Dawn had hardly kissed the sky when Hikari met Rinne at the border of Yamaoka. Her childhood friend was already there, his hunter's attire merging with the morning shade. He was sitting on an old fallen tree where they used to meet as kids, carving a wood piece with skilled strokes. Unlike the other villagers who kept their distance with respectful reserve, Rinne had always looked beyond her title of Kanshisha, addressing her simply as Hikari.

"You haven't slept," he stated, not looking up. It wasn't a question.

Hikari sat beside him on the log, wrapping her robes closer in the chill of morning. "How can I? Every time I close my eyes, I see those Hakari soul, Rinne. The way they seemed to. to drink in the light."

Rinne put aside his whittling and looked at her. Morning sunlight illuminated the worry in his dark eyes. "Tell me about last night. Everything you saw."

"It happened during dinner," Hikari began, her hands instinctively going to her judgment beads. "Hakari was different—more different than usual. Father confronted him about skipping his training sessions, and s-something just... Something just snapped.".

"His true Hakari or the mask he has been sporting?"

The inquiry gave Hikari a pause. "Both, perhaps. Don't you recall how he used to be, before I was blessed with judgment?"

Rinne nodded slowly. "He was a good brother to you. Protective, even. Used to chase off the kids who attempted to peek in on your early training sessions to tease you."

"Also he would bring me rice balls to those sessions," Hikari whispered, her eyes watering at the memory. "But after the gift showed up."

"He changed," Rinne finished.

"He spent more time in the archives, obsessing over ancient texts... I thought initially that he was just trying to impress the elders. To demonstrate that he could be useful, even without the gift." Hikari's voice broke. "But in the middle of the night, when I attempted to read him through my gift, what I saw. Rinne, it was like peering into an abyss without depths. Only darkness, consuming whatever it came in contact with."

Rinne reached out and grasped her shaking hands in his. "You're certain about this? Heading to Kurohana village. the elders expressly prohibited anyone from going near it after the disappearances. If we get caught—"

"I require evidence," Hikari cut in, clenching his fists. "The elders won't move against Hakari without it, not when our family has been guarding for so long. And there was something in those markings on his arm. they were recognizable, the sorts of things in Kurohana's old stories.".

"The village that sought immortality," Rinne whispered. "I heard about it from my grandmother. She said that they had rituals that opened their shrine as a doorway for demons."

"Did she ever say why they wanted to be immortal?" Hikari's voice was barely above a whisper.

Rinne shook his head.

"I came across an ancient scroll in the archives—before Hakari began occupying all his time there."

"It told how the people of Kurohana did not fear death, but rather being forgotten. They believed that if they lived forever, their names would never be forgotten." She looked up at the lightening horizon. "I think something of the same thing is happening with Hakari. He fears so much being forgotten, living in my shadow, that he will do anything to make his own mark in the world."

"Even if that signature is written in blood?" Rinne's voice was gentle but firm.

"That's what I'm most afraid of Rinne, " Hikari confessed. "The brother I knew—the one who was supposed to protect me—he would never have stood for such evil. But now." She squared her shoulders, determination taking the place of sorrow in her face. "That's why we need to go to Kurohana. If there's any hope we can discover what he's mixed up in, perhaps we can stop him before he goes any further."

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Rinne stood up straight, shifting the bow slung over his shoulder. "Or perhaps we'll discover he's done more than we already suspect."

"Then at least we'll know," Hikari stood up with him. "And I can approach the elders with certainty rather than suspicion."

They set off down the forsaken trail that wound into the interior of the woods. As she walked, Hikari could sense the weight of the corruption within her brother pressing against her mind. The darkness that she had sensed in him was something she had never experienced—not mere malice or greed, but something that appeared to consume light itself.

"You're thinking about him again," Rinne murmured. He'd never needed magical abilities to be aware of her moods.

"I keep wondering if there was something I could've done to prevent this," Hikari admitted. "If only I'd realized the signs earlier. I recall one day, perhaps a month ago, I saw him leaving the restricted section of the archives."

"His eyes gleamed with fever, and he was holding a scroll to his chest as though it were worth more than gold. When I questioned him about what he was reading, he merely smiled and replied, 'The truth about power, little sister.' I should have realized then that something was amiss."

"This isn't your fault." Rinne's fingers touched hers for a moment. "Whatever Hakari did, he chose to do it of his own accord. Do you recall what you said to me when we were kids and I was blaming myself for not being able to save that wounded fox?"

A wry ghost of a smile crossed Hikari's features. "That we cannot rescue everyone from their own choices?"

"Precisely. Even if those choices break our hearts."

The forest grew denser as they went along, the trees closing in until they formed a canopy that blocked out all but a little of the morning sun. The air grew thick with an unnatural mist that clung to their skin.

