Taeko’s eyes slowly peeled open. She looked around and immediately recognized her surroundings. Somehow, she stood in the courtyard of her Senkumo military base from centuries ago. The bodies of slain, Senkumo soldiers lied all around. The smell of blood and smoke invaded her nostrils.
“This is…”
“The day the Senkumo clan was wiped out by Bishamon.” Osamu said, startling her. He stood behind her with his hands in his pockets, his soulless eyes surveying the scene around them. “Come on. There’s plenty more to see.”
Taeko took one last gander at the bloodied bodies laying at her feet. To this day, she recognized the faces of so many of the troops that were killed that day. When she blinked, she and Osamu suddenly stood in the reddish-gray waters of Normandy after the infamously destructive, amphibious assault had taken place. The sand was engorged with dead bodies, bloody rags, and bullet casings. Czech hedgehogs lined the shore, preventing allied tanks from advancing on the beachhead.
“Why are you showing me all this?” Taeko asked.
“To say that I agreed with you.” Osamu said. “War is an atrocious thing. Our history is marred by the scars of war, yet we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. The same conflict. The same destruction. The same death. Our country knows the pain of war more than any other.”
“If you agreed with me, why did you try to do so much on your own? Aren’t you trying to bring an end to war as well?”
“Yeah. As far as that goes, we truly wanted the same thing. That’s why I decided to team up with you.”
Osamu took a helmet off of one of the dead, American soldiers laying in the water, tracing his thumb over the bullet hole at the crown. “But you and I have different ideas on how to end that war. No, that’s not true. It’s not that we had different ideas. It’s more like we had different extremes. You were willing to go incredibly far to achieve this, but not far enough.”
“How much farther do I need to go? Is starting the Third Great Holy War not good enough for you?”
“No. It’s not.”
The two then found themselves in a city neither of them had even been in their lives. Looking around, Taeko realized they were in Japan. They were surrounded by wooden, traditional houses and sauntering women dressed in beautiful, floral-patterned kimonos. Most of the men walking around wore brown, button-up Imperial uniforms with Arisaka rifles strapped around their shoulders.
The morning breeze kicked up clouds of dirt and sawdust off the paved road as civilians and soldiers alike went about their daily lives, some transporting goods like rice and fabric on their horse-pulled wagons, others conversing with their friends on the sidewalk. The smell of fresh water from the moats and canals filled the air, the water coursing like blood throughout the city.
It was as though Osamu and Taeko weren’t there, even though they stood dead center in the pedestrian street. None of the patrolling soldiers, peddlers, or parents walking by paid them any mind.
“I thought long and hard about our world, about the nature of war and nations.” Osamu said. “Your philosophy is a route to peace, but it’s a kind of peace protected only by deterrence and the shared idea of the Soldier’s Condition. You nearly changed Japan with this philosophy, but who’s to say the world will follow suit?
“Even if your philosophy is a wake-up call to soldiers and military leaders the world over, there are those who believe that only the state gives a nation its legitimacy. Not everyone strives for freedom the way you do. Some people actually prefer to live beneath an authority figure that makes all the important decisions for them. Some people…don’t want freedom. Even I started to think that maybe that’s the road to a peaceful world.”
“That’s an ideology of enslavement, one that Japan was forced to accept as its own.” Taeko said. “Our people were brutalized in the Second World War. We were the first ones to catch a glimpse of humanity’s potential for senseless destruction.
“You know what happens when the state strips away the personhood of its own soldiers and people, but something worse happens when a nation is crushed in a war the way we were. The nation as a whole has their sovereignty stripped away. They’re scorned and shamed by the world.
“When the victor occupies your country and controls the tribunals, only your crimes in the war are brought to light. I do not deny my country played a part in the barbarity, that we committed heinous deeds that should never be repeated.
“I simply know that both sides of the conflict committed crimes. Barbarity was never unique to the Japanese people. War does that to anyone and everyone engulfed in its madness. But because we were the ones defeated, we were made out to be monsters who deserved what was coming next, so that the Allies could stand on the backs of our dead and pose as valiant heroes to the world.”
A flash of light outshined the sun, drawing Taeko’s eyes to a massive explosion in the distance. A thunderous boom tore the sky apart, followed by a monstrous rumbling as a mushroom cloud formed out of the great fireball on the horizon.
The people stopped and froze in fear as a shockwave traveled from the hypocenter of the blast. Frightened gasps and screams filled the streets as the people’s normal, everyday life suddenly came to an abrupt end. Mothers threw themselves over their shrieking children as the flash of light burned brighter, blinding all who looked in its direction. The terrible rumbling grew louder and the earth shivered beneath everyone’s feet.
The blast sent forth an inescapable wave of thermal death upon the city. That wave tore through buildings, eviscerated flesh, and burned away all traces of life in its path. The civilians standing around Osamu and Taeko didn’t know what was happening. All they could do was scream and shout in fear mere seconds before they were killed. In the blink of an eye, countless thousands of men, women, and kids all met the same, horrific end.
And yet, Osamu and Taeko remained. The streets were clouded in a thick, hot veil of smoke and ash. The sun that dawned so brightly was snuffed out by the towering mushroom cloud that stood like a titan over the city. Every trace of light died as the cloud of gaseous death benighted the land in its shadow.
