The rain always descended with the cloying scent of iron clinging to its droplets.
In this soil of Mutsu, the blood of the Emishi rebels and the Imperial soldiers who had perished over the last century lay in stagnant, suffocating layers. When the heavens wept, that ancient stench of slaughter rose from the mire, mingling with the heavy musk of damp earth.
Utsugi loathed that smell with a visceral intensity.
"Damnation."
He spoke the word like a low growl, his eyes fixed on the rhythmic fall of rain from the eaves of the sanctuary.
He sat upon the wooden veranda of a decaying, forgotten temple. Casting aside his sodden straw sandals, he withdrew a single rice ball from the folds of his garment. The grains were withered and dry; the only filling was the meager remains of a salt-pickled plum.
"Is there no meat?"
The question was a reflex of habit. Had the soft aristocrats of Heian-kyo heard it, they would have recoiled in horror—to crave flesh in a land where the Buddha's law forbade such consumption. But for Utsugi, such holy precepts had long since been washed away by the Northern rains.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
His temples pulsed with a violent rhythm. Utsugi furrowed his brow, sealing his eyes shut in a futile bid for stillness.
Even in darkness, the world refused to vanish.
Behind his closed eyelids, the trajectory of every individual raindrop manifested as a pale blue afterimage. He perceived the frantic movements of termites devouring the temple's rotting pillars; the faltering heartbeat of a dying doe in a forest five miles distant; the viscous, suffocating flow of cursed energy snaking across the mountain ridges in the far horizon.
The Six Eyes.
To the world, this sight was a divine benediction. To Utsugi, it was a 'lamp that never dimmed'—an eternal, agonizing curse.
By all rights of providence, this power should have belonged to the elder brother of Enju, born on the same cursed day. But that phantom known as Kenjaku had slaughtered the boy, and the cruel gears of causality had forcibly thrust these eyes into Utsugi's sockets instead.
"My head... it rings..."
Though he kept the Reverse Cursed Technique constantly circulating through his brain to stave off the madness, the deluge of information still threatened to burst his mind like a dam under siege.
It was then that an alien sound splintered the rhythm of the rain.
Squash. Squash.
It was not the sound of a foot sinking into mud. It was the sound of something heavy being dragged. Then, the putrid stench of bursting, rancid meat reached him.
Utsugi lowered his rice ball and let out a long, weary sigh. He resented a world that would not grant him even the dignity of a quiet meal.
"Oi. I see you hiding there. Do not bother."
Utsugi's gaze shifted toward the bamboo thicket beyond the crumbled perimeter wall.
A shape coalesced from the shadows. It bore the raiment of a monk wearing a traditional hat, yet beneath that brim, where a face should have been, there was only a singular, yawning maw torn wide. A low-grade Cursed Spirit. A grotesque manifestation of the lingering grudges left by monks who had succumbed to famine.
"Hungry... So hungry..."
The curse emitted a dissonant, gargling cry as it scrambled over the ruins.
Utsugi yawned with boredom and reached for the tachi at his hip. The scabbard was battered and aged, yet the hilt gleamed, polished smooth by years of constant use.
"I am hungry as well."
The cursed spirit lunged. Its speed was formidable; a common soldier would have had his throat torn out before he could even draw breath to scream.
But in Utsugi's world, the creature moved slower than a snail traversing a mire.
The Six Eyes analyzed the sequence of its muscular contractions, the angle of its ankles as it leaped, and the precise coordinates of the 'core' of cursed energy within its wretched form, processing it all in infinitesimal fractions of a second.
Three paces to the right front. A leaping strike. Target: the jugular.
Utsugi did not move his feet. He merely shifted his torso with the fluid grace of a falling leaf.
The curse's jaw snapped shut, grazing only the air where his sleeve had been an instant before.
In that heartbeat, Utsugi's hand closed around the hilt of his blade.
"Falling Blossom Emotion."
Originally, this was a defensive technique passed down through the Big Three Clans—an art that released cursed energy the moment a Domain's sure-hit attack made contact to repel it. Utsugi, however, wielded the shield as a spear.
He coated the length of his blade in a razor-thin, incredibly sharp layer of cursed energy. This was no longer a technique to deflect; it was a counter-blade that 'backflowed' the opponent's cursed energy upon contact, shearing through them from the inside out.
Shlick.
The sound was disturbingly clean.
The mid-air body of the cursed spirit was bisected with terrifying precision. Black ichor sprayed, mingling with the rain before pooling into the filth below.
Utsugi did not even bother to flick the blood from his steel before sheathing it.
The cursed energy wasted in the strike converged toward zero. It was a feat made possible only by the Six Eyes, which allowed for the manipulation of cursed energy at an atomic level.
Utsugi gave the evaporating remains of the curse a dismissive kick.
He returned to his seat on the veranda and reclaimed his cold rice ball.
Suddenly, a paper doll fluttered through the air toward him.
Undamped by the rain and glowing with an eerie cerulean light, it was a messenger Shikigami of the Sugawara Clan.
"Persistent wretches. You exiled me, and yet you still seek me out."
Utsugi scowled as he snatched the construct out of the air.
The Shikigami unfurled of its own accord, manifesting glowing characters in the air. He could almost hear Enju's voice through them—arrogant, yet laced with a tremor of cowardice.
[In the northern reaches of Mutsu, near the Ou Mountain range, a spirit believed to be Special Grade has appeared. The local sorcerers have been annihilated. Exterminate it immediately and report back.]
"Special Grade...?"
Utsugi's brow twitched.
A Special Grade Cursed Spirit was no mere monster. It was a walking calamity.
The clan's intentions were transparent. They deemed it too hazardous to risk their own elite sorcerers, so they chose to expend their 'disposable pawn'—the exiled brat—to test the waters.
If he succeeded, the problem was solved. If he died, the troublesome branch-family bearer of the Six Eyes would finally be scrubbed from existence. A victory for them either way.
"Hah. I can see right through you."
Utsugi crumpled the Shikigami and tossed it into the mud.
Yet, he could not refuse. This was a command from the clan, carrying the weight of a Binding Vow. Moreover, a Special Grade might harbor a valuable Cursed Tool within its belly, or perhaps something that could be bartered for coin. At the very least, slaying such a beast might buy him the leverage to demand a meal of white rice and meat.
He rose to his feet, his joints popping with a staccato cadence.
The ache in his skull persisted. The rain showed no signs of relenting.
But he had to go.
He had nowhere else to return to, in any case. The past had discarded him, and the future was a clouded abyss.
Utsugi pulled his wicker hat low over his brow.
The weight of his tachi pressed heavy against his hip.
He stepped out, walking into the unrelenting rain.
Behind him, the crumpled Shikigami soaked through, dissolving into the mire of the temple courtyard.
In the distance, the mournful notes of a biwa drifted through the air like a discordant jazz melody, clinging to his footsteps as he departed.