The first sign that things were changing was how quiet the wrongness became.
The cursed boar had been obvious: loud, sloppy, twisted. Whatever came next, Alaudi expected it to be smarter.
Kyoto agreed.
Three days after the boar incident, the rain cleared. The air went razor-sharp. From the shrine's steps he could see the whole city more clearly than usual—temples, towers, streets, all stitched together with faint lines of power.
His Cloud Flames traced those lines without touching. Observing.
Ren sat nearby, running through breathing drills. Hibird was asleep on his head like a hat. Roll lay belly-up in a beam of sunlight, perfectly useless.
Alaudi felt it like a splinter.
Far edge of Kyoto. Not tearing the wards, not rushing the barrier lines—just… listening.
Watching.
Foreign power pressed up against Kyoto's skin, then withdrew. Pressed. Withdrew.
Testing.
"Stay here," Alaudi said, standing.
Ren's eyes snapped open. "What's wrong?"
"Static," Alaudi said. "Shrine's calm. That means out there."
Ren pushed himself up. "I can—"
"No," Alaudi said, and there was no crack in it. "This isn't 'run laps and don't explode' level."
Ren's mouth pressed thin; he nodded, sitting back down. Hibird slid from his hair to his shoulder, sticking close. Roll hopped to the threshold like a tiny sentry.
Alaudi stepped off the veranda.
Cloud Flames bloomed under his boots and carried him down the worn path.
The closer he got, the quieter it felt.
Not peaceful. Muted. Like something was trying to dampen Kyoto's voice.
He dropped his presence low, Cloud Flames hugging close. He didn't want whoever it was to clock him first.
The trail took him to a cluster of old buildings on the city's fringe—abandoned inns and shuttered shops that hadn't yet been torn down or reclaimed by youkai.
That was the first red flag.
Kyoto didn't like empty spaces hanging around this long.
He reached out with his flame, brushing the cracked pavement, the moldy walls.
There. A slick film of something foreign spread thin across the alleyway. Human magic. Western. Circles etched with angelic script twisted into something uglier.
He recognized parts; Grigori filed this kind of thing.
"Amateur hour," he muttered.
He stepped through a broken doorway.
Inside, the air was colder. Not temperature. Meaning.
Three men in exorcist-style gear stood around a makeshift array chalked on the floor. Disposable charm tags. A few stolen youkai trinkets. A laptop open to grainy footage of Kyoto shrines. One of them muttered into a headset—English, mostly.
"…field test… minor familiar corrupted… reaction within expectations…"
Alaudi didn't make a sound, but all three turned when the Cloud dipped under their boots.
The one with the headset scowled. "Barrier—"
"Is trash," Alaudi said.
They froze.
To their credit, they clocked immediately that he wasn't a civilian. Their auras snapped sharp, blades half-drawn, scripture flaring.
"Identify yourself," the leader snapped.
"No," Alaudi said.
His violet domain rolled out from center mass, coating the floor and walls, slipping under their feet, bleeding up through the chalk lines. Their circle warped, sigils smearing.
The second guy tried an ofuda; it fizzled mid-air.
"Grigori?" the leader guessed, watching the flame. "Or—no. That's wrong. You're not—"
"Here's the part where you shut up," Alaudi said calmly. "You're trespassing in Kyoto. Worse, you're poking it. I don't like that."
"We have sanction," the man lied too fast. "Joint-church research—"
"No, you don't."
He'd seen sanctioned work. It didn't smell like this.
Under his domain, he felt them reaching: for radio signals, escape charms, a teleport marker.
He crushed each attempt as it sparked.
Panic leaked.
"Y-you can't interfere," the second one stammered. "This is strategic—"
Alaudi stepped closer.
Violet Flames rose ankle-high around all three, not burning, just holding.
"Let me explain something," he said. "Kyoto extended me hospitality. You are not Kyoto."
One of them swung a blade.
The domain shoved back, turning the strike aside without much effort. He caught the man's wrist, twisted, and let a thread of Cloud Flame crawl up his sleeve—not to scorch flesh, but to bite cleanly through the charms sewn there.
Talisman ash drifted down.
Their defenses fell apart like wet paper.
"You did that to the boar," Alaudi said. "To see if you could slip influence through the wards. Play with local life. Watch the reaction."