Taeko walked around the city, realizing now it was Hiroshima. The sight of the corpses made her stomach twist into knots. Those closest to the blast had the flesh burned off of their bones, leaving only broken skeletons behind. She walked down the street and witnessed worse scenes the further she went.
She saw the body of a charred child laying in a pile of burnt wood. He died with his arms shielding his face from the light. His white teeth stuck out from the rest of his blackened body, made visible by the force of the blast that killed him with his mouth agape before burning away his lips.
Taeko stopped on the sidewalk, noticing the nuclear shadow of a man burnt onto the pavement. She guessed he must’ve been sitting idly when the bomb detonated over the city and eviscerated him. The blast burnt away the faces of the people strewn about on the desolate streets. It seared away their hair, melted their skin, and boiled the fluid in their eyeballs.
So many people lied around, charred and frozen in the pose they took in their final moments. It was like they were statues made of charcoal, some of them fused to the pavement they died on.
“Why did we ever accept this.” Taeko cried. “We were forced to pay for our crimes in the war. We’re ridiculed for honoring our war dead, told not to enshrine or honor them. But the war’s greatest criminals did this to us. Twice. And then they flew off to be celebrated as heroes.
“If one side is made to pay for their sins, surely the other side should as well. If not, how can any of these wrongs ever be set right? It’s not justice. It’s domination. It’s slavery.”
“I agree with you.” Osamu said, appearing from behind. “But this destruction was the only thing that stopped the cycle of madness being reciprocated with madness.”
The scene flashed from Hiroshima to the inside of an Imperial army barrack filled with young pilots. They drank and ate together, huddled around the light of candles. Several of them were in tears. Others seemed happy their time was drawing near, that their lives would mean something in such a senselessly destructive war.
Those feelings of grief and pride came into conflict when it came time to leave behind letters for their families and girlfriends. Each of the boys sat in their beds after their final celebration had died down. The mood had gone from sad, but hopeful, to grim and silent. It began to truly sink in that these were the last hours of their lives. In the morning, they’d be flying planes directly into Allied ships.
“It’s like I said. We were responsible for our own share of the madness as well.” Taeko said.
Her eyes narrowed in sadness as she watched one of the boys finish a letter to his mother. In it, he apologized for having to break such awful news to her, that he and his friends had been chosen to conduct kamikaze attacks.
He had written about all his acts of mischief as a child, all the sacrifices his mother made to keep him fed and happy. In his final moments, he had written about how he longed to return to his childhood home and drink tea in the garden with her just one last time.
He missed the way she’d scold him for not keeping his room tidy, how she’d always make sure to leave a snack by his door when he was working hard on his studies. The boy thought he was a man ready to lay down his life for his race and country, and perhaps he truly was. But at the same time, he was a boy that only wanted one thing in his final hours; his mother’s affection.
Tears rolled down Taeko’s cheeks as the boy wrote the final words of his letter. ‘Please don’t be sad. I love you, Mom.’ Taeko sat beside the boy on his bed, rubbing his back as he broke down in tears. Osamu watched her with a heavy heart, knowing they had many more difficult images to see.
They then found themselves standing before a palm tree on Peleliu island. A group of American soldiers tied the severed heads of two Japanese soldiers to the high branches of the tree, laughing as the heads swung in the wind.
“So many acts of cruelty committed by the enemy went unreported. Some were dismissed by their commanding officers.” Taeko said. “One way or another, they always found a way to avoid punishing their own men for the crimes they committed.”
“Japan handled it the same way.” Osamu said.
“Yes, but like I said, the difference is we paid for our crimes in blood and ash. We continue to pay for it now. The memory of the war still looms over the country like a ghost. When these men died, do you think anyone told them they couldn’t be honored? Do you think anyone scolded their families for burying them with nothing less than the highest respects?
“These men were monsters on the battlefield, the same as us. But we’re the only ones shamed for honoring our war dead. Our dead, whether they were guilty of heinous crimes or not, deserve to be laid to rest and honored with respect.
“Whether they were conscripted or volunteered, they marched straight into this hell so that we didn’t have to. They became demons so we could remain ourselves. Only those who have ever been to war understand what it does to your mind and body.”
“But how else would this hell have ended if not for something infinitely more destructive than the war itself?” Osamu asked.
“I’m trying to tell you that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the fighting, but not the venom that leads to wars. It only promulgated it. I’m sure Hima would understand that. Her people were brutalized and shamed into submission in much the same way.
“Wars like this would never come to pass if the world accepted my philosophy. Acknowledging the Soldier’s Condition is acknowledging that war is inhumane. If one country can adopt that philosophy and structure itself accordingly, I have faith that others will follow. If not, then deterrence is needed to encourage everyone to seek solutions other than war.
“You’re not wrong that sometimes it takes a monstrous act of evil to end a war. That act is the Third Great Holy War.”
Taeko and Osamu found themselves in the airport where the Inari Standoff took place, witnessing White Saint’s final moments as Inari’s teeth sunk into his neck.
“My death here is meaningless. They'll just send more to fight in my place, and this will go on and on…" White Saint said.
Osamu, standing beside his past self, remembered those words very clearly. White Saint was far more correct than he ever realized.
"You've doomed more than just one exorcist tonight, Osamu." White Saint wheezed. "You deserve everything you get."
"How many more of you are there? Tell me." Osamu demanded.
