Dolorosa - Nymphenberger (TwistedNym) - 呪術廻戦 (2024)

Beloved Shoko,

Your sudden disappearance worries me, as it always does. Although I know, your heart beats for your studies, and it bleeds for the ones lost and missing, I do hope to see you return safely soon nearer to me, and I will be hoping and praying until I see you again as soon as I can. I miss you dearly-like my heart has been removed from my chest. Less surgically so than you would be able to, I will wager, but I would give it to you nonetheless if you only asked.

I would hope you have not picked up your bad habit of smoking in my absence again, as you tend to do in our longer separations under pressure. Do not attempt to lie to me when my train arrives someday soon when you have all but safely returned from this madness. I will be very much able to smell it on all your coats and wherever you are currently residing. You cannot lie to me. I know you too well. You have an endearing yet peculiar crease in your smile if you attempt to lie.

There is nothing to say but mourn the fact that it has been so long. I cannot find any of your acquirements, and the only letters reaching my abode in your name are letters of disappointment. I did not wish to start a letter to the woman I care most for like that, it is a rather crude thing, disappointment. I have faith in the fact that there are others who may prove more of value, and retain my stubborn attempts to seek any aid I can from your from so so far.

I wonder how the stars shine wherever you lie your head down to rest now?

But as always, I have faith in your abilities to find anything remotely useful in the dead words of autopsies and ghost stories about gray women and shadow figures in a broken mansion. I have seen you prevail in the faces of peril before, and I know you will master whatever this travel will provide and curse you with.

This was and never has been, and I have to repeat myself, never been your fault. As much as my crippling ability to dislike Satoru Gojo might sound as influence and not voice of reason, and I would always tell hell you are the saint of the heavenly gates, I believe you will never be at fault in any of the past mistakes.

Until we meet again, yours forever

Utahime Iori

• A gilded part of parchment, dated as a letter with the envelope encased, found neatly folded at the start of a leatherbound book filled with wordy entries and drawings, namely belonging to a person calling themselves S. I.

Penning thoughts beyond mere jottings is a personal affront, and addressing it to a formless entity in the form of a diary or myself is not correct. Your letter reached me at the very brink of mail’s endurance, for now, Utahime, and that is why I have decided to leave this book in a state of addressing my findings and holding down all progress as well as emotions if I may feel like it myself. It serves me well to imagine all your reactions, pondering and endearing rage if you get a hold of them, and I can imagine them well enough as if my words smeared on this page in a midnight flight are nothing but us two deep in a conversation in which you force me to elaborate.

This all started with the letter, although, perhaps , this started long, long before that accursed missive.

I know I was a fool to assume that I have any choice in following this, as it is the only chance I have in faith to understand the occurrence of events in the last winter and the disappearance of not one but five souls.

Souls is, I will admit to, a misleading term, according to my own experiences with the both of Rika Orimoto and Yuuta Okkotsu as well as the elaborate examination of the testimonies given to me face to face by Yuuji Itadori and Nobara Kugisaki on the last months of the past year. But as misleading as it might be, it is the unearthed truth as well.

What are ghosts and the thrumming awake undeath if not lost souls? They have a mind to hold desire, and they are shackled as any other creature by instincts and emotions unfathomable, with the desire and yearnings of those we loved and those we left behind.

You say I removed your heart; a deed I would never, no, I refuse, as long as it beats I beat as well with it in tandem. But see, if I was to perish, and I swear by all principles of this world I do not plan to die, Utahime, despite the bad habits you have caught me in from time to time past, I would yearn to return and haunt you as well. I would follow you and I would wish to be with you. You shall not die first; I would not permit it, nor can I bear the thought of it. Perhaps I did not ask you to join me for now wears this sole reason in logic and dread - that I wish for you to be as safe as you wish for me.

Nonetheless, my wish to be reunited alive or dead is the very same as everyone else's in the accounts told and the folklore sung. The stories all start that way. They come with knives and longing. Souls bound together by something carnal and human and deeply unsettling. It is as unnatural as a dead girl creeping out the abyss of her own grave, clawing her way free as she already wanes and rots away.

It sounds inherently occult, devoid of one grain of science, this alchemic nightmare of cabals and candles , ghost stories told in hushed whispers. But I suppose I cannot explain what I witnessed and heard in the sole eye of rationality without believing in it and my own eyes for a while. Neither from the mouth of a corpse, nor the letters and voices regarding the destruction of Satoru Gojo.

It was a strange thing, to unveil his demise, the small pieces of the words that linger in the corner of my thoughts, unable to paint the whole scenery of this decrepit image, but close enough to be eager to do so. I am but one small step closer, time by time, with every step.

The both of them reached civilization frostbitten and ill with fevers. I realized that they had come by foot—a feat manageable in calm weather, when the season of the storms is not tormenting the mountains, with only thin layers of snow freezing the world. It is not a long hike to reach the mountainside by any means. But in the weather they had come in, with the cold biting so deeply, and them not being prepared, they had to spend the night outside, and it must have taken a big toll, judging by their fatigued demeanor and desperate words.

I could not take them with me, of course, so I left them in the makeshift infirmary I created, and since neither you nor others were around me, I requested help from poor Nanami , the unfortunate soul around to reach out for. He is dutiful enough not to stop me but at least to accompany me, and we waited until the last flicker of the early morning turned into higher lights and the weather stayed in a soft simmer of a few ice flakes but nothing more.

We found naught but the trails of a vehicle as we ventured back, a surprising telltale of poor beasts drawing a four-wheeler or perhaps a sled up the revine, battling the mass of snow. The tracks led away from the mansion, and they ended by a far corner of the road to lead down an unreachable chasm in the snow laden nature between steep hills and the far away lights of the town whence I got found in a distressed call. We observed them well as we traveled into the opposite direction, a hike of doom in the ice. Even in the heavy fresh frigid ice, the tracks w

ere old, but not yet faded. It instilled a fleeting hope of fleeing survivors. If it had only been that simple, it would have made the whole ordeal much simpler to find them after our return down the paths. Alas and , we both know, it is not as easy.

Unearthing the whole mansion was a task impossible. You are correct to call the shadows by their nature. The strange lingering miasma of a tragedy, yet the absolute absence of any body, and any evidence. Shadows in the snow, with old footsteps and a dilapidated ruin. Any glory has vanished from the former mansion. It was a house, now it is merely a memorial for the folly of men.

We discovered more old tracks, animals or humans that dug through the snow, leaving amassing hard hills of ice behind. They dug deep through the mountain’s force, deeper than I have ever seen an animal dig for flesh before, but I suppose hunger could lead to such desperation. The same desperation can lead humans, and although we did not find any reason to believe it, I know what I felt, and I know my companion was aware of it as well.

Someone had escaped.

That was the utmost shocking and revealing realization that fit the tracks of the vehicle lost abroad.

A small inkling, the smallest glimmer of hope, yet it was something, and a blind chicken desperately picks for any kind of kernel fearing starvation, does it not?

There was little else to unearth. The avalanche was sure to erase everything thoroughly. Quite depressing, really, but neither me or Nanami are the type to dwell on the burdening mood with each other, and we simply made our way back the same as we came, fearing to be caught in a new brewing storm.

The mention of graves as stated by the witnesses could not be proven, as we did not find any way to dig our way through the heaps of snow. As you can imagine, when we told them, they were both quite downtrodden and angry. I think that especially Itadori blamed himself, but I had little chance to reassure them, since they were quite short on their waking hours, and since he did not share everything in a perfect order in his feverish mind, I have to study my notes again now that I am truly on my way toward his supposed guilt.

Naturally, I did not converse with him using words akin to that; I am not so cruel. I have left inflicting cruelties on souls to others, much more proficient in that skill.

Cruelty takes myriad forms, but in the right hands, it stabs quite unerred into flesh, wouldn’t you say? It leaves festering wounds turning to scars that always wait to swell and swelter again in heated flare and hot blood.

Now, as you are well, aware, this was far from the end. Although this must be the most elaborate piece I ever wrote about it for your eyes, since we barely talked about it the last few times I visited. Since our time was so short, I will never waste my words if it means I cannot hear you talk.

You surely recall what ensued in the aftermath—the trials and tribulation of pinning down threads so thin they might as well have been spun of silk, attempting to find out who left the mansion in the absence of the witnesses.

I reached out to everyone I could locate who had ever been in contact with both Rika Orimoto and Yuuta Okkotsu, but without fail, no one heard or saw any word about them, nor send from them, and this includes two of his former acquaintances in another city.

The weeks and months after Gojo’s disappearance were a havoc for our plans, and many others, but the true deceiver, the fuse on the potential explosive , arrived months after.

I should have done more than simply show you, and leave you with a vague sense of direction for my travels. Even in the days of me desecrating cemeteries to take the dead bodies, you always know where I lived, where I would hide, where to contact me. This is a step into unknown territory, and although I feel decently prepared, as always, I am but weary and scared in my inner self.

I left the winter behind, quite literally, with the cold gone in favor of warmer, but saltier air, traversing by ship now. The sea is a soft waver, but the alcoholic beverages are bad, and the company is more rough than they are pleasant. No one bothers me for being a lonely woman, since I tell everyone but a different story about a deceased relative, a sickness I carry and wish to survive to visit family members, things of that manner. I do not enjoy the lying but I do enjoy the peace.

We should travel more together. Or perhaps, we should simply find a city worthy enough to have you reside there with me.

In only a few days I will reach the port side down town of the beaches I need to reach, on the cold white cliffs that they praise them for, as that was the nearest notion of where to meet, to be transported to my true destination far in the moors and grasslands. Even then, it is a whole week until my departure there, so I have arranged to meet an old acquaintance, and she was willing to meet me, and tell me about what I may have to face, if only for her usual bristling demands of gaining in her prize.

Mei has always been a true menace in her rules of negotiation, even with old friends, and I am not surprised by her stance, even though I am supposing I can be glad I could even summon her to this abandoned stretch of coast before she disappears again.

The hour is late and there is nothing to note on the ship. It is cleanly and orderly enough. Very few rats.

Alas, Ships were never my favorite method of travel. So I dare say I will be glad as soon as we reach land. Despite my bad lies about sickness, everyone on the ship is in well health, with the occasional chronic issue, and good mood, hoping to reach their destination soon.

I hear the moors are supposed to be are beneficial to one's health, though they are also reputed to be haunted and I wish I could not believe it after the last letter. It was truly a gruesome note of threats, begging, and scattered secrets about what only others in the mansion could know, asking for a doctor in exchange for the rest of the whole truth. As if I was a miracle worker, not a physician, although I do have my experiences.

We shall see what Mei was able to unbury and unburden from loose tongues and rumors, I do trust her expertise, and then we shall proceed. Nothing to do but to step forward, Utahime, is there?

The town is much less a proper town and more of a sprawling village with huts and brick walls much older than recent civilizations, leftovers that arch in circles, and long houses. It makes sense to say they were fed by fishing, seeing the many small boats knotted by the harbor, and it still takes most of their time to feed their, albeit scant amount, as far as I have noticed, of children. Their fundament, as it seems, is shaking by its very core, though, perhaps by an unsettling presence, and it reminds me of the mansion, but with more unfortunate souls that dwindle in sickbeds and cough on the streets. They are thin and gaunt, pallid, sallow creatures that do not meet your eyes. By the sheer prospect of an incurable illness, I am keeping my contact to a minimum, and so did the sailors before they left the port. I can not say what it is that plagues them. They certainly fit the gloomy atmosphere of this strange place. It is a miracle that I am but mere days on a ship traversing the coast away from where I started, it is a different country altogether, a different world to see in all the misery. Dry stone walls line the way into the vast expanse beyond, one I had not dared to breach yet, not alone, for certain I would get lost beyond the smallest amount of cattle yelling and the noise that followed them, a strange whistle of the wind turning from sea breeze into frightened explorer. I am still in the line of waiting on my guide, and it comes with the ease of having time to get accustomed.

