I was born in a village so quiet, even the wind whispered in reverence.
The air always smelled like incense and pine, and the mountains—those towering sentinels of stone—cradled our home like gods watching from above. People there walked slowly, not because they were lazy or old, but because they had nothing to fear. We believed that as long as we followed the rites, said our prayers, and lived clean, sinless lives, nothing could touch us.
We were the ward.
Not the kind of place where strangers were welcomed with open arms, but a place where every soul had a role, and mine was simple: watch, listen, obey.
My parents were the Gatekeepers.
The title wasn't ceremonial. They watched the barrier stones—tall obsidian markers encircling the village like crooked teeth, each etched with old script and filled with power older than our bloodlines. "The last line," my father always said. "If corruption ever breaches the wall of the world, it will come here first."
I used to believe that made us special. Sacred.
When I was five, I watched my father cut open his palm and press it to a shrine stone, letting his blood run down the ancient grooves. He said it was a vow—offered to the Four Pillars, the gods that wove the fabric of life. I didn't flinch when he turned and smiled, hand still bleeding.
"Purity comes with pain," he said. "Remember that, little flame."
I was proud of that pain. Proud of him. Of my mother, who taught me the chants and the rites and how to burn sage without coughing. I thought our world was strong because we kept ourselves clean.
But I was a fool.
I remember that winter like a scar on my mind. I was eleven.
It was colder than it should have been. Not in a natural way, but the kind of cold that bit into your bones and whispered things through the cracks in your window at night. The fires burned lower. The priests said the barrier stones were growing dimmer.
And then one day, a girl came.
She wasn't one of ours. Her clothes were torn. Her fingers frostbitten. But her eyes—her eyes were hollow. Not from fear. Not from pain.
But from absence.
She was my age. They let her in.
That was their first mistake.
I watched from behind the temple curtain as they questioned him. She barely spoke. Wouldn't eat. Didn't flinch when they dripped holy water on her skin.
But the next morning, birds were dead in the trees. The shrine dogs howled all night. One of the barrier stones cracked down the middle.
And I—I was the one who found my mother.
She wasn't in her bed. Her room was a storm of broken glass and smeared blood. Her body lay by the central altar, her throat carved open, her eyes wide and staring toward the sky. Her hands were clasped in prayer.
As if she saw it coming.
As if she had time to beg the gods to stop it.
I ran. Screamed. The village burned incense and recited the cleansing psalms, but it was too late. One by one, they died. In their beds. On their knees. While chanting. While hiding.
Every ritual I thought was sacred failed. Every prayer I knew by heart was swallowed by silence.
By the end of it, only two bodies weren't found.
The girls—
And mine.
I stood alone among ash and snow, and I buried them all with my own hands. Frostbitten. Bloodstained. Faithless.
That day, I made my own vow.
Not to the gods. Not to the Pillars.
But to the dead.
"I will never be fooled again."
The forest didn't sound like it used to.
I remember it always had life—crickets crying, birds fluttering from branch to branch, wind whistling secrets between pine needles.
Now it was quiet.
I had long since stopped hearing my own breath. My body moved on instinct, but I wasn't inside it. I was a ghost wearing skin, crouched beneath the rotting roots of a fallen tree, its underbelly slick with moss and decay. The scent of ash still lingered in my throat, dry and bitter, like the air after a pyre.
I didn't remember how many days had passed. Only that I hadn't seen the sun in a while. Only that the blood on my hands had long since dried. That my fingernails were cracked and black. That the pain in my stomach had dulled from hunger into a hollow ache that felt more like a memory than a wound.
And then—
A crunch.
Not from a rabbit or fox.
I didn't breathe.
The rustling stopped. A moment of silence. Then—
"…Is someone there?"
The voice didn't match the nightmare in my head. It wasn't deep or snarling. It was calm.
That made it worse.
Monsters that sounded like people were more dangerous than the ones who bared their teeth.
My fingers gripped the stone I'd kept beside me. A jagged piece of brick from the village wall—one of the only pieces not burned.
Footsteps came closer.
"You're not hiding very well, you know," the voice said again. "If I wanted to hurt you, I would've by now."
A lie.
Everyone said that before they hurt you.
The moment I saw a shadow move past the trunk, I lunged.
I screamed—a hoarse, ragged thing that cracked from disuse—and swung the stone at the figure's face. My arms shook from the motion, too weak to strike properly, but the momentum was enough to send us both tumbling into the mud.
"AGH—!"
He didn't strike back.
He didn't yell.
He just grunted as my fist hit his collarbone and my teeth sank into his shoulder like an animal.