"As many as they need to kill you both." White Saint answered. "Just how many people will you force to fight to the death?"
"You people didn't give us a choice." Osamu said.
"And you did?" White Saint asked.
Taeko looked at the present Osamu in that moment, seeing exactly why he recalled this specific memory. He never wanted this war to happen, or any war for that matter. He didn’t believe the exorcists were evil or that Inari was good. He simply believed that all the wrong circumstances drove the two sides to conflict, resulting in the Inari Standoff and ballooning into the Third Great Holy War.
“If there’s one thing your philosophy doesn’t take into account, it’s circumstance.” Osamu said. “Under the right circumstances, even the Soldier’s Condition can be used to justify the horrors of war, not rectify them. You were complicit in this during the Warring States era. You watched it unfold during the Inari Standoff. We weren’t willing to back down, but neither was the enemy.
“In that sense, White Saint was right. This has and will go on and on. When the Soviet Union’s army moved through Ukraine and Yugoslavia in the Second World War, they did so while murdering and raping everything in their way. Stalin espoused something very similar to your Soldier’s Condition when confronted about the atrocities.
“‘Does Djilas, who is himself a writer, not know what human suffering and the human heart are? Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?’
“Ironic, isn’t it? You rebelled against a callous state, only for another to use your philosophy to justify the actions of its soldiers. The fighting may have ended, but the venom remains. In time, the hatred that remains will lead to more wars. The Soldier’s Condition is noble, but it is corruptible for that very same reason. I realized that your philosophy won’t end the cycle of war. It’s not the path to world peace.
“You said that something worse happens when a country is defeated in the way Japan was in the Second World War. The shame, the brutalization, the erosion of that country’s sovereignty…that’s where our philosophies diverge, Taeko.”
“You think what happened was a good thing?” Taeko asked, revolted.
Osamu shook his head. “No, I don’t. Why does that mean it can’t be a solution?”
Taeko and Osamu walked through the terrifying Highway of Death in Iraq. The road was like a black skid mark in the desert. Burnt out vehicles, clothes, personal belongings, and bodies littered the road. Most of the bodies were in their vehicles, their hands still on steering wheels. Just as it was in Hiroshima, the bodies here were left charred and frozen in their final moments.
From afar, the bodies looked as though they were made of wood, their skin covered in dark tree bark. As Taeko passed by their vehicles, she saw the hints of cooked, orange flesh beneath their blackened skin. Osamu forged ahead through the death and glassy sand as Taeko trailed behind him.
“History has proven that with enough force, even the mightiest of empires can be defanged and forced to submit.” Osamu said. “It happened to our people. It happened to Hima’s. It can happen to the entire world.”
“You’ll create a world where no country has sovereignty and no people are free.” Taeko chided. “It sounds like a world so brutalized by war that it lives in fear and shame of itself. You can’t possibly believe that a world like that is acceptable.”
"It's the world you and Manami would've created that's unacceptable to me." Osamu retorted as he marched ever onward through the endless row of burnt out vehicles. "We establish our new nation, win enough support for the Third Great Holy War by revealing my powers to the vampires, fight back the world's coalition forces with a horde from the Underworld, and then what, Taeko? Wait for the whole world to launch an assault on Yakutsk?"
"We can stave off anything they throw at us with the Underworld under our control."
"So you'd have Izanami continue carrying out massive slaughters on our whim? What about Akatsuki and Omagatoki? Do they need to keep acting as the nation's deterrence indefinitely? Will you really do to them what the pantheon did all those years ago?"
"I know it's not perfect, but there aren't any perfect solutions, Osamu!"
Osamu stopped in his tracks and bowed his head, his raven hair fluttering in the char-scented desert breeze. "Brilliant as it is, the entire project fails unless we subject everyone we know to the very burdens that created all of this. Don't you see that? Nothing changes. Izanami keeps living as a weapon of mass destruction. The twins keep living as deterrence against the world. Yoko and the others will only have Siberia to call home. The vampiric people will find themselves at the complete mercy of three Shinto goddesses and human with the power of Bloodcraft. You want to talk about building a country with no sovereignty or freedom? That's exactly what your plan amounts to. Once I give Hima my powers, the others have no reason to continue upholding their awful roles in all of this."
Osamu aimed a scornful glare at Taeko, his eyes alight with rage. “It’s not just war…”
Turning the corner, Osamu and Taeko ended up inside a classroom. The teacher and her elementary students huddled together in the corner of the class as gunfire rang from outside.
“People like you have such noble ideals, but you refuse to acknowledge that the world isn’t as agreeable or rational as you think.” Osamu said. “It isn’t possible for the entire world to accept your point of view. Not through discourse or discussion. Not through debate and intellectual exchange. Not even through war. You already know how to achieve true peace, but you all cower from it. That’s because you know that if you face the answer for what it is, and you come to accept it, it’ll destroy everything you assume about yourself.
“All the principles you think you hold, the values you think you have. You think you believe in liberty and freedom for all, in free expression and equal rights. You’ve built this image of yourselves as rational people who only resort to violence and barbarity when it is absolutely necessary. That couldn’t be further from the truth.”
The gunman kicked down the classroom door with his black boots. Taeko watched in horror as the children screamed in terror, the teacher shielding her head with her arms.
“Please, don’t!” the teacher pleaded.
