The next morning came shrouded in fog, the kind that clung to rooftops and refused to lift until midday. Vendors called out half-heartedly from their stalls, their voices dampened by the mist. Paper lanterns swung lazily from beams, their colors muted, and the streets of Yoshiwara were unusually still — as though the night had left something behind that no one wished to disturb.
Inside her residence, Kiyo sat before her mirror, unmoving.
Her reflection stared back: eyes dark as ink, lips unpainted, the faint curve of her serpent mark hidden beneath layers of silk and modesty. But in her gaze lingered something new — something unsettled. A tension behind the calm.
She hadn't slept.
Not because she was restless. But because... she hadn't wanted to. Not after the dream.
A dream without form or voice. Just golden eyes watching from a garden of withered camellias. A voice calling her name — not aloud, but inside her. Whispering it like a vow.
Kiyo.
She had never heard her name sound like that before. Not with such ache.
A knock interrupted her thoughts.
"Lady Kiyo?" Risa peeked in. "A man awaits you outside. He claims he's a poet. He left no name."
"A poet?" Kiyo repeated softly. "At this hour?"
Risa nodded, clearly uneasy. "He looks... strange. But not rude. He said he only wishes to share a verse with you. Just one."
Kiyo stood slowly. "Let him in."
Risa hesitated but bowed and disappeared.
A moment later, Kiyo stepped out onto the engawa, the wooden walkway that overlooked the inner garden. The koi stirred again, as they always did when she approached — not in fear, but in stillness.
The man stood at the far end, beside the stone lantern. His clothes were plain — traveler's robes, rain-stained and dark. His wide-brimmed kasa hat concealed most of his face, but not the impression of him. He was tall. Still. His very presence seemed to ripple the air, like heat over stones or the moment before thunder strikes.
He removed his hat slowly.
His hair, long and black, fell to his shoulders like wet silk. His eyes... gold. Not bright, but old. Dimming embers instead of fire. Serpent's eyes.
"You sang of me," he said.
Kiyo didn't move.
"I've sung many things," she replied, voice light, careful. "People hear what they wish."
"I did not wish," the man said. "I was drawn."
The silence between them thickened, stretched.
"You are a god," she said finally.
He tilted his head slightly, as though amused.
"I was."
"And now?"
He looked past her — toward the garden, the sky, the veiled sun. "Now I am what remains of a prayer no one finishes."
The wind stirred the camellia bushes. A single petal floated to the ground.
Kiyo stepped closer, though not out of boldness. Something about him felt familiar — not like meeting a stranger, but like finding a dream you had almost forgotten.
She studied his face.
"You know who I am," she said quietly.
His gaze drifted to her shoulder. "Yes. You bear the mark."
Kiyo's fingers twitched at her side. "I was born with it."
"No one is born with the mark of Hebi-no-kami unless they've been touched by a god," he said.
She narrowed her eyes. "Touched... or claimed?"
He smiled then, and the gesture did not reach his eyes. "Is there a difference?"
Their words hung between them like silk threads pulled taut.
"I am called Kagutsuchi," he said, the name falling like an invocation. "Though that name has been buried by time."
Kiyo's breath caught. "The serpent god from the song."
"Yes."
She stepped back, only a pace. "That story ends in betrayal."
"It begins in love," he said softly. "But yes. It ends in ruin."
The koi swam in slow, mirrored circles.
"And why are you here now?" she asked.
Kagutsuchi's gaze darkened. "Because the story may begin again. Or it may end completely."
Her throat tightened. "Will you kill me?"
"I don't know," he admitted, with disarming honesty. "The curse upon me is clear: I must eat the heart of the one marked by divine voice. Only then will my immortality return."
"And yet you hesitate."
He looked at her as though seeing her not with his eyes, but with the part of himself that had once been a god — the part that remembered love, not just power.
"I heard you sing," he said. "And it sounded like something I once fought to protect."
Kiyo's heart beat hard in her chest.
She stepped toward him again, closer than before.
"If you're here to end me," she whispered, "why do you speak like a man begging to be undone?"
Kagutsuchi did not answer.
Instead, he reached forward and — with a reverence that seemed to pain him — touched the edge of her sleeve, as though testing if she was real.
Kiyo did not flinch.
Outside, the fog had begun to lift. The first clear shaft of sunlight pierced the clouds, casting pale gold across the garden.
Kagutsuchi dropped his hand.
"I will return," he said. "When the moon is full."
And with that, he turned, stepped down the stone path, and vanished into the mist.
Kiyo stood alone, the fabric of her sleeve still trembling from his touch.
She looked up to the fading sky.
And for the first time since she was a child, she feared her voice. Not because of what it could do — but because of what it had already awakened.
The late afternoon sun painted the city in strokes of gold and amber, warming the tiled roofs and stone pathways of Yoshiwara. The world had shaken off its fog, but Kiyo's heart remained clouded.