As you well know, finding Mei is a simple task. You have to be on the outlook for the most comfortable, well-furnished fireplace, and the best vantage over a city. Then you'll encounter the crows on your way. I know I have made jests about this before, how crows are seeking the opportunity like she does. Carcasses rotten and leftovers, out cunning an enemy and eating their flesh at their most befitting strike. I saw near no gull by the house. It was a black tarnished cloud of birds from the deeper moors and hills, an ill-seeking omen for those who believe in that nonsense.

A flock poised to consume whatever they chance upon, or perhaps they have been banished from their former nesting grounds, disturbed.

Be that as it may, it was just as I had prophesied and after a day of resting and exploring the edges of the village, I found her at the warmest fire, draped in a fur lined pelisse worth twice or thrice the money's worth of the passage I paid.

"Long time no see, and you chose a horrid spot to vacate, as per usual. It is an awful dreary place even without the fog," she declared, utterly unbothered by any dreadful ghost stories she was about to share. She has one fueled meaning in her existence, after all, and everyone else is a stepstone to it. I do admire that tenacity, but I wonder where greed will drag her one day. Some might even call it a sinful behavior to be so without principles.

The fog, as I have learned, drifts down from the hills and moor in a matter of minutes, on the darker days, and it has taken a many lives over the years. But according to Mei, it has become more frenzied and recurring as well. Ever since the last months.

"Some say it was a carriage, and the rattling of the hearse was what awoke them, as midnight bells announced their arrival," she told me, amused, antics of a theatrical degree. Her heart harbors no love;it is as black a pit as the crows pecking at the ground before the windows. "Some say, a mere black horse, and it rode through the night, into the fog, carrying two riders in dark cloaks. I have heard tales of a ship as well, and it brought a sickness with it. You can believe what version you wish to, Shoko. It is a strange variety of them for something that has happened so little time ago, but I suppose people talk when there is nothing to do but perish, and they might hold a truth or two in each of them. Who is to say there was no carriage nor cart, nor a rider? They had to traverse the road somewhat, even if the moors are treacherous for wheels and midnight flights. And the village is plagued."

Indeed that is the unequivocal truth. I have tried to find out more about the sickness that torments them, but Mei was no help in that one regard. She simply stated that the people lose their will to live, that they grow thin, and tired, as if sucked out of their pure essence, and occasionally die.

"It takes children, then it takes their parents," she elaborated, simply. There are a few ailments I can think of that would do this. Consumption is the most horrid one in this weather, and I hope my stay will leave me healthy. Mei seems healthy, even if she interacts with the townsfolk, so I have some hopes for both of us. “It takes the ones that do not vanish without a clue in the middle of the night.”

I advised her not to seek any more contact, but she smiled and willfully made my worry obsolete.

"I heard someone say it was King's Evil, but the rest of the sick swear that they are cursed. And whatever doctor has come here vanishes after a while, without a clue. A colony of cursed, Shoko, what do you suppose that makes of whoever you are seeking?"

She possesses no need to know that I have a very clear and very horrifying idea of whom I will have to face by the very letters addressed to me before my departure and after the witness testimonies.She does need to know my correspondence pertaining this matter, how I sought and like an arrow guided by an invisible hand, someone sought me as well, in an emotional tangled knot only fit to be cut apart to be solved.

I barely remember Megumi Fushiguro as a child, from a very rare occasion as a guest in Gojo's home. I do remember the horror of his sister falling into a waking state of slumber and his silent self becoming even more quiet, and the complaints and worries about the behavior of a child that never quite acted the way, always too self-reliant and far apart from any guiding hand.

To think that after the testimonies, I would go venture out to find him, of all people, is again, a strange twist of the tale we are in, this grief stricken wound up fate I have no control over. It seems that neither does Megumi, and perhaps no one does. What a horrifying thought that is.

That accursed last letter addressed in his name, it is something not to share. I doubt she has the same vanity of interest in it that I carry in my burdens, and she did not ask me, but simply continued in our dialogue, an exchange more from her side than my own.

Apparently, and I have no reason to doubt it, the last residents who traveled up into the moor, be it by whatever means described, do not share commodities or converse in much trading and social etiquette with anyone.

It was an empty house in the soft nothing, lost in the deep fog and soft burrowed earth of the land, once the resident of the biggest landowner, but long forgotten, and only by chance did anyone see a glimpse of them after their appearance.

People do not wish to speak much about them, not the Master of the abode or his companions, and only a few words were uttered about them, a tinge of fear, a hue of poisoned caution. I do not believe anyone in the village has ever seen them in person, I would be surprised if they had set foot amidst the huts.

Sometimes, as the word goes, one of their servants comes by but never has many words beyond the necessary.

I suspect by the revelation of their appearance well described by Mei, I will meet them soon as well.

I know you will tell me I should not have stayed, or perhaps even to go back to whence I came from, but it is far from possible now. I have gone too far, Utahime. There is but to finish what we start.

Mei enjoyed a few drinks with me, telling me about the moors, the way to traverse past it to other cities, before she hid herself, as did the crows in the night.

"There is a weeping stone," she began, spinning folklore with very imminent indifference tinting her voice before taking a swig of her drink. The jewelry on her smooth clothes glittered extravagantly in the light. "Some sort of ancient landmark left from burials or worship. It lies right behind the worn path of the crossroads we took to traverse to this foul village. The folk who dwell in the moors—those strange hermits—speak about demons and ghosts and fairies, and they did advise me to never take the wrong side of the crossing. One leads to safety, one to a devil ready to devour any who stray.Quite a few things here will gladly eat you, don't you think?”

I do not believe it to be as amusing as Mei, but I indulged her for all her knowledge, before biding my farewell after our business was conducted.

I woke up in the old habit of all the nights hunting and hiding, and all the oddities of staying awake for studies, way beyond night, but too early for the powdering lights of an early gray dusk. I felt the sudden urge to smoke, but did not, fearing your ire even from this long distance. So I merely took a walk around the huts. Upon further inspection, I noticed how many of them are empty, abandoned perhaps, the further from the sea they reach. As if it is truly the strange new inhabitants of the house in the wide yawning plane that chase the villagers away with sickness and ominous curses.

Once more I did not dare reach past the road leading out the village, as it is a line invisibly drawn into the earth, ending the hallowed ground and deserting any safety. This position and my nightly wandering led me to notice the arrival of another stranger to the village.

They appeared like a specter in the obscured landscape ahead—nothing but a small shimmer of light at first in the open floors of the moors. Any sounds a rider hatches from hoof to voice get swallowed by the fog, it devours humans and animals alike and blankets the world in a soft numb sensation. It feels like madness to me to traverse a place like the moors on horseback all through the night, but this rider was experienced in it, not storming, but following a measured pace as they led another horse behind themselves. They maneuvered all through the steep rising blades of grasses, leaped over drywall, and trotted by the scarce cattle fleeing their presence.

It could only have been my escort. There was no other soul who would share the ominous circ*mstances of my invitation and their arrival.

The closer they came, the more of their form I could behold, from the scarf tightly wrapped around their neck, white hair a soft flutter of a combed back, once accurately cut hairstyle, slightly less meticulous by the wind and weather now, down to the shining boots tightly pressed to the sides of the shivering horse. A creature well fed and cared for, exhausted by the nightly sprint in heavy drips of sweat over their mane and flanks, eyes wild. I retreated back into my current abode before they could reach me.

Black horses and pale white riders, something apocalyptic or ghostly to find in this for sure. Why I retreated? I am not quite sure. Perhaps the fog rises into my head and Mei's words burrow into my consciousness. Perhaps I simply do not wish to share the same space with them until I have to.

No one attempted to find me in my abode after I fled inside. In the hours of suntide, if you can even name it this is a forlorn spot on this earth, crazed by fog draining the color out of it.

After detaching myself, and gathering my things, I found my solitary host by the doorway talking to a soft-spoken figure. The very one I had observed riding into town, slightly less disheveled, in the same measured hurry that they rode in. As soon as I approached the doorstep, my host vanished, and the figure affixed all their attention in one glance onto me.

"Doctor Ieiri?"

I have seldom had the pleasure of being addressed as a doctor, it is a title not made for women afterall, and the respect is flattering, albeit I can see through it.

"Yes. Megumi mentioned a servant would guide me to the house."

Perhaps I have hit a nerve in the smooth waters barely rippling with a single drop of emotions since the answer was more than a slight abrasive call for attention.

"My name is Uraume. I do not work for Megumi Fushiguro. This is a favor, and a favor alone, for he is what I would consider dear to my master."

"What you would consider but not he?"

"There is no guessing about another person's interest, especially not an exceptional one, and I have no interest in it. And you will know, by now, that my master is not one to divulge such matters."

I have some notions about Sukuna from the testimonies. Even beneath the occult babble, and the very real truths behind it, there is a fear incited to even spare thoughts about this man- this thing. If Itadori had been in his right mind, perhaps even more so. I have splinters of horrifying truths, stories that make all the others in this village pale in comparison. They have not led me further toward what occurred in the night Satoru Gojo and Yuuta Okkotsu both disappeared and the avalanche hit the manor with a fist, but they have prepared me to be in the measured presence of both Sukuna and Megumi, at least.

Uraume is another yet unplanned encounter with someone who is very clearly not fazed by the horror in front of them. They serve it and feed it, most likely loyally so.

Seeing how this servant is not only grandly invested, but informed, and knows what I know, is unnerving. I suppose they must be exceptionally competent or reliant.

We rode after securing my small travel bags. The horses appear restless, shining, black mares with onyx eyes, born to draw a carriage much more royal emblazoned with insignia and gold. They are agile and fast, and I had no issue seating myself into the saddle, although it has been a while since I had to ride.

The saddles creak in old leather, dark, well-kept for their visible age even beyond the shine. They do not quite fit the young horses, but they are fitting for the undulating expanse of wildflowers and grass, the ancient marks of the world stretching before us.

There was no way to question Uraume riding ahead on the worn-out path, the world a tapestry of greens, browns, and trickling soft purple. The hardy plants and the receding walls of fog leave no sounds but the breath of the horses stampeding through the open fields— yet the silence breaks in the howling wind that fights any traveler in cold cutting daggers. The needles in my hat almost surrendered, ripping my scalp apart, until the wind subsided for a good portion of our trip, and the swamp of quiet consumed us.

The further the village disappeared in the distance behind us, the more wild the world felt in its silent roaring. And oh so very lonely. A desolate place, of lost understanding buried beneath the soil of ancestor stones.

What drives someone to venture here and hide? I wager it is a wish for solitude. Perhaps it is the wish to hide. I cannot say for sure, and dare not for now.

There was little to do but keep myself afloat in the saddle as we traversed the wild loneliness, securing my bags, my hat tucked in harsh cutting bands beneath my chin, and the reticule hitting my thigh when the horse but leaped a small portion of the way.

There is a stark beauty to behold in these moorland hills, but if I ever wish to visit them again remains to be seen.

Hours of the morning passed into midday, a squeamish continuous ride of two horses familiar with their way, and me, holding on, keeping the world at bay with my gaze like I would slip beyond oblivion when I get lost in my thoughts here.

Uraume paid me no mind, too occupied in the task of leading, and we made steadfast progress. Their eyes never linger on the foggy dreamscape, be it nightmares or feverish wanted ones, they focus on their gloved hands holding the reins, as the waves of the harsh wind fly past yonder, carrying the scents of the moor in cold notes.

We only paused briefly once, on my personal behest and insistence, as I stopped by the crossing that Mei had described, the fork leading up the path winding by the stones. It was half of an excuse to stretch my sore muscles, but half of me felt strangely drawn to the old stones, marks dressed in the colors of the expanse, with mourning, bent trees overshadowing them. One of them had split in a former storm and dangled precariously, like a head on a single thread, over the tallest stone.

Uraume, never straying off path or safety of the saddle, lifted a single gloved hand to call me back, and it took but a moment before the wind wavered by, and as it got caught in the middle of the stones, the echo sang in a lament of despair. A sound akin to weeping indeed, in a strange way.

It was comforting, in a way I cannot fathom to describe, although sadly so.

We continued our trip shortly after. But the song of the stone followed us, for a good while, as if it wanted to warn me.

