A six-winged leviathan breached the ether in a single jaunt, piercing through the ragged fabric of reality in the Skysea to traverse thousands-upon-thousands of leagues in a blink of its nine-fold eyes. This one was of the sky-whale or kujira variety, so it was not a born predator but instead a filter feeder that cavorted in the liminal realm between the shallows of the Skysea and the fathomless depths of its abyss where no light from the dead goddess could reach.

In the wake of the leviathan’s passage, spirit-koi swam on etheric currents, their flesh insubstantial and their scales translucid as glass. Black lines like those of an ink brush upon paper wove the insides of the yokai fish, centred around a bead-like shape.

Riding on cloudships whose wood was taken from heavenly mammoth trees, ten Kuroikaze men darted through the schools of spirit-koi, capturing them in a facsimile of the sky-whale in giant nets wrought of tsuchigumo silk; stronger than steel and lighter than a non-yokai spider’s gossamer. One in every thousand fishly apparition would produce a whole yokai-core once harvested and gutted; otherwise, the rest were used to feed the samurai’s spirits.

Having sensed their presence, the kujira breached through the ether once again, taking the schools of spirit-koi with. In the wake of its origami shadow, space folded upon itself thrice, leaving behind cracks like broken glass upon the fabric of reality which were infinitely sharp at the edges and could transport a man up to twenty fathoms up or down should he enter the insensate darkness.

The men did not despair for they were not the hunting party proper but instead only leading the leviathan by the nose to them; the spirit-koi were a superflory bonus that would net some rounds of jade on top of the two-part split of the sky-whale’s bounty of blubber, reikon-rich meat, heart-amber, ivory, hide and other assorted internal organs that could be rendered into medicinals.

Almost made one feel remorse for killing such a beautiful and awe-inspiring creature. Operative word being ‘almost’. Jade was jade and Kuroikaze had mouths to feed.

Sakai Yamato was a samurai through-and-through, groomed to bear the mantle of patriarch once his father was welcomed into the Eye-of-Samsara once again.

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” He whispered into the ether as if a foreboding of doom from a prophet—fitting for a horseman atop a kirin, a yokai known as a harbinger of coming change. The dragon’s body was that of a deer whose cloven hooves left cloudstuff in its wake so that it might tread upon thin air as if solid ground; backwards-curved ox-like horns and long koi-like whiskers adorned its regal head to endow the kirin and its rider with an aspect most fierce. The ever-shifting wind of the Skysea caressed what bare skin there was left unarmored of the Sakai clansman clad in full plate; it was lacquered in tar that was both refulgent and glossy and yet darker than the black in between the stars.

Akatsuki, his wonderful, beautiful wife was to birth two lovely twins on the day that Yamato must bring down a leviathan. Kujira were few and far between, even in the outskirts of the Skysea—to let such an opportunity slip through one’s fingers and into the winds is to court disaster. Whaling was not simply the backbone of Kuroikaze but rather its very fundament and without the supporting pillar of regular quarry, the isle may fall out of the sky and into the unending darkness below.

From the depths of his spirit, the would-be Sakai Patriarch evoked a nine-tongued whip wrought of the sinew of a dead god—Tasogare-no-Shikyuu; Womb-of-the-Sleeping-Sun. Though a spirit construct conjured from whole cloth, it reeked of embalming fluid and sickly-sweet carrion; tipped with wicked talons like that of a shinigami’s vulture-shadow, the living weapon could draw blood from a stone.

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Today it would bring down a half-god.

That day, Kuroikaze lost ten good men.

Though filter-feeders by diet, kujira are still leviathans that can swallow a man whole. A sky-whale’s voice can paralyse at the best of times and explode a person from the inside-out at the worst. Its sixfold wings swatted hunters out of the sky and into the yawning maw of the abyss.

There was no pull of the earth so far from an isle and so momentum could drag an unlucky soul far and away—especially dangerous for the edge of where the dead sun’s light could reach for there, in that liminal realm, nightmares of the Godhead would hallucinate themselves into being to snatch away men into bondage within the Thousand Hells of Naraka and eat them alive for eternities so as to feed upon their spirits.

There was no for it; Yamato would have to call upon his birthright, a seldom used jujutsu that blinded the wielder and whose usage was limited by sight. Once he became well and truly blind, the technique would vanish just like his ability to see.

Yamato closed his eyes; ivory of iris like the purest of snow and ebon of sclera like the blackest sin. When he opened them, the shadows began to bleed, exsanguinating the leviathan’s very soul for so long as he beheld it within his gaze. The world was reversed as the sight of a god came down upon it, transforming light into darkness and combusting bodies of darkness into Hell-fire.

The Sakai clansman wept black, tar-like blood as he raked the nine-tongued whip across the kujira—the five other remaining warriors capitalised on the renewed offensive, waylaying the spirit-beast in tandem.

Lances of fire and icicle spears beat down upon the beached leviathan, its ability to escape disrupted by Tasogare-no-Shikyuu and the Sakai’s bloodline innate ability. Swords of blood-steel and arrows with black-sakura shafts tipped with leviathan bone; one by one, the kujira’s eyes were blinded and its skin was breached and its golden blood was bled until, at last, it fell. The wound-laden amaranth carcass floated in the ether, unmoving but for the sublimating liquid that emanated from its many cuts, refulgent like the dawn.

By the end of it, Yamato lost sight in his left eye, having had to close his right to preserve some of the innate ability. The eye’s physical characteristics were much the same as before, a haunting spirit-sign that ran chills through the spines of any that were caught in its gaze.

But its gaze could not keep what it caught, not truly and not ever again.

Sakai Yamato and the rest of the hunters hooked the sky-whale’s flesh to their mounts, lashed by rope wrought from its brethren’s sinew and returned home; tired and accomplished, broken and unbroken.

By the white veins that lined Yamato’s sclera, Blackwind Village knew that he had been forced to call upon his birthright. And by the heavy, grief-stricken silence of the people that congregated to meet with the returning hunters, Yamato knew that Akatsuki had died during birth with the coming of twilight.

The tears that Yamato wept then might as well have been blood for the pain that racked his heart and lungs. The hollowness in his breast was worse than the absence of his blind left-eye; the wail of his throat more paralysing than the leviathan’s call.

A part of the Sakai clansman died that evening, abandoning him to cross with his dead wife’s soul into the Eye-of-Samsara. With half of himself gone, Yamato did not become the man he could have been or the father he should have been.

Where there was to be joy, sorrow dug its grey roots, drinking deeply of the waters of his spirits. That which blossomed from that misbegotten seed of resentment was a corpse-flower that stank of misplaced rancour; wrath placed upon a child that held no guilt and naught but the innocent, filial love of a man with half a soul.

When out of earshot, Kuroikaze whispered that the leviathan had taken not ten but eleven good men that day.