*A darkness is swallowing the mountain—and the exorcists are doing nothing.*
When lower ayakashi vanish from the Yatsuhara range without a trace—not exorcised, not devoured, but hollowed out until nothing remains but empty vessels waiting for orders—the Matoba clan's young head, Seiji Matoba, is the only one who sees the threat for what it is. A forbidden art. Ayakashi-name binding. The greatest taboo of the exorcist world, and someone is using it.
But Seiji has spent his whole life learning t
The Law of Ayakashi: Seiji Matoba's Conviction - Burning the Roster — The White Fox Remaining in the Bloody Right Hand
The inn at Kirinoya was dead silent in the deep of the night—so still that the sleeping breaths of the resting hot-spring guests couldn't even be heard.
Matoba Seiji sat upright in the center of the six-mat room on the second floor, his spine straight. He had removed his black suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. In the faint light of the paper lantern, he compared again and again the aged scrap of paper in his left hand with the burn scar running across the back of his right.
The scrap was densely covered in tiny characters—the true names of ayakashi. It was a torn fragment of the name registry that Douan had left behind when he departed.
Matoba set the paper on the tatami and slowly clenched his right hand. His fingertips trembled faintly. The old burn scar throbbed dully in time with his heartbeat.
He rose without a sound, took up his haori, and draped it over his shoulders. In his breast pocket: a few talismans and Douan's scrap of paper. That was all.
In the corner of the room, Natsume Takashi—who had been sitting with his back against the wall—lifted his head. His gray-tinged brown hair caught the lantern light and glowed softly. On his lap, the plump white beckoning cat, Madara, narrowed his eyes in obvious displeasure.
"...You're going."
Natsume's voice was taut, stripped of any trace of sleep.
"Yes. Douan is rushing to complete the registry. There's no time."
Matoba answered without turning around.
"You're going alone? Do you even know what shape you're in?"
Natsume stood. As he moved, Madara leaped onto his shoulder.
"This is none of your concern. This is my duty as head of the clan."
"It's absolutely my concern! You've lost every shiki you had, and your spiritual power's barely there. Going alone in that state—that man will just kill you!"
Natsume's voice cut sharply through the quiet room.
Matoba turned slowly. His narrow eyes, catching the lantern light, sank into a deep violet-black. That gentle smile played at the corners of his mouth. But it was colder than usual, stretched thin.
"Even so, I must go. I won't ask you to understand my duty."
"I don't want to understand it. Your way of doing things is wrong."
Natsume didn't back down an inch.
"...That's fine. Follow your own convictions. I'll fulfill my duty."
Matoba reached for the sliding door.
That was when it happened.
"Wait, exorcist."
Madara leaped down from Natsume's shoulder and landed on the tatami. His round body floated white in the lantern light.
"Even a worn-out one like me is still here. Don't underestimate a deity-class."
Madara's voice suddenly dropped—low and deep.
The next instant, the beckoning cat's form swelled enormously. White fur bristled upright, and his body expanded before their eyes. Small forepaws became thick, long limbs; the round face transformed into the sharp-fanged profile of a beast.
Ayakashi aura flooded the room. The air grew heavy and cold.
Madara, restored to his true form, settled his massive white body onto the tatami and glared down at Matoba with golden eyes.
"I'll carry you there. On your own, you don't have the stamina to even walk to the depths of that mountain."
Matoba looked up at Madara's enormous form.
His right hand unconsciously gripped the burn scar.
"...Understood. I'll owe you one."
Matoba spoke briefly.
"Hmph. You already owe more debts than you could ever repay."
Madara snorted.
"...Thank you, Sensei."
Natsume touched Madara's great body. His hands moved not as though touching something fearsome, but as though touching a longtime partner—gently.
"Save your thanks for later. Get on, Natsume. You too, Matoba."
Madara turned his head toward the window.
When the sliding door opened, the night's cold air came cascading into the room. The fog was thick. The entire area around Kirinoya lay submerged in white darkness.
Natsume straddled Madara's back, and Matoba too entrusted himself to that white fur.
"The innermost depths of Yatsuhara. To the shrine."
"I know. Douan's miasma is flowing from deep in that mountain. It's enough to make my nose curl."
Madara leaped from the window into the night sky.
A white beast raced across a sea of fog. The ground below was invisible. Only the cold mist and the sound of wind flowed around the three of them.
On Madara's back, Matoba quietly closed his eyes.
The burn scar on his right hand, exposed to the cold wind, ached.
As they drew closer to the deepest part of the Yatsuhara mountains, the air began to change. The fog thickened, and the wind threading between the trees took on the smell of rotting water.
Madara landed on the ground without a sound.
Before them, deep within a dense cedar forest, an ancient shrine cast a black shadow. The stone torii was broken; the shrine building was covered in moss, looking ready to collapse at any moment. But the air around it alone was strangely heavy and cold.
"...It's there. Inside."
Madara growled low.
Matoba dismounted from Madara's back and stood before the shrine. Natsume quietly touched down as well.
From deep within the shrine, he sensed a faint but unmistakable flow of ayakashi aura. Multiple weak presences. And at their center, a single presence—unnaturally dense and cold.
"...Douan's spellwork. The entire shrine has been made into a binding barrier for ayakashi names."
Matoba drew the scrap of paper from his pocket and scanned the ground around the shrine.
"If we enter, the barrier will react. But he already knows we're coming."
"Yeah. The miasma's writhing like it's welcoming us."
Madara narrowed his golden eyes.
"...Let's go. Standing here won't change anything."
Natsume stepped forward.
Matoba studied his profile for a moment.
He simply could not understand it.
The three of them passed through the broken torii and stepped inside the shrine.
Instantly, the air shivered.