Hidden like a child behind its mother's skirt, the old house rests on a stretch of moorland surrounded by nothing but hoseswept heather and coarse grasses. Even the lilac faded near it, as if the color flees this place; as if it makes beauty wither beside its sagging roof, grim in a toothless stare of missing shingles and vines sprouting over it. The eaves glare with the same hunchbacked grimace of greenish-gray decay, lichen, and vines—a contorted sign of a lord long dead and a place occupied too late with too little care. Nevertheless, the house possessed character, austere and regal at that, and it shows in the animals sauntering around, the greedy stout faces of sheep and goats, poultry flapping up and down as our horses made it into the yard, a bare space crumbling wall too poor to be named even that.

These creatures, fat and well-fed, are made to last whoever resides here through the coming months.

The absence of color made one of the hosts of this abode stand out even more so in a bold splash of color. The red jacket had seen better days; a fine garment once, but now patched up in frayed edges seamlessly transitioned into the more coarse and sturdy black and browns of this muted landscape. It is the jacket of a noble, taken to war by a soldier, the fine collar hidden under a dark scarf.

His eyes, unyielding, barely followed mine from his resting spot by the wall. I would not call him cold. Moreso uncaring. As if he had, with the expression of a dreamer in his pale face, lost himself just the way I had feared to be lost on the ride in the valleys and expanse. The giant dogs at his feet bared their teeth at our small procession, massive beasts ready to leap, matted furs bristling in the winds. Uraume has no care to obey dogs, it seems, and they simply stepped past them, leading the horses to the decrepit stable. Albeit their clothes are in better shape, they are much more poorly made in comparison to the abstract scarlet rot of the jacket.

They gave the figure but one nod, and it spoke to me in fiery complacent abhorred politeness, a searing thing from one human to another, yet unrequited by the stillness of who I presumed to be Megumi Fushiguro.

His hair was a dark cascade, unruly and in need of a cut, falling in disordered strands around his brow like a wild, untamed mane, reminding me of the horses.

"Thank you for your quick arrival. I was unsure if you would truly take the ordeal upon yourself."

"Megumi?" I dared to ask, ensuring that Uraume had left us, so we could talk more openly.

"If you fear the wrath of the other master of this house," he greeted me, one hand laid on top of the dog nearest, a giant black beast with too clever yellow eyes. "He is absent, for a while, I would wager. And when he returns, he will be more mellow, at least for a fortnight or so."

"And where would he be?"

"Hunting. Murdering things. Reveling in gutting them in their last moments for daring to insult his presence." A nonchalant answer, one that makes my blood run cold with the breeze. Megumi Fushiguro is, for all intents and purposes, not how I imagined him to meet, simply by the fact he carries the cold fog as his coat above the red ones altered to fit him. "I daresay, I enjoy him more after his hunting hours. As much as I can enjoy anything these days."

"I value every second I do not have to be near him." For whatever reason that lures a small sound out of his throat, and I cross my arms in response. "You asked me for a favor in return for information about the missing souls from the manor. I am not here for a friendly visit."

"There is nothing friendly in these moors." He laughs bitterly, and I know now it is the sound I have conjured before. "It is but one more twisted, desolate place I've inhabited, devoid of much joy and much light. The fog consumes it, just as the master of the house devours all that is left."

His hand beckoned me forward, and I moved but a mere hand's breadth closer, watching him between the massive beasts at his feet. The wind quickened around us, and it snatched the hat I had precariously piled over my hair. A ribbon flickered in a snake tongue, and then it blew over the yard as if nature itself was a part of Megumi's indifferent negligence. I watched it tumble and turn before disappearing behind the rotten wooden sheds, and I watched it tumble with a pang of regret, wishing to retrieve it, for it had endured the journey and I had grown fond of its simple elegance.

"Since we speak bluntly, I do not wish to keep you a captive, and therefore I will do as you ask, to the best of my abilities. I was once obscured from knowledge in the name of protection, but it was nothing but a thin veil for selfishness. I do not wish to repeat that mistake. Please heed my warnings, but trust my words are true Doctor, and I promise we will have no need for clandestine half-truths."

I can surely assume he meant to allude to Gojo and the events in the snow drunken manor—a small unhappy jab.

I have no reason to distrust him completely, for now. So I simply nodded and went my way as Uraume returned to lead me inside alongside Megumi.

Inside, the air was thick and musty, damp with rot, doors aching as we walked in. We walked the uneven floorboards, warped by weather, slowly, past the fireplace cackling, illuminating tapestries gone, with plaster nearly peeling off the walls.

"Please follow me upstairs after you have been shown your quarters, and we can discuss our arrangement further." All host, Megumi walked up the broken planks of the stairwell, and I watched him disappear beyond the steps before I followed black and

brown-clad Uraume. His coat is what stays in my mind, that blood-red broken thing, a last shot of dignity embellished and forced upon him by someone else. The dogs followed diligently, a pack of them, claws clicking on the wooden ground.

The guest room is as expected. Cobwebs decorate a few corners of the plastered pillars, throwing shadows in flickering orange off the walls from the coal heating in the metal. Layers of dust removed from the furniture, it almost has a certain flair, something beautiful, if only restored to perfect glory, and the attempt of it is enough to impress.

Uraume set down my bags before, procuring it with the flourish of a cook garnishing a meal, they handed me my hat. When I took it, but only for a split second, their grip turned to the ice-cold vice of iron, and their eyes were just as cold.

"Do not mistake Megumi's anger for indifference, nor his anguish for kindness. He is but a poisoned vessel for his emotions, and for my master’s, and he is failing his purpose."

"I will not mistake any of your souls and their agendas," I promised carefully, taking my hat back. The brim of the coarse dark cloth seemed a frail shield against this person, this dedicated servant with a definite distaste, perhaps even somber jealousy, readable in the quirk of their features and the creak of their lips. "I am not foolish enough to do so, though it is folly I see to stay here."

"That much is true."

They left with no other warnings to heed. After taking but a moment to seat myself, I followed the call upstairs.

The only open door gleamed with lights, and the scent of flowers enveloped me in an overwhelming haze. The pack of giant wolflike dogs rested beside an abundance of flowers in vases and hanging from the ceilings, below the bed, and beside the slowly pacing figure sleepwalking around. Candles flickered, and the warm, stale air made me swallow my own tongue as I took in the scenery.

She rested in a giant bed of white sheets and wildflowers. At first glance, she seemed but all dead, until her soft breath emerged from her chest, and her eyes rarely, but by happenstance did, flutter behind her eyelids.

Upon further examination, she was well fed, if frail, a young woman in deep unbreakable slumber, and even if nothing indicated wounds, she has been slumbering for so long hopes for her awakening are all but gone.

Megumi wanders by the window before he rested his eyes on me examining her pale face, the hair well combed, the clothes clean and well made.

I recognized her by that look because they look alike as siblings do, but also by the sheer wave of worry and care in his exterior.

"My favor is not for me," Megumi returned to our conversation in a sullen, worrisome manner. "My favor is my sister's safety, and that she might wake up someday, in a better place than here."

I did not know that his sister was gone too. Perhaps Mei was correct in telling me about a carriage. Perhaps they carried Tsumiki Fushiguro here that way. As I watched them, these creatures both slumbering and awake, deep sadness filled me, and I could not wait to drown it fast enough. It bleeds inside me in wounds seeing this pain. Uraume warned me about the anguish in Megumi, but I cannot see any ill intention behind protecting his kin.

"I do not wish for my friends to see me this way. Or to fight for me when they see me in a cage with no keys but my jailer holding my broken wrists like shackles. So I wrote you, in hopes of your interest, as a medicinal person, and as a friend of those we lost," he continued, and his paces turned faster now. More erratic, as he moves his hands and then forms fists at his side. "I daresay it was a risky endeavor. But we should manage, and I have procured means of transportation once we have conducted business."

“Your friends are in deep sorrow and mourning over your loss,” I assured him, simply because I had seen it, the grief and the battle of hearts grappling with tragedy. And it cut him deeply, I can feel it, in the way that it reverberated between us.

"How did you even take her?” I dared to ask him. “Where did you go?"

When his face was but agitated and alive it became dull now, and another stab told me to feel more guilt for the interrogation.

"She was a gift, my reward when we first left. I did not wish to leave her behind if I was to flee. So she got plucked from the sanatorium like a flower. Easy as that after Gojo was gone and I was there to ensure her rightful removal." We share the regret, I believe, upon examining our reasons, even if I should feel no shame or guilt, but then again, I was too late, I did nothing, and should have done so much more for everyone. They were wounded when I was not. Megumi crushes dried petals as he sits down beside his sister on the bed and takes her unmoving hand between his own like a precious gem, a rough diamond. "I should have not. She deserves better than being a glorified spoil of war, some present for me sitting pretty and dying slowly."

Tsumiki did not so much as stir beside his distress. Her condition is never changing, an enigma of dreamless death and undying sleep, a comatose nightmare, and she never stirred as we talked, nor woke at the contact he made as he held her hand. Even her nails were short and clean, a testimony of devotion and care, and I was sure it was not Uraume's work. I have some hopes, small sparks of ideas, but they remain tiny, even in retrospect, and they are not worth sharing with a hopeful relative resigned to a fate. I will share them with you when we meet again, although I know medical procedures and their descriptions sometimes bore you, or worse, but I always valued that you endured me for it, Utahime.

"My story is a long one, Doctor Ieri, and I don't have the means nor the time to tell it all, so let us start where you wish to, to learn about Satoru Gojo's disappearance and the events leading to the avalanche."

Megumi's accounts are the detailed entry of a soul who suffered ever since they were cast out to fall. And how deep he fell is but a long tale of haunting events.

Megumi Fushiguro's tale is another letter, yet another invitation, posed to him this instance, and it follows frigid events of the dead coming back to life. It follows the uncanny unknown of a grave disturbed, a body gone, where it should have been sealed, and

the interest of another creature much worse than a simple ghost. A specter like the ones I witnessed, or the ones he describes as a tattered, hateful creature, are strong, they are deadly, even the ones tamed, like the curious of Yuuta Okkotsu and Rika Orimoto, but they make me fear Sukuna even more.

After the accounts shared, I do not wish to displease a creature who chooses who it wants to haunt, detaches and attaches, and rules over them. I do not wish to anger a creature willing and able to harm me, ruin me from my body to my soul, and break me apart. I am at my core cautious, even if I wish to help.

"I did not truly think he was sincere when he called himself his brother's keeper, back then, even if I always knew it was the truth, that he held him back," Megumi alleged during the conversation blossoming and withering like the foliage. I had found myself on the only chair beside his sister's bed, an old, but comfortable fur cloaking brittle wood, and he was sitting beside her still. "But he was always just that. He was the keeper of a brutish, violent thing with a heart made of brilliant malevolence and beautiful arrogance. And we should all be thankful for his service. To give Itadori the credit he deserves. Because it has been less than his time lost on Sukuna, and I am but tired, and I wish for it to end. My lack of patience is what hurts me, and Sukuna's lack of patience is what saves us all."

I can put into some perspective the things I learned. I have but witnessed the posession of a living human before and heard accounts of others. There is no denying that I was hopeful that Satoru did not attempt to conjure a memory of a lost hope, a lost bond. I should have been there more since we lost Geto not once but twice. My own act of folly as a friend was turning away in the hopes of seeing him unshattered, but I should have known better. I have witnessed the gravestead once after Suguru got buried. The lonely but lovely stone hall, the plaque that was supposed to honor a friend and partner. I believed it to be the end of a life, not the beginning of something, but given the circ*mstances and my two friends, I should have known better.

As it appears, and in hindsight, he was sure to die there. He did not call upon anyone so he would survive. He went into the storm willingly, as did he say goodbye to his students. The lack of farewells is either flattering or hurtful to me. Perhaps we know each other too well, and he feared I would see through him. Things spiraled out of control.

