Two weeks.
That's how long it took for the shrine to stop feeling like a motel room and start feeling like a place that missed them when they stepped out.
Not that Alaudi would say that out loud.
Morning came in slow layers of pale light through cedar branches. Mist pooled in the hollows. Crows heckled each other in the distance. Kyoto's spiritual pressure rolled lazy and content, like a big cat napping with one eye half-open.
"Again," Alaudi said.
Ren groaned, already mid-stretch. "I just woke up."
"And?"
Ren grimaced. "...Nothing."
"Correct."
They moved.
Today's lesson: movement with control.
No more sitting still and "feeling it." Ren had that down well enough not to explode. Now he had to hold his power while his body did something.
"Run the perimeter," Alaudi said. "Breathe like I showed you. Keep your energy tucked in. Shrine kicks if you leak."
Ren glanced at the old stone fox statues flanking the path. They stared back, impassive.
"Okay, yeah, I'll keep it in," he muttered, and took off at a jog.
Hibird flew lazy circles overhead as escort. Roll trundled along the inner edge of the path, little spines flickering, acting as low-budget detection net.
Alaudi watched.
Ren stumbled twice when his aura wanted to flare with exertion. Each time, he dragged it back in faster.
"Better," Alaudi called.
"It sucks," Ren called back, breathless.
"Good," Alaudi said.
Training that didn't suck wasn't training.
By midday, Ren was sprawled on the steps, dead to the world. Hibird perched smugly on his chest. Roll sat on his head.
Alaudi took the quiet window.
Cloud Flames slid from his palms, then spread in thin strands across the courtyard, into the treeline, down toward the hidden paths. He narrowed his focus, condensing the domain tighter, thicker, until it stopped being a haze and became structure.
A ring. A net. A second skin over the shrine.
With his eyes closed, he walked the boundary without moving his feet.
A leaf falling here.
A fox slipping through there.
The flutter of a low-rank youkai testing the edge and backing away quick when its fur prickled.
He held it all for a full minute.
Then let it go.
Too slow, he decided. Too heavy. It'd work for defense, but not if he had to move fast.
Adjust it, something inside suggested.
Not Roll. Not his own voice. That other one. Cooler. Measuring.
The faint impression of a crown prickled above his brow, a pressure like fingers on glass.
He scowled and opened his eyes. The sensation vanished.
"Not yet," he said under his breath.
He would use that power. On his terms, not because it whispered.
Trouble found them by late afternoon.
Not big trouble. Just stupid enough to be useful.
Alaudi felt it halfway down the mountain path on a supply run: a jagged spike of twisted youki knifing through Kyoto's smoother flow. Angry. Hungry. Heading up, toward the outer wards—toward his shrine.
He exhaled.
Hibird stiffened on his shoulder. Roll's spines rose in his shadow.
He didn't run. He just moved.
By the time the warped presence came into sight—ragged boar-like youkai, patchy hide, eyes gone white with some cheap curse or botched possession—it was already snarling at the first of Yasaka's barrier lines.
The wards held.
For now.
"Hey," Alaudi called.
The beast jerked its head his way, froth dripping from its jaws. Up close, he could see threads of foreign power wormed through its aura—someone had poked it, pushed it, aimed it uphill.
Cute.
"Back off the line," Alaudi said. "Last warning."
It screamed and charged.
He spread his Cloud Flames with a thought.
The path between them turned violet. Each of the boar's stomping steps sank into it like wet concrete. It thrashed, roared, but every move only buried it deeper.
"Should've listened," Alaudi said.
He flicked two fingers.
Pillars of Cloud Flame shot up around the beast, caging it. The fire didn't burn flesh; it burned movement, locking muscles, crushing wild edges, isolating the invading energy like smoke trapped in glass.
The foreign threads squirmed.
Alaudi saw them. Felt them.
Someone's experiment. Or distraction.
He tightened his grip. The beast shrieked, sound warping.
He could just erase it.
Instead, he did something the old Himejima would have hated.
He separated.
Violet fire squeezed, forcing the twisted energy out of the boar's body like poison from a wound. The corrupted threads bled into the cage, thrashing against his domain.
