"Blood of My Blood, Peace of My Heart"
synopsis: Your village tried—and failed—to kill the king of curses, so he razed it in a day. as a last-ditch offering, they gave him you: soft-spoken, well-bred, meant to be a symbol of surrender (or a future corpse). they expected you to cry, beg, maybe throw yourself from his balcony. Instead, when sukuna returns from war two months later, he finds you alive and well: organising his palace, baking for his servants, folding his robes like you belong there. You hate him though, and he hates you. and worst of all? you don’t fear him, not the way you should. He doesn’t kill you. He watches. always. because the god of slaughter was supposed to forget you, now he can’t stop wanting you.
pairings: heian era!Sukuna x war bride!Reader
content/warnings: fire, destruction of home, village destruction, mass death, graphic violence, blood and gore, slow burn, historical fantasy, Heian-inspired setting, fish out of water, grief arc, female rage, reader protagonist, Sukuna x Reader, Uraume buggin
Early Winter, Morning
Akebara: Day of Akebara’s destruction
By dawn, there would be nothing left of your home but ashes and ghosts.
The floor burns beneath your palms as you drag yourself forward through the wreckage. Ash cakes your hands black. Your fingers slip across what used to be polished cedar wood—your mother’s low dining table, perhaps, or one of the veranda doors that rattled softly during storms. It is impossible to tell now. The grain has burned out of everything. What remains is blackened, smooth, brittle as old bone left too long beneath the sun.
A beam somewhere above groans like a dying animal. You flinch instinctively, the movement sending pain lancing through your shoulder. Dust sifts from the ruined ceiling in pale streams, settling in your hair and lashes. Smoke crawls into your lungs with every breath, carrying the bitter stink of charred wood, burnt bodies, and something…
You do not remember falling, however, you do remember running. That much is certain. The slap of bare feet against polished corridors. Shouts splitting the night apart. A villager crashing into you hard enough to send both of you sprawling. The crack of timber, the screams of a child somewhere beyond the garden bridge.
Your mother’s voice—No—not her voice. Only the faint memory of it torn to pieces before it could ever reach you whole. After that came heat. Heat so fierce it swallowed the air from your lungs.
If you stopped moving, even for a moment, the flames would devour you whole. Now there is only silence. Silence, and the distant ringing of shrine bells somewhere beyond the smoke.
“Mama,” you try, and the word breaks apart halfway out, splintering against your throat. You cough hard enough that it aches, one hand braced weakly against the floorboards, but it does nothing. The smoke clings stubbornly inside your lungs. “Mama…?”
Far beyond the ruin, you think you can still hear the village screaming. Men shouting over one another. The shrill terror of frightened oxen and sheep. Yet all sounds strangely distant, muffled beneath the violent ringing inside your skull. It whines endlessly in your ears like a living thing burrowed deep behind your eyes.
You crawl anyway. There is no thought left in you now, only movement. The stubborn animal need to survive. Your sleeve drags through soot and shattered plaster, the pale fabric turning black at once. Heat radiates from the ruined floorboards beneath your knees. Your vision pulses strangely, the edges of the world blurring in and out as though you’re sinking underwater. A support beam collapsed across the corridor ahead, split clean through the middle. You push weakly against it with trembling hands. It does not move, so you drag yourself around it instead.
“Papa…” you whisper this time, quieter than before, as though he may be close enough to hear if you don’t frighten him away.
Only then do you realise your lips have split open somewhere along the way. When you lick them, the taste of iron spreads across your tongue. Nothing around you looks right anymore. The house has become something monstrous and unfamiliar. Walls lean where they should stand straight. The roof has caved inward like the ribs of a rotting carcass.
There is something low to the ground near the remains of the veranda.
A chest, perhaps. Or bedding.
Your thoughts stop short as your hand catches suddenly against something soft. You freeze. For one terrible, hopeful moment, warmth floods your chest so quickly it hurts. Fabric, you think wildly. A sleeve. Someone is there. You turn at once, blinking through smoke and tears, straining to force the shape into something familiar.
But there is nothing waiting for you.
Only charred cloth collapsed into ash, blackened and hollowed through, crumbling apart beneath your fingertips. Empty. Like everything else. You don’t know where you are anymore. Whether this is still your home or merely the bones of it, every corridor looks the same now—burned black, collapsed inward, stripped bare of shape and memory.
You could already be dead, and this a cruel hindsight by the gods.
“Mama,” you whisper again. This time, the word barely leaves your mouth at all.
Before you can make sense of the words, rough hands seize you beneath the arms. You cry out as your body is hauled upward so violently that your breath leaves you in a broken gasp. Your feet drag once against splintered floorboards, then lose purchase entirely. Panic overtakes thought.
You kick wildly, twisting in their grasp like a trapped animal. Your heel strikes something solid and one of the men grunts. Instead of loosening, the grip on you tightens painfully. Another hand clamps around your arm, iron-hard, hauling you higher until you are pinned between bodies that smell of sweat, smoke, and scorched leather.
Your vision stutters as they turn. The world comes apart in flashes. Burning beams collapsing inward with showers or sparks. Through the smoke, you glimpse what remains of your home.
Or, what had once been your home.
The outer walls have already caved inward, the veranda is gone entirely. Fire pours through the structure greedily, licking through. You stare at is as they carry you past. You cannot stop staring. The night has opened wide above the village, vast and black and terrible, streaked orange by firelight. Nothing hides the destruction here. Not walls. Not shadows. The fields beyond the homes glow faintly beneath drifting embers, and smoke rolls across the earth in thick grey waves.
A woman stumbles through the mud clutching a child to her chest, her hair half-burned away. An old man kneels beside a collapsed house muttering prayers beneath his breath, over and over, though whether to the buddhas or the kami, it is useless.