Megumi turned somber and cold when he spoke about Rika Orimoto warning him. I have my own experiences with the dead girl and her betrothed. Suffice it to say I understand why he was unsettled, but never worried to be harmed. Yuuta seems to have been instrumental in the events before the avalanche, and Megumi's recounting simply adds to it, and strengthens my doubts. He turned even more somber as his thoughts drifted to friends lost, but a sigh of relief mingled in the pain, as they were what he calls “free” now.

I cannot share his sentiment but I pray he is right.

The events that occurred, as I understand them with this added testimony are as follows.

Satoru Gojo was haunted, followed, and unshackled a creature, one that was reminiscent of the man we buried in his ancestral soil.

As he awaited his own demise, in whatever capacity, he called upon the ones closest to him. Perhaps for some, simply to say his farewells. For some, perhaps, to assist him, to trick the riddle master that is death and gain time. Whatever his reasons as he unfurled them, Megumi had his very own encounter with demons past the mortal coils. And in the end, as the others ran, or were lost beside tombstones, he accepted a hand outstretched, like a martyr in the hopes of a final ending.

He was not granted this ending.

I do not believe Okkotsu and Gojo are dead. Not when I see a young man who has been under the same duress, to die in the suffocating embrace of a mass of snow, and yet stands unperturbed.

Megumi shares this belief, even if it is weakened, as are all his hopes.

We spend the better part of the day talking about the events in the manor, with the candles burning down, and the warmth lingering, dogs falling asleep around us, until Uraume appeared silently like yet another ghost by the door of Tsumiki's room, a wrap of polite knocks that angered the canines in their rest.

"I will prepare supper soon," they explained under the choir of barks. "Since Master Sukuna is yet to return, I suspect you will take your meal and your guest downstairs?"

The bristling question told me that this was not usually the case, and so I awaited any response but was simply met with a belligerent breath and a sharp nod.

"You and his servant are not on the best of terms," I stated the obvious.

The remark struck a low cord in him, a flicker of pained distaste darkening his gaze.

"I do not harbor any fear for Uraume," he replied, dispassionate. "As long as my nature doesn't change, there will be nothing for them to do to me I did not doom myself to. But yet, I am filled with contempt, that much is true. Had they not dug me out of the

snow that fateful day, I would have perished surely, and Sukuna would been entombed like an ancient relic, waiting frozen for a resurrection that may never come."

The memory of that dire moment was vivid for the both of us, him for other reasons, but I digress, it does not matter in that moment where we met the next burning question on the tip of my tongue. Thus, I inquired about the tracks in the snow—and was met with more riddles.

"I recall neither carriage nor sled," Megumi answered bewildered. "I do remember only being carried, as weak as a newborn kitten, incapable of resisting even had I understood what was occurring. It was not the first time that he carried me away, so I remember the grip well, even if I was all but helpless. I remember nothing but anger, and I remember blood until my own warmth returned. The fires in our house were my pyres, but they did not burn my flesh, simply my will to be alive, as everything inside me was cleaved away. Another victim of the cold, for the second time since I went to the manor. This time though, I remember his voice, and it spoke very quietly to me. It was an archaic fairytale of promises, to keep me safe, a tormenting lullaby. He spoke of my potential and spirit, soothing me through the sickness with tales that wove themselves into a cruel comfort, a violent sanctuary from the unbearable. There were too many eyes in my fever, too many hands, and the rotting stench of death lingered as if he had feasted upon blood and gore every night. Whatever that means to you, I cannot say. Perhaps I am simply attempting to make you understand, Doctor."

It means a lot. It means that the tracks were perhaps yet another participant in this wild hunt. And it means there is yet another chance for this story to take another twist in its dark entirety.

I worry for Megumi Fushiguro's mind. It seems utterly broken already.

For his behest, I will attempt to keep every word as true as I can here in this book. As if that preserves some of his humanity. Perhaps it can. At least in remembrance.

Supper was served in the living space of the house, downstairs. The table is all but cut out of two giant old dark wooden logs, with chairs that dress in similar furs as the one upstairs.

It stands imposing, made for much larger feasts than the one we received. Uraume is very clearly a capable cook, even in this decrepit space. Every dish smelled like heaven and tasted even more so. I had not been fed this well since I left you behind, so I devoured most of my meal very quietly and swiftly.

"They're very proficient with any kind of meat, their master is all but smitten by that," Megumi simply stated, eating slowly, quietly, and with his hair still hanging around the jagged line of his red jacket. It sounded foreboding and darker than it should have, but I assume I did not consume human flesh, at least, given my assortment in cutting and dissecting it myself. Or at least I dearly hope so given how sickly the town nearby is.

Speaking about that, I dared to ask how they found this place. It is so far away from the mountains.

Megumi's expression hardened as he continued, his voice tinged with bitterness. "We traveled through many nights, avoiding any main roads, and took shelter wherever we could find it. You can call it happenstance. Luck. Coincidence. This village seemed remote enough, isolated and forgotten. We heard about the abandoned house in the moor, a whisper of terror but long slumbering. So we took our chances. I had thought we would better be safe and safekeep others by staying away. Yet even here, his presence lingers, and the villagers suffer for it."

"I can see that," I replied softly, glancing at our meals, the heavy warmth of flames blazing out the fireplace, and the little decor left intact. "The villagers must've been afflicted since your arrival then."

Megumi's eyes darkened once more. "Yes. The sickness started shortly after we settled here. Sukuna's influence taints everything it touches. There is no escape. The villagers have been cursed with a malady that drains them of life and soul, one way or another, and I fear it is my presence that has brought it upon them, wishing for peace and freedom."

There is no ailment I can procure if there is no sickness I can cure or speak about. The idea of being affected by a malady that might kill me is nothing I wish to enjoy, but it might as well not affect me if I stay no longer than I need to.

Perhaps he wished to say more, but the lingering white-haired head of a servant rushing by takes that away from us.

I thanked them for the meal, but their only reply was a smile too kind to be anything but indisputably uninterested.

I do not sleep very long hours, as you will recall, and just as I did not sleep in the village, I stayed up now after supper, after my host excused himself away from the prying eyes, and long into the morning. To write this, for once, but also to explore this place further, or by chance, just observe its inhabitants.

Uraume is, as far as I can tell, the only servant around, and they are busy preparing and maintaining the house and all that surrounds it. They are like the fog that surrounds the moors. Megumi and his sister spent the rest of the evening in her room, as far as I can tell by the lights upstairs. Or at least the watch began that way.

My quarters boasted but a small window to spy past the brick walls, into the yard, and beyond into the grim expanse. As I penned these events down, I did just that, and my gaze lingered on the dark yard. I wondered what else I could learn, and how I would ensure the safety of Tsumiki Fushiguro after I was about to leave, and her brother as well, but my musings were cut short by a single rider that disturbed the fog in a reckless abandon. He shot into the yard with a discordant clatter of hooves, the horse's breath a spectral mist disturbing the shroud of darkness and light playing tricks around it.

Ushered outside by the late-time noise, as if compelled by it, Uraume hurried by my room and out into the yard, where the taller figure simply tossed a large carcass toward them, a dead, dangling thing I could not identify, before seating off the panting, exhausted horse and stepping inside.

A muffled exchange of words followed, low but a rumble, and when I heard my name, and the word guest, the nonchalant grandeur of the figure shifted. I watched them as they disappeared, aching to shudder of doors being flung open and closed, before the steps of who I presumed the master of this house disappeared, fading as they toppled over stairs up, and I was listening intently at that point, near my own door.

The lack of tumult above was more unnerving than any uproar.

Silence can be a very deadly and uncomfortable companion, more ominous even than cries and shouts. Doors opened and closed more quietly after an initial toppling of steps and bodies moving, and more dogs barking, their voices stern but not yet rising to a fevered pitch.

I slipped from the guest room, my steps light and cautious, as I am practiced in moving light-footed, and as I traversed the corridors, fragments of conversation drifted through the cracks in the wooden walls, along with the low bark of laughter.

I remembered distinctly that Megumi called Sukuna "mellow" after his hunting escapades, perhaps that was my hope as well. Whatever mellow means to him in his current state of mind, it appears to include amusem*nt.

Uraume was by all intents and purposes, unperturbed by the noise from upstairs as I found them in the confines of the dimly lit kitchen. Apparently, the late hour had done nothing to temper their grim efficiency, clad in a bloody apron, and a sinister collection of cleavers and knives hacking away at a rabbit. Its white fur stained with blood, almost as red as Megumi's jacket, they cut it apart methodically, fast. The big carcass was nowhere to be found in the cramped space of oven and stove, shelves, and more dead animals hanging from the ceiling. More rabbits, and birds, I presumed, or parts of them.

The copper scent of the blood, and the wet noises, reminded me of other nights in my life, less fortunate ones.

"I see we kept you awake, Doctor Ieiri," Uraume remarked, their gaze never lifting from the grim task of skinning the rabbit upon the stone table.

"No matter, I was never asleep to begin with. It appears your master disapproves of my presence."

Uraume shrugged, their hands buried in the animal’s bloody remains.

"You are not here by his wish, hence you are no guest of ours. It does not become Megumi to act on his own. But fret not. This is but a minor disagreement between them. There have been far worse nights. Megumi has grown quite adept at handling the wrath of my master."

I do not wish to inquire about worse nights. There is a spectrum of nightmares that have pursued us since the day we were born. Some souls carry an array of them under their ribcages like white bone knives piercing their organs in a relentless dance of internal torment. It would appear the Fushiguros are one of these people.

Instead of retiring to bed, or seeking safety in the guest chambers, I sat down on the stone bench by the oven, a solitary warm spot in the all-embracing darkness. The world glowed a vile deep red in the coals gleaming on the rack. The only sounds in the desolate kitchen came from the cackling embers and the constant slicing cuts hacking over stone and wood.

Breaching that silence was for naught since Uraume was too well poised for answers that were unbecoming of them. Luckily for me, and I am sorry to say this, Utahime, I did bring my matchbox and cigarettes.

So I dared to light a slightly broken piece of tobacco on the end of the bending cigarette. The poison tasted wrong, almost as bitter as the brown moor, earthen and musky, worse than the decayed house even. I dragged out breaths in silence, under the baldachin of meat dangling down, and a spectral white figure methodically severing tendons and hide from the small carcass of the next hare.

"Go on," they broke our quiet camaraderie as the cigarette had burned down and my lungs ached, blood pumping in cavalry as hard as the stumping hooves of the horse earlier tonight. Their bloody hand held the knife like a brush, artistry in itself, as gentle as their voice was almost soft. "You wish to ask me questions. Ask them so we can be done."

"Megumi claims to have been dug out of the snow."

"Indeed," they agree. "I dug them out. It took me an ordeal, but I braced the ice more easily than you would think. I unearthed him out of the avalanche. He had very little breath left, a blue body, a few broken bones as well. The rest, my master did, as always ever resilient."

"How long have you been employed under Sukuna as his servant?"

The back of their hand wiped over their mouth in a precise motion, leaving no trace of the butchering.

"It feels like an eternity. Not that I would change it. I am usually comfortable, even if there are humans around whom I would prefer to avoid. I do as I am commanded."

There is profound devotion in those words. But such an enduring arrangement must surely be mutually beneficial, in some twisted way or another.

"How dutiful," I remarked with a tint of sarcasm.

My snide words drew out a delighted sound. Their laughter was light and made me yearn to ignite another cigarette. So I fiddled another strike from the matchbox and the smoke curled by the meat, obscuring the inside of the kitchen in a red haze.

"What about you, Doctor Ieri? How dutiful would you say you are? What does your devotion cost?"

"It costs nothing, I would say. I choose my duty and stay steadfast." They do not have to know about you, about whoever I choose to be devoted to, Utahime, or my friends and companions for that matter. It would suit me well to stay guarded, I am neither young nor naive enough to share my most inner self with someone of their stature ready to hurt me for just one word of their good master.

"Is that altruism's or lethargy's fault?" They asked, and their hand dug into the carcass of the hare so hard a bone broke apart in a shattering squeezed noise as they sliced away a hand of guts gleaming tar black in the light.

"Perhaps both, perhaps neither." I smothered the gleaming cigarette on the stone tiles, a small wave of the dark scent lingering beside the blood.