Outside the trap, the physical boar collapsed, panting, dazed, eyes clearing.
Inside the flames: a naked lump of malice, all edges, no anchor.
Hibird fluffed up.
Roll prowled around inside the circle, quills raised.
"That's better," Alaudi said.
He closed his hand.
The Cloud Flames contracted.
The foreign curse shredded, smothered, and went out.
He let the cage drop.
The boar sniffed the ground, then bolted back down the mountain, away from the wards, as if something had explained the concept of consequences directly into its brain.
Alaudi watched it go.
"Well," a voice said, smooth as running water. "That was elegant."
He didn't jump. Just turned his head.
One of Yasaka's lieutenants—tall kitsune with three tails—stood leaning against a tree, arms folded, having watched the whole thing.
"You let a tainted one approach our lines," she said. Not accusing. Testing.
"I wanted to see if it would stop," Alaudi replied. "It didn't."
"You didn't kill it."
"It wasn't the problem."
Her eyes glinted. "And what was?"
He nodded at the scorch-mark where the curse had been. "That."
She eyed the mark, then him. "Yasaka-sama wondered if our… guest would respond to smaller threats, or only grand ones."
"She could ask," Alaudi said.
"She prefers evidence," the kitsune said. A hint of approval colored her tone. "You handled it cleanly. The land noticed."
The shrine's distant hum, the lack of backlash, agreed.
"Someone's testing your borders," Alaudi said. "Or your patience."
"Ours," she corrected lightly. "You live here. Kyoto's tests are also yours."
"Good," Alaudi said. "I get bored."
The kitsune snorted. "Try not to. The last bored guardian we had turned into a problem."
"I'm hard to domesticate," he said.
"I see that," she answered. Then, more serious: "If you sense more of those foreign threads, inform us. Quickly."
He nodded once. "If I'm close. If I'm not, I'll cut them."
"That will also do." She vanished into leaves and foxfire.
Alaudi lingered one more moment, feeling for any lingering wrongness.
Nothing.
As he turned back up the path, Hibird pecked his ear sharply.
"What," Alaudi asked.
Hibird chirped something like: You're doing it again.
He didn't bother pretending not to understand.
He'd moved without thinking—stepped in, fixed it, shielded the ward-line because it was his now too.
Tch.
Ren was sitting cross-legged on the veranda when Alaudi returned, eyes closed, aura held in a decent, shaky coil close to his skin.
He opened one eye. "You were gone longer."
"Stray boar," Alaudi said, stepping past him. "Cursed. Fixed."
"Oh." Ren paused. "Did you kill it?"
"No."
"Because it wasn't its fault?" Ren asked.
Alaudi glanced back.
The kid met his eyes, steady.
"Because it was stupid, not malicious," Alaudi said. "And because if I kill everything stupid, I'll be here a while."
Ren huffed a laugh.
Hibird abandoned Alaudi's shoulder for his, chirping rapidly like a gossiping aunt retelling the boar incident in compressed bird noises. Roll nudged Ren's knee, sparks faint.
"You're protecting the shrine," Ren said quietly. Not a question.
"I'm protecting my sleep," Alaudi said.
Ren smiled, small but real. "Sure."
Alaudi sat beside him.
"Again," he said.
Ren shut his eyes without complaint this time.
The shrine watched them.
Kyoto's heartbeat kept time.
Somewhere above, for just a breath, a faint, pale-gold crown-line shimmered into being over Alaudi's head—responding not to rage or survival, but to the simple, stubborn act of holding a space safe.
He felt it.
He didn't push it away this time.
He just let it exist for three seconds, long enough to understand:
Sky did not mean chains.
It meant center.
Anchor.
Responsibility he'd already started taking before the power had a name.
"Fine," he thought at it. "But we're doing this my way."
The crown-flicker pulsed once in agreement and faded.
Cloud Flames purred along the stone like satisfied thunder.
"Again," Alaudi repeated.
Ren breathed.
The guardian he refused to call himself kept watch as the day slid toward dusk.