"Calm down, child." He said, his voice calm like the attack I launched at him didn't hurt him in any way.
"Liar! You're lying!" I shrieked, swinging again. "You're all liars! All of you!"
He caught my wrists. Easily. Like it was nothing. His grip wasn't cruel, just firm.
"I'm not here to hurt you."
His face was older than I expected. He looked like someone who had seen too many winters and not enough springs.
"Then… why…" My voice cracked. My throat burned. "Why are you here?"
His eyes didn't leave mine.
"To bury the dead."
That silenced me.
He waited for a moment before letting go of my wrists, like testing to see if I'd run.
I didn't.
I didn't have the strength anymore.
"I'm Yatsu Davida," he said, slowly, like his name meant something. "I came because no one else would. Your people… they didn't just die. They were slaughtered. And the ones who did it will do it again."
I curled in on myself, hugging my knees, burying my face in the muddy hem of what used to be a white robe. "I know," I whispered. "I saw."
He didn't ask for details. He didn't prod. Just waited.
Finally, he spoke again. "You can stay here and rot. Or you can come with me."
"…Why?" My voice was barely audible.
"Because you're not dead yet."
It wasn't comfort. It wasn't hope.
But it was something.
"…You're not one of them?"
"No."
"You're not going to pretend to be kind and then burn me too?"
"No."
"…Then… don't touch me," I whispered.
He nodded.
I stood up, legs shaking. My stomach twisted. My vision blurred.
But I followed.
One step at a time. Away from the ruins. Away from the graveyard I'd once called home.
And toward something else.
I didn't trust him.
But I went anyway.
Because I didn't want to be alone anymore.
Part 2
The first few days after Yatsu found me were hazy—a smudge of dull light, blurred faces, and voices that didn't seem to reach me. I remember the warmth of the blanket they wrapped me in. I remember the coldness of the porridge they tried to feed me. I remember the way I clung to silence, as though if I spoke, the memory would pour out and drown me.
I didn't want to remember.
The carriage that carried me away from the ruins of my home jostled over stone and root, each bump shaking loose more of the girl I used to be. I sat wrapped in too-large clothes, watching raindrops race each other down the glass, and I wondered: if I were purer, if I had prayed harder, if I had screamed louder—would any of them still be alive?
No answer came. Just the creak of wheels and the quiet murmur of nobility.
The Davidas family did not take me in out of love. I wasn't their daughter, their kin, or even their ward. I was a fragment of a broken prophecy, a leftover from a village that failed its sacred duty. They took me in because I was a survivor. And survivors make useful tools.
They gave me food. A bed. Education. Order.
They taught me how to recognize corruption—not in demonic beasts, but in people. The lies hidden behind smiles. The rot behind honeyed words. They taught me to see evil not in the form of fangs or claws, but in the way someone's eyes flicker just slightly when they lie, in the hesitation of a hand reaching for a weapon.
I never asked for their kindness. But they still offered it.
I didn't cry. Not when they burned the remains of my village. Not when I stood alone at the edge of the smoldering pit that used to be my life. Not when they told me that no bodies were found intact enough to be identified.
There was no funeral. No farewell.
Instead, I was trained. Refined. Sharpened like a blade left too long in the fire.
Emotions became noise. Doubt was a weakness. I carved those truths into my soul with the same precision I learned to carve symbols into stone wards. The world wasn't made of gentle shades—it was black and white, clean and cruel. There were sheep and there were wolves. And I would never again mistake one for the other.
I volunteered to become the gatekeeper of the Davidas Estate.
They thought I did it to repay them, out of gratitude. But they were wrong.
I did it because I needed to atone. Because I needed to be the one who saw clearly when no one else could. Because if I had been stronger—if I had trusted my instincts instead of clinging to childish ideals—then maybe… maybe they wouldn't have died.
So I stand watch. Every day. Every hour.
I don't protect the family out of loyalty.
I protect the gate so I never have to live through that again.
And if someone threatens us, even if their smile is gentle, even if their words feel honest…
I will not hesitate.
Because I know what I am now.
I am the judgment that comes when mercy has failed.
Part 3
I saw him smile.
That was the moment it began.
The boy—Tatsuya—smiled like someone who believed the world was still worth smiling at. Not forced, not polite, not restrained. It was open. It was warm. It was naïve.
And it shattered something in me.
I should have known better.
I did know better.
But still… still something inside me trembled at the sight of it. Like the smallest piece of me still wanted to believe that smile could be real. That it wasn't a mask.
Just like his had been.
That girl—the one who came to our village with flowers in her hands and honey in her voice—he smiled just like that.
And we let her in.