The gunman, a young man around Osamu’s age, opened fire on them all. One by one, the screams of the students were silenced, leaving only the breaths of the gunman and the lasts of the bullet casings ringing aloud as they fell and rolled across the floor.
“The only way to achieve peace, to stop this same story from playing out over and over again, is to strip the world of its freedom.” Osamu said. “There are many ways to do just that.”
The two then ended up at a rooftop in Kyoto, not far from the neighborhood Osamu and the girls used to live. It was a bright and sunny day with a cool breeze passing by. The streets were abuzz with laughter and conversation as people dined at their favorite restaurants with friends and loved ones. Children glided across the sidewalk on their scooters and cars slowly made their way down the road. It was a day like any other in Kyoto, before it was mercilessly attacked.
Osamu’s past self leaned against the rooftop railing, watching the people go about their lives. Osamu joined his past self along with Taeko, all three of them looking over the railing to see Kyoto in a state of unassuming peace.
Taeko looked into the eyes of the Osamu of the past, surprised to see his pupils shrunken by fear and anxiety.
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“In just one week…” Osamu’s past self murmured, his teeth chattering. “I’m going to kill all of these people. Here. There. Everywhere.”
Taeko recoiled in shock. She recognized this day and Osamu’s specific outfit. He had worn white sweatpants, a red t-shirt, and his silver, peace sign necklace. She remembered it clearly, as it was just a few days prior to the attack on Kyoto. Osamu had already accepted the war would happen, that he would play a central role in it as a mastermind of its most vicious attack.
One thing stuck out to her most. ‘In just one week’. But the attack happened four days after this. If Osamu meant something else would happen three days after the Kyoto attack, it meant it would happen today.
“Osamu…” Taeko said, her voice broken and low. “…What in God’s name are you planning?”
“I told you.” Osamu said. “I’m going to take this world’s freedom. But to do that, there’s something else that needs to happen first.”
Osamu walked off, prompting Taeko to follow him past the roof access door. The door led them into the frigid caves of the Underworld, where Osamu and the Shoku Twins roused Satori out of his peaceful rest.
“Tell me, Osamu.” Satori began. “How many people die in this plan of yours?”
“The price I’ll pay for peace is nothing compared to everything I’ll save.” Osamu answered. “I arrived at this conclusion because I agree entirely with the philosophies of Taeko and Lucrezia. I only want to take that philosophy several steps further. As horrifying as it may seem, this plan will create all the conditions needed for world peace. Most importantly, it’ll ensure that Kagutsuchi and the others are protected long after I’m gone.”
“Does anyone know of this plan of yours?” Satori asked.
“Just the twins here and you. I can’t risk anyone trying to stop me before I’m ready.” Osamu said. “If I don’t enact permanent change in this world, Kagutsuchi will eventually find herself in the same danger Inari faced. If I run away from this, I’ll eventually get cornered just like Inari did. When that happens, the pantheon will take Inari’s Bloodcraft, and you can be damn sure that their first target will be Izanami.
“The issue is that they’ll realize that they can’t kill Izanami without first killing Kagutsuchi. Kagu will become collateral damage in the pantheon’s vendetta against my family. I won’t let that happen to her. Not now, not ever. This plan is the only way to ensure their safety, and that the world never sees another war ever again.”
“We’ve called it Project Dark Dawn.” Omagatoki said.
“All of that death and destruction…is it really the only way?” Satori asked, his hand balling up into a fist.
“The pantheon’s made it clear they have no interest in talking this out. They want this power, and that means they want me dead. Kagu and the others simply won’t stand for that.” Osamu explained. “So we need you to do this for us. There’ll come a time when I’ll need the power of the Underworld, but whoever was left in charge of it was hostile to us the last time we were here. It’s why we got attacked by those demons, remember?”
“Of course…I hadn’t thought of that.” Satori said.
“I want you to overthrow the lord of the Underworld and take control of this place.” Osamu said. “That way, we won’t have to spend days fighting our way to the Onyx Temple and risk getting killed once we’re there. It’ll be much more difficult for the demons to detect one man than a group of powerful people.”
Satori thought hard about Osamu’s plan. He closed his eyes, shaking his head as he pursed his lips. “No! You can’t do this, Osamu! There has to be another way! What’s the point of keeping Kagu alive if this is the world she’ll inherit as a result?”
Taeko slapped her hands over her mouth as she gasped in shock. “It can’t be. Osamu…you said Satori agreed with your plan! Izanami saw the same thing, didn’t she? If he refused, how did you…”
Osamu didn’t answer. He kept watching as his past self balled his hands into fists, his anger boiling into a rage.
“There is no other way, Satori.” Osamu said. “We’ve spent years searching for other ways. There aren’t any! I thought you of all people would understand my position.”
“This is different, Osamu.” Satori said. “Not even the most twisted tyrant could come up with something so horrific! If that’s what the world looks like under your rule, then I refuse to be any part of it.”
Akatsuki and Omagatoki looked up at Osamu’s face. They his eyes widen in shock and desperation. He saw his dream slip away, getting further and further away from him, all because Satori refused to comply. That desperation soon turned to a dark resolve. His eyes narrows and his brows sunk downward.
“Fine.” Osamu said. “I’ll make the choice for you.”
Akatsuki’s torch light dimmed and faded as Osamu clasped his hands together, filling the caves with Satori’s shouts of desperate protest.