"Who knew I would be discussing my personal philosophy over a dead hare at midnight? I should be lucky it isn't another dead body. They were quite exhilarating to procure when I had to."

Uraume cleaned the knife with a practiced motion on their apron before setting it down beside the cleavers very orderly.

"We find ourselves in the queerest of scenarios on the center of the stage when we least expect to. I suspect studying medicine as a woman and stealing dead bodies is but one of many adventures you could tell."

"Of course, and I would assume the same for you," I assured them, standing up to abandon the warm solitude of the bench. I was barely at the ready to move on as they poured a fistful of organs into a bucket, along with other body parts. The sight froze my blood. My eyes, tricked by the dim light, surely beheld the paws of a hare, but for a blink, they were but human remains: a finger standing out of the mess, and a heart too giant for a small mammal. As Uraume passed by, and I dared to inspect the bucket and its remains again, I could see neither the heart nor the fingers. Only small pieces of bodies never again to flee and hop in the wilderness.

I was never the squeamish type, Utahime, but I fear that this house, its darkness, and perhaps the tiredness are gnawing at my very core. Uraume must have discerned my unease in my face, as they paused and gifted me the most pitiful smile. Yet, their face was a mask and the smile never reached their eyes.

"Good night, Doctor Ieri. Sleep well," they told me, ushering me out of the kitchen as they returned to their grim task. What a strange, soft-spoken creature they are.

I did not attempt to speak to Megumi Fushiguro that night. I stole through the hallways, drawn by the voices much closer, much more tangible this time. The fireside in the living room was blazing in fed, satisfied streams of cackling flames licking hungrily at logs, casting an eerie glow.

The master of the house and my host both had taken their respective places before the roaring flames, throwing shadows much larger and longer behind them onto the wall in thin monstrous silhouettes. Megumi's eyes met mine for the briefest moment, a flicker of recognition swiftly extinguished as he resumed his quiet brooding. His coat had been discarded, revealing the coarse fabric of a white and beige shirt under his tightly crossed arms as his lips set in a tight line.

All I could behold of Sukuna were fragments, like an unfinished painting, as the chair he was seated in faced away. I caught mere single glimpses in this first night, both in the yard and now: a row of dark-lined fingers, talons gripping the armrest beside Megumi; a shock of bright hair standing against the shadows; and boots, polished to a cruel, pristine sheen.

I had stumbled upon some sort of exchange, one that flickered in tandem with the hungry fire.

"Do not give me that look of contempt," Sukuna's voice rumbled through the cracks in the wood once more, as if it was burying through the foundation to seep into the mud and clay of the wilderness moor itself. "You were not there. It was not your hand. Nor your will. It was their own denial that sent them to their graves."

"You want too much, as always." Megumi's voice was tinted by the cackling mockery of heat as he unfurled his arms and rested them on his lap. "No, you demand. And then, like a child, you are surprised by the ire your demand draws."

"It is a small relief you know me too well to presume I would ask for anything politely." The hand disappeared from the armrest, and the old massive chair ached as Sukuna leaned away. "I demand merely because it is my very right to do so. I thought you wished to be safe, and your sister as well."

"Please," Megumi asked, although his words held a strange defiance, sharper than any plea I had ever heard. They were not a plea at all. I slowly retreated from the conversation, a precaution. It would not become me to get caught, and I had never expected to hear anything less cruel. "Don't lie to me. You take pleasure in it, and we can speak openly about it."

A heavy sigh later, Sukuna's hand reemerged, resting upon Megumi's folded hand with a casual intimacy.

"And that is why you'll never bore me, my dearest Megumi."

I left them behind at their resting space in the living room by the hearth as I retreated, finally, to the guest room.

What a long, what strange day, I am ending here. I dread closing my eyes. I promise you, nothing is what I expected, and it hardens my resolve as it softens my understanding. I am not fashioned by the world to follow ghosts into a hazy bog.

As dawn broke, I made sure to barricade all the doors, but a part of me still expected to never wake up, given the proficiency of Uraume skinning animals. So I kept my belongings near, in case of any sort of attack, but it never came, of course.

In my dreams, I found myself wandering the desolate moor, the vast expanse of brown, black hues in the hillocks and glades. As I fled, lichen softened my steps, though I do not know where I ran, nor do I know what hunted me.

I was prey, pursued by my hunter. My breath strained in my chest, my body gasped in pain behind the fog parting, and the winds ominously howling. I was weak, no, terrified as I have never felt awake, my body begged to cry out from the depths of my soul in dread. I would have, but the air got stolen from my lips as I fell, cut by stones hidden in soft earth.

I woke up in the early, grey morning, weak light filtering through the small window. The candle I had left burning on my bedside extinguished, the warmth of the coals in the metal rack by the hearth steaming weakly, my eyes followed the rays of light into the yard again.

For the second time, my eyes noticed something that wasn't there. It was an almost human shape, almost I say because it stuttered walking, and for a second I was but nervous remembering similar instances of the dead stumbling out of their graves. But the shape turned less and less human, as I observed it, until I realized it was not an abnormality but was a piece of white cloth or fabric flutter along the yard.

Breakfast time already passed when I finally stepped out the guest quarter, draping my shawl and coat over my body. I blended well into the walls, with the browns and whites, the lines of cotton. Yet, I know I cannot hide forever by molding into the walls. The wind had found a way through the cracks and now shaking the very foundations of the home. It accompanied the voices and footsteps in an orchestra as they marched and triumphed through the house and over the yard.

The weather is damp, it is decrepit, dark, and foreboding, as always. Even if the fog slowly faded in the morning, there is no sun to shine upon the forgotten plane and us in it, as if a titan's hand withheld the sun and pulled the curtains of the clouds so tightly shut they may never open again.

I expected the upstairs doors to be closed, but when I stepped toward Tsumiki's room past the stairwell, I found it slightly ajar. Daring to peek inside, I saw the solitary housekeeper cleaning the petals around her sweeping, and a batch of new, violet wildflowers gleaned in the vases and glasses, emitting a cold, sweet aroma, accompanied by the earthy scents from below.

They were working all but fast, never touching the slumbering body, nor even sparing a glance at her.

"Good morning, Doctor," they greeted me, without turning, a hushed voice murmuring with the arctic wind dressed in blue cotton. I opened the doors but a fraction more to stand inside the frame, leaning a hand against the cool morose wood as they finally looked at me. "Did you rest well?"

I gave a single nod without much truth.

"I do not fault you. The former inhabitants of the house named it a soul trap, an ancestral burial ground causing malevolent dreams, although I do not think anyone was ever buried here before they were alive, they said there were voices in the wind, whispering into their nightmares." Another pluck of petals, dead hanged plant corpses that they swept into their grip. "As if it was a building that kept souls trapped or alive. As if it was a building giving someone nightmares. A building is stone and mortar, until it turns to ashes and dust, just as a body does. A soul is immortal."

"What do you reckon it is that keeps a soul immortal?"

Uraume smiled at me. The same hollow smile as before, that never turned to reach the death in their eyes. They were more lifeless than the slumbering girl in the bed. "Their natural desires, of course. And their ambitions, I am sure."

I pondered at this, with my mind wavering over my very own epiphanies about life and death and souls, before giving any answer. "Natural desires are manifold, I suppose. Hunger is natural. So is thirst. The need for safety is natural. And the need for companionship, warmth."

"Hunger is indeed very natural," Uraume responded, the smile remaining fixed onto their face. "You are very astute, doctor. So here is yet another piece of advice."

"Please do speak your mind," I offered and waited patiently.

"I would advise not to try and ever enter into the master's room," they warned me, gloved hands strangling dead flowers. The dried petals crunched into dust before they rained over our shoes. "You will not appreciate the reaction it might elicit. And I promise, you won't find anything about the people you seek."

"How do you know what I seek?"

Before they passed me, their hands picked a bundle of fabric up, hidden before from my sight by the door.

White cloth and fabric, sheets, soiled in the brown earth of this land, smears of it, crumbs filling the white canvas.

"I know everything that transpires within these walls." Uraume brushed past me, blue wool rustling. "Perhaps you are but a lost soul wandering yourself. If that is so, you will only find wrath, no salvation.”

That is a threat at best, not an advice, but I am weary, and so very tired already.I do not wish to draw more ire on me. Thus far, they have been benevolent at most, in their servitude, and I wish for it to stay that way.

"I am not lost," I promised. "But you are right in one thing, some days I wish I was not wandering. It turns all but sad when people expect you to linger and settle."

That struck but a cord in them, strangely, and for the first time their smile turned but a tint of a shade sad. "Good day, Doctor. I will ring for the next meal as it is being served."

Tsumiki's condition remains unchanged, unblemished and unaware, innocent as long as she remains this still. She might as well be one of the angel statues shaped in silent prayer with her arms folded over the blanket beneath the sea of mauve and violets. Stealing her from any hospital or sanatorium was a bold move claimed by her brother and his- well. What exactly do I call him? His jailer? Calling him anything else but his name feels estranged and wrong.

There were very few personal belongings in the room she rests in but after a short inspection of the nightstand, I have found a cracked cameo inside. It is a broken porcelain face of a woman, a silhouette, and even in the stylized way, I can see the loving details, and the family resemblance is all but clear for both her children. A sentimental keepsake valued even in its current state, a proper belonging.

“I am sure she loved you very much, just as your brother,” I told the dreaming girl and put the cameo back into the cabinet. “There is no malady in this bog for you. But I suppose you don’t care.”

She has no voice to answer, of course, but her chest ebbed in a heavy breathing sigh before I retreated downstairs.

If I had thought the house oppressive, I had already forgotten how the outside could weigh so heavily upon one’s body. The horses and the chickens were nowhere to be seen, but the dogs barked ever vigilant, baring fangs as they heard me close the heavy front door. Their growls were low and harsh, a warning to be taken as seriously as any other in this house, before the hand of its master silenced them.

They resumed their watch in silence, alongside the other sentinels of this dark abode.

As I stepped into the yard, arms crossed against the chill, I found myself watching two figures that were throwing but the same flickering monstrous silhouettes last night but were contrasted so starkly now.

Megumi was still or perhaps again dressed in the red coat, the same somber ensemble of a black scarf, and the brown and tan attire beneath. He looked gaunt this somber morning, as if the night awake had drained him of more vitality. He was even less expressive than before, countenance all but gone, and I remembered his fleeting glance finding me by the fireplace, and wondered how long he had been awake, or if he slept at all.

I have been able to study the sleeplessness in the haunted and lost, as well as other symptoms that seem to apply to him, the way that his life filters out of him, bleeding in colors as red as his coat, and his emotions stolen away. Yet, desperation lingers with

him that still keeps a part of him tethered, it seems. After all, he deeply cares for others, even a first glance onto his sister can tell.

I thought of the asylum and housing of the other cases in the years beforehand, as well as Itadori's, and I wish I had more knowledge, instead of the mysterious accounts and feeble words. I should have listened closer, should have found more, Utahime, but I also wanted to live a more peaceful life, and now everyone is dead and gone or haunts the living and I am near my limit to comprehend the events before my eyes.

"You could instruct Uraume to dispose of it," Megumi asked, gaze fixed onto a point unseen in the distance.

"No," was the only reply.

Sukuna himself is as opulently dressed as he appears to be in personality, a forest green ensemble of wool coat and dark green cravat, and his clothes are in the best shape of everyone in this house, in stark opposition to the squalor of this space.

Given the myriad of glimpses and warnings, I am uncertain what I expected, but he certainly does the notion of caution justice. He is certainly imposing, tall, even if not as tall as a tower, barely taller than I expected, in truth, with these black markings burned into his flesh, and the clenched jaw and eyes of a man who finds anything else beneath him, an arrogant demeanor with a cold undertone. I am not easy to impress, but I do wear a cautious step now for every step we may meet, after being spotted.

There is no escape from this encounter in any shape or form since we are both here.

