First encounter

The stone steps were old, their edges worn smooth by time. Dark green moss filled the cracks, giving off a mingled smell of earth and humus in the damp air.

The trees on either side grew thick with branches and leaves. Even in winter, the evergreens remained dense, blocking most of the sunlight and making the mountain path to the Shinto shrine gloomy and damp.

Light filtered through gaps in the leaves, casting shifting, mottled shadows on the steps like countless prying eyes.

Madara walked very slowly.

His Sharingan was already active. In the dim surroundings, his blood-red eyes resembled two faint ghost lights, turning slowly as they caught every anomaly.

He was observing.

The Cursed Residue in the air was faint but present, like the lingering smell of old blood mingling with the wind.

The marks on the ground-besides moss and fallen leaves, there were unnatural depressions. The arrangement of the trees-several had deep claw marks in their bark that no animal had left.

The flow of the wind grew erratic near the summit, as though something was interfering with it.

(There was residual Cursed Energy... very faint, but definitely there.)

(The direction... the Shinto shrine.)

(More than one. Two? Or three?)

Madara stopped and crouched, brushing his fingers over a patch of unusually colored moss on a step.

It felt sticky and cold.

He pushed the moss aside. Beneath it was a dark red stain, dried and blackened, soaked into the grain of the stone, yet still carrying a nauseating aura of curses.

(Blood. Human blood, mixed with contamination from Cursed Energy.)

He stood and continued upward.

His footsteps remained light, but each landed on the most stable part of the steps, his center of gravity always poised to let him burst into motion.

The higher he went, the denser the Cursed Energy became, until the Shinto shrine's Torii appeared at the far end of his view.

It was very dilapidated.

What should originally have been vivid vermilion had peeled away in large patches, exposing blackened wood beneath.

Vines covered the pillars. Some were already dead, winding around a dying body like shriveled blood vessels.

Cobwebs clung to the top of the Torii, trembling in the faint breeze.

Beyond the Torii lay a small clearing paved with grayish-white gravel, darkened by the damp.

A stone Temizuya stood in the center of the clearing. Its basin held no water, only rotting leaves that gave off a sour, rancid smell.

The main hall stood at the far end of the clearing, a traditional wooden building with one corner of its eaves collapsed and roof tiles scattered across the ground.

The wooden door stood half-closed. The darkness within was as thick as ink that would not dissolve, and even sunlight refused to enter.

Madara did not go straight inside.

He first circled around to the side of the main hall.

There stood a row of dilapidated Ema racks, their wood rotten and blackened. Most of the hanging Ema had either fallen to the ground or rotted into fragments, the wishes and names on them long since illegible.

But one of them...

Hung in the farthest corner, newer than the other Ema-at least it had not rotted completely.

The wood was dark brown, its edges damaged, but it was still mostly intact.

Madara took down that Ema.

It felt icy in his hand, like holding a piece of ice, and a sinister dampness seeped from the grain of the wood.

The words on it had been written in some dark red liquid, now dried and blackened but still legible.

The handwriting was crooked, the strokes trembling, as though someone who could not write had struggled to trace them, or a hand had shaken uncontrollably in extreme terror.

"Save me"

"I don't want to die"

"Someone"

"Save me"

Every line contained the same three characters, repeated more than a dozen times, each line messier than the last, until they became an almost hopeless tangle of strokes, merely circling frantically across the wood.

Madara turned the Ema over.

There were words on the back as well, more scrawled, more frantic, the strokes so deep they had almost pierced the board.

"She's watching me"

"She's smiling"

"So scary"

"Save me save me save me"

The final "save me" was written three times in succession. The last stroke of the final "me" stretched a long way, like a desperate scratch running from the edge of the board to the center of its back.

When he lowered the Ema, a little dark red powder clung to Madara's fingers-dried blood mixed with wood dust.

("She"?)

(The residual Cursed Energy on the Ema was strong. Whoever wrote these words was either already dead or deeply consumed by a curse and mentally broken.)

He returned the Ema to its original place and turned toward the main hall.

The hall's wooden door stood half-closed, and the darkness in the gap seemed alive, slowly writhing.

Madara walked to the entrance. Instead of immediately pushing the door open, he first tilted his head to listen.

It was quiet inside.

But his Sharingan saw an entirely different sight-Cursed Energy brimming with malice filled the entire hall like a spiderweb.

It hung from ceiling to floor and stretched from the walls to the Shintai, every strand of "silk" pulsing slowly, as though breathing.

And at the center of the web, where the Shintai stood, something was moving.

Madara gently pushed the door open.

Creeeak-

The old wooden door gave a long, piercing creak, especially distinct in the silent Shinto shrine, like the groan of someone dying.