“As it turns out, Bloodcraft can be used to alter how people remember things.” Osamu said. “I had Satori remember this moment differently. The memories Izanami inherited were lies. I had to be careful. I needed Izanami to still trust me enough to take us to Fukuoka later, but I also wanted her to know at least part of my plan. I needed you all to suspect me just a little.
“If I could gather you, Izanami, Gekko, and Kagu in one place, I could utilize all of your powers without you realizing it. For what I want, Izanami’s power alone won’t be enough. I had to siphon some from the others as well.”
When Taeko blinked, she and Osamu stood in the garden behind Moonglow Castle, when Osamu met with Anne in secret shortly before departing to Yakutsk.
Anne looked around, noticing Taeko’s absence. “Where’s Taeko?”
“This has nothing to do with her.” Osamu said. “This about Dark Dawn. There’s something I need you to do before Hima and I found our new nation. This is critical to making the project a success.”
“Okay? What is it?” Anne asked.
“I want you to report Manami’s location to the exorcists. Become their informant.”
“...What?”
“I need the world’s forces to gather in one place. In order to do that, they have to be able to plan for our arrival. And in order for that to happen, they need to know we’re coming. The best way for that to happen is if they have an informant they can trust.
“You know a lot about this operation, but they won’t fully trust you unless you can prove your intel is good. For that, you need to turn Manami in. The exorcists will raid the villa, kill her men, and capture her.”
“Osamu, hold on!”
“You’ll then inform them that we plan on coming to Fukuoka. That will set the stage for what’s to come.”
“Osamu!” Anne shouted. “I’m not selling out Manami! That’s insane! I’ve been with her for years! We were both good friends with Lucrezia! And in case you forgot, she’s a major part of this operation! How could you even think of selling her out?”
“I’m telling you that unless we can trick our enemies into gathering at one place, the next step of my plan won’t be as effective. Manami doesn’t have a plan to end all wars. I do. Anne, I need you to trust me.”
“This is your mother-in-law we’re talking about, Osamu. You want me to sell her out? You know they’ll give her the death sentence for helping you carry out that attack, right?”
“What we sacrifice now is nothing compared to everything we’ll save.”
“The answer is no!”
Osamu clasped his hands together, sending a small jolt through Anne’s spine. All of a sudden, she stopped protesting Osamu’s decision. She stood with her face frozen in fear for a few seconds. Then, she calmly collected herself, turned around, and left.
“I can’t believe this…” Taeko said, her hands shivering in fear. “You’re the one who told Anne to betray Manami? You’ve been able to use Bloodcraft this whole time, and you used it to brainwash both Satori and Anne?”
“You were right, Taeko.” Osamu said. “Even with a cataclysmic event, you can’t wipe away the anger that fuels wars. Not unless you’re me.”
After witnessing the truth behind Satori and Anne’s actions, Taeko began to piece together the horrifying picture. “Earlier, you said that it was pointless for Gekko to trap you.”
“It’s also pointless for Izanami to refuse to help me.” Osamu said. “I wanted her to be on my side in all of this, but it doesn’t matter if she isn’t. Whether you all support or oppose me, I already have the power to put my plan into action. I needed Satori to be the one to take lordship at first, so that getting to the Onyx Temple wouldn’t be a bloodbath. But then I needed Izanami to take over for him after he hollowed out.
“Izanami is strong enough to hold it for as long as she needs to without hollowing. Satori, not so much. He had his own mission, and he carried it out exactly as I needed him to.”
A gust of wind rushed past them, prompting Taeko to cover her eyes with her sleeve. When she opened them again, she was back in Kyoto, standing outside Osamu’s home as they faced down his children after their botched assassination.
“You three might be talented exorcists, but you’re still children.” Osamu’s past self said. “You still believe this world is ruled by right or wrong. It isn’t. It’s ruled by circumstance and necessity. Inari became the violent outcast she was because the circumstances you forced onto her didn’t give her a choice.
“The violence and loss of life that ensued during the Inari Standoff happened because neither of us were given a choice but to fight. And now, all of this is happening because the pantheon will not give us a choice. Nothing has changed. No one has learned anything.”
“None of that changes the fact that everything you’ve done up until this point is evil, Osamu.” Yuuto snarled. “As such, we have no choice but to stop you.”
“See what I mean? Good and evil.” Osamu sighed. “It’s nothing that dramatic. You’ll do what you have to, and I’ll do the same. Our circumstances require it. It’s really just as simple as that. If none of you are willing to end this cycle of kin killing kin, then there’s nothing I can do to save you.
“This cycle will never end unless one side gives up their wants for power and revenge. And yet, both of us rely on this cycle to survive. I finally understand how much Amaterasu suffered trying to stop this exact cycle. It really does seem impossible. But…I have the power to end it, and that’s what I’m going to do. Nothing can stop it now.”
Alarmed, Taeko turned to the present Osamu. “You knew from the start! The Shoku Twins showed you a lot more than you told us! You’ve been shaping everything so it could go your way!”
“Finally figured it out, huh?” Osamu snickered. “You’re right. Akatsuki, Omagatoki, and I saw the war play out many times over, from beginning to end. We didn’t do anything to change the future or the past. We simply watched. What’s about to happen next didn’t happen in any of the timelines. Hate me all you want, but this might be the only reason any of you make it out of this alive.”