"We're close," Rinne breathed, gesturing forward where the trees started to clear. "Kurohana should be just over that ridge."

They broke through the trees and were confronted with a vision that halted them both. Kurohana village was spread out in the valley below them, but it was far from the deserted town they had anticipated. The structures remained, yet they were somehow wrong—their lines appeared to twist in ways that pained the eyes, and the wood of their walls had darkened to unnatural black.

Yet it was the silence that shook them most. No birds sang, no insects hummed. Even the wind appeared to perish when it reached the outskirts of the village.

"Air." Rinne touched his throat. "It is heavy."

Hikari nodded, her judgment beads unpleasantly warm against her skin. "There is power here. Old power. Can you feel how it resists us?"

They made their way down the ridge, each step like trudging through water. When they came to the village itself, Hikari's gift woke. Threads of light flickered from her fingertips involuntarily, trying to connect with. something.

"Look at these," Rinne exclaimed, kneeling alongside one of the charred buildings. Symbols were carved into the wood—symbols that made Hikari's heart pound with recognition.

"They're the same as those on Hakari's arm," she whispered, her shaking fingers tracing the air over them. "But these are older, more finished."

"Over here!" Rinne had walked ahead to what must be the village shrine. Unlike the other buildings, its wood was unstained, though the torii gate that came before it had been twisted into a spiral that led the eye inward, creating a dizzy sensation of falling.

As they got closer to the shrine, Hikari's beads started flashing warning light. "There's something underneath it," she said. "A space that doesn't belong."

Rinne notched an arrow in his bow with a practiced ease. "Or simply called a cave?"

"More than that. It's." Hikari's voice faded out as her present revealed more to her. "It's a door. They made their whole shrine into a door to something else."

They discovered the doorway concealed behind the altar of the shrine—stone stairs leading down into the dark. The air that wafted up from underground was sweet and cloying, like overripe fruit, Hikari thought.

"We should return," Rinne said, though he was not very convincing. "Seek aid from the village."

Hikari shook her head. "Whatever is down there. it's related to what's going on with Hakari. I can feel it." She laid her hand on his arm gently. "But you don't have to come with me.".

Rinne's laugh was soft but firm. "As if I'd leave you to handle this by yourself." He drew a torch from his pack and ignited it. "Just. promise me something?"

"What?"

"If we locate what we're searching for—if we locate evidence of what Hakari's up to—we leave right away. No heroics, no fighting, no judgment okay? We bring the evidence walk away and goes to the elders and they deal with it."

Hikari nodded, although something in her heart was saying it wouldn't be quite that easy. "I swear."

They walked down the stairs together, the torch's beam sending dancing shadows across the stone walls. The scent of sweetness increased with every step, and Hikari's beads pounded harder, a scared heartbeat against her chest.

The stairs ended in a circular chamber that took their breath away. The walls were covered in the same glyphs they'd seen upstairs, but here they were done in something that glistened wetly in the torchlight. Altars ringed the room, topped with things that Hikari's mind seemed to dart away from rather than actually look at. And in the center of it all stood another altar, larger than the rest. Upon it lay a mask made of what looked like polished bone and painted red. Its seems it wants a paint at all its like hardened blood, its surface carved with symbols of such complexity that they seemed to move when viewed directly.

"The Immortal Mask," Rinne breathed, recalling bits of the ancient tales. "They really did it." Rinne crept nearer to the mid-altar, bow half-drawn. "Is this what Hakari's trying to achieve? Some kind of immortality ritual?"

Before Hikari had a chance to respond, a hollow voice that seemed to ooze over shattered glass said, "what clever little mice have crawled into my nest?"

The air between them and the altar churned, and a woman emerged from nowhere—a woman of impossible loveliness, her face pale as moonlight, her eyes aglow with an inner flame that said something far removed from human.

"The hollow queen," Rinne whispered, drawing his bow fully as him and Hikari back away.

The vacant queen does not say a word, but being near her is stifling. "The Kanshisha herself, and her faithful guard dog. How delectable." She stroked the mask with a long-fingered hand. "Do you come for answers about your dear brother? Or maybe. You've come for the same power he pursued?"

Now, as the shadows shift and the air is heavy with the perfume of fruit gone too far, the Hollow Queen inclines her head. "You were well advised to come seek me out, young Kanshisha. Do you come. To look for your brother. Or perhaps." her head back to normal again. "would you rather die remembered. or live forever in immortality."

The edges of the room started to writhe in the darkness, and Hikari could sense her power struggling to alert her to something—but by that time, it was already too late. There crept in from all directions an unnatural darkness, like a fog, and the vacant queen silence rang off the stone walls like the toll of a funeral bell.