*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 - The Morning of Returning Names: A Dawn Still Incompatible
The eastern sky was beginning to shift into the palest blue, tracing the ridgeline of the mountains like a brush against an edge.
A thick fog filled every valley of the Yatsuhara range, still holding the remnants of night within it. From the ruins of the collapsed shrine, the smell of scorched wood and a faint heat rose now and then. Fragments of burned talismans mingled with the ash, sinking white into the ground before dawn.
Matoba Seiji stood alone before the broken shrine.
The back of his black suit, damp with mist, looked bitterly cold. His right hand, visible past the cuff of his white shirt, was still stained with blood and soot. Slowly, he raised it.
An old burn scar.
The wound from that day, long ago, when he was small—when his father's shikigami, a white fox, had dissolved into motes of light, and he had grasped desperately after it. Over that scar, fresh blood now ran in several streaks. His own blood. Blood he had shed himself, to defile the forbidden array.
Matoba gripped the burn scar hard, his left fingers tracing its shape.
—One.
In the valley, the first shikigami had vanished when its name was called.
—Two.
On the night of Kirinoya, the second had been stripped of its name from afar.
—Three, four, five.
In the abandoned village, those five, pinned by the barrier with no way to resist, had been drawn into the register.
He counted them in his mind, folding down fingers.
—Eight.
He had lost every shikigami.
Eight pieces he had spent long years binding, subjugating, polishing into tools as head of the Matoba clan. All of them were now gone from this world.
The backlash of demonic energy still pulsed dully at the core of his body. Every breath made the inside of his ribs creak and groan. His fingertips were cold, and yet only the burn scar on his right hand burned as if on fire.
(...How absurd.)
A faint smile surfaced at the corner of Matoba's mouth.
(Counting them won't bring them back. Ayakashi are tools. If I've lost them, I simply gather the next pieces.)
So he told himself.
But somewhere deeper in his chest, something else ached—quietly, but surely.
He had burned the register.
He had defiled Douan's twenty-year obsession with blood and set it to flame.
That had been the most rational move Matoba Seiji, as head of the clan, could make to defeat his enemy. There had been no other way to cut through that moment.
—Was that really true?
A voice sounded somewhere in his heart.
(That moment, the ember of my father's white fox was certainly within me.)
Matoba closed his eyes.
Behind his lids, a snowy night resurfaced.
White light. A vanishing shikigami. A small hand reaching out. The searing pain in his right hand.
"Wait... don't go..."
His young self's voice echoed deep in his ears.
(I don't want to repeat that pain. Never again. That's why I decided ayakashi are tools.)
(And yet, why)
(Why, in that instant, did I hesitate to burn the register?)
Matoba slowly opened his eyes.
Beyond the mist, from the charred scraps of the register, the true names of ayakashi rose like faint phosphorescence, dissolving into the morning air.
That was the last lingering scent of the stolen names.
The ayakashi who had lost their names could no longer return to the mountain. They would lose their sense of self, become empty shells, hollow vessels waiting only for Douan's commands.
(...Don't grow attached. Ayakashi are tools.)
Matoba tightened his grip on the burn scar.
The old wound throbbed from within.
That pain alone kept him tethered to the man called Matoba Seiji.
The wind blew.
The mist flowed, shifting greatly for a moment.
Matoba's black hair swayed, and the black stone earring on his left ear caught the morning light with a faint glint.
He turned his back on the collapsed shrine.
———
Outside the shrine, on a slightly open slope, Natsume Takashi stood alone, gazing into the mountain's darkness.
His grayish-brown hair, damp with morning moisture, clung softly to his cheeks. His light-colored hoodie, soaked with night dew and sweat, hung heavy. In his arms, he clutched an old notebook as if it were precious.
The Book of Friends.
The contract ledger in which his grandmother Reiko had collected the names of ayakashi she'd bested.
Natsume stroked the cover gently, as if confirming its feel against his fingertips.
Only moments ago, deep in this mountain, nameless ayakashi had been chained. Stripped of their names, reduced to empty shells, forced by Douan's command to wound one another.
Natsume had severed those chains with Madara's power.
And he had sent the surviving ayakashi back into the depths of the mountain.
They had vanished into the mist without looking back.
(...That was the right thing to do.)
Natsume murmured inwardly, as if convincing himself.
(At least those children aren't bound anymore. They can live by their own will.)
But somewhere in his heart, another thought sank like sediment.
Among the ayakashi he'd freed, there had been one—a small one, strangely slow in its movements.
While the others had bolted straight for the mountain, that one alone had stopped again and again, its vacant eyes scanning its surroundings.
An ayakashi whose name Douan had stolen.
Even after the register burned, it remained a hollow shell, most of its sense of self lost.
(Where will that one go?)
(Wandering the mountain without knowing its own name or its own will?)
Natsume held the Book of Friends tightly against his chest.
This notebook, too, held the names of many ayakashi.
Names Reiko had won and taken.
A ledger for binding the true names of ayakashi—just like Douan's register.
(...What's the difference between my Book of Friends and Douan's register?)
Natsume bit his lip.
(Reiko took names from ayakashi. Douan took names from ayakashi. Didn't they both do the same thing?)
(The difference is what came after. Reiko intended to return the names. She waited for the ayakashi to come reclaim them. ...But Douan doesn't return them. He keeps stealing names to use ayakashi up as tools.)
(...Is that really the only difference?)
No answer came.
Only a heavy ache deep in his chest.
"...Hey, Sensei."
Natsume spoke to the white beckoning cat curled on his shoulder.