“Osamu, stop! Don’t do this!” Taeko urged. “Don’t become something you’re not! It’s my fault, I should’ve kept you out of this! You weren’t well enough to be involved in something this terrible!”
“Something I’m not?” Osamu asked. “Yoko said something similar, didn’t she? But like I said to her, I haven’t changed at all. You were changed by your father’s suicide, and by killing your mother with your own hands. But me? I’m the same man I’ve always been.”
Osamu walked through the door of the house, closing it behind him. Taeko followed him through it, finding herself standing in the bedroom of his Hokkaido home. Osamu of the past sat on the bed as the morning sun poured through his window and onto the sheets. He was reading Isabella’s final letter to him aloud as Yoko sat by his side.
"Osamu, remember what I told you. You're the glue that holds us all together, so don't you dare buckle when things get tough! You're the slat amor, taking the heavy blows and protecting us all! I expect great things from you, and great stories to come when we meet again!”
“Tsukuyomi told me the same thing as well. I’m the glue that holds us all together.” the present Osamu said. “My ideals, my philosophy, I’ll bind the whole world with it. I united all those people under one roof. I united a broken race and made a new nation for them. Now it’s my job to unite all of mankind. Maybe only someone like me could ever hope to achieve this.
“I’ve always been able to look at something ugly and see the beauty hidden beneath. It’s why, despite them both being mass murderers, I accepted Izanami and Gekko into my life. It’s why I fell in love with Inari even as I watched her tear the exorcists apart. I’ve always been able to see something greater beyond the darkness and carnage.
“Beyond the war, beyond the barren fields of ash and bodies…there’s peace. There’s a world so broken by war that it’s afraid of it. There’s a world where all nations submit to peace as their greatest cause, just as Japan submits to its own self-flagellating vow of pacifism.
“There’s a world enslaved by my ideology. A world where all nations and people are forced to accept a vow to reject war. But first, I’ll need to break this world in much the same way the atomic bomb broke our island.
“You’re going to use Bloodcraft to brainwash the entire world?” Taeko asked. “What kind of monster would ever think that slavery is the answer to this? To make it so that no one can ever raise up arms again, to eliminate the very concept of war from this world…it’s not right. Sure, nothing we’ve done so far has been right, but committing terrible deeds to achieve a just end is different from committing those same deeds for an awful end like that.
“I didn’t start this war to enslave the world, Osamu! I started it to show the world how destructive a war like this is, so that when another war threatens to rear its ugly head, every nation on this planet will remember the horrors they experienced. The memory of it all is deterrence in and of itself.”
“It’s not enough.” Osamu said. “There will come a time when that memory fades and war breaks out again. Casting that dark memory upon the world and espousing the Soldier’s Condition, a naive and corruptible ideology, only serves to delay the inevitable resurgence of global conflict.
“What will all of this have been for if the very bane of this world comes back to haunt us? For what did I sacrifice Chiya, Satori, Anne, and Manami? Why do so many people all around the world have to die?”
“I can’t possibly ensure the world will still be peaceful a hundred years from now, Osamu!”
“But I can!” Osamu screamed.
“By enslaving all of mankind with Bloodcraft!” Taeko raged. “You think you’re some kind of martyr who sees the harsh truth of the world, but all I see is a child who won’t be satisfied until he sees instantaneous results!”
“Because I’m dying soon, Taeko! I refuse to leave this world without knowing for absolute certain you won’t be killed in another war!”
Osamu seemed so calm up until that point that Taeko didn’t consider the dread and terror he was feeling. He knew he wouldn’t even live to see the end of the war. He’d die without knowing for certain if anyone he cared about was safe. Taeko finally understand what was driving Osamu, what fueled him to tread down the darkest, most violent path possible. What she saw before him was a cornered man who was afraid of uncertainty, afraid that his remaining children, or perhaps even their children, would see a Fourth or a Fifth Great Holy War.
Their surroundings changed far more rapidly. The two stood in Taeko’s childhood home, watching Taeko’s child self as she discovered her father’s body in his study. His blood stained the tatami mats and dyed his white hoari red. His intestines spilled out from the smile-like gash in his stomach, drawing a crowd of flies to feast upon the offering.
“Over…” Osamu said.
The Senkumo’s merciless raid of a nearby village following an attack on their convoy. Not knowing who was responsible for the attack, Taeko’s men brutalized the people of a nearby village, suspecting that they gave their location away to an enemy. Men, women, and children were pulled from their homes, interrogated, and the slashed to death when their answers didn’t satisfy the men.
Osamu and Taeko watched as the Senkumo troops chased down a young, pregnant woman named Noriko, tackling her into the mud. Noriko screamed in terror as the men bludgeoned her with a hammer. They broke her arm, shatter her kneecap, and disfigured her face into a red, swollen mess.
“And over…” Osamu growled.
The coastal cliffs of Saipan. It was an overcast day and the sea screamed with rage. Haunted by reports of Allied troops mutilating Japanese war dead, the Japanese living on Saipan feared what would happen to them once the Americans landed on their island. Fearing what would happen to them, hundreds of men, women, and children threw themselves off the cliff and into the crashing waves below.
“And over!” Osamu shouted.
