[RYOMEN COMPOUND – VERANDA, NIGHT]
The paper doors were closed, the hall beyond sealed in ritual silence. Hanae stood outside, alone on the veranda. Her bare feet rested against the cold lacquered wood, her white ceremonial robe fluttering in the mountain wind. Moonlight filtered through the misty ridges, painting her face in silver sorrow.
She wasn't allowed inside—not even to watch. It was forbidden.
The child was not hers. Not truly.
He belonged to the clan.
A rustle of cursed wind whispered through the trees. She didn't flinch. Her hands were folded, but her fingernails dug into her palms.
She had been trained to endure.
Her thoughts drifted backward.
[FLASHBACK – MOUNT HOSHIN SHRINE, YEARS AGO]
She had been born under a black sun. Or so the monks said.
A Star Plasma Vessel—one of the sacred few whose body could merge with the heavens. The first sign was her white eyes. The second, her curse-rejecting flesh. The third, the way birds died when they perched near her cradle.
From infancy, she was confined to a holy temple. A place of silence and offerings. She bathed in lotus water. Ate from stone plates. And slept in a room with no corners, lest evil accumulate.
They said she was chosen by the gods. They said she would serve a purpose higher than her own life.
So she waited, day after day, to be taken. Sacrificed. Transformed. Used.
When the Ryomen clan came, it was not for ascension—but blood.
They stormed the temple, led by Ryomen Karyu himself—his curse energy so dense it made the monks scream without touching them. They tried to resist. But they were nothing. Insects in the palm of a greater demon.
She remembered the first time Karyu looked at her.
He did not leer. He did not smile. He looked at her the way a scholar looks at a sacred artifact—important, but not personal.
"She will do," he said.
And that was that.
She became his wife.
A title in paper and politics. In practice, she was an honored vessel, kept in the Ryomen inner chambers. They gave her fine robes, better food, and silence. Endless silence.
Karyu did not visit often. But sometimes—rarely—he tried to be kind.
Once he gave her an old hair comb from his mother's shrine. Once he told her she could walk the garden alone. Once, he knelt beside her in the rain after a failed pregnancy and said, "Try again, when your body heals."
He didn't love her. But sometimes, she remembered those moments—and felt almost human.
[PRESENT – VERANDA]
It took five years for her to conceive.
The monks had said her body was made to merge with purity. Curse energy, by nature, rejected her. And yet, in the end, something took root.
Something the clan whispered was not a child—but a destiny.
Now that thing had been born. A silent boy. Four eyes. Two mouths. No cries. No tears.
The first time she held him, he didn't reach for her. He only stared.
He never looked away.
She felt like prey under that gaze. And yet, part of her ached—because he had come from her.
Her womb. Her blood.
Her curse.
She closed her eyes. The ritual inside was ending. She could feel it—the air pressure changing. The cursed energy pulling back like a tide retreating.
She turned to leave.
And then—
The door slid open.
Two attendants stepped out, bearing the swaddled child in silence. The talismans around the black cloth hissed softly, repelling ambient cursed energy. The child did not cry. He had never cried.
Hanae took a quiet step back, her breath hitching.
Then — the child moved.
His eyes opened, twin pits of ancient stillness. His tiny head turned toward her, his gaze cutting through distance like a blade.
And then… his hand lifted.
Not with warmth. Not reaching for comfort.
It was slow. Purposeful. Like a lord beckoning a servant to kneel.
Her heart stopped.
The attendants froze. "He… he's reaching out?"
But there was no affection in that gesture.
Only possession.
Hanae stared back, trembling. She couldn't breathe. It was as if the whole world had narrowed down to that small, chilling motion.
Something in her tried to resist.
You don't have to go to him. You never had a choice, but now—now you could walk away. Now that the ritual is done, you can return to the quiet. You can disappear into the background. You don't have to belong to anyone.
But as she looked into her son's eyes — the illusion of freedom shattered.
She did belong to someone.
To him.
The blood bond had been forged not by affection, not by love — but by inevitability. She was his vessel in more ways than one. She had carried him into the world, and now the world inside him called her back.
Her hands moved before her mind could object. She stepped forward.
One of the attendants startled. "My lady—"
But she ignored them. She walked to the child and knelt.
His gaze never wavered.
She reached out. Her fingers brushed the black wrap. She unwrapped just enough to see his face — perfect, unnatural, unmoved.
"...I see," she whispered, voice raw.
A tear welled in her eye, but not from love. From the certainty of what had just happened.
She had accepted it.
He is not mine. I am his.
"I'll care for you," she murmured, barely audible over the wind. "Not because I want to… but because I must."
The attendants exchanged glances but said nothing. No one else would raise the boy. Not after what the Seer had seen. No wet nurse had dared step forward. No elder had offered to teach him.
So they handed him to her.
And in that moment, without fanfare, without warmth — a new pact was born.
Not of mother and child.
But of servant and sovereign.
Continued...