Your thoughts cannot keep pace with any of it. You do not know who these men are. You do not know what they want from you. You only know the dreadful certainty gathering cold in your stomach: whatever comes next will not spare you, you hope they’ll kill you after.
Your feet leave the ground once more.
The impact slams through your body hard enough to empty your lungs. Pain flashes white-hot through your knees and palms as you hit the earth too late to catch yourself properly. Mud and ash smear across your hands. The taste of iron floods your mouth again where your teeth strike the inside of your cheek. The world lurches violently sideways. First, the man kneeling before you. He is bent low against the soot-black earth, forehead pressed into the dirt as though in prayer. His posture is not reverence.
It is surrender. Around him, the village burns. Rooflines collapse inward in bursts of sparks. Smoke climbs slowly into the heavens in obscene twisting ribbons. Firelight flickers across shattered beams and broken walls. The place where your home once stood has become unrecognisable—a smouldering heap of blackened timber and ash.
Gone so completely it almost feels as though it had never existed at all.
Then…more of the figure behind him comes into view. Tall and wrong. Not merely in height, but in proportion, as though the body itself had been shaped according to rules different from those of ordinary men. Four arms rest in terrible stillness at his sides, and somehow that stillness feels more violent than movement ever could.
Even the fire seems unwilling to draw too close. He does not look at the burning village, nor to you. His eyes rest solely upon the kneeling priest as though the man’s death has already happened and only the body has yet to realise it. The men behind you shove you forward roughly once more.
Every instinct inside you screams to flee, yet your body feels nailed to the ground. Lord Sukuna.
You lower your gaze at once in cowardice. The earth beneath your trembling hands is damp with something warmer than rain. Blood, perhaps. You don’t allow yourself to look closely enough to know. Instead, your eyes catch upon the hem of his robes—silk dark as fresh ink, embroidered faintly with gold thread now blackened by ash.
The kneeling priest trembles so violently his sleeves shake against the dirt. Only then do you recognise the bastard.
Not by his face. His features are smeared black with soot and sweat but—but his voice.
That same voice that once recited sutras during spring rites while children slept against their mothers’ laps beneath paper lantern light. The same voice that scolded your father for missed offerings. The same voice that looked upon your family with eyed disapproval whenever your mother spoke too boldly. The village priest.
“M’lord,” he stammers, pressing his forehead deeper into the ash. “Please—please accept this offering! S-She is untouched, pure—her family line is respectable, h-her mother educated her properly, her father served the military and s-shrine f-faithfully, and—and—”
Beside you, silk rustles softly. The sound nearly stops your heart.
The priest continues in frantic bursts, words tumbling over one another so quickly they scarcely sound human anymore.
“She is obedient—soft-spoken—a suitable woman, m’lord. Strong hips for bearing sons, healthy besides. She can serve you well, she can—”
The wet sound comes suddenly. You don’t understand what has happened, until you see the priest come apart. Your breath catches painfully beneath your ribs as half his body topples sideways into the dirt. The rest folds forward a moment later with a heavy spill of torn flesh and shattered bone. Blood rushes black-red across the earth in steaming sheets, creeping toward your knees.
Something hot surges violently into your throat. You clamp your mouth shut hard enough to hurt. The smell reaches you a heartbeat later. Fresh blood. Opened flesh.
Do not breathe. Do not breathe and perhaps he will forget you are here. Your lungs ache at once, already scraped raw by smoke and heat, but still you force your chest still. Panic claws beneath your skin. Your pulse pounds so hard you fear he must surely hear it.
If you suffocate quietly enough, perhaps death will take you before he does. Perhaps death by your own body is kinder than death by his hands.
Then Lord Sukuna speaks. The voice is low enough that you cannot make out the words themselves, yet the command inside them is unmistakable. Footsteps answer immediately. The two men behind you barely have time to react. A sharp movement cuts through the dark. Warm blood spatters suddenly across your cheek. One body collapses beside you hard enough to shake the earth beneath your palms. The second falls moments later with a choking noise cut brutally short midway through.
Behind you, the village still burns. Timber cracks apart beneath flame. Somewhere in the distance, someone screams once before the sound vanishes abruptly into the night.
Yet around Lord Sukuna there exists another kind of quiet entirely.
You gasp hard enough to choke, smoke tearing through your lungs the moment your mouth opens. The burn is immediate. A fit of coughing doubles you over, tears sting your eyes at once. When your vision finally steadies, there is someone kneeling before you. You don’t remember them approaching. One moment, there had been only blood and fire and Lord Sukuna’s dreadful silence. The next, this stranger.
Their skin is almost colourless beneath the shifting firelight, untouched by soot despite the ash drifting endlessly through the air. White hair falls neatly to their cheeks, cut blunt and straight. You cannot tell whether they are a boy or a girl. Young, certainly. Mayhaps your age, mayhaps younger.
Their face is lovely in the way winter rivers are lovely. A hand enters your vision, clean, impossible clean. Around you, the earth is soaked dark with blood. Ash drifts through the air like black snow. Bodies lie cooling only a few paces away. And their fingers remain untouched by any of it, pale and steady as carved ivory.
“It would be best,” the stranger says softly, “if you did not resist.”
The offered hand remains suspended between you, though the choice no longer belongs to you at all.
Early Winter, Dawn
Shiranui: The Palace of Ryōmen
The room is extremely clean. That is the first thing you think as you lie staring up at the ceiling. Dark cedar run overhead, polished smooth by years and years of careful hands. Not a speck of dust hangs between them. Not a single cobweb clings to the corners. No ash, no soot, no smoke.
Instead, the room smells faintly of something floral you cannot name. Everything is clean. The rush mats between your cheek are pale gold. The walls are unmarked. A bronze incense burner sits upon a low table, polished brightly. The tears slip soundlessly into your hair. Another. Then another. At some point, the pale stranger had brought you here. The journey remains scattered through your memory like a broken pottery.