When Sukuna spotted me, the line of his mouth upturned only slightly, as if I wasn't worth much of a reaction, another insect under the sole of his shiny boots. I took my time catching up, lighting the bending tobacco and paper in my palms, shielding my face from the wind as I did so. Megumi’s disapproval was palpable, though he refrained from voicing it, his silence speaks loud enough.

"Megumi's elusive guest," Sukuna greeted as I approached, with a disdainful intonation. To him, I was in no way a guest or particularly elusive.

"I suppose that is what I am," I answered, slowly finding a space amidst the group.

There was no formal introduction. Neither of us bowed or curtsied, no pretense of civility or feigned pleasantries. Perhaps this fits me as well as any other moment in this ragged world. There is no time for this etiquette of falseness at least. There was a grim honesty in our lack of pretense.

"He speaks in high praises of you," Sukuna continued observing the smoke of the burning tobacco with the same unyielding glare as before. "That itself, is quite unsettling. I am weary of anyone praised so highly, particularly those who intrude upon my domain with such impunity."

Megumi's eyes flickered in a single silent glance of disapproval before turning his eyes away from either of us onto the dogs.

"I assure you, I am not here to disturb your peace." However shallow it may be.

"I am perfectly indifferent toward your intentions." Sukuna retorted with an indignant huff creasing his nose. "Least of all, you are but a strange woman searching for dead men. I suggest you do not test the limits of my hospitality."

Megumi parted his gaze from the dogs, almost with a grain of resignation. "She won't stay too long."

He did ask me for a favor, absconding with his sister. Yet, abandoning him was an option not truly worth considering. Severing ties with Sukuna might be yet possible. But there is no use in leaving him behind. When I find Satoru, he would be very cross if I had not given my utmost effort to save a boy he cared for.

"Are you quite sure they dead?" I inquired and pushed the tangled knots of thoughts aside.

Sukuna's glare was a cold dagger. "I do not care if they hang dead in a tree. Now."

He ignored my presence in favor of Megumi, a hand brushing over the red coat before turning his attention toward the stable. "I'll be back post haste."

"Take however long you need. I will see you at dinner," Megumi simply replied. His eyes lingered behind the green-dressed man until he had disappeared from our side, even if the oppressive presence was yet to vanish.

Finally, at least, I stared at the shrouded moor, and I saw what they had been discussing. It was a rather grim spectacle.One of the sheep lay dead between blades of grass in the expanse.

The once brown and green landscape was marred by the murder. The carrion was plagued by the animal perched on top of its open ribcage. A giant, brown bird of prey buried its beak into the open wounds. Its beady eyes gleamed with the very hunger I had called a natural desire the night prior. As its talon dug through entrails, chains of flesh in putrid violets and blackened colors, I swore I could almost smell it, that familiar scent of coppery death, as nature partook in the dark drama amidst the moors.

Megumi watched the carrion torn asunder with the same expression reserved for most things until a black horse with its rider thundered past us along the wall. Sukuna did not follow the trail, his horse's hooves throwing dirt and blood into the air as it sped past the bird. The beast did not stir, did not fly, a weave of its wings as it swung to another cleaving blow.

"If he is gone so frequently, why have you never attempted to flee?" I inquired.

"There is no predicting his departures.” Megumi replied, a disdainful edge to his words. " But trust in the inevitable: he always returns, grimly satisfied. I allow him to come and go as he wishes, even if I disapprove of his actions. He despises me for my humanity as much as it entertains him.For a while, he was entertained by being chained to my side. And he was all but dreadful, like I had locked him in a cage, and it was tormenting to be with him, as he haunted my days and nights. He did not trust our convenant, did not trust for me to stay. But where even would I go that he did not follow me? He is plague and locusts, and he makes us ill.This current arrangement renders him more approachable. He'd have killed you if he had not sated himself. He has done worse to humans for smaller insurrections. He will do so again.”

"So you would flee, if you could?" I attempted once more.

He remained eerily still, absent-mindedly stroking the head of one of the dogs.

Was this meant as a justification, of sorts? An excuse, perhaps? A confession, for sure.

"And there is the matter of Uraume," he continued.

"I find Uraume to be fascinating," I mused.

"Uraume is exceptionally unnerving," Megumi retorted. "I've never paid them any mind when Sukuna was still with Itadori, but that was because they never wanted me to. Don’t mistake their politeness for kindness."

“They said something quite similar about you.”

Megumi quietened, lost in the spectacle of the bird devouring the carcass, but he found himself again in a long breath. “I am nor kind, neither do I attempt to flatter you. We have an agreement. That is all:”

"Do you wish for assistance to bury the sheep?"

His face hardened. "It was stupid enough to die; let it be eaten. No one will mourn cattle."

The words did not quite fit the mouth they left, and the white in his green eyes turned visible as if he was bewildered by the atrophy of his mind or the way he sounded.

Regardless of that, when I went to his sister's room again, examining her state, I could hear him shout through the house. An hour later, I saw him beside the yard, coat discarded, heaving earth off the brown ground with desperate ferocity. He stabbed the shovel into the ground again and again until he had unearthed a hole large enough for the carcass.

Perhaps it was less about the sheep and more about some unspoken metaphor, but the sight of the burial left a bitter taste in my mouth. That taste turned even more into poison as I surmised the surroundings behind the yard, in the fields spotted in the wild vegetation, and noticed there were many more spots of soft soil, dark mounds that were not natural, but other graves. And a part of me doubted any of them were for sheep.

As he returned, sweaty, with a feverish look in his eyes, we continued our discussion about the previous events. I had many questions left to ask, about the peculiar way that everyone had behaved in the mansion, and was unpleasantly pressed to see more pieces of the bitter truth.

We always knew Gojo was a fool sometimes, but he always has been a fool with the best intentions and means to do so, and capably managed his tasks.

"I did not know anything when I stumbled into this misery," Megumi asserted. "I know enough now, after being part of it for so long."

"How does it feel?" I asked.

"I believe it must be different for everyone. I chose this. I did not ask for it, but I chose to be tethered, with my essence and my mind, an inescapable thing. With him and I, I fear I lack words to describe this fever dream. Some days, I wish I could be in my sister's place, not out of mercy for her, but simply because I want to sleep eternally. I am being eaten alive, and the worst part is that I do not even mind, doctor.”

A smile caught the edge of his mouth, and it was the most distressing smile I have ever witnessed, in all my years of pained examinations and amputations, of maddened figures in an asylum. The smile spoke of fondness, while his eyes spoke of the fatigue of a man famished.

"Does it pain you?" I asked, by whims led here. "To see him gone? Is the tether breaking, or does it turn to a whip?"

"It hurts either way."

He needs rest and food. So while we waited for the latter we continued, seated near the fire in the big armchairs I had seen him in the previous morning. The chairs released the harsh coal odor of flames, a sting in the nose, nothing pleasant. And as always, the scent of blood lingered by the hearth, ruptured by the broken earth and rotten decor.

"Is this how you pass all your days here?" I asked him. "It is quite a solitude, and the villagers very plainly despise you."

"On occasion we receive visitors, but not the most pleasant kind, as you may imagine. The villagers, yes, some venture here too, and they do despise us for good reasons. Sometimes others suppliantly approach the house, it is why I like to watch from the wall. But for the most part, yes, I spend my time with the dogs and my sister, when I am permitted."

I can only imagine what this does to someone, apart the very visible toll. My resolve to free him is growing by the moment.

"I apologize for interrupting your conversation earlier than necessarry." Uraume hadn't made a sound walking, or if they had, I had been too transfixed on my host to notice.

Megumi clearly had wished to speak more, by the looks of it. The air suddenly was misbegotten with the rank of their personal dislike.

"What is it this time?"

"One of the suppliants is stalking around the house again. Do you wish me to dispose of him or do you want to wait for Sukuna to do it?"

"Neither of those," Megumi stood up, the floorboards aching along with his step. "I will handle it accordingly."

The dogs sat at his heels, even without the low whistle leaving his lips. Giant, bristling beasts, with teeth as long as daggers. Their ears lay on their heads as they followed.

"I doubt that," Uraume murmured, but stepped aside to let Megumi pass by. When I stood up from my seat, Uraume did not, in fact, let me follow.

"This is no matter for humans, doctor," they excused themselves with their deadly hollow eyes pointed at me, a mask slipping down ever so gently.

"Do you wish to elaborate on that?"

"No," was the only answer, but they did not budge one bit, and simply remained still as a statue in front of me devoid of any spark of life. "I can simply let you get torn to pieces this very moment. It is no matter to me, doctor. But I assumed you had at least a shred of self-preservation. Perhaps you are the same as this ill-fated boy, who fancies himself a martyr when he is naught but a fool."

Such spite, but in a cold way that denounced all living beings, and I wondered what calamities someone has to endure to capture such wrath for all that breathes. It does not strike any semblance of understanding in me.

With nowhere to go, I leaned back in front of the chair but refused to sit, and my eyes never left the door that Megumi vanished through before the heavy wood fell into place like the lid of a casket.

It is a strange form of hell, Utahime, when you are helpless for your own safety but others. A cold unrelenting hell, and I do not ever wish for you to be helpless, hence why I am glad you are far away from this wretched place and all that is in this mess is me.

At first, no sound drifted by the fire, a flickering flame cracking wood, and eating the silent seconds. The first shout pierced my ear, then a crack, and every turned into a cacophony of noise. Uraume left me standing by the hearth listening to the destruction a mere wall away, busying themselves by attending to a table so marred and unsteady it seemed futile to preserve it.

The noises outside were vile. They stopped as fast as they started.

When Megumi returned to the living room, the fire had dwindled, burning too bright too fast, and I did not attempt to stoke a flame that did not warm anyone.

Blood discolored his sallow face, trickling in a stream down his nose to sink into his jacket. Some of his clothes bristled in tears, dirty mud and blood encrusting the flesh. The closer he came, the more the dark splattered pattern of blood stood out.

He reeked like death itself, reminiscient of the nightly graveyard air, after unearthing a grave and beholding the body within. That waxen, decaying odor, poorly masked by the dead plants and perfume on it, but it stains the world along with the distinct scent that graveyard soil holds for me.

I have seen my fair share of death and blood, and though he did not seem to be mortally wounded, he walked with a weary, tired gait, so I urged him on a chair to examine the wounds.

Most of the blood, as it turned out as we cleaned his wounds, lest it fester, did not come from himself. He barely stirred as I washed the grime away.The skin of his arm revealed half marks of fangs, a mosaic of half or fully healed wounds besides a fresh, shallow cut. It did not look like the bite of a dog, nor was it quite human, and I stared at it as my hand cleaned it, in morbid curiousity.

"May I ask—"

"You may not," he interrupted me, too feeble to be truly rude. "At least this once, less knowledge is to your advantage."

I simply let him be in his own thoughts before I acquired one of the clean bandages out of my bags, burrowing past unused medicines and vials that had surprisingly survived the travel.

"He will not like it," I was able to gleam the end of the discussion before Megumi turned away from the figure near the windows. The shutters and curtains were so moth eaten, so riddled with holes, they held back nothing, not the cold, wind, nor the fog.

Regrettable as it was, I wished I could simply ready the horses and flee now, as I saw the way that Megumi stared at his own blood.

"You'll survive," I joked, with half my heart in it, and it showed in my smile, too taut to be joyous. My hands worked deftly, and pressed the bandage against it swiftly as I could.

His fingers gently encase my hand on his wound as I pressed the cloth against it, white blooming with red. There were no words spoken, but the unspoken ones traveled along my arm into my lungs to release a sigh into the world.

"Don't come out for the rest of the day," he urged. "Whatever you do, do not show your face. Whatever you hear. Don't come out. I promise you it'll be all but fine tonight."

"That is quite a while away," I answered, not ready to swear such a thing to him without more information. He did not attempt to bargain with me, but walked me along the hallway, away from the ever vigilant eye of the servant. “I fear I cannot simply promise that, if it concerns your well being.”

"You don't have to worry for me," he promised, with a solemn expression avoiding my face alltogether. "Merely for the rest of the world."

"I will promise it," I told him, murmuring the words, as quietly as my throat was capable of. "If you promise me something else."

