then Yukina started laughing.
It bubbled up from her throat unbidden, uncontrollable, a sound of pure joy that she couldn't suppress no matter how she pressed her hands to her mouth. She doubled over, giggles spilling out in waves, her eyes watering with mirth at nothing and everything simultaneously.
Even Iki's lips twitched—the closest thing to a smile Yaho had seen from him.
Yaho stopped playing, and Yukina's laughter cut off as if severed. She gasped for breath, cheeks flushed, staring at Yaho with wonder and confusion warring in her expression.
"What was that?" she breathed.
"My Fullbring: Guitarist." Yaho's smile turned genuine. "I manipulate the soul of sound itself, bending emotions and spiritual energy through music. That was the Chord of Joy—it makes everyone who hears it feel overwhelming happiness."
"That's amazing!" Yukina bounced excitedly. "Can you do other things? Can you make sad music? Scary music? Music that makes people dance?"
"Many things," Yaho agreed. "But each application requires practice, focus, and understanding of what I'm trying to achieve. Fullbring isn't magic—it's about manipulating the fundamental nature of things. The soul that exists in all matter."
Iki raised his hand slightly, the gesture oddly formal. "If Fullbringers can do this, why doesn't everyone know about us?"
Yaho's expression sobered. "Because we're rare. Because most humans can't even perceive spiritual energy, let alone manipulate it. And because..." He hesitated. "Because those who can see us—Soul Reapers, Quincy, certain spiritual-aware humans—often view us with suspicion. We're anomalies. Humans who carry Hollow essence but aren't Hollows themselves. Some see that as dangerous."
"Are we dangerous?" Iki asked, his tone genuinely curious rather than concerned.
More than you know, Yaho thought, feeling the constant low-level pressure that emanated from his nephew like heat from a fire. More than you could possibly understand.
"We can be," he said instead. "Like anyone with power. That's why I'm going to teach you both control. How to suppress your reiryoku so Hollows can't find you easily. How to release it when necessary. How to survive in a world that wants to eat you."
Yukina's expression had gone serious, her fantasy-prone mind clearly spinning elaborate narratives. "So we're like... heroes in training? Learning to use our powers to fight evil?"
Yaho couldn't help but chuckle. "Something like that, princess."
The nickname made Yukina beam.
After the explanation came questions—dozens of them, mostly from Yukina. Did other Fullbringers exist? Could they meet them? What were Soul Reapers? What were Quincy? Were there good Hollows? Bad humans with powers? How strong could Fullbring become?
Yaho answered what he could, deflected what he couldn't, and through it all, Iki listened with that unnerving intensity that suggested he was cataloging every word for future reference.
Finally, Yukina asked the question Yaho had been dreading.
"Yaho-san, why is this place so big if it's just you living here? And why—" She looked around at the expansive estate, the multiple buildings, the empty rooms. "Why does it feel lonely?"
Silence settled over them like snow.
Yaho's fingers found his guitar strings again, but he didn't play—just rested them there, feeling the tension of metal against his calloused fingertips.
"This estate has been in the Susami family for seven generations," he said quietly. "At one point, nearly thirty people lived here. Grandparents, parents, children, cousins, uncles, aunts. It was loud. Chaotic. Full of life."
"What happened to them?" Iki asked.
"Hollows." The word fell like a stone into still water. "Our family has always had strong spiritual pressure. Stronger than most Fullbringers. That made us valuable—we could accomplish things others couldn't. But it also made us visible. Extremely visible. And over the years, Hollows came. One by one, sometimes in groups. They hunted us."
Yaho's gaze drifted to the garden beyond the screens, seeing ghosts that weren't there.
"My mother died when I was twelve. Hollow attack. My father lasted until I was sixteen. My grandparents were already gone. My cousins scattered, trying to escape the family curse. And your father—" He looked at Iki. "Daichi was my twin brother. My last real family. He tried to start his own life away from here, thinking distance would keep him safe. But the Susami blood is strong. The spiritual signature follows us wherever we go."
"And now there's just you," Yukina said, her voice very small.
"Now there's just me." Yaho forced his smile back into place. "But that means I've had lots of practice surviving. And I'm going to teach you everything I know so you can survive too. So this doesn't have to keep happening. So maybe—" His voice cracked slightly. "So maybe this family can finally know peace."