Fear sharpened their faces in unison.
Confirmation.
"We're gathering data," the leader tried, sweating. "If we understand how Kyoto's system works, we can better protect—"
"Say 'protect' one more time," Alaudi said. "I dare you."
The man swallowed the word.
Good.
Outside, Kyoto's ambient pressure flexed. The land knew. It was letting Alaudi handle it—for the moment.
"You have two options," Alaudi said. "One: I break your toys, walk you to Yasaka, and you explain this to her face."
Silence.
"Two: I break your toys, and you leave, now, with the very sudden understanding that if you come back without an invitation, this city will kill you before I have to."
"That's not your decision," the leader snapped. "You're—"
"Guest," Alaudi said. "Not servant."
He let the Cloud Flames surge just enough that they felt it—how easily he could tighten, how fast their bones would snap if he wanted.
They got the message.
The man with the headset raised his hands slowly. "We… withdraw."
"Good choice," Alaudi said.
He swept the room with his flame.
Every tool, every circle, every marker soaked in foreign power burned away—not in a dramatic inferno, but in silent erasure. No data for whoever they reported to. No hooks left in Kyoto.
The Cloud left the walls clean.
He released their legs.
"Walk," he said.
They went. Fast.
He watched until he couldn't feel them anymore.
Only then did he let out a slow breath.
"That was merciful."
Yasaka's lieutenant dropped out of a shadowed beam near the ceiling, tails barely brushing the floor as she landed.
"You were listening," Alaudi said.
"Of course," she said. "We wanted to see if you'd kill them."
"They're idiots following orders. Kill the orders," Alaudi said. "And if they come back, then I stop being polite."
The kitsune smiled, sharp and satisfied. "We're in agreement."
She met his eyes. "These weren't Khaos Brigade. Their patterns match smaller Western groups. Splinter cells. The kind that hear 'Kyoto' and think 'lab.' We'll track the trail."
"You want my notes?" Alaudi asked.
"You erased most of theirs," she said. Approval again. "But yes. Tell Yasaka-sama what you felt in their curses later."
He nodded once. "Fine."
As he stepped past her toward the door, she added, "You took a risk not calling us in."
"No," he said. "I took a courtesy. You already had eyes here."
Her grin widened. "You're learning how we think."
"No," Alaudi said again. "I'm learning how to not be in the way."
She laughed and vanished into foxfire.
On the walk back up, Hibird rejoined him from nowhere, landing with a thump that said he was offended about being left behind. Roll reappeared at his heel.
"I'm back," Alaudi said when he reached the shrine.
Ren looked up from a stance drill. Sweat stuck his hair to his forehead. "Everything okay?"
"Annoyance," Alaudi said. "Handled."
"What kind?" Ren pressed.
"The kind that pokes things it doesn't understand and calls it research," Alaudi said. "You'll meet plenty."
Ren grimaced. "Sounds like the people who made me."
Alaudi paused.
He hadn't missed it—the way Ren's eyes sometimes focused on things nobody else seemed to see, the flickers of incorrect geometry that warped the air when he lost concentration.
"Maybe," Alaudi said. "But you're here now. So we make sure if they come looking, they don't like what they find."
Ren's mouth tugged into a crooked almost-smile. "Okay. More training, then."
"Now you're getting it," Alaudi said.
Ren went back into his stance.
Alaudi settled on the step, Cloud Flames circulating through the stones, reaffirming his claim around this tiny patch of land.
Kyoto didn't protest.
If anything, it leaned into him.
For a brief moment, the sense of that pale-gold crown returned—stronger than before, hovering over both him and the shrine. A pattern, a network, whispering how easily he could link his field with Kyoto's for real: unify, stabilize, lead.
He could see the shape of it:
Cloud as the walls.
Sky as the center.
Guardian, but official.
He let the idea sit.
Ren stumbled, cursed under his breath, then corrected his posture.
Hibird barked a tiny scold. Roll bumped his foot.
Alaudi exhaled and let the crown-flicker fade again.
"Not yet," he murmured. "We're still in the margins."
But the margins were getting sharper.
And somewhere out there, people were starting to notice the Cloud that wouldn't die was no longer drifting.
He'd chosen a city.
Now came the part where he proved that choice went both ways.