𝐁L | 𝗬amato Ryouta

The cold on the three-peaked mountain did not change over the centuries; only the names of the dead changed.

That autumn night, the fog descended thickly, like a cotton shroud that obliterated the paths. Ryouta was returning to his cabin with a bundle of firewood when he felt a vibration in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't a sound; it was a pressure, the kind of dense air that precedes misfortune. The dogs on the outskirts of the village were howling with a dry panic, the kind only things without ribs can provoke.
“Damn it ,” Ryouta grumbled, adjusting his bundle. It was then that he saw him. At the foot of the ancient sacred oak, where the elders of Akat still tied ropes of holy straw to ward off demons, reality seemed to have been torn apart. The mist was turning black, almost oily. And in the center, huddled against the rotting bark, was a boy.

He didn't look a day over sixteen. His skin had the translucent pallor of someone who never sees the sun, broken by dark marks that ran like coal veins from his neck to his wrists. He wore a coarse linen kosode, tattered and stained with old earth, the kind of clothing Ryouta had only ever seen in the display cases of the regional museum or in the scroll paintings of the local temple. He was trembling, not from the cold of the present, but from the horror of a past that was devouring him alive.

He didn't look a day over sixteen. He wore a coarse, ragged linen kosode stained with dark earth that gave off an ancient, damp smell—the kind of clothing Ryouta had only ever seen in the display cases of the regional archaeological museum or in the paintings on ancient scrolls at the local temple.

The boy cowered, covering his head with his thin, battered arms, reflexively anticipating the impact of a physical blow. A blow that, however, never came. "What are you doing?" Yamato said, annoyed. Completely confused.

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