Despite the heaviness in her chest — despite the way her dreams still clung to her skin like spider silk — she had duties. And her name was already inked on the folding fans of tonight's guests.
The House of Crimson Fans awaited.
Ayame tied the final knot of her obi, firm but gentle. Risa adjusted her collar with the precision of a court artisan, while Naho pinned fresh camellias into her long, dark hair.
"Will you wear red or blue tonight, my lady?" Ayame asked, holding up two lacquered hair ornaments.
Kiyo stared at them, then blinked slowly, her gaze distant. "Neither," she murmured. "White."
"White?" Risa echoed. "But that's..."
"Funeral color," Ayame finished in a whisper, troubled.
Kiyo met their eyes in the mirror — calm, unyielding. "It's for a song I haven't finished yet."
The girls obeyed, silent as petals falling.
When she arrived at the House, the lords were already in high spirits. The sake had flowed early, and laughter spilled like oil over the silken tatami floors. Incense curled in lazy spirals, and the sound of shamisen echoed faintly from the neighboring room.
As she entered, all voices hushed.
Even the drunks knew better than to speak over Kiyo.
She bowed low, a vision in flowing white, and took her place by the golden screen. Her biwa was already waiting for her — polished, waiting like a loyal beast.
Without a word, she began to sing.
The room breathed with her.
Her voice — at first gentle, like dew sliding off a lotus leaf — rose into something richer, full-bodied and haunting. It told no story at first, only feeling: the ache of waiting, the sweetness of surrender, the sorrow of blooming in the wrong season.
The lords sat in awe, slack-jawed or weeping quietly into their sleeves. Even the youngest among them, barely men, looked as though they'd just glimpsed something divine.
But then —85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzBswdIXjyy
something changed.
A shiver laced up Kiyo's spine mid-verse. Her fingers faltered on the strings. Her breath caught, not from fear, but pain.
White static prickled across her vision. A wave of dizziness surged behind her eyes, and the words she had prepared — the final verse — melted on her tongue.
Your name...85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOV3UNAB5uz
Your name was fire —
And then everything went dark.
A gasp rippled through the room.
Kiyo slumped forward, her head striking the lacquered body of her biwa with a soft thud. The instrument wailed a single, off-key note — long and shivering.
Ayame was the first to reach her, catching her before her body crumpled to the floor. "Kiyo!" she cried, panic piercing her usual calm.
Servants rushed to clear the guests. Risa and Naho helped lift their mistress into the back room, her limbs limp, her breathing shallow but steady.
"She's burning," Naho whispered, pressing a cloth to Kiyo's brow. "But there's no fever... this doesn't feel like sickness... it's something else."
The room darkened.
And somewhere beyond the world of flesh and silk, Kiyo dreamed.
The dream was fire.
Not the warmth of lanterns or hearths — but a searing, ancient heat that split stone and turned oceans to mist.
She stood in a garden she did not recognize. The trees were blackened bones, the sky torn and bleeding gold. In the center, on his knees, was Kagutsuchi.
He clutched his chest, writhing. His robes were torn, soaked with blood that shimmered darkly — not red, but bronze, metallic and bright.
His skin cracked.
Scales bloomed across his face, down his neck, curling over his hands. Not fully — not yet. The transformation was violent, jagged, as though his body rejected what it once was.
He screamed, but it wasn't agony alone.
It was grief.
"You sang of me again," he rasped, not looking up. "You called me with your voice, and so the fire answers."
Kiyo reached out, breathless, unable to move.
"It hurts," he said — not like a god, but like a man. "Every note... every word... it pulls."
He lifted his head.
His eyes found her.
They glowed like molten gold, ringed with black. The pupils narrow, slitted — no longer human. But within them flickered something devastating.
Recognition.
"Your voice is not a gift," he said.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡauebbl4UjV
"It's a chain."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5zneH5i4V5
"And every time you sing... you draw me closer to the edge."
He stood.
The scales on his face gleamed. His presence filled the dream with a crushing weight.
"Tell me, Kiyo..."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZdxjKp0FCj
"Will you sing for me again when the time comes?"85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqVqjjnt6U5
"Will you sing... even as I take your heart?"
The world shattered — not with violence, but with silence.
Kiyo's eyes flew open.
She was back in her chamber. Candlelight flickered overhead. Her throat ached, and the sheets beneath her were damp with sweat.
Ayame was dozing beside the futon, Risa curled near the door, Naho hugging a pillow, their faces tight with worry even in sleep.
She sat up slowly.
The room was still. But the silence was not empty.
It hummed.
In her bones. In the mark on her shoulder.
He had looked at her.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡasN0ptqAJE
Not in the dream. Not in metaphor.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡviY40quZ5p
He had truly seen her.
And worse —
She had heard his voice.
Not through memory.
But through bond.
The song had called him.
And now, he was coming.
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