The wind outside the Sakuma house was restless.
It whispered against the wooden walls like the murmurs of unseen ghosts, scratching like fingernails across the windows. The sky was bruised with stormclouds, though not a drop of rain fell. Just thunder in the distance, like war drums echoing across a forgotten field.
Reiko sat hunched on the floor of her room, the old diary trembling in her hands.
The pages were yellowed with age, stitched by a red thread now flaking like dried blood. The cover bore no name—only the faint impression of a family crest long since faded. But inside... the past was alive.
It was the diary of Asigawa Reina, there a old paper that were attached telling about a shrine maiden . A shrine maiden from the late Meiji Era, who once served the secluded Miyazaki Shrine before it was sealed and forgotten.
Reiko had found the journal hidden behind a false wall in the school's archive room, buried beneath scrolls and broken incense bowls.
She flipped the pages carefully, her breath slowing with every line.
---
June 6th, 1899
"There is something wrong with the mountain. The air tastes like metal. The bell no longer rings at midnight."
July 13th, 1899
"The new lord has returned to Miyazaki Manor. He is not like the previous patriarch. There is something… cruel behind his smile. The servants say he watches Miwa too closely."
August 20th, 1900
"Miwa is missing. The villagers pretend not to notice. They say she ran away. But I found her comb in the well."
August 22nd, 1900
"She is dead. I know it. I saw her reflection in the shrine's mirror. She was crying. Her dress was torn. Her mouth sewn shut."
---
Reiko's throat tightened.
The ink in some passages was darker, etched like the writing of a shaking hand. Others were smeared, as though Reina had tried to wipe away her own words.
She continued.
---
September 2nd, 1900
"The Lord... he killed her. He defiled her body, then cast her into the fire pit behind the shrine. The priests covered it up. Said she had been possessed. Said it was her fate."
October 1st, 1900
"We found an ancient sutra in the shrine's inner sanctum. A Buddhist text sealed with golden thread. But it was no scripture. Not really. Just pages and pages of nothing. Blank."
"It was Miwa's rage, I know it. Her pain was poured into the pages. And the monks… they bowed to it. They sealed it beneath the shrine and whispered her name only during eclipses."
Miwa Miyazaki.
---
Reiko's hand trembled.
She remembered the dream — the sea of feathers, the chains, the whisper: "You are the blood of the Vessel… You are the broken key…"
Now she understood.
Miwa Miyazaki hadn't just died. She had been sacrificed.
And the empty sutra — it wasn't meant to guide. It was meant to bind.
A curse in the shape of silence.
---
Kino sat across from her, her hands clasped together, face pale.
"So the shrine wasn't sacred," Kino whispered. "It was a cage."
Reiko nodded. "And the curse didn't vanish. It just… waited."
"Waited for what?"
Reiko looked up slowly. Her voice cracked.
"For me."
---
The room fell quiet.
Kino didn't speak — not out of doubt, but horror.
Reiko stood, lifting the diary, flipping toward the last, crumbling page. The final entry was written with blood, not ink. Barely legible, but undeniable.
---
January 12th, 1901
"She speaks through me now. At night, in the mirror. Miwa was the first Vessel… but not the last. Her curse is not death. It is inheritance."
"Every few generations, the Vessel is born again. A girl who bleeds silver in her dreams. Who hears the Eye whisper. Who draws the chains without knowing why."
"I buried this book to delay the awakening. But it is only a delay. The curse will always call to its own blood."
"And the next Vessel will be the one who returns to the shrine willingly."
---
Kino covered her mouth. "You went there… last week. With me."
Reiko nodded. "I touched the statue. I heard the voice."
"You are the Vessel…"
"No," Reiko said, her eyes hollow. "I became the Vessel."
---
Outside, a single lightning bolt cracked the sky.
The house groaned as the wind howled louder — a piercing, shrill sound like a scream caught in a bell.
Reiko dropped the book.
It landed with a thud, open to a blank page.
But as it hit the floor… the ink began to bleed.
Lines appeared.
Not written, but burned into the paper.
A new message.
Written now, not in the past.
---
YOU ARE THE FINAL ONE.
THE VESSEL OF HER WRATH.
WHEN BLOOD TOUCHES FLAME, THE EYE WILL OPEN.
---
Reiko stared at it, breathless.
"Flame…" she whispered. "That's what the dream said too. One key buried in blood… one hidden in fire."
Kino stood shakily. "Then that's our next step. We find the fire."
"No," Reiko whispered, her gaze distant. "We wait."
Kino blinked. "Wait for what?"
Reiko turned toward the window.
"For the Eye to open."
---
The next night, Reiko returned alone to the Miyazaki Shrine ruins.
She didn't tell Kino.
She didn't even leave a note.
The air around the shrine was cold, unnaturally so, despite the heat of summer. The forest around it was too quiet — as though time had stopped breathing.
Reiko carried the diary in one hand, and a lantern in the other.
She stepped through the ruined torii gate.
The shrine was in decay, but the altar remained.
A stone slab, etched with unreadable sutras.
A cracked mirror hung behind it — and as she looked into it…
She didn't see her reflection.
She saw Miwa.
Eyes hollow.
Mouth sewn.
Blood running down her legs.
And chains — so many chains — blooming like flowers from her chest.
The mirror cracked further.
And Miwa smiled.
---
Reiko fell to her knees.
The diary burned in her hand — the pages turning to ash, but the words branded into her mind.
"When blood touches flame…"
She reached into her coat.
Pulled out the knife.
She'd brought it just in case.
She never wanted to use it.
But now—
She drew the blade across her palm.
The blood dripped onto the stone altar.
And the ground began to shake.
---
The cracked mirror shattered.
And from the shards rose a figure cloaked in black feathers.
Chains hung from its shoulders.
And behind it, the sky split open — revealing a single, massive, glowing Eye.
It blinked once.
And then —
"VESSEL," it said.
Not with words.
But with thunder.
Reiko dropped the knife.
She couldn't move.
She couldn't breathe.
The Eye stared into her — past her soul, past her thoughts, into something deeper. Into the memories she didn't know she had. Into bloodlines she had never questioned.
It whispered:
"Miwa never died.
She lives in the one who woke her.
And now, you must carry her vengeance."
---
A chain slithered around Reiko's neck.
Another around her heart.
Her breath caught.
And then — a voice cut through the storm.
"ENOUGH."
It was Shin Kazumi.
Barely standing.
Blood still staining his shirt, but his eyes burning.
He stepped into the shrine, limping, clutching an old talisman.
"Reiko is not your vessel," he said, teeth clenched.
"She is a girl. A student. And she chooses who she is — not some ancient sin passed down through blood!"
The Eye blinked.
Chains rose around Shin too.
But he didn't back down.
He reached Reiko — grabbed her hand.
Their blood mingled.
And the Eye—
Screamed.
---
The shrine collapsed.
The altar cracked.
And the chain around Reiko's throat fell loose.
The Eye blinked… and vanished.
---
Reiko gasped, falling into Shin's arms.
He held her close.
"It's not over," she whispered.
"I know," he said. "But now we fight it together."
Behind them, where the mirror had been—
Only ashes remained.
And from those ashes…
A single black feather drifted down.
---
TO BE CONTINUED