Then a jail cell inside the Unit 731 complex, where unspeakable crimes against humanity were committed by Japanese troops and surgeons for the sake of bacteriological, pathological, and weapon experimentation. Osamu and Taeko stood alongside three of Unit 731’s staff as they forced two prisoners, one male and one female, to have sex with each other. One was infected with syphilis while the other was healthy.
The two prisoners cried and begged for the madness to stop, but they were only met with guns pointed at their heads. It was clear they would be shot if they refused to comply.
“And over!” Osamu screamed.
The execution chamber where Cyanide was shot to death. Taeko couldn’t bare to watch this memory. She closed her eyes as the exorcists tied Cyanide to a stake, the firing squad getting into position to kill him.
When asked if he had any last words, Cyanide responded, “Sicily sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
The volley of rifle fire made Taeko jump in fear. She turned her back on her friend’s sagging, bloodied body, crying as she fell to her knees with her hands slapped over her ears.
“And over again!” Osamu raged.
“Osamu, make it stop!” Taeko wept.
Taeko felt Osamu grab her arms and pull her close. She opened her eyes, seeing they were now inside the abandoned bowling alley as the afternoon sun poured in through the rows of colored glass, illuminating the interior in a radiant, multi-colored glow.
The anger and desperation in Osamu’s eyes were unlike anything she had ever seen in anyone before. Going through all of his thoughts and memories, it became abundantly clear that Osamu simply didn’t see an end to war.
He didn’t believe humanity would ever be capable of fostering a peaceful world. Seeing what horrors history had witnessed, he feared the exact same atrocities and conflicts would replay in a savage samsara of barbarity.
He couldn’t let his wives and children inherit a world like that. To put it an end to it all, he would use his accursed power to change the world in the most terrifying and irreversible way. He truly was the glue holding everyone together. He had helped unite an unlikely family of women, a nation of vampires, and soon, he would unite the whole world through death and everlasting slavery. All would accept his wish for peace as their own.
“I’ll destroy this world!” Osamu raged with a terrifying glare. “I’ll kill as many people as I can, across every nation! I’ll burn this cursed history away! I’ll end all of our burdens!”
The bowling alley faded away, and Osamu and Taeko stood on the bright, golden sands of a tropical island. Explosions rocked the sea as the Shinto gods fought and killed each other. Amaterasu’s child self watched the fighting happen from the shore, her eyes stuck open in horror. Taeko realized this was the First Great Holy War, the conflict that gave birth to the two Great Holy Wars that would follow.
It was the war that robbed Amaterasu of her innocence, forcing her to choose between two halves of her family. Taeko looked at Osamu, realizing he had reverted into a child himself, while she retained her adult form. Osamu ran up to Amaterasu, taking her hand into his own.
“This is for you as well!” Osamu screamed, his higher-pitched, boyish voice audible over the sounds of fighting in the background. “I’ll end it for you! That’s what you want, isn’t it? You don’t want to see another war, do you? You don’t want to be a queen or a goddess! If the world won’t stop until I’m dead, and if the pantheon won’t stop until they’ve overthrown you, then let’s destroy them both! Let’s kill all of them!”
Amaterasu stared into his eyes with tears flooding her own. She gritted her teeth, thinking of all the horrors she had witnessed in the First Great Holy War, of all the terrible things she had to do in her vain pursuit of peace within the pantheon. If anyone understood Amaterasu’s burden, it was Osamu. Even now, despite all that happened between them, their love and compassion for one another had not faded. Not one bit.
Seeing no other way to end the madness, Amaterasu shook her head side to side. She and Osamu fell to her knees, hugging each other tightly as the First Great Holy War raged on in the background. Amaterasu wept into his shoulder, her pained screams saddening even Taeko.
Her own family had done to Amaterasu what Taeko always warned about. They had stolen Amaterasu’s personhood, turning her into a weapon to win the war and an ideological figure for their nation.
She was no longer allowed to be a lost, little girl, grieving for her parents. She wasn’t allowed to scream for the help she so desperately needed. If the Soldier’s Condition needed to be applied to anyone, it should’ve been applied to Amaterasu first.
“Let’s destroy it all!” Osamu said, folding Amaterasu’s hair behind her ears for her. “We’ll wipe the world clean! We’ll break every nation on this planet, then we’ll force them to accept our vow. No more wars! No more suffering! You can be you again! I can be me! All we have to do is take their lives! We just have to kill as many as we can and enslave the rest! That’s all it’ll cost us! That’s nothing, right?”
Amaterasu gazed into his eyes with a glimmer of hope in her own. Having taken the same paths and the same choices in life, the two came to a dark and horrifying understanding. Peace couldn’t be achieved through peace. It could only be achieved through when the world was forced to choose between it and complete annihilation.
Peace could only be achieved if freedom died.
And so, Amaterasu lended her power to Osamu in the hopes he could end the cycle of war, and thus, end the suffering both her and Osamu endured. With Izanami, Tsukiakari, and Kagutsuchi all gathered in one place, he had more than enough power to carry out the first step of his true plan; destroy the world.
The island instantly transformed into a void of darkness, the sudden change terrifying Taeko. She turned and saw an ominous eclipse shining like a halo and that dark expanse. Osamu and Amaterasu stood in front of that unholy, dark eclipse as children, their eyes veiled by shadow but the tears rolling down their cheeks glistening clearly.