Polished floors that reflected lanternlight in wavering gold ribbons. Cedar pillars thick enough that three men together might not have wrapped their arms around them. Painted screens depicting cranes standing amongst reeds, foxes disappearing into forests of red maple, great waves curling beneath silver moons.
Servants had appeared wherever you looked. Men. Women. Folk not much older than yourself.
Every one of them dropped instantly to their knees as the pale stranger passed. Foreheads lowered. Eyes fixed upon the floorboards. None dared look directly at him. Beyond him either.
The walk to this estate was even longer. You remember staring at the back of his white head for what felt like an eternity. “Are you a boy or a girl?” you had asked.
He glanced back, “A boy.” Then he turned forward again. And that was all. You hadn't bothered to even learn his name.
Beneath your robes, your skin aches. Dried blood tightens across your arms and shoulders. Every movement pulls at it unpleasantly. Smoke still lives in your hair. You can smell it whenever you breathe. No matter how many times your fingers drift upwards to touch the tangled strands, the scent remains.
Your hand rises to your mouth, pressing your knuckles hard against your lips. The tears continue anyway. There’s no village sounds here. No sound of barking dogs waking you up, nor chickens scratching through the dirt; no cart wheels rattling over uneven roads; no neighbours calling to one another across gardens; no sounds of children’s laughter.
Only silence. A different silence than the one surrounding Lord Sukuna.
Just then, the door slides open with a whisper of wood against wood. Your eyes follow the sound.
A woman. Her black hair is drawn into a severe knot at the nape of her neck, secured with a simple wooden pin. Her robes are plain beside the silks you glimpsed throughout the estate, yet they are finer than anything you’ve ever owned. Not a wrinkle mars the fabric. Not a loose thread escapes the stitching. She kneels immediately.
“My lady, the bath has been prepared.”
The title strikes you harder than the sight of the burning village. My lady. You nearly laugh.
You drag yourself upright with stiff, trembling limbs. Your knees protest immediately. One buckles before catching itself. The dried blood upon your skin cracks as you move, smoke-blackened sleeves hang from your arms. Soot stains your hands, your neck, your face. It stains everything. The servant says naught, though you’re sure the sight of the dirtied mats trouble her more than you.
She rises to her feet and waits. You follow because there is nothing left to do, out the door, to the halls.
The corridors seem endless. They wind through the palace like riverways through a forest, turning corners only to reveal more corridors beyond. In the distance, water trickles over stone. The sound follows you…a small, peaceful sound. You find yourself hating it. Servants move through the corridors as silently as ghosts. Some carry folded robes. Others lacquered trays. Every one lowers their eyes the moment they see you. None speak.
At last, the servant stops before a pair of doors, upon sliding one, you’re met immediately with warmth. The bathing chamber stretches beyond. Your breath catches. The room…it’s enormous. Massive wooden beams cross the high ceiling overhead, darkened almost black by years of steam and heat. Lanternlight dances along pale stone walls polished smooth as river rock. At the chamber’s centre rests the bath.
A pool, you’ll say. Sunken deep into the earth itself, perfectly round. Water laps gently against smooth stone edges worn soft by time. Pale petals drift across the surface in slow circles. Lanternlight shimmers beneath them, turning the water molten gold wherever it catches.
You forget yourself, but just for one terrible moment. It is beautiful. It doesn’t belong in the same world as the village. Only hours ago, you had crawled through smoke and blood and burning timber. You’d watched men die, watched homes collapse into embers. Yet, here the air smells of cedar and flowering plum. Here the stone floors have been scrubbed clean. Here petals float upon warm water whilst servants bow and avert their eyes.
The contrast makes your stomach feel strangely hollow.
The servant withdraws towards the wall and lowers her gaze. You remain standing for several moments, staring at the water as steam curls around your ankles. The robe hangs from your shoulders. Smoke has worked itself into every thread. The fabric smells of ash. Of your village. Of home.
Slowly, your fingers find the ties. The robe loosens and slips from your shoulders. It falls in dark folds around your feet. Soot stains the pale fabric in dozens of places. A torn sleeve hangs by loose threads. Dried blood darkens the cuffs.
Barefoot, you step forward and descend the stone stairs. The water reaches your ankles first, your knees, then finally your waist.
Heat wraps around you immediately. A shaky breath escapes before you can stop it, your body feels heavy suddenly. You hear the servant exit the room, so you take the opportunity to sink deeper.
The water rises over your ribs, your shoulders, your collarbones. Petals brush softly against your skin before drifting away again. Your hair spreads across the surface behind you in dark ribbons. For a few moments you simply sit there, staring across the bath.
Before you can let your tears fall, you draw a breath and slip beneath the surface. Water closes around you at once. The world vanishes. Everything does. Your hair lifts weightlessly around your face.
The image of the priest still lingers somewhere within your mind, even that seems farther away beneath the water. His voice. The spray of blood across your cheek. The sight of his body collapsing into the dirt. You remain there longer than you should.
Perhaps this would be a fate easier than Lord Sukuna’s hands.
Something disturbs your stillness. Even through the water, you feel it. Above you, distorted by rippling gold light, blurred figures move beyond the surface.
Reluctantly, you rise. Only enough for your eyes to clear the water. Everything else remains submerged beneath the drifting petals. Women stand gathered at the bath’s edge.
All dressed alike in layered robes pale as cream, the sleeves embroidered with delicate plum blossoms picked out in silver thread. Their dark hair has been pushed smooth until it gleams beneath the lanternlight, every strand pinned precisely into place. Even their faces appear nearly identical. White powder softens their features. Their lips are painted red. Red strokes of black accent the corners of their eyes.
Their conversation dies the instant they notice you watching.
