god of wishes go brrrrr--
but anyway. her name is kazue ( 一恵; specifically for the reading of ‘first blessing’ ) and, of course, they were the original god of wishes. they were killed during the archon war some 2000-ish years ago, but had been around some ~1000 years before that. in that time, they built up a following of people who came to them seeking to have their wish granted. kazue, as kind and gentle as she was, granted these wishes with relative ease. however, there were feats even she could not pull off― gods are not without limits, after all. but when she would respectfully decline these wishes with a warning that the wisher was asking for far too much and needed to rethink their priorities, kazue’s loyal followers were not satisfied. they needed their god to be all-powerful and be without fail, and they needed others to see that kazue could solve all things. and so, when they grew large enough in number, kazue’s followers waited until they declined a wish beyond their power only to move at night, working relentlessly through any means necessary to make that wish happen by their own hands. when morning came around, they boasted that kazue granted the wish after all, despite all of it happening without kazue’s knowledge or consent.
and so kazue played into a trap, essentially, and thus began the centuries-long tradition of the god of wishes’ following ( by now turned into the cult we’re familiar with in the present day ) leading by deception. even when kazue died a few decades later in trying to defend their home against other archons during the archon war, the cult still was not satisfied. an all-powerful god who granted all wishes could not be truly defeated, right? and so they sought out their reincarnation, certain in their conviction that they existed, for thousands of years. they tried first by tracking down kazue’s son, a ningyo named shinkai kichirou ( 吉郎; ‘lucky son’ ), but to no avail― kichirou knew what they would try to do, hoping that the reincarnation would come from kazue’s own bloodline and thus keeping the family, to some extent, hostage within the cult. and to kichirou’s credit, it worked. when he took to the sea among other ningyo, the cult lost all trace of him for thousands of years―
until they found shinkai kanata a couple thousand years later, a half-ningyo bearing striking resemblance to a lost god from ages ago.
little did they know, while kanata was indeed their descendant, kazue themself did reincarnate, if a generation or two earlier. over time, she has regained her memories, and has been observing the shinkai cult in secret all the while, waiting for an opportune moment to dismantle them. and now, with the war against inazuma’s ruling archon finally finished and kanata back in inazuma, kazue has decided to take her chance while all the pieces are on the board.