Amaterasu held onto Osamu’s hand as thought it were the only shred of warmth and love left in the world, and his hand coiled around hers just the same. That haunting image of those two was the last thing Taeko saw before everything returned to darkness for just a brief moment.
The white light consuming the Onyx Temple receded, bringing Osamu and Taeko back to reality. Taeko was already too late. Osamu used his Bloodcraft to force Izanami, Tsukiakari, and Kagutsuchi to produce the kuji-in signs needed to undo the seal placed upon the Underworld. If they wouldn’t cooperate, he would force them to carry out his will.
The bloodshot eye watching over the Underworld closed shut, and in its place, an opening to Fukuoka appeared. Hima saw a strange vortex open in the middle of the sea, swallowing the entire fleet of allied war ships sailing towards Hima’s moonlight dragon.
After the ships sank into the Underworld, an unfathomable amount of demons were spat out from the vortex. Shikome, ogres, hebi-onna, yuki-onna, mu-onna, and many different demons, both small and colossal, emerged from the vortex.
With the sheer number of demons being released, Hima realized that he wasn’t just unleashing a few demons. He had let the entire Underworld free. There were enough demons and ghosts flooding in to kill every single person in every corner of the world, and all of them were under Osamu’s command.
In Kyoto, Amaterasu felt everything that happened in Osamu’s own mind, as if he she had shared that exact dream with him. She snapped out of it, much to the worry of Uzume, who rushed to her side.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Uzume asked.
Amaterasu looked at Uzume, then at Osamu’s children as they lied unconscious in their beds. “He’s done it. He’s going to destroy this world.”
“Who is?” Uzume asked, confused.
“Osamu. And I just helped him do it.” Amaterasu said, a smile slowly forming on her face. She looked down at her hands, realizing she had them posed in the Rai kuji-in sign.
Hima spotted Osamu and the others falling out of the vortex. She rushed towards them with her moonlight dragon, catching them within its head.
“Osamu!” Hima shouted. “Did it work?”
“Izanami unleashed every demon in the Underworld!” Osamu said, lying through his teeth.
“What? All of them?” Hima recoiled.
“So we can crush their armies and destroy their nations!” Osamu said. “We’ve bought Minavere more than enough time!”
Seeing hell on earth, Hima couldn’t help but laugh. To her, the near-omnicide of mankind wasn’t reprehensible at all. Humans had driven her own race to the edge of extinction. What was happening now was nothing short of justice in her eyes.
“Izanami! I can’t thank you enough!” Hima sang. “Let’s head back down to the beach!”
Hima’s moonlight dragon lowered its head and dissipated into a shower of glittering stardust. Everyone landed softly on their feet, but it soon became clear that not everyone was happy with this decision.
“Osamu…what have you done?!” Yoko wept.
Kagutsuchi fell to her knees, her hands trembling in horror at what she had done. Tsukiakari screamed in agony. She had been used as a tool to accomplish the opening of the Underworld, and there was nothing she could do to take it back. Izanami simply looked at the swarm of demons flooding the world in horror. She almost couldn’t believe this was reality.
Three colossal demons emerged from the vortex, sticking their skeletal arms out to grab hold of the earth. Once they dug themselves out of the portal and stood upright, the setting sun cast their shadows over and entire shoreline. The three, massive skeletons shook the earth with their very steps, their black cloaks flapping in the wind.
The insides of their cloaks were as dark as the night sky, but seemed to carry the glitter of stars and nebulae within them. It was as if they ripped pieces of outer space away from the universe, wearing its darkness, its stars, and its bright, gaseous clouds as cloaks. Together those skeletons marched away from the shores of Japan and towards the Asian continent.
Osamu stood at the shoreline, his feet kissed by the violent waves crashing upon the sand. It mirrored exactly what Taeko saw of the First Great Holy War. Now, it was Osamu standing in Amaterasu’s place. Instead of the First Great Holy War, the world would instead be swallowed by Osamu’s omnicidal ambitions and his violent desire for peace.
“Osamu…why?” Izanami wept. “The sheer scale of this…it’s unimaginable! Everyone the world over will be killed!”
Osamu was the same man he had always been. He was the glue that held everyone together. He was a man that always saw the beauty in the horrific. Those qualities hadn’t changed. He spread out his arms, his hair pulled and tugged by the seaside breeze. He took in that moment, witnessing the end of the world with a smile on his face and a hopeful beat in his heart.
“This is it…” Osamu said. “The path to peace…”
Just as he said that, the girls noticed something horribly strange. The sunlight was fading into darkness. They looked to the west, watching as the moon occulted the sun, plunging the world into a premature nightfall.
“That has to be the Shoku Twins!” Izanami said. “The eclipse will make the demons stronger!”
“They helped you do this? But why?” Kagutsuchi cried.
In that moment, Izanami realized that Satori’s memories alluded to this very day. They were already too late to stop Osamu.
“This is the Dark Dawn.” Osamu said, watching the end of the world unfold before his eyes. “It’s finally happened. It won’t be long now. Soon, the world will finally know peace.”
The girls quickly realized that this had gone way too far. The near-extinction of humanity was absolutely unjustifiable. Osamu’s plans had gone beyond the ambitions of a war and reached unimaginable levels of death and destruction. Without words, the girls all knew what this meant. More than the Shinto pantheon, more than Amaterasu or the exorcists, Osamu had become their enemy. He had to be stopped.