“My lady?” one asks after a hesitant pause. Her voice is soft enough that it barely disturbs the stillness. “May we know your name?”
You say nothing. Water laps quietly against stone.
The woman waits a moment longer before lowering her gaze. Another kneels beside several folded cloths and a collection of small ceramic jars arranged neatly upon a lacquered tray. She reaches towards one uncertainly.
Your eyes remain fixed upon them. The woman slowly withdraws her hand. A third servant shifts awkwardly where she kneels. “Were you injured during your journey?” she asks. “If my lady is in pain, we can summon a physician.”
The women exchange brief, uneasy glances. One clears her throat. “My lady? Are you able to speak?”
You continue staring. The youngest servant lowers her voice, though terrible whispering. “Perhaps she cannot hear us.”
“No,” another whispers (terribly, might you add). “She looked when you spoke.”
“Then perhaps she is frightened. I would be frightened too.”
A third woman shoots them both a warning look. Their whispers cease immediately.
The unease remains. You can see it in the way their hands fidget within their sleeves. The way one repeatedly smooths wrinkles that do not exist from her robes. The way another keeps glancing towards the door as though expecting someone else to arrive and solve the problem for her.
“...P-perhaps we should call Lady Yorozu?”
One of the older attendants shakes her head. “Lady Yorozu departed just this morning.”
The relief vanishes just as quickly. At last the oldest woman lowers her gaze respectfully and folds her hands within her sleeves.
“My lady must rise. We cannot bathe you otherwise.”
When you do not move, a flash of uncertainty crosses her painted face. “My lady?”
The title sounds less confident this time. Almost questioning.
Slowly, without breaking eye contact until the very last moment, you rise from the water. Droplets trail down your skin in silver rivulets. None of the women look directly at you now. Their eyes lower almost immediately, trained carefully upon your hands, your shoulders, the stone floor. You wade towards the bath’s edge in silence.
You turn your back to them and wait. After that encounter, they approach more carefully. One kneels behind you with a wooden basin resting atop folded cloth. Another dips a ladle into warm water, pouring it slowly across your shoulders. The heat runs down your spine in shimmering streams. A third works powdered azuki beans and rice bran into a soft paste before rubbing it gently along your arms.
Her fingers work patiently over your skin, loosening soot from your elbows, dried blood from your wrists, ash from the curve of your neck. Grey water trickles down your body and disappears back into the bath.
Beneath its surface, bruises emerge one by one from beneath the grime. Dark stains bloom along your knees. Purple shadows wrap around one wrist where fingers had once seized you too tightly. A scrape runs the length of your forearm.
You can see one of the women notice it. Her eyes pause, immediately lowering, ashamed to have looked.
In Akebara, women bathed together from childhood until marriage. Shoulder pressed against shoulder in riverwater cold enough to numb the calves. Mothers washed daughters, sisters washed sisters. Old women scrubbed children’s hair whilst gossip drifted between them as naturally as birdsong. No one thought much of nakedness. Flesh was flesh, bone was bone. Yet, these court ladies move around you as though your bare skin were something sacred.
Their ears glow faintly pink whenever they accidentally took too long. They avert their eyes whilst washing the very body they have been commanded to tend. You study them.
All four wear layered kosode beneath their outer robes, the fabric so fine it catches the lanternlight like water. Their sleeves are long enough to brush the floor when they kneel. The woman seated to your left reaches for your hand, gently turning it over to rinse the soot gathered beneath your nails. There’s a mole beside her mouth. A small thing, even naught the powder can hide.
The woman freezes so suddenly droplets spill from her ladle and patter against the stone. “Shimamoto no Mika, my lady.”
You consider this. “It suits you.”
The woman beside her glances up briefly before looking away again. You turn towards the youngest among them.
She cannot hide amongst the others no matter how carefully she imitates them. Youth clings stubbornly to her face. Her sleeves are slightly too long for her wrists. Every few moments she pushed them back only for the fabric to slip forward again. A faint dusting of freckles peeks through the powder across her nose.
You point at her. “And yours?”
The girl startles outright. The ladle in her hands nearly stops. “Y-Yoshimura no Kame, my lady.”
A small laugh escapes you. “All noble names.” The women become very still as you glance from one painted face to the next. “Have they truly set daughters of the court to scrub soot from a peasant?”
Complete silence follows. The young woman beside you resumes pouring warm water down your arm. Her hand trembles ever so slightly. A few droplets miss entirely, splashing against the floor. No one answers your question. That, more than anything, feels like an answer.
“How many years have you seen, Kame?”
“...F-four and ten years, my lady.”
So young. You think suddenly of village girls chasing dragonflies through flooded rice fields in midsummer, shrieking with laughter as their hems soak through. Fourteen is for flower-viewing, not for kneeling inside the palace of Ryomen Sukuna while corpses cool beyond the walls.
“You shouldn’t be here,” you whisper before thinking better of it.
Another lady lowers her head. “This one serves willingly—”
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” you snap at the lady, looking back to Yoshimura. “Would you return home, if permitted?”
That stills the chamber entirely. Not one woman moves. Steam curls upward between you all, thick enough to veil the lanternlight. Somewhere water drips softly into stone. Kame’s fingers tighten around the cedar dipper. Her eyes flick sideways toward the eldest attendant before lowering once more. You understand. A different woman kneels before you and takes your hands into hers. Her fingers are cool despite the warmth of the bath. Small, fine hands.
She studies your hands, staring at the calluses, the cracked skin, the traces of dirt still caught deep within the creases. Then, she begins her work. A damp cloth passes over your fingers. A small carved tool slips beneath each nail to loosen the grime hidden there.
The woman notices and immediately bows her head lower, though her hands continue. “Forgive me, my lady.”
Again, she presses too harshly beneath the nail bed. You draw your hand back from your grasp. “That will do.”