Madara stopped licking his front paw and turned his golden eyes toward Natsume.
"What is it."
"Do you think that one will make it home safely?"
"Which ayakashi do you mean."
"You know, the small one that kept looking back at us until the very end..."
Natsume trailed off.
He didn't want to remember those vacant eyes.
Madara snorted.
"Who knows. Even I don't know in detail what becomes of an ayakashi whose name has been stolen. But at least it's been freed from that register's binding. The rest depends on that ayakashi's own vessel."
"Vessel..."
Natsume murmured.
"A name is like a vessel for an ayakashi. A core that preserves the sense of self. That was torn away by force. I wouldn't expect an ayakashi that's lost its vessel to recover right away."
Madara's voice, in its usual imperious tone, carried just a hint of weight.
Natsume watched the mountain's darkness in silence.
The mist was slowly beginning to clear.
The outlines of the trees emerged faintly.
The night was ending.
———
How long had he stood there?
Suddenly, behind him, came the sound of a dry branch snapping.
Natsume turned.
Matoba Seiji walked slowly from beyond the ruins of the collapsed shrine.
On his face was the usual gentle smile.
But in the light of dawn, that smile looked terribly thin.
"So you're still here."
Matoba's voice was very quiet.
"...Yes. I thought I'd stay a little longer."
Natsume answered, still holding the Book of Friends.
A brief silence fell between them.
The wind stirred up ash from the burned ground.
"...The register burned. But this isn't over."
Matoba spoke with his gaze still lowered into the ash.
Natsume watched him silently.
"That was the catalyst for a forbidden art that Douan spent twenty years writing. I doubt a fire of that scale reduced it all to ash. Remnants of the register are certain to remain somewhere."
"...And if remnants remain, what happens?"
"If true names remain in the remnants, they can become seeds to bind ayakashi once more. Even without a practitioner of Douan's caliber, anyone with even entry-level knowledge of the forbidden art could grow a new register from a single fragment. It's not impossible."
Matoba raised his head.
His narrow, purple-tinged black eyes pierced Natsume directly.
"That's why I keep moving. As head of the Matoba clan, I will eradicate everything Hiiragi Douan left behind. To that end, I will continue to use ayakashi as tools. ...I don't intend to ask for your cooperation. I'm only telling you the facts."
Natsume stared back into Matoba's eyes.
Those brown eyes were exhausted, yet clear.
"...I figured. But I won't cooperate with your methods."
Natsume's voice was quiet, but without hesitation.
"I won't treat ayakashi as tools. If remnants of the register remain, I'll protect the ayakashi my own way. ...That's all."
Matoba regarded Natsume for a while.
Then, faintly, a smile surfaced at his lips.
It wasn't the plastered smile from before.
It looked like a bare expression, just slightly relaxed.
"...That's fine. Protect them your way."
With that, Matoba turned his back on Natsume.
"Ayakashi are tools. I won't acknowledge your way. ...That won't change, now or ever."
"And I won't acknowledge your way. ...That won't change either, now or ever."
Natsume spoke quietly to Matoba's back.
Matoba didn't turn around.
He only stopped for an instant.
And then, softly, he clenched his right hand.
The burn scar rose red in the morning light.
"...You said Douan called that Book of Friends of yours a kind of ayakashi-name binding."
Matoba spoke without turning.
Natsume didn't answer.
"Whether that's truly what it is, I don't know. But if it is, the day may come when you burn that notebook with your own hands."
"...Even so, I'll return the names. Because that's what I want to do."
Natsume's voice didn't tremble.
Matoba laughed softly.
"I see. ...You really are stubborn."
"I don't think I'm as bad as you."
"Hmph... I suppose not."
Matoba began walking again.
Alone, he descended the mountain path as the mist cleared.
The back of his black suit receded into the morning light.
That back looked just a little smaller than usual.
Natsume watched until Matoba's figure disappeared among the trees.
———
"...He's gone, has he."
Madara murmured from Natsume's shoulder.
"Yeah."
"That man—same as ever to the end. Well, he's consistent, at least. Though he and you are fundamentally incompatible."
"...That's fine. I walk a different path from him. That's all."
Natsume turned his eyes toward the ruins of the collapsed shrine.
That was when it happened.
Deep in the shrine, in the shadow of fallen timber, something moved—small.
A faint rustle, the sound of ash crumbling.
Natsume held his breath and approached.
Madara perked his ears on Natsume's shoulder, alert.
Between the gaps in the wood.
Among the scorched talismans and shattered stone, a single small ayakashi crouched, curled in on itself.
One of the shikigami Douan had used as a servant.
Even with the register burned, remnants of it still clung to its body, and it trembled, small and shaking.
Its form was semi-transparent, its outline blurred.
It couldn't maintain its sense of self.
"...It's all right. Nothing binds you anymore."
Natsume knelt gently before the ayakashi.
He reached out his hand.
The ayakashi flinched, but didn't try to flee.
Natsume's fingertips touched its cold body.
That was the moment.
The ayakashi's body took on a faint light.
It was reacting to Natsume's spiritual energy.
The ayakashi turned its vacant eyes toward Natsume.
And its mouth moved, faintly.
"...Mi...zu...no..."
It was a voice like wind, thin and fragile.
"What?"
Natsume strained his ears.
"Mizu...no, ha..."
The ayakashi
Novelia is an AI-powered platform to read original light novels and fan fiction, create your own in just a few taps, and chat with the characters. New, illustrated episodes arrive daily — free to start.