She praised our traditions. Said we were holy. That the world needed people like us. She said my mother's cooking reminded her of her childhood. She knelt when my father offered a blessing. She knelt and we believed her.
Even I—stupid, stupid girl—I liked her. I thought she was different. She spoke to me like I mattered. Not like a child. Not like a girl to be shushed and protected, but like someone she saw.
I remember—I remember that night.
The one where I sat beside the fire while she played the old reed flute. And I told her about my dreams of becoming a guardian like my parents. She said I was brave. That I would grow into someone strong.
She said I had a good heart.
And the next night, he burned it all to the ground.
The screams didn't stop. The smell of burning hair, the wet choking coughs, the laughter—his laughter—it wouldn't leave my ears. He'd set the flames and walked away. Just walked away, as if the death of my entire world was no heavier than stepping over a puddle.
I stopped trusting people after that. Not out of choice. Out of necessity.
Because kindness is a mask.
Trust is a trap.
And people like her—people like Tatsuya—always destroy what they touch.
Even now, even after everything, I see it.
The way Tatsuya reaches out, clumsy and sincere.
The way his voice falters when he tries to comfort someone.
The way he keeps hoping that if he's just honest enough, if he just means well enough, people won't hurt him.
He reminds me of everything I used to be.
Everything that got them killed.
That's why I hate him.
That's why I have to hate him.
Because if I don't—if I let myself hope again, even for a second—then it means I never truly learned. It means I haven't changed at all. That I'm still that dumb little girl in the snow, crying over corpses that could no longer hear her.
No.
I won't go back.
I won't be fooled again.
So when I raise my hatchets, it's not just at him.
It's at me.
The part of me that still wants to believe in softness.
The part of me that wishes—deep down—that someone like him could be real.
But he can't be.
Because if he is… if that light in him is real…
Then that means the darkness in me is my own doing.
And I… I don't know if I can live with that.
Part 4
The wind didn't stop screaming, even after he disappeared from view.
I stood there, arm outstretched, fingers still curled from the shove that had sealed his fall. The world was too quiet now, too still—like even the trees were holding their breath, waiting to see what I'd done.
But I knew.
He was gone.
I'd pushed him.
I'd actually… pushed him.
I let my hand fall to my side slowly, and then I stumbled backward, one foot dragging across the earth like it no longer wanted to obey me.
Why…?
Why did it hurt?
My chest burned, not with triumph or satisfaction, but with something sickly and cold. Something crawling under my ribs and clawing at my throat. My heart was pounding like it didn't know which direction to flee.
I had done the right thing.
I had to.
He was a demon cultist. That scent… that taint… It was all over him.
That smile. That trust. That voice that pleaded for understanding. That wasn't real.
It couldn't be real.
Because if it was—if even a fragment of it had been sincere—then I just murdered someone who only wanted to be understood.
I just murdered someone like me.
My legs buckled, and I dropped to my knees at the cliff's edge. I leaned forward on trembling hands, peering over the ledge like I might still see him—like I might call out and hear his voice again, telling me it's alright, that he forgives me, even when he shouldn't.
But there was only the void.
The mist, the distance, the shimmer of moonlight over water far below.
No body. No scream. Just the echo of silence, and the sound of my own breath becoming ragged.
I pressed a hand to my chest.
Why is it so hard to breathe…?
I had made the right call.
I had made the right call.
I had to.
Didn't I?
If I had trusted him, if I had believed him, and he had been just like the man from the village—
If I had let him in, if I had let myself hope again—
He would have burned it all down.
Just like before.
I had to stop it.
I had to stop it.
So why…?
Why did it feel like I'd lost something?
Why did his voice—his terrified, confused voice—keep ringing in my ears?
"Why does nobody care about me?"
I pressed my palms to my ears, trying to shut it out. Stop. Stop. Stop.
But the echo didn't fade. It wasn't him anymore.
It was me.
A child in the snow. Crying out to corpses that could no longer answer. Crying because no one had come. Because no one had saved her.
Because no one believed her.
I dug my fingers into the dirt.
I had become the very thing I hated.
The one who turned their back.
The one who didn't listen.
The one who didn't care.
The tears didn't fall. They never did. I had long since run dry.
But the ache… gods, the ache was worse.
I had survived the fire. I had built walls. I had armed myself with reason and fury and absolutes.
And now, for the first time in years—
I didn't know if I was still right.
Or if I'd just murdered a boy… because I couldn't bear the thought of trusting him.
Because I was still afraid.
I curled in on myself, forehead pressed to the earth as if it could answer me.
Was I right?
Or did I just kill someone who was trying to love?