No one moves. Perhaps they mistake your meaning. Court women are expected to protest delicately before allowing themselves to be attended once more. The thought irritates you. The attendant reaches again for your wrist.
You stare at her. “I said enough.”
This time the women glance toward one another openly. You see now how carefully ordered this place must be. Nothing here moves without instruction descending from some higher mouth first. Even dismissal requires permission. Irritation rises slowly and cold through your chest.
The woman nearest you bows until her forehead nearly touches the floor. “My lady, we have been instructed to complete your preparations.”
You rise slightly within the bath then, water slipping down your skin in quiet streams, and the attendants avert their eyes at once. Not one dares look directly upon you now.
“I have dismissed you.” You explode. “What manners has your lord taught within this palace, that women no longer know how to obey?”
At once, the women bow so low their sleeves spill across the damp stone like pools of silk ink.
None depart. They obey you [insofar] as they are permitted to obey you. Nothing more, nothing less. Somewhere above them rests another command, stricter than your own, and no amount of temper from a soot-strained low villager will loosen it. The realisation irritates you afresh. You turn away before they might see it plainly upon your face.
The air smells different from Akebara’s fields. The water here tastes of minerals when it touches your lips, drawn perhaps from some deep spring hidden. You take up the cloth beside the bath and scrub hard at your own skin.
One of the women shifts from where she kneels, though none dare interrupt again. You rub until your skin reddens beneath the heat, until the last streaks of soot dissolve into the bathwater. The smell lingers.
Smoke and opened flesh. Burned mats. Wet blood steaming upon dirt. You scrub harder. A hand-sized bruise blooms ugly along your forearm where someone seized you earlier. You stare at it awhile before lowering the cloth slowly back into the water. The anger leaves you as quickly as it arrived. In its place comes only exhaustion.
When you speak again, your voice sounds roughened by more than smoke alone.
“I should not have spoken so…harshly.” The women glance toward one another in visible surprise. You keep your eyes fixed on the surface of the bath as you continue. “It has been…a confusing day. To lose one’s home before sundown and wake beneath another roof before moonrise. Surely, you all would understand.”
No one answers you. Perhaps nobles within this palace do not apologise to attendants. The very notion unsettles them more than your temper did. Alas, Mika bows her head.
“This one understands that my lady has suffered greatly.”
“Do you?” you ask quietly.
The youngest, Kame, lowers her eyes further. “Many ladies come to the capital unwillingly.”
Marriage, political fostering, religious service. Daughters are traded between houses like folded letters sealed with wax. You know enough of noble custom to understand that much. Your mother made certain of it. You think suddenly of your mother’s hands guiding yours across paper years ago.
“From where do you come, Kame?”
“Shizukage, my lady.” The Silent Shadow Vale.
The women answer more readily after that. One from Hoshikage, where astrologers and omen readers serve mountain shrines older than the capital itself. Another from the outskirts of Yamishiro, where fortified estates crouch behind black pine forests and snow lingers longest upon the hills.
Scattered daughters gathered beneath one monstrous roof. Interesting.
“Akebara’s rice is spoken of quite favourably in the provinces. My father always claimed no village grew finer grain.”
“And the persimmon groves,” Kame blurts suddenly. The words escape her so quickly that seems surprised to hear them herself. “Forgive me…”
“There is nothing to forgive,” you smile.
Colour rises faintly beneath the powder on her cheeks.
“My father travelled there once during tax season,” she admits. “He brought persimmons home afterwards. I was very young, but…” Her fingers tighten around the cedar dipper. “I remember liking them very much.”
You find yourself remembering the groves. Rows of twisted trees stretching over the hills beyond the village. Orange fruit hangs heavy amongst the branches each autumn. Children throwing stones to knock the ripest ones loose whilst their mothers shouted at them from below.
You wonder if the roads still exist, or the village shrines. If the river where children gathered smooth stones each summer now runs black with ash and blood. Or has Lord Sukuna gotten rid of it all?
You ask them of everything. Which gardens bloom latest into water. Which corridors are forbidden after dark. The attendants answer carefully, then as easy as the steam softens around you, so do the women. They speak of moon-viewing festivals held upon the eastern terraces, of poetry gatherings amongst the noblewomen during autumn rains, of hidden shrines tucked deep within the palace grounds where foxes are said to gather. Mika speaks carefully, arranging each word before releasing it. The eldest attendant avoids superstition altogether, favouring practical answers and old traditional etiquette. Kame tells you there are corridors even servants avoid.
“Some halls have been abandoned since the old reigns. Some say spirits remain there.”
The eldest clicks her tongue. “Yoshimura.”
But the girl continues, drawn onward by your attention now. “Old ones. Sometimes, lanterns are seen burning where no servants have gone.”
You rest your cheek against the cedar rim of the bath. “Has Sukuna wandered those halls?”
Immediately, the chamber stills. The silence that follows is so sudden you hear the soft drip of water sliding from your own fingertips back into the bath below. You swear you see their face goes whiter beyond their powdered makeup. The eldest lowers herself immediately until her forehead nearly touches the damp floor. The others follow immediately.
“M-my lady,” the older woman whispers, “you must not—”
“You must never speak his name aloud,” another breathes.
You blink at them. For the first time since arriving within this palace, believe it or not, genuine confusion overtakes you. In Akebara, mothers spoke his name to frighten children into obedience. Farmers muttered it beneath their breath when tribute collectors arrived too early before harvest. Priests lowered their voices when discussing him, yes, but they still spoke it. Here they behave as though you have uttered something cursed.
The attendants do not even look toward the doors as they panic. They look upward as though the palace itself might hear you.
Kame presses trembling fingers hard against her sleeves. “Please,” she pleads quietly. “Do not say it again.”
“Then what do you call him?” you ask.
No one answers immediately. At length, Mika speaks without lifting her eyes.