The interior was far larger and deeper than it had appeared from outside. Countless talismans plastered the walls, and on the floor, a complex array was drawn in black ink. At the array's center, chains crisscrossed, binding more than a dozen ayakashi.
They were small, nameless ones. A kappa child, a fox kit, a two-tailed nekomata, a one-eyed imp. All were thin and wasted, their eyes vacant, reflecting nothing.
Among them were some who had already lost themselves—chained and utterly motionless. Those whose names had been written into the registry and been reduced to empty shells.
"...This is horrible."
Natsume's voice was a strangled whisper.
Matoba silently read the structure of the array.
At the end of his gaze, at the array's center, sat an ancient pedestal, and on it lay a thick ledger, open. The registry—crammed with countless true names.
"So you came, Seiji."
A voice like bone-deep chill echoed from the depths of the shrine.
Matoba raised his head.
From the darkness beyond the array, a gaunt man slowly emerged. Long hair streaked with white tied back in a single tail, unshaven stubble—a man in his mid-fifties. His stagnant gray eyes held no light as they fixed on the three of them.
From the back of his left hand to his elbow, the characters of the registry surfaced black beneath his skin.
Hiiragi Douan. Once of the Matoba clan, now exiled as a forbidden-art practitioner—the compiler of the ayakashi name binding.
"I knew you'd come. You're that kind of man."
Douan cradled the registry in one arm and with the other hand slowly stroked its cover.
"Douan. What you're doing is not the way of an exorcist. Dominating ayakashi goes against the clan's teachings."
Matoba looked straight at Douan.
"Ayakashi are humanity's servants. I'm merely following that truth. You're still soft, Seiji. Using ayakashi as tools isn't enough. Dominate them. Rule them. Make them obey humanity's every whim. That is the proper relationship between ayakashi and humans."
Douan laughed. A grotesque smile that showed his gums.
"You're wrong! Ayakashi aren't beings that should be treated that way!"
Natsume stepped forward.
Douan's gaze shifted to Natsume.
"Oh, and you must be Natsume Takashi. Reiko's grandson. The holder of the Book of Friends."
Douan opened the registry.
"Your ayakashi name, and the true name of that Madara there. I'll be taking both."
Douan ran his fingers across the registry.
Instantly, the array pulsed with a heavy throb.
Black ink lines rose from the ground and crawled like snakes toward Natsume's and Madara's feet.
"Kh—!"
Natsume tried to retreat, but his feet stuck to the ground as though glued.
"Don't move, Natsume! Don't touch that array!"
Madara planted himself in front of Natsume. But black lines coiled around Madara's limbs too, sealing his movement.
"Futile. This entire shrine is my barrier. Within my spellwork, you'll simply have your names stripped away."
Douan slowly approached Natsume.
Matoba observed the scene calmly.
His right hand, inside his pocket, gripped a single talisman. But a talisman wasn't enough. No shiki. Spiritual power at half strength.
Matoba looked at the back of his right hand.
The old burn scar.
Quietly, Matoba bit sharply into the back of his right hand, tearing the skin.
Blood dripped.
"...What are you doing, Matoba-san?!"
Natsume's voice rose in shock.
Matoba slammed his blood-dripping right hand down onto the array on the floor.
With a wet splash, blood scattered.
Matoba's blood seeped dark red into the black ink array.
Instantly, the array shuddered as though screaming. Where the blood touched, the black lines dissolved with a sizzling hiss.
"What?! You'd defile a forbidden-art array with your own blood?!"
For the first time, agitation surfaced in Douan's stagnant eyes.
"If all I need to do is disrupt the spellwork, it doesn't have to be a shiki. Human blood—an exorcist's blood especially—pollutes ayakashi barriers. You taught me that once, Douan."
Matoba fixed his eyes on Douan, blood still dripping.
"...The same foolishness as your father. Whittling away your own body to protect something. Do that, and you'll save nothing. Your father lost his shiki and died. You'll just follow the same path."
Douan spoke mockingly.
"My father didn't die. ...No. To you, that's irrelevant, isn't it."
Matoba's voice was quiet, but in his eyes, for the first time, clear anger burned.
"Now, Natsume! Break the chains!"
Matoba's voice rang through the shrine.
Natsume seized the instant of opening created by the array's disruption and broke free of his restraint. Then he sprinted with all his strength toward the chains binding the ayakashi.
"You guys, run! Hurry!"
Natsume grabbed the chains and strained to tear them apart. But the chains were reinforced with ayakashi power—bare hands couldn't break them.
"Sensei!"
Natsume shouted.
"Leave it to me!"
Madara's golden eyes blazed, and he loosed a mass of light from his mouth.
BOOM!
The light struck the chains dead-on, and they shattered into pieces.
"Go! Get outside!"
Madara drove the ayakashi forward.
Those who hadn't lost themselves, driven by terror, surged toward the shrine's exit. Even the empty shells, with no command to obey, simply collapsed where they lay.
"I won't allow it!"
Douan raised the registry high.
"All who are written in my registry—make your bodies my shield!"
The registry glowed ominously.
Then, from behind the shrine's walls, several ayakashi appeared without a sound. All had vacant eyes, limbs twisted into unnatural shapes. Douan's shiki-ayakashi, enslaved through the name binding.
"You too shall serve me as my servants for all eternity. Consider it an honor."
Douan swept his hand down.
The shiki-ayakashi lunged at Natsume and Madara.
"Tch—out of my way!"
Madara wheeled his great body and fired a rapid volley of light bullets.
BZZZT-BZZZT-BZZZT!
The shiki-ayakashi were pierced by the light and blown away. But no matter how many fell, the shiki bound to the registry rose again.
"There's no end to them...!"
Natsume punc
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