He waited for my request, in an almost courtly manner, his head tilting in the silent inquiry.

"Consider to go with me and your sister," I mouthed, a hush conspiracy in these oppressive walls.

He did not answer, neither with words nor actions, and walked away with his shoulders drawn together.

"Megumi," I called out, and as he stopped, his body collapsed, a crumbling ruin inhabiting a house just as broken.

"I will give it some thought," he promised, and that was more than I had dared to hope for.

I closed the latch before sitting down and writing these words. I am very sure you can guess what happened afterward. When the horse sped down past the trail again, the silence turned to louder eruptions of voices again. There was no deer or rabbit handed to a servant, but something dragged behind it, and it did not need a genius to realize it was a body. Arms and legs dangled down in broken pieces, like a straw doll squashed.

Today, the voices were not laughing, but fighting, and they did so for longer than I wished to hear. A storm whipped through the house. A rupture. It was infuriating to witness, and even more infuriating to do nothing against it. It was not like I didn't want to break my promise. Removing the latch from the inside did not help me. The door did not budge a moment. Stuck, broken, stubbornly ignorant to my pounding, in vain. Perhaps the former inhabitants of the house were correct and this place is cursed. It feels like it is my enemy, as it stands bulwark against me.

There have been moments in our lives when we had to retreat or I had to flee, but I have never been more trapped than in this moment. No windows to crawl through, no escape to be found. I had been sitting there for hours, ensnared, and with no way to chew the nasty iron claw holding me in place like an animal in the vice might attempt in such desperation.

A part of me wonders if I will be in one of the soft grounded shallow graves behind the house, aside the sheep and among the other unnamed bodies I presume in those holes.

Perhaps one next to the body dragged behind the horse on this very day.

As you can imagine, I am not too keen on dying here, and I remain ever skittish and weary as I waited for any sign of the ravings to stop. The noises continued until late in the evening, and even then, the door never gave in, try as I might. The sky darkened in heavy rainfall. As it drowned the house in its fall, the hammering of raindrops was the same as many heartbeats before dying in a last crescendo. After many attempts, I was able to break the door from the frame, and with a heavy thundering creak, the wood splintered as it fell.

The inside of the hallway was astoundingly quiet now, and the whole world appeared to be nothing but rain and empty walls. It was more frightening than the sound of the fight. Certain doors in the house were shut tight, and as I passed by Tsumiki's room, I discovered her brother in a chair beside her, the very same gaunt figure he always was, but even more so colorless like the moonlit rain, blending right into the gloom of the night.

Since they both were sleeping untouched for but a moment of respite, I shut the door again and retreated, scouting through the dark wet floors as the wooden boards ached beneath my quiet steps as I inspected the house carefully, inspecting every nook and cranny, following every hallway, patrolling for a while, until I decided to sneak by the backdoor to the yard. Outside, the tempest unleashed its rage, and surges of water flooded the world behind the shutters in rivers cascading.

Half my wits asked me to grab the siblings and flee.

As I made my way outside, I found the rain so heavy, that the water hit me with icy needles tearing at my skull, and the darkness seemed alive, ready to eat me. A mad, long moment, I swore to myself that something moved in the darkness, a figure in a sheet,

or a dress, perhaps, distant in the complete night, only visible in the strokes of lightning hitting the moor in a thunderous fist of rage. As soon as the specter appeared in the distance, it was gone again.

I had to wait the weather out, and make better plans for our escape. I did not attempt to find the lord of the house, and found myself once more in the only other warm room this forlorn seat had to offer.

I half expected to step into the kitchen and see a corpse dangle from one of the hooks, but only dead animal flesh did so, beneath the clean table and lowly flickering stove.

Beside a single candle, in yellow hues, Uraume reminded me of a pale apocalyptic curse once more. The kitchen became our uneasy meeting ground, for I harbored no desire for their company, yet was left with no choice. I reluctantly settled beside them.

They cradled a glass of colorless liquid in their hands, the candlelight sparkling in it like a gemstone, cloudy particles swimming in the drink.

"It appears to become a peculiar habit to meet you at night times," they offered as they procured a glass bottle of the same colorless liquor.

When I took the seat, a second glass appeared unasked, and when I took in the odor, a familiar sharp,invigorating scent filled my nostrils.

"It would seem so, given your relentless wakefulness."

"Rest is a luxury for those who can afford it. I had my fair share of rest, and do not wish to do so anymore." Their words did not contain the same malice as the spite directed toward Megumi had, moreso a sadness as cloudy as the glass emitting the scent of white juniper. "Do not fret, the storm will soon pass."

The storm is my cage, the lightning my chain, and I wish it wasn't so.

I did not trust the silence that lingered in the house to drink. Perhaps it was my weary look that made them chuckle, the sound ringing at the ring of their glass with the clink of a ghostly bell.

"It is not poisoned." Their lips curled into a half smile, ever half-knowing. "Or perhaps your preference lies with some other drink?" Their hand waved toward the back of the kitchen slowly. "Take your pick."

I remember how we drank until dawn's light broke upon us. I fear my tolerance stands unscathed, yet that is my secret to keep. I do not drink because of fear, and caution. That much is true.

But, my dear Utahime, how I miss you. How I miss you with my every breath, as if each of them is but a desperate plea as I hold onto my memories like a beggar, yearning to catch but a glimpse of the days past when we were not apart.

I try desperately to hold onto the sound of your voice engraved into my being, as your eyes are, and the warmth of your skin, or the way your scar wrinkles when you regard me with a smile.

If only I could wish you into existence, a summon of midnight sparks, there is nothing I would do so more urgently now, even if you were gone hours into the hazy foggy dusk and left nothing but the feeling of your lips as a parting gift- oh, would that I could, only to hold onto the way that I miss you, forever. My heart already aches. But it is nigh bursting simply staring into the crystalline glass now. Since I eventually nursed the glass in my hand, it quelled the pain in my heart by a fracture, but not enough.

Uraume stared into their own glass with a contemplative glare. They were already in their cups before I arrived, and I remembered the city at that — stumbling drunkards in the streets, under the gas lights, and the idea of civilization is strange out here.

"Since we are in agreement that there are creatures below and above humanity that haunt and clash with them," I asked, since I dared to, in their current state, a little sedated and not harmful. "As there is no mystery to what your master truly is. What of you?"

"I didn't realize it was considered polite to ask questions such as this bluntly, doctor. Will you try and dissect me next?"

"Not that I wouldn't think that intriguing," I tipped my glass toward them like a toast, as if there was not at least a shred of truth in that jest. "But I prefer to study your kind from a safer distance. I have already witnessed a dead girl rise from her grave and cared for the leftover victims of the manor."

"Ah, the dead girl. Indeed, a very nasty creature. I, too, would prefer to not be near her again." I felt like they had invited me because of their own entertainment, and it was palpable now in the ever cruel kind mask slipping away for nothing but frigid ice. "But here is where you err in your assumption. You have never met my kind, nor have you ever met the kind of my lord. You spoke of creatures above and below—yet there is nothing beneath mortals, certainly not us."

I shivered, although the thought fascinated me, and I dare not pretend otherwise.They bear no resemblance to the decaying state Rika had been in when she returned; they seemed almost alive in our past interactions, though I had never seen them eat, and I do wonder what effect the alcohol has on them.

I am sure they do not need sustenance like humans do, as Megumi or I.

My mind drifted to his strange remark about Uraume being an excellent cook. This creature is the embodiment of odd violent servitude, like some cruel smallfolk beneath hills, or a house-helping creature caught enraged enough to drink human blood.

My blood froze in my veins as I drained my glass, and thought about the bitemark on Megumi's arm, suppliants, beggars, perhaps, drawn here, after death. "The dead feast sometimes, do they? Since I see you work on meat so tirelessly."

"Is that not inherently clear?" They laughed now, and the candle flickered so much their body lost form, a faint outline, shaking in glee. "The dead love to eat humans, doctor. Hunger is after all, so very natural. Some do have a more refined palate than simply eating the meat raw from the bone."

A dark thought crossed my mind—had Satoru lived longer, would Suguru have devoured him? I doubted it. The act of devouring, the act of haunting, is inherently carnal, but it seems more like the bond I can see Megumi wasting away from, the strange draining that goes beyond flesh.

Once again, I pondered: If I removed Megumi from here, would that free him or kill him? Or would he be simply pursued forever, as he so fears and claims? I am afraid there is but one way to find out. I lack the time for more research and attempts.

"You do remind me of myself before I found my purpose, that is why I like your presence," Uraume states, draining another cup, and then pouring but the rest of the bottle into the glass. "I can see your confusion. Once again, you had the right to ask me all you want, and write it into your journal, it is all the same in the end. It does not matter."

I should have known they would know I write this journal and the events occurring down. They did warn me they had eyes in the walls of the house. Nonetheless, it took all my strength to stay still in my seat and mask my shock or distraught.

"You called Megumi an ill-fated martyr, a poisoned vessel."

“I could call him far worse, if I had the time.”They sighed, and I echoed the gesture, albeit for distinctly different reasons."My master escaped the last imprisonment," they muttered, with a bitter tinge lacing through the warming alcohol and the wind hammering against the shutters.

“And now, here we are, stranded in this forsaken wasteland, surrounded by nothing but peasants and sheep. I am sick to death of the resistance. And the sanctimonious self-appraisal that comes along with it. He fancies himself a martyr, he is a mongrel and a sinner, if he only gives up the act, we can all find peace.”

Peace is what the dead and the living all need to achieve, tantalizing in its ideals almost, but to exorcise a demon, it might take more than I have in me. Since I doubt that peace means the same for a creature of Uraume’s or Sukuna’s standards as it does for me, and so I shall not even attempt to understand it.

"For one reason or another, I do not believe he ever will." The word "hope" flitted and wavered on my lips, too fragile a thing to form and be sent into the world like a soldier unfit for the war they have to fight.

"Then he is all but lost," they answered, their voice laced with the cold pine scent wafting through the kitchen. "and so are you. Cheers, Shoko."

The storm outside raged on, the water running in rivulets down the stone and old wood. The dank dampness almost burned rotten in all my senses. I went to bed with the gnawing sorrow of someone sentenced to hang for crimes not committed, andf the feeling never ceased to hold me in a choke, as I fulfilled hunter and hunted dreams in weak slumber. The drumming of the rain had snuck into my sleep, and so the moors were drenched in the water, as I ran away from the shed and the stable now, with no lights behind me burning in the house to guide me. The rain blinded me and I fled, but to no avail, as I was torn down but where I stood.

The dreams may be simply my mind warning me, but they surely loom over my mind as a bad omen when I wake up.

The water continued to fall down the next day, though I woke up without any notion of time. The expanse devours it in its somnolent state, and it might have been early morning or late evening behind the grey nimbus of clouds brewing cauldrons of cold water and accursed trapped terrain.

Although the downpour lessened in favor of soft spraying mist filling the fog, a cold sunk right into skeletons and soaked those bones in a heavy dark burden through it.

No flame can dry our clothes.No fire can warm our bodies.

The house was caught in this drear, and it was devoid of its inhabitants. There was no sign of life down the stairs, no soul in the kitchen, as I scavenged food and drink, devouring it in a barbaric manner that has become the habit of the hunted throughout the years when I have not a moment to waste. Even if the fire in the living room cackled, it did not harbor the hosts of this nightmare abode.

I did notice traces of life, but they were not the kind I anticipated.

Mud prints marred the wooden floorboards, racing up the stairs like a wild animal had broken into the back door. Heavy seams of fabric had trailed up, in a struggle, slipping wet feet carrying the dirt inside.They stopped by the top of the creaking staircase with Uraume scrubbing them away in a misbegotten, begrudged expression, the brush ready to erase any evidence of what had occurred.

The window stood ajar in Tsumiki’s room, inviting the wind inside, every linen billowed in the weather like a swollen gut.

I found Megumi where I had left him, in the same chair as before, legs stretched forward, the hems of his dark trousers caked with dirt, unnoticeable almost if I had not seen the tracks leading up the stairs. He barely stirred as I snuck through the open crack of the door. Even my inspection did not rouse him, as he shook in the dreams of this cursed world.