Another murmurs, almost inaudibly, “The Lord of Calamity. Our Lord.”
“His Excellency,” says the eldest carefully, choosing the safest path of all.
The palace does not merely obey him, it seems they worship him the way villagers worship the sacred tree praying for rain for their crops. You think then of the village priest neatly split in two before he could finish speaking. Of blood spreading hot across dirt.
“How strange,” you murmur, leaning your cheek lightly against the rim of the bath.
You hear the sound before you feel the cold. The air enters the compartment right away. The pallid figure from earlier is framed at the doorway, standing still against the shadowy hallway outside. His complexion is nearly colorless in the lanternlight. He surveys the room once.
“As though I entered a shrine during prayer…” he hisses. “You may rise. The bath should be concluded by now.”
Annoyance sparks hot beneath your ribs. You have been dragged from the ruins of your home, carried across provinces like tribute grain—now this creature dictates how long you’re permitted to sit in water.
You rise. Water slips from your skin in slow streams as you stand fully within the bath, bare beneath lanternlight. The attendants lower their eyes instantly toward the floor, though you catch Kame flushing red beneath her powder before she manages it. You don’t cover yourself.
The water trails down your body onto the stone steps as you ascend from the bath. One attendant rushes forward at once with layered drying clothes of soft woven hemp, though she hesitates before touching you, uncertain now whether permission must first be granted.
“The robes prepared for her,” he says at length, directing the words toward the attendants without once looking away from you. “Use the lighter junihitoe. His Excellency dislikes excessive fragrance.”
You wonder suddenly whether anyone within these walls possesses preferences untouched by that man’s shadow. Uraume turns then as though to leave, pale sleeves whispering softly against the floor.
At the doorway, however, he pauses. Without facing you, he orders quietly, “You should learn the customs of this palace quickly.”
Early Winter, Three Days After Akebara
Shiranui: The Palace of Ryōmen
Morning arrives cold on the mountain. Mist gathers thick beyond the palace verandas. Somewhere below the cliffs, temple bells carry through the valleys in the long mournful notes. You wake before the attendants arrive, though you scarcely remember falling asleep at all.
Your new bedchamber prepared for you is larger than your family home in Akebara. Screens painted with cranes divide the room into graceful partitions. Silk hangings stir faintly each time mountain wind slips beneath the shutters. Even the bedding beneath you feels impossibly soft.
You hate that you slept well.
When the attendants come, they dress you in subdued layered robes suitable for mourning, though no one names it as such. Soft greys, faded cream. No cosmetics are offered beyond a touch of lip colour, perhaps that boy’s instructed restraint. Could it be the palace hasn’t decided what you are meant to be? A bride, a hostage, or an offering. The uncertainty is loud.
Morning has fully entered the palace. Servants move soundlessly along the walkways carrying trays and folded cloths. Incense flows from bronze braziers stationed near the open halls. Kame walks half a step ahead of you, visibly eager despite her attempts at composure. Today, she wears robes of soft willow-green delicately.
“This corridor leads toward the eastern residences!” she explains while guiding you around a corner lined with painted screens. “Most visiting nobles are housed there during their stay.”
Mika walks upon your opposite side in silence, her own robes darker and more restrained. Deep purple layered beneath charcoal silk. She speaks rarely unless necessary, yet when Kame falters over details, Mika supplies them quietly without correction enough to embarrass the young girl.
“And these?” you ask, pausing beside a row of hanging plaques inscribed with flowing calligraphy.
“Poems,” Kame says brightly. “His excellency has them replaced seasonally.”
You lean slightly closer to study the inkwork. Expensive paper; one poem compares winter plum blossoms to snow gathering upon a lover’s sleeve. Another mourns autumn ending before the speaker finished composing under the moon.
“Oh, this one is my favourite.” She points to one of the plaques. She clears her throat, then she reads:
“The river leaves the mountain
Though it longs for the snow.
What waits below,
Only the sea may know.”
The poem means little to you. The characters themselves are little more than beautiful shapes across expensive paper.
“That one has been here for years,” Kame says. “The steward says it was written by a wandering monk.”
“A drunk monk,” Mika giggles behind her sleeve.
Mika’s mouth twitches faintly. “A drunk monk who lost all his money gambling and attempted to pay his debts with poetry.”
The younger girl looks scandalised. “He did not.”
Kame turns toward you as though seeking support. “Well, I think it’s beautiful.”
“It can be beautiful and written by a fool.”
“A fool can still write beautiful things.”
The younger attendant beams as though she has won some great victory. Neither woman notices that your stare remains fixed upon the poem. The river leaves the mountain, though it longs for the snow.
Beside you, Kame shifts from one foot to the other. “Would my lady like to hear another?” she asks eagerly. “There are several good ones further down the corridor.”
You turn towards her. “Hear another?”
“If my lady wishes, we would be pleased to read them for you,” answers Mika.
“Many noblewomen learn poetry before they learn proper household management,” Kame explains. “There is no shame in it if—”
“My lady is from Akebara, the opportunities available there are not the same as those offered at court.”
Not the same. A graceful way of saying it.
Beautiful, you wonder how many villages starved whilst these poems were written. How many farmers bent their backs in muddy fields so some nobleman might spend an afternoon mourning the passing of autumn.
The luxury of people who had never worried where their next meal would come from. Speaking of meals…the scent of cookfire smoke and rice and soy broth and—Yes.
You stop walking so abruptly Kame and Mika nearly collide with you. The corridor ahead widens into a bustling lower passage unlike the polished quiet of the upper palace. Servants move here carrying baskets of winter greens, barrels of pickled plums, sacks of grain slung over bent shoulders. Somewhere nearby, knives strike rhythmically against wooden boards whilst water boils loudly in iron pots.
Kame blinks in surprise. “Yes, my lady.”