Iki stood abruptly, drawing both their attention.
"I need to meditate," he said.
Without waiting for permission, the boy walked to the corner of the room where morning light pooled brightest, sat cross-legged with perfect posture, and closed his eyes.
Yukina watched him go with poorly concealed concern. "Is he okay?"
"I don't know," Yaho admitted. "I really don't know."
Training began in earnest after lunch.
Yaho led both children to a cleared area of the garden, a space surrounded by ancient trees whose roots had drunk deep of the estate's spiritually enriched soil. The grass here grew thicker, greener, as if the earth itself had been nourished by generations of Fullbringer reiatsu.
"First lesson," Yaho announced, standing before his students like a teacher from an older era. "Spiritual awareness. You need to learn to sense reiryoku—your own and others'. Close your eyes."
Both children complied, though Yukina peeked occasionally.
"Feel your own body first. Your heartbeat. Your breath. The way blood moves through your veins." Yaho's voice dropped into a rhythm, almost meditative. "Now go deeper. Feel the energy inside you. It's there—warm, heavy, like a second heartbeat underneath the first. That's your reiryoku. Your spiritual power."
Minutes passed in silence broken only by birdsong and rustling leaves.
"I feel it!" Yukina gasped. "It's... it's like there's something glowing inside my chest!"
"Good. That's exactly right." Yaho turned to his nephew. "Iki?"
"I've always felt it," the boy said, eyes still closed. "It's not separate from me. It's just... there. Like breathing."
Of course it was. Because Iki's reiryoku wasn't normal—it was augmented by something divine, something that had turned spiritual energy from a power into an fundamental aspect of existence.
"Now the harder part," Yaho continued. "Suppression. You need to learn to pull that energy inward, to hide it from anything that might be searching. Imagine drawing it into your core, compressing it, making it small and quiet."
Yukina's face scrunched with concentration. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Her spiritual pressure, which had been radiating outward in gentle waves, began to fluctuate—flickering, unstable, but showing signs of movement.
Iki simply breathed.
One moment his presence was a constant weight, pressing against Yaho's senses like humidity before a storm. The next, it had diminished by half. Then half again. Within thirty seconds, Iki had compressed his reiryoku so completely that he felt barely present—a ghost of a ghost, nearly invisible to spiritual perception.
Yaho's eyes widened. "How—"
"The voice told me how," Iki said, opening his eyes. "He said reiryoku is like breathing. You can breathe out—release it. Or breathe in—pull it back. I just... stopped breathing out."
That's not how Fullbring works, Yaho thought wildly. That's not how anything works. He shouldn't be able to—
But Iki could. Because normal rules apparently didn't apply to whatever resided in his lungs.
"Can you do the opposite?" Yaho asked. "Release it all at once?"
Iki tilted his head, considering. "I think so. Should I?"
"Small amount. Very small. Just a burst."
The boy nodded. Closed his eyes. Breathed out.
The pressure that erupted from him was instantaneous and overwhelming—a wave of pure spiritual force that washed over the garden like a physical wind. Grass bent flat. Leaves tore from branches. Yukina stumbled backward with a cry of alarm, and even Yaho had to brace himself against the sudden weight pressing down on his shoulders.
And then it was gone, pulled back into Iki's small frame as quickly as it had emerged.
"Sorry," Iki said, though his tone remained utterly neutral. "Was that too much?"
Yaho couldn't speak for a moment. His heart hammered against his ribs. Because what he'd just felt wasn't the spiritual pressure of a six-year-old Fullbringer. It wasn't even the pressure of an adult Fullbringer.
It was something else entirely. Something vast and ancient and utterly beyond human scale.
"That was..." Yaho swallowed hard. "That was perfect. But let's not do that again unless absolutely necessary."
"Okay."
Yukina had fallen on her backside, staring at Iki with eyes like dinner plates. "What was that? I felt like... like the sky was falling!"
"That was my reiryoku," Iki explained helpfully. "Released all at once. Like Yaho-san asked."
"You're so strong!" Yukina scrambled to her feet, dress grass-stained, expression shifting from shock to awe. "You're like—like a prince from a story! A prince with magical powers!"
Iki blinked at her, clearly not understanding the comparison.