His sister did the very same, but when I turned her wrist seeking her steady beat of life, I noticed that one of her well-kept nails was torn, a fresh wound, and the others on the hand were caked in blood and dirt like abominable bleeding half moons.

That made me shake Megumi awake, swiftly so. Even though I lacked strength, his whole body steeled itself under my grip on his shoulder. It pains me to see what he has become.

"What game are you playing with me?" I demanded to know. "Why did you not tell me your sister was walking about?”

"There was nothing to say when you arrived," he promised, weary but truthful. "I was all but honest. I am unsure what caused her to sleepwalk these last nights; it is a rare occurrence, but this house... it calls to her more often." At that, he bowed his head and lowered his voice to a murmur, a rustle of clothes and flowers in the windy breeze. "It is but one more reason to take her with you and flee as soon as the rain has stopped."

"If you believe I will leave you behind, Megumi, you are even more of a fool than Satoru and his charades."

I clasped his shoulder harder now, and he grimaced painfully, perhaps at my grasp, perhaps at my insistence.

"We shall all leave this house," I whispered trembling, seeking to hide behind the hope of the wind shielding us from prying ears. There was so little light left in his face, it was scaring me more than the idea of what unknown consequences were awaiting us. I dared to speak the words even if I shouldn’t. "I will see to Uraume if you make sure the horses are prepared. Once we are ready, we must take your sister and ride as far as we can in the night.”

My knowledge of our immediate surroundings was rather sparse, but I was grateful for the morsels of information Mei had shared over drinks. I could have attempted to surprise Uraume, but it seems a bad idea since they were never asleep. There was very little time for plans. I had very limited supplies with me.

"Lock the doors, and close the windows," I commanded in a hush, this time around, not a negotiation. "In the morrow, if the weather eases, we make ready for our escape, we await the right moment, and the night will take us."

I dare to say I did not expect what occurred next — the way he clung to me, arms circling me in a crushing embrace. I softly sighed as I held him for but a fleeting moment. He was so cold. If the fire could not warm us, the wind had stolen but his last breath and he was weak and frail in this desperate embrace.

That was not what let the blood in my veins freeze. It was the way his face contorted and turned to a ghastly pale sheen. The wind might have hidden my words from mortal ears, but much to my chagrin not the figure in the white apron, grasping a hand onto the doorframe, in some sign of apprehension. And with them, like the harbinger of doom, the master of the house loomed, his presence as inevitable as death itself.

There was no escape, and whatever bloodshed had cooled off or sated his temper, it had worn off long before the rain had drowned us all.

There was no explanation to offer, and nothing to say, as I stood rooted in between dead wildflowers.

He droned, words without meaning, or perhaps even no words at all, and I inhaled air that I did not know would be one of my last breaths.

His jaw clenched as he moved toward me one more step, then he smiled, and what a smile that was, the most grotesque, vile thing I have ever seen, chilling me to my core.

The sensations and feelings of this moment elude me even now; all the feeling left my body with the air that escaped my crushed windpipe as his hands— tainted black claws of a demonic beast— closed around me, locking around me. Everything was but a blur, and I do not recall if I was shockedt by the fast movement or simply flinched in an instinct.

What I do recall is the cracking sound my bones made when he bent them, a sickening shudder. The angle made me dance like a ballerina, my arms flailing, my legs bucking, as his hands crushed my neck, a twist turning it around as I struggled, ripping away my tendrils, my skin. The noise of my own bones breaking reverberated in my skull, before it suddenly fell quiet, and I beheld a stark white and black void before I fell and everything vanished.

I wonder if that is what people see when they depart from this earth? The nothing? The void? No wonder they return maddened, crawling on arms and legs and limp to their reasons to linger abound and among the living.

I was, for all intents of purposes, not fully lost. As I came back to myself, two pale hands dragged me by my boots over wooden floorboards, and then through muddy soil. The color soaked my dress, the soil clung to my hair. I became earthbound, in a country

far off home, away from all my longing and the objects of it thereafter. My blood, or whatever had not already been drained, mingled in the yard, as I suspected so many before me had.

The animals in the stable behind me screamed, shrill noises piercing my mind as I was nothing but numb, a puppet staring up at them until I joined their shrill sounds in a single involuntary gasp.

My legs smattered into the soft ground as the Uraume loomed over me, eyes narrow, hair matted with sweat, relinquishing their grip.

"I warned you," they simply stated. “And how I wished that you’d not have to die. I’d have let you, doctor, if you wish to be comforted in the last moments. Leave, that is. One less regret, so that you may perish in peace.”

I did not wish to perish in peace, nor did I wish to be damned in regret. With no voice, I could not

"It should be over soon," Uraume muttered, gripping my hands this time, a frigid touch clasping them for a second before they resumed to dragging me toward the shed. If they meant my death or the annihilation of Megumi Fushiguro, who could say for sure.

This time, the darkness was impenetrable, and a strange part of me was very aware that I had met my demise. I had failed my mission; I had not freed anyone, for that matter, and no one would ever find my journal. No one would tell you that I was dead, you would never know, and in the end, your foreboding warnings and worries were all but true.

I did neither wish to die nor expect it. Perhaps I dreaded it, but that is an entirely human fear of death, a fear of the unknown. I have seen death up close so many times — I have seen unnamed corpses, and loved ones, I saw a dead girl crawl out of a broken coffin, whispering a name in the stanza of yearning.

When I was stripped of will and lost my soul, something old came to me like a figure in a nightmare, something dark nesting in my empty ribcage like a bird. My body reformed, like molten metal cast into the form of a weapon, a slow, radiant smoldering process heated by the fires of the abyss, and I wished back the black void to take me and make me forget.

When I returned to my senses, the first thing that I realized was my head hurt, a searing pain. My throat burned too, a rasping sensation as if I had come out of a bad dream with a parched throat in the middle of the night.

I tried to move my arms and legs but somehow I still felt the same invisible marionette strings binding me, a weight pushing me down, rendering me useless. When I stretched my fingers, something cold and wet met my fingertips. It squelched and gave under

my hand, with a familiar softness, and I struggled in the restraints until I dared to take a long breath through my nose.

Ah, and I wish dearly so I hadn't.

The scents were an overbearing odor of the usual, coppery scent of blood, the musky, damp rot of the earth, and a sickly sweet note.

Graveyard soil and rotten bodies encaged me like a beetle in amber.

Another sickly sweet breath cloyed my lungs and I dared to open my eyes, beholding a sight most regrettable to witness. The jaw of the rotting face hung agape like a snake's maw, as the corpse stared down at me, the hollow socket of its nose was so close I might have kissed it if I had not flinched back.

With a wretched, forlorn thrust, my arms brushed against a piece of cloth wrapped around a leg, bone exposed.

As I burrowed upward, sharp pieces of bones gouged into my palm, cutting my skin apart, and one long broken femur bone sliced along my face in a jagged line.

The pit, since I dared not call it a grave, held bodies in varied states of decay. Or at least parts of them. It felt like I was grotesquely born anew, a frail infant covered in blood, as I clawed toward the edge of the pit. The bones rattled against rotting flesh beneath my feet in an eerie glockenspiel as I waded through the shallow end of the hole. The inside of the shed was dark, yet strangely, the darkness did not frighten me. The world had turned to tenebrous ash around me, alas it stood apart in inexplicable clarity.

When my shaking hands felt for my neck, I found the jagged cracks in it, where the bones had snapped, and muscles had been torn asunder. Now, the cracks were barely visible. I could move, albeit stiffly so.

Another thing caught my immediate attention surrounded by death; as my fingers felt over the misaligned bones, they brushed my pulse, yet found nothing.

It might not come as a surprise to say that, since I told you about my demise, but I was certainly not prepared for it. The world settled in a shroud of daggers over me as I took an eternity to settle in the reality of the world as it was now. That I had become what I sought.

I slipped out of the shed easily. The fog surrounded me in a damp embrace, and I crawled into safety away from the windows of the house as it curled its soft fingers around me. Almost as if it was shielding me as I was moving slowly beyond the red and orange glint of lanterns.

For but a moment, I swore that I saw a figure at one of the kitchen windows, but even with the sharpness of my senses, they were but a blur—a phantom, like before. No alarms rang, no one came to break my body apart once more.

As I hid behind the old brickwork, my eyes wandered over the bleak landscape around me. And to my surprise, I was not the only one afoot in the death of this cold hazy night. Tsumiki drifted between the blades of grass in a white nightgown, a sleepwalker

with bare feet gliding on moss, and I was sure now without any doubt I had seen her before, in the rain, and perhaps even before that. Her fingers reached toward me without knowing of my existence, and I slowly took her hand, feeling the rush of her heart beat inside it, the reach of her life, even now in this state. A state I did not possess. And nevermore would.

This house is not what is calling us—neither her nor me.

"Don't fret," I promised her, voice a dry rasp in my unnatural stillness. "I'll do right this time."

The moon was all but a sickle hidden in the grey clouds, and it gave us no refuge nor sheltered and nursed us with its light as we both simply took in the moor for a moment. When I let go of her hand, desperate footsteps echoed over the earth.

Megumi stopped his disheveled run but a few steps afar, fluttering cloak and flushed in confusion and feverish bewilderment. He is all but skin and bones. It is the only hint for a passage of time I possess. I must have been lost for long.

"I was sure you were dead," he stuttered, with a ragged breath, and I watched him, the way that humans breathe, lungs full of midnight air, until I realized I hadn't done it for a while —and yet didn't suffer for it.

"You did not truly think I would leave you behind," I murmured, my voice barely more than a whisper. "There are enough others already lost. Where is he?"

I meant my murderer, and the murderer of so many others, worse even, more that he had tormented or mocked or that he had kept.

“Asleep,” Megumi answered. “Or whatever the dead do when they rest their heads.”

I wouldn’t know yet how to answer, I dared never ask, but I shall find out soon enough.

With a gesture, I beckoned him to follow, silently.

In the strange bleeding silence, with nothing but breath and heartbeats to guide me, I stepped past his agonized, trembling body.

No one stopped me from capturing the horses, bodies sleek, eyes wide. No one bothered me leading them outside. I helped lift the dreaming girl in the saddle along with her brother, a dark-stained broken figure cradling her safely.

For beasts as big as the dogs, they are silent creatures following along. I do not know if they had followed Megumi outside, or stood watch by the shed, but their teeth were the only thing visible in the night as they trotted along, scaring the horses.

If Uraume saw me, they made no move to stop me or wake the lord of the abandoned house. Perhaps it was Megumi’s presence that stayed their hand and their distaste for each other. Perhaps they are glad to see them gone or hope that this will be the moment that ends whatever interest their master still has to keep him alive. I dare not question the motives of the creatures dwelling in this wretched place.

We rode through the night as I promised, worn out path swallowed by it. Luckily, the horses knew the way well enough and carried us swiftly. As we passed the crossing, the weeping stone sang a lament again — a song that trailed behind me in a lilting bow, as it was cheering for me to flee from this sorrowful, lost place.

It has been weeks since that night, and yet it feels too unnatural to attempt and pen anything else afterward down. For one, because we are yet to be safe, as we are traversing the country to board a ship soon, and also because nothing that I could say feels as relevant as the events that have occurred since then.

The wandering at night has stopped, now, and the dreaming girl slumbers in a bed or the carriage in her brother's lap.

The dreams of the hunter and the prey ceased as well, and I am sure it is because we escaped.

I report happily that Megumi slowly but steadily gains his body back, always followed by his ever vigilant monstrous dogs following wherever we leave, as well as I learn to navigate my new form, and I hope for the best as safety eludes us but we are quick to

move.

Utahime, perhaps I lied, there is but one more relevant thing to say, and it is a promise. I will be back shortly. If you read this, I hope I am safely and happily returned, and on the best possible way to navigate and study myself as well as find a way out of this wretched misery we are caught in. I must be.

Yours, forever

The last entry in a journal by S. I.

Half the book is but empty, some pages ripped, a few splattered in dubious, dried liquids.