You turn toward the sound immediately.
“My lady!” Mika shouts, “the kitchens are not usually—”
The warmth hits first upon entering. The great kitchen chambers spread wide, beams blackened by decades of smoke. Fish glisten silver upon cutting boards. Baskets overflow with daikon, burdock, root, mountain greens packed in winter straw. Conversation dies instantly when you enter.
Fires still crackle beneath the iron pots, and broth continues simmering. The servants bow their head lower and faster than you’ve seen before.
You realise now what you are. A strange ‘noblewoman’ wandering where noblewomen seldom wander.
The kitchens themselves stretch far larger than you expected, sprawling through interconnected chambers lined with shelves and heavy storerooms built partly into stone. Heat gathers thickly beneath the smoke-darkened rafters overhead. The air smells richly of miso broth, river fish, damp straw, and freshly steamed rice. Servants move quickly between the hearths in muted robes with sleeves tied neatly back, their hands red from hot water and winter air alike.
Your eyes drift slowly toward the storerooms where sacks of grain stand stacked in careful rows taller than a man’s waist. Each bundle bears the black-brushed markings of its province upon rough woven cloth, tied shut with cords. Hisame. Kurotsuki. Aokiri.
Your eyes move absently across the names first, little more than habit born from childhood harvest tallies and years spent watching your father bargain over tribute inventories.
For a moment you simply stare. The characters sit plainly upon the nearest grain sack, dark ink bleeding slightly into the woven fibres. Akebara rice. The kitchens blur at their edges suddenly, lanternlight softening into gold haze as memory rises swift and merciless beneath the surface of your thoughts. You see your mother standing knee-deep in flooded paddies during early planting season, skirts gathered high above her calves while dragonflies skimmed low across the water. You remember the ache in your shoulders from carrying harvested stalks beneath autumn heat, the smell of wet earth after rainstorms, the careful counting of grain stores each winter when snowfall came too early.
You remember your father arguing with tribute officials by lanternlight long after midnight, his voice disguised by fear, he dared call frustration instead.
Never enough left behind. Now, those same harvests sit stacked neatly within palace walls untouched by famine or fire, reserved for silk-clad nobles who compose moon poetry whilst villages ration their feed bowl by bowl. Fed upward toward the mountain, the fields below starve.
Around you, the kitchens slowly begin breathing again, though quieter now than before your arrival. Knives resume their measured rhythm against wooden boards. Steam curls upward from iron cauldrons in soft white clouds. Somewhere a servant kneels beside a brazier turning skewers of river fish over open fire whilst another grinds sesame into paste.
Toward the nearest preparation tables where women work swiftly beneath the kitchen overseer’s eye, lined trays of pickled plum, salted greens, dried sardines and freshly steamed rice are arranged with care.
“So much food,” you whisper. The nearest servants freeze at once, startled perhaps that you address them directly. You glance toward the broad iron pots suspended above the central hearths. “For what meal?”
An older woman with burn scars, who you assume to be the kitchen mistress, lowers herself into a quick bow before answering. “For the morning, my lady.”
You suppose you wouldn't know, you refused to leave your room for three days. You smile faintly despite yourself. “And all this is prepared each morning?”
The smell is almost overwhelming now that you stand amidst it fully. Fresh rice. Fish broth rich with mountain herbs. Soy simmered with root vegetables. Smoke from cedarwood fires clinging warmly to everything it touches.
You step closer to the lady before thinking better of it. “May I assist? Or help?”
Servants exchange uncertain glances immediately. One young cook nearly drops the knife in his hand before recovering himself. Even the kitchen mistress hesitates. Mika steps forward smoothly before anyone else may answer.
“My lady, the kitchens are servant quarters. It is not proper for a lady to involve herself in such labour. Less so, for the wife of His Excellency.”
You turn toward her. Mika’s posture remains composed as ever, sleeves folded nearly before her. “Wife?” You let out a short breath through your nose. “I planted rice three days ago. Four days ago, I would’ve been helping them already. And I am no wife to Sukuna.”
The name lands…and every sound in the kitchen dies. A servant carrying stacked bowls nearly stumbles outright before catching himself. Several attendants lower their eyes instantly toward the floorboards. Others glance nervously toward the open corridors beyond the kitchens, as though expecting the mountain itself to react. No one speaks.
Even the fires seem quieter.
Mika bows her head at once. Beside her, Kame’s eyes widen with genuine alarm before she quickly lowers them too, sleeves tightening nervously between her fingers.
“May I help?” you ask again, softer this time so that you won’t scare the servants.
The kitchen mistress blinks at you in visible confusion. “My lady…”
“I know how to prepare morning rice, and if your cooks ruin river fish the same way ours did during the season, I know how to salvage that too.”
A few servants exchange startled looks at that. One older cook coughs into his sleeve, poorly disguising what might almost be laughter before immediately remembering himself.
Kame looks horrified. “My lady,” she whispers quickly, stepping nearer to you, “you truly need not concern yourself with kitchen duties. We can have whatever meal you desire brought directly to your chambers.”
Mika presses her lips together faintly at that, though you catch the briefest flicker of amusement crossing her face before composure smooths over it once more. The kitchen servants remain uncertain still, glancing between one another and the kitchen mistress as though awaiting permission to breathe.
You step closer toward the preparation tables yourself. One of the cooks begin hurriedly clearing space at the edge of a preparation table. Another offers fresh cloths for your sleeves.
“My lady may sit here, if it pleases—”
“No need.” You reach instead for the ties at your wrists, beginning to fold back your sleeves yourself.
Kame looks as though each movement pains her physically. “Mika, surely this cannot be proper?”
The door slides open. Servants straighten in alarm so quickly that one of the younger boys nearly overturns a steaming pot entirely. Bowls clatter softly against lacquer trays. Every head lowers at once, the movement instinctive and immediate in a way no court etiquette alone could explain.
