After hours of piercing cold that seeped into his bones, Yujiro's consciousness slowly drifted back to a strange reality. His first sensation was the hardness beneath his back and a suffocating dampness in the air. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on the floor of a dark forest, covered by a thin layer of fresh snow. Every part of his body ached with a searing pain, as if his insides had been hollowed out and refilled with lead.
He raised his hand to wipe his face, and noticed something that made him freeze more than the winter chill. He looked at his palm; the mark that had accompanied him his entire life, the faint "Sun Star," had completely vanished. In its place remained nothing but a pale, lifeless white scar.
"Where am I?" he muttered in a raspy voice. He tried to piece together the events… the flower, Hakaji, the silver dust… and then, a vast black void.
He began to crawl slowly, using his arms to heave his body up, eventually standing on trembling legs. The forest was unnaturally silent; no birdsong, no rustle of life. Yujiro walked without a clear destination, leaning against trees that appeared to him like standing corpses.
Suddenly, he spotted something in the distance. An old, moss-covered wooden sign pointed toward his village. A flicker of hope rose within him, but he soon noticed that the darkness was creeping in with an irrational speed, as if the sun were too afraid to remain in the sky and had decided to vanish early.
Yujiro was in no condition to face whatever might emerge in the gloom. With a Herculean effort, and despite his shivering limbs, he climbed a towering fir tree. He tucked himself between its thick branches, trying to cover his body with his tattered shawl. There, amidst the creaking of the boughs, he surrendered to a fitful sleep. His nightmares were not of monsters, but of eyes glowing with a cold light, and a girl with hair as black as night looking at him with boredom and saying: "This vessel has served its purpose."
Yujiro woke several times, shivering, wondering if his family was still waiting for him, or if time itself had abandoned him alone in this cursed forest.