The main hall was more spacious inside than it looked from outside, but also more dilapidated.

Sunlight streamed through broken windows and holes in the roof, forming gray shafts through the drifting dust, with countless motes dancing in the light.

A thick layer of dust covered the floor, leaving clear footprints when stepped on.

A heavy musty smell filled the air, mixed with something even more nauseating-the cloying sweetness of rotting flesh.

On the floor, a clear trail of footprints led from the entrance toward the Shintai.

The footprints were small and shallow, like a child's, or those of a slight woman.

They were fresh. The disturbed dust exposed the dark floorboards beneath, and fresh dust had not yet covered their edges.

Madara followed the footprints inward.

His steps were light, but each left a mark in the dust.

He quickly scanned his surroundings: deep scratches marked the walls, as though fingernails had scraped them repeatedly.

Dark stains spattered the pillars. On the offering table before the Shintai, where offerings should have stood, small white things lay scattered-

Teeth.

Human teeth of varying sizes, some still streaked with blood, scattered in the dust.

The footprints vanished before the Shintai.

They did not simply reach an end, but broke off abruptly, as though their owner had vanished into thin air here, or... flown up.

Madara stopped, his Sharingan turning slowly as he surveyed every corner of the hall in a full circle.

The Shintai itself was in ruins, its wood carvings flaking and its gold paint faded.

But the Cursed Energy was densest behind the Shintai. That mass of "something" was there.

He heard a faint sound.

It sounded like sobbing, yet also like laughter.

Very soft, very thin, intermittent, as though coming from far away, yet also like a whisper right against his ear.

A twisted pleasure mingled with bottomless sorrow in the sound, making one's scalp crawl.

Madara circled behind the Shintai.

Someone was crouching there.

No, not a person.

It was a woman wearing a white bridal kimono-or rather, something humanoid.

The white bridal kimono was already very tattered. Its once-pure white fabric had yellowed, covered in dark red stains and black patches of mold.

A bridal veil hung over her face, but disheveled black hair was visible beneath it.

Her body curled into an unnatural position, her shoulders shaking as she made that sobbing laughter.

And in her arms, she held a stuffed toy.

A shabby, crudely made stuffed rabbit with one ear missing, exposing the blackened stuffing inside.

The toy's eyes were two black buttons, sewn on crookedly.

A red ribbon was tied around its neck. The ribbon was very new, its color glaringly vivid, utterly out of place amid the surrounding decay.

Madara watched the woman, the flow of Cursed Energy clearly visible through his Sharingan.

(A Grade 3 curse? No.)

(This density, this texture... at least Grade 2.)

(And... more than one.)

His gaze fell on the stuffed toy.

The toy was quiet, merely being held.

But through his Sharingan, he could see Cursed Energy flowing inside it that was entirely different from the "woman's"-more insidious, like a venomous snake lurking in the shadows.

Then the toy's button eyes reflected a faint glimmer in the dim light.

The toy's mouth-merely a curve simply sewn with red thread-slowly split open.

The stitches snapped, exposing black stuffing, and the curve became a crooked, exaggerated grin.

"Found you."

The stuffed toy spoke.

The voice did not come from the toy, but from every direction-from inside the walls, beneath the floor, above the ceiling, from every corner.

It sounded like many people whispering at once, the voices of men and women, young and old, overlapping with echoes that reverberated through the empty hall.

Madara slowly took a step back, drawing his right foot behind him and lowering his center of gravity. Cursed Energy circulated through his body, instantly covering him as he entered a combat stance.

His right hand hovered over the hilt of the Tanto at his waist.

The woman in the white bridal kimono raised her head.

Her movements were very slow, frame by frame, like rusted machinery.

The veil slipped away, revealing the face beneath-

A blank face without features.

Her skin was deathly grayish-white, as smooth as a boiled egg, without eyes, without a nose, without a mouth, without anything.

Only a blank expanse.

And in the center of that blank face, a fissure slowly opened.

The fissure stretched vertically from forehead to chin, then spread to either side, revealing what lay within-deeper darkness, densely filled with pinprick red lights like countless eyes.

The fissure widened until it became a mouth occupying her entire face, its corners splitting to the roots of her ears, filled with layers upon layers of fine, sharp teeth extending deep into her throat.

"Found you."

"Found you."

"Found you."

Countless voices overlapped and echoed, growing louder and shriller, like fingernails scraping glass, like bones grinding together, like the wails of the dying.

The doors of the main hall slammed shut.

The crash of wood against the doorframe reverberated through the enclosed space, shaking dust loose in showers.

All light vanished in an instant.

Something blocked the sunlight outside the windows, and not a trace of light penetrated the damaged roof.

Darkness surged in like a tide, swallowing every corner