You look toward the doorway. And to no surprise, the pale creature stands there once more. The corridor behind him lies dim with winter light, mountain mist curling faintly through the open passage beyond, yet none of it seems capable of touching him. His robes remain immaculate despite the damp air and smoke-heavy kitchens alike. White layered silk falls cleanly to the floor without a single crease out of place.
His eyes immediately seem to settle upon you. Upon your loosened sleeves and the space cleared at the preparation table.
A pause follows, he is clearly disappointed. Kame drops instantly into a bow so deep her forehead nearly strikes the floor. “Forgive us!” she blurts out before anyone else can speak. “She only wished to look, we did not intend disrespect, I should have guided her elsewhere—”
Your eyes remain fixed upon the white-haired figure standing near the doorway, calm as snowfall whilst the room trembles around him. “Kame, do not apologise for me.”
Around you the servants lower their gazes further and return frantically to their work with desperate concentration. Someone begins chopping daikon so quickly the knife strikes the board in uneven frantic rhythms. Broth spills over one pot’s rim unnoticed. No one dares intervene. You fold your sleeves slowly back down over your wrist.
“Do you follow me through this palace by habit? Or has someone assigned you the task? Sukuna?”
“You should watch your tone.”
“Answer the questions asked of you.”
Something flashes in his eyes then. It could be surprise, you suspect defiance is hardly common within these halls.
“His excellency extends considerable patience toward you, be grateful he didn’t kill you along with the rest,” the boy says at last.
“There is generosity in allowing me to breathe after slaughtering my village?”
Several servants physically flinch at that. Kame whispers your name is quiet horror. The creature’s face hardens slightly for the first time since entering the kitchens. “You speak carelessly—”
“Fear is what keeps people alive,” he bickers.
“—as though terrified of their own shadows—Oh, does it? It didn’t keep Akebara alive.”
The pale creature studies your face a moment longer. Then, without another word, he turns and steps back through the kitchen doorway. You find yourself staring at the empty doorway.
Three days have passed since Akebara burned. Three days of attendants bowing and calling you my lady. You hadn’t left your room in three days. Men dragged before Lord Sukuna did not survive because he possessed a hidden kindness. You had seen enough in a single night to understand that much. Whatever purpose had spared you thus far, it had finally reached its end.
Kame slowly lifts her head. “Has he…left?”
You know she’s right almost immediately. A few seconds later, multiple footsteps return. He reappears flanked now by two broad-shouldered men dressed in dark layered robes. The pale creature stops just inside the doorway once more. Then, with infuriating calm, he gestures toward you.
“Our lady appears tied, perhaps she should return to her chambers.”
The men hesitate only briefly before obeying. One reaches carefully for your arm. The moment his hand closes around your sleeve, something in you snaps entirely.
You wrench backward violently enough that the guard nearly loses his grip outright. The second man moves immediately to assist, catching your other arm before you can pull fully free, and rage erupts through you all at once—hot, humiliating, animal.
Your heel catches the edge of a wooden stool and sends it skidding sharply across the floorboards. Bowls rattle violently against nearby preparation tables. One servant yelps softly before ducking his head lower over the vegetables he is pretending desperately to focus upon.
The men tighten their hold. You (try to) twist hard enough that your sleeve tears faintly near the seam and lash out blindly with your free hand, nails catching against one man’s jaw. He curses beneath his breath in shock more than pain.
Kame gasps outright. “My lady!”
“Do not drag me like some animal!” you snap, struggling harder. “Get your filthy hands off me!”
Several kitchen servants abruptly become fascinated with their rice washing. One older cook begins stirring broth with such intense concentration, he may as well be worshipping it.
Mika moves quickly toward you, keeping her voice low and urgent. “Please,” she murmurs, trying carefully to catch your wrist without worsening the scene. “Please do not fight them here.”
You plant your feet hard against the floorboards and nearly succeed in wrenching one arm loose again before the second man catches you around the elbow. Fury burns white-hot beneath your ribs now, tangled with panic so fierce it leaves your vision sharp at the edges.
"I am going to kill all of—"
Early Winter, A Week After Akebara
Shiranui. Your Chambers
You stand motionless for three breaths. Four. five. Six. your hands still shake from where the men held your arms. Finger shaped aches pulse faintly beneath your sleeves. Slowly, you turn your head and look around the room prepared for you. The sight of it makes rage bloom so suddenly inside your chest you nearly choke on it. Everything is immaculate.
You start mumbling to yourself. “That…pale little mountain leech creeps through hallways wearing nothing but funeral robes. I’m going to slice his spine from his corpse and hang it from the gates.”
You stumble back from the door and drag both hands through your hair so forcefully that it pulls terribly at the roots. With the gold-painted cranes on the folding screens, the bronze incense burner emitting delicate ribbons of plum smoke, and the ridiculous untouched bedding patiently waiting in one corner as if this place already belonged to you, the thoughtfully designed chamber now swims before your eyes in flashes.
You make a sound halfway between a growl and a gasp, grab the lacquer tray closest to the low table, and throw it across the room. It strikes a painted screen with a tremendous crack.
You seize the nearest cushion and hurl it next. Still, no matter how much you throw, the room refuses to look ruined. You cross the chamber in three quick strides and sweep both arms across a writing table. Brushes scatter across the floorboards. A ceramic water dish shatters. An inkstone follows, spilling black ink across the pale tatami in a spreading stain that reminds you unpleasantly of blood soaking through snow.
Your eyes catch upon the window. The shutters stand partially open. Far from the mountain, hidden amongst forests, lie roads. Villages. Rivers.
You hadn’t thought much of the window before. Why would you? Slowly, your anger begins giving way to something else.
For the first time since arriving at Shiranui, you smile.
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