But Yukina was already spinning narratives, her fantasy-prone mind latching onto the image with desperate intensity. "That's it! You're Prince Iki, and I'm Princess Yukina, and we're training together to fight the evil monsters! And one day we'll—"
"Yukina," Yaho interrupted gently. "Let's focus on your training now. You need to learn control before you can think about fighting anything."
The girl deflated slightly but nodded, returning to her meditation stance. She threw one more glance at Iki—longing, fascinated, inexplicably drawn—before closing her eyes again.
And Yaho watched them both, these strange children under his care, and wondered what future he was preparing them for.
The vision took Iki during meditation.
One moment he was seated in the garden's warm afternoon light, focusing on the rhythm of his breath as Yaho had taught him. The next, reality shifted, and he was somewhere else entirely.
Somewhere primordial.
There was no ground, yet he stood. There was no sky, yet above him stretched infinity. Everything was fluid, luminous, a sea of light that wasn't light in any conventional sense. Souls moved through it like currents, like fish through water, each one a spark of consciousness existing in harmony with countless others.
This is the before, Iki understood instinctively. Before the separation. Before the worlds.
He was witnessing reality's first breath.
In this space, there was no division between living and dead, human and spirit, matter and energy. Everything existed as one vast ocean—the primordial sea of souls, undifferentiated and infinite.
And then—
Pain.
The ocean convulsed. Reality screamed. Iki watched as something impossible happened: the unified whole was torn apart. Ripped into pieces by hands he couldn't see, by will he couldn't comprehend. The sea of souls divided into three—one part became the realm of the living, one the realm of the dead, one the realm of monsters.
And at the center of that cosmic wound, holding the pieces apart through sheer existence—
Him.
The figure that had once been whole was now dismembered, mutilated, transformed into a keystone that prevented reality from collapsing back into unified chaos. Arms separated from torso. Legs bound by chains of spiritual energy. Head wrapped in sealing cloth. And from the chest cavity, where organs should be—
Emptiness.
Pieces scattered. Heart, liver, lungs, all ripped away and hidden throughout the newly divided worlds, ensuring the keystone could never reconstitute itself.
Ensuring the prisoner could never escape.
"They dismembered me," the voice said, and Iki felt it vibrate through his bones. "They made me a keystone. You carry my breath."
"Why?" Iki asked, his child's voice small against the cosmic horror surrounding him. "Why did they do this to you?"
"Because I could not be controlled. Because my power threatened their vision of order. Because they believed three worlds were safer than one. So they took me—the one who could maintain unity—and made me into the lock that keeps everything separated."
"That's wrong," Iki said. It wasn't a question. Just fact, simple and clear.
"Yes. But wrong does not mean undone. I have been here for hundreds of thousands of years, child. I have suffered for eons beyond counting. And I will continue to suffer until—"
The voice paused.
"Until someone frees me."
"I will," Iki said.
"You are six years old."
"I'll get older."
"The ones who imprisoned me are the strongest beings in existence. Gods and monsters who shaped reality itself. You are one small child."
"I'll get stronger."
Silence stretched across the primordial vision. Then, something that might have been laughter—dry, humorless, but carrying the faintest edge of hope.
"Perhaps you will," the Soul King whispered. "You carry my breath, after all. And breath is the foundation of all existence. Without breath, there is no life. No death. No anything. So breathe, child. Breathe deeply. Grow strong. And when you are ready—"
The vision shattered.
"—break these chains."
Iki opened his eyes to find Yaho's concerned face inches from his own.
"You stopped breathing," his uncle said urgently. "For almost a minute. I was about to—"
"I'm okay," Iki interrupted. His voice sounded distant even to his own ears. "I saw him again. The one who speaks to me."
"Iki, I think we need to talk about these visions. They're not normal, even for Fullbringers with powerful reiatsu."
"Nothing about me is normal." Iki met his uncle's eyes, and for once, something like determination flickered behind his empty expression. "I think you know that by now."
Yaho sat back on his heels, running a hand through his hair. "What did you see?"
"The beginning. Before the worlds were separated. When everything was one." Iki's hands clenched slightly in his lap. "And I saw what they did to him. How they cut him apart. How they turned a living being into a tool."
