The shrine sat at the peak with mock indifference, as if bored by devotion.
Moonlight brushed its roof in the wrong direction — sliding upward instead of down, defying every rule of night.
I ran — slipped — caught myself.
The cold stones bit through my sandals. Great, I thought, breath snagging as I steadied myself. The ground beneath me hummed faintly, a sound felt more than heard — the shrine breathing in its sleep.
Below, the festival shimmered like a second constellation — laughter, bells, taiko drums echoing through the dark like distant thunder.
"Good evening, Miss Victoria. A pleasure to meet — we were made aware of your arrival."
The voice was smooth, deliberate — silk drawn over glass.
It pulled my attention before my thoughts caught up.
Gentle hands, cool and careful, turned my face toward her. I must have looked half-mad.
"Please, follow me," she said — voice as soft as a fallen petal and as soothing as rain.
You don't complain about the texture of the rope that pulls you from the river.
So I followed without question.
The air inside was thick — sweet incense threaded with the metallic ghost of long-dried rain. Shadows rippled along the paper walls as if breathing, the shrine's heart beating in time with the world outside.
Moonlight poured through the cracks not as illumination, but as presence.
She led me not to the inner altar, but to a smaller chamber lined with cedar and silence.
Four figures waited — still as portraits, painted by patience.
We exchanged murmured greetings. Someone poured tea; the sound was steady, ritualistic — steam rising in perfect white curls. The porcelain trembled faintly in my hand.
"I think there's… something wrong," I said finally, hearing my words fall like stones into water.
None of them looked surprised. Not even curious.
"Did you bring the blade?" one asked.
Her voice was quiet — like a prayer said over a sleeping god — yet sharp enough to cleave through thought.
"Uh—yeah," I said, fumbling through my purse, setting the wrapped weapon gently on the low table.
"That blade could paint a target on your back," she said.
Unlike the others — whose presence felt like the seasons breathing through human skin — she was different.
Her hair shimmered like starlight gone sour, a pale silver tinged with shadow.
And from it, fox ears twitched, subtle but unmistakable, listening to something I could not hear.
"As for what you saw," she went on, eyes closing briefly, "a leaf may curse the wind, but it cannot be a stone. You can only ride."
Her words landed soft — and final.
When she opened her eyes again, they burned violet — not purple, but the strange, electric hue of candlelight glimpsed through tears.
I nearly choked on my tea.
"So we're just going to sit here, then?" I thought — too loudly, apparently.
Because she smiled — just faintly.
"You may ask your questions after the ceremony," she murmured.
"Did you bring the bookmark?"
My fingers clenched instinctively around the cup. Warmth bled into my palms.
"Yeah," I said. The word felt small, fragile — unworthy of the air it took.
"Then all is as it should be," she replied.
The room thickened.
The smell of blossoms and ozone — spring about to break, or rot about to bloom.
Smoke curled from the incense dish — each wisp forming shapes that almost made sense, almost spelled words.
And beneath it all, the hum of the shrine deepened — as though something ancient was waking beneath the floorboards.
---
The Twilight Festival of Yako-no-Hoshimi
Night had fallen — but now it collapsed, drawn inward by gravity's hush.
The stars flickered, refusing to name the void for what it was.
The hour between breaths.
Behind Victoria, the shrine gleamed as though half-erased from the world, its marble blurred beneath the lights' last gasp.
Bells. Voices. Incense smoke curling through the air like living script.
Her eyes followed the sound — lanterns housing summer stars swung lazily down the hill where stalls sold rice wine and ribbons, and children darted by with paper fox masks tied in red string. The scent of blooming camellia thickened the air like storm clouds about to tear open.
Beneath the hush of wind and festival song, the people whispered their blessing:
"May the Lady of Seasons dream kindly tonight — for concealment is an act of nurture."
The road ended where the pond began.
No gate, no tower — only a shrine half-veiled by willow branches, its reflection trembling in still water.
Hundreds of lanterns floated upon it, slow-turning, like lost stars seeking constellations.
At the pond's heart stood five priestesses.