"Who is 'him,' Iki? Who are you seeing?"
But Iki just shook his head. Not because he didn't know—he did know, with certainty that went beyond logic or evidence. But because speaking the name felt dangerous. Saying it aloud would make it real in a way that couldn't be taken back.
"Someone who needs help," Iki said instead. "Someone I'm going to save."
The day wound down toward evening. Training concluded. Dinner was prepared and eaten. And through it all, Yukina shadowed Iki with increasing persistence, chattering about heroes and adventures while the boy listened with patient emptiness.
After dishes were cleared, Yukina disappeared briefly, returning with an armful of flowers she'd gathered from the garden—chrysanthemums, camellias, and wildflowers whose names Yaho didn't know.
"What are you doing?" Yaho asked, watching her settle cross-legged on the floor.
"Making something," she said mysteriously, her small fingers working with surprising dexterity. She wove stems together, creating a circular shape, adding blooms at regular intervals.
Iki watched from nearby, kneeling beside a low table where Yaho had set out tea.
After several minutes, Yukina held up her creation triumphantly: a crown of flowers, simple but charming, petals arranged in an alternating pattern of white and red.
"There!" She stood, marched over to Iki with exaggerated importance, and placed the flower crown atop his head. "Now you look like a proper prince!"
Iki blinked, reaching up to touch the flowers. "Why?"
"Because!" Yukina's cheeks flushed. "Because you're special. And strong. And you're going to protect people, right? Fight the monsters? That makes you a prince. A hero. And every prince needs—" She gestured at the crown. "—needs a crown!"
"I see." Iki's tone suggested he didn't see at all.
Yukina deflated slightly, her enthusiasm dampened by his lack of reaction. She fidgeted with her dress, opened her mouth, closed it, then burst out: "And every prince needs a princess! Someone to stand beside him. Someone to support him and cheer for him and—and be there when things get scary!"
She dropped to her knees before Iki, hands pressed together in supplication, eyes shining with desperate sincerity.
"So I'm going to be your princess protector! I'll get strong too, and I'll fight beside you, and we'll—"
"Yukina," Yaho interrupted gently. "You don't have to—"
"I want to!" She didn't look away from Iki. "I don't understand why. I just met him. But when I look at him, I feel like..." She struggled for words. "Like I've been waiting for him. Like something inside me recognized him the moment we met. Is that weird?"
Yes, Yaho thought. That's extremely weird.
But Iki simply tilted his head, considering Yukina with that unreadable gaze. And then—miraculously—his lips curved upward. Not quite a smile, but the closest approximation he'd managed yet.
"Okay," he said. "You can be my princess protector."
Yukina's face lit up like sunrise.
And Yaho watched this strange scene unfold—a boy crowned with flowers accepting a pledge from a girl who didn't understand her own obsession—and felt the future shifting around them like continental plates grinding against each other.
What are you becoming? he wondered, looking at both children. What paths are forming here?
But he had no answers.
Only the growing certainty that whatever these children were meant to do, whatever role they were meant to play in the spiritual world's cosmic drama—
It was already beginning.
Night fell. The estate settled into darkness broken only by lantern light. And in his room, Iki prepared for sleep with the same methodical calm he brought to everything.
The flower crown sat on his bedside table, already wilting. He'd removed it carefully, treating it with the respect Yukina's earnest gesture deserved. Now the petals were browning at the edges, curling inward, succumbing to the natural death of cut flowers.
Iki stared at them as he lay down, pulling his blanket up to his chin.
Death is natural, he thought. Everything dies. Flowers. People. Even worlds, probably. But being forced to exist in agony forever—that's not natural. That's not right.
His eyes drifted closed. His breathing slowed, falling into the deep rhythm that accompanied meditation.
And somewhere in the space between waking and dreams, he heard it again:
"You are learning. Good. But understanding comes before action. You must know what you're fighting for. What you're fighting against. What I was. What they made me. Only then can you—"
The words faded into impressions, into feelings, into knowledge that bypassed language entirely and sank directly into Iki's consciousness like rain into soil.
And as he slept, something changed.
The ambient reishi in the estate—already rich from generations of Fullbringer presence—began to move. Spiritual particles drifted toward Iki's room like moths toward flame, drawn by his unconscious breathing. They pooled around him, saturating the air until it felt heavy, pregnant with potential.
In the next room, Yaho bolted upright in bed.
He'd felt it—the sudden spike in spiritual density, the way reality itself seemed to compress around his nephew. Heart hammering, he rushed through the corridor, sliding Iki's door open without bothering to knock.
The boy sat upright in bed.
His eyes were open but unseeing, glazed with white light that had no source. His mouth moved, forming words in a language Yaho didn't recognize—harsh syllables that sounded like stone grinding against stone, like the earth's bones shifting beneath the crust.
And most terrifying of all: Iki wasn't breathing.
His chest didn't move. His lips formed those alien words without drawing air. For five seconds, ten, thirty—no breath entered or left his body.
"Iki!" Yaho rushed forward, grabbing his nephew's shoulders. "Iki, wake up!"
One minute. Two. Five.
The boy sat perfectly still, speaking in tongues, not breathing, while spiritual pressure built around him like a storm gathering strength.
And then, all at once—
Breath.
Iki inhaled, and the sound was like a whirlwind condensing into a point. All the reishi that had pooled in the room rushed toward him, sucked into his lungs with such force that Yaho actually stumbled forward. Papers scattered. The lantern flame flared white. And for one heart-stopping instant, Yaho swore he saw something in the air around his nephew—a ghostly outline, vast and impossible, like the shadow of something that existed outside normal dimensions.
Then Iki's eyes cleared. The pressure vanished. Reality stabilized.
The boy looked at his uncle with confusion. "Yaho-san? What's wrong?"
"You—" Yaho's voice shook. "You stopped breathing. For five minutes. And you were speaking in—I don't even know what it was. Some ancient language."
"Oh." Iki touched his throat, as if surprised. "He was teaching me. Showing me words from before. From when reality was young and language was different."
"Iki, this isn't normal. Even for a Fullbringer, even for someone with powerful reiryoku, this is—"
"I know." The boy's tone carried no fear, no concern. Just acceptance. "I'm not just a Fullbringer, Yaho-san. I think you've realized that by now."
Yaho knelt beside the bed, meeting his nephew's eyes. "Then what are you?"
Iki was silent for a long moment, considering the question with his characteristic detached thoughtfulness. Finally, he said:
"I'm breath. His breath. The breath that was stolen and scattered. And breath is the first and last thing anything does." His small hand pressed to his chest. "So I think... I think I'm the part of him that refuses to die. The part that keeps hoping, even after eternity of pain. The part that believes someone will eventually care enough to help."
A chill ran down Yaho's spine.
Because Iki wasn't speaking like a six-year-old child.
He was speaking like something infinitely older, borrowing a child's voice to express truths that predated civilization.
"I'll protect you," Yaho said hoarsely. "No matter what you are. No matter what you're meant to do. You're family, and I'll protect you until my last breath."
Iki tilted his head, and for once, something like warmth entered his expression. "Thank you, Yaho-san. But I think... eventually, I'll be the one protecting you. And Yukina. And everyone else who gets caught in this."
He lay back down, pulling his blanket up.
"Because that's what breath does," he said quietly. "It sustains life. And if I carry his breath, then I have to use it to sustain as many lives as possible. Even if the ones who imprisoned him try to stop me."
Sleep claimed him almost instantly.
And Yaho sat there in the darkness, listening to his nephew's steady breathing, feeling the gentle pull of spiritual particles being drawn in and released with each inhalation and exhalation.
One in four hundred trillion, he thought again, that philosophical anchor that usually brought him comfort.
But looking at Iki—at this impossible child who spoke with gods and breathed in languages older than humanity—Yaho wondered if those odds applied.
Or if Iki Susami was something that existed outside probability entirely.
Something inevitable.
Something destined.
Something that would reshape the spiritual world, whether that world was ready or not.
In the flower crown on the bedside table, something impossible occurred.
The wilted petals, brown and curling, suddenly reversed their decay. Color returned. Structure restored. The flowers bloomed again, fresh as if newly picked, responding to the ambient reiryoku that saturated the room.
And they would remain that way until morning, when Yukina would find them and stare in wonder at flowers that refused to die.
The first small miracle in a life that would be filled with them.
The first sign that reality itself bent around Iki Susami.
And always would.