Their robes were white as unwritten pages, trimmed with the hues of the seasons — cherry blush, ember red, rust gold, frost blue — and the fifth, in twilight grey, veiled in indigo mist.
They stood in a perfect circle, palms open to the moon — the only heavenly body still watching. Their murmurs wove through the air, a language older than thought — more wind than word.
The water stirred.
First, a ripple. Then light — silver, soft, pulsing like a heart remembering its rhythm.
And then, as if spring had woken beneath the ice, she emerged.
Yako-no-Hoshimi, the Mamorigami of Change and Concealment.
Her form breathed between worlds — a maiden with fox ears and moonlit hair one moment, a vast vulpine shadow the next, nine tails unfurling across the pond like ribbons of the Milky Way.
When her paw touched water, it did not break. It bloomed — lotus after lotus rising to meet her, as if the earth remembered its own beauty.
Silence fell.
Even the wind seemed to kneel.
Her voice came like a sigh between heartbeats:
"The wheel turns, yet the centre holds.
The blossoms fall, yet the roots endure."
Her gaze found Victoria — amber, knowing, unblinking — the warmth of fire that endures its own ashes.
A smile touched her lips, small and heavy with prophecy — the kind that sees both ruin and redemption.
"The veil is mercy… and the scale and death are heavy both, child of endings," she murmured, words slipping beneath hearing.
"The Arcana are omniscient and omnipotent — yet not in the manner mortals think.
Their knowing is not thought, and their power is not motion."
The priestesses' chants deepened, rippling through the night. The pond mirrored not the sky, but memory — spring meadows, burning summers, blood-soaked autumns, silent snows.
Yako lifted her hand — slender, divine.
"Will you entrust the Balance to the Seasons, for a while?
The bookmark you bear — let it rest where moon and water meet,
until the cycle turns anew."
Victoria hesitated.
The borrowed sigil of Justice glowed faintly beneath her skin, trembling like something alive.
The air around her shivered, heavy with warning.
This was not an offering — it was a weighing.
Still, she stepped forward.
When she placed the bookmark upon the pond, it did not sink like the blade — it drifted.
And from the ripples came a sound like the earth itself exhaling.
The Twilight Priestess bowed low.
Yako-no-Hoshimi closed her eyes, dissolving into mist and silver.
Only the reflection of nine faint tails lingered — fading like afterimages on the soul.
Then, as the bells began again and laughter trickled back through the trees, Victoria whispered into the wind:
"You were waiting, weren't you… through the veil, through the silence."
And for just a breath — the pond smiled back.
---
In the heart of the festival, two stood —looking to the hill.
The laughter of the festival drifted away, dissolving into incense and bells.
Victoria stood at the crest of the hill, the shrine of Yako gleaming like a dream made flesh — gold and silver threads woven through shadow.
Below, at the foot of the hill, Caelun lingered — a god who did not move, yet whose presence coiled around the air like a thought too heavy to breathe.
When he spoke, no sound came. The words bloomed inside her mind, as if her thoughts had turned traitor and begun to echo his own.
"The Ouroboros devours itself not from hunger or ignorance," the voice said, calm as still water. "It acts because that is what eternity must do to remain whole."
Victoria's hand tightened around her chopstick. She didn't turn. Turning wouldn't change anything.
"Even the High Priestess — that blind silver serpent — makes herself a moon by biting her own tail. She is no god, Victoria… she is what gods see when they dream too deeply."
The thought pulsed like a heartbeat that wasn't hers.
She wanted to speak, to tell him to stop — but the words melted before they reached her lips.
"Let's go Atheron," Caelun murmured through her skull. Then a pause — deliberate, knowing.
"Before she notices."
Another heartbeat. A faint amusement rippled through her mind, cold and golden.
"No… before she takes interest in what she already is."
The voice said fading
The shrine shivered in the moonlight.
The incense smoke twisted into the shape of a serpent devouring its tail.
And for a moment — just one — Victoria understood why even gods who's names felt like final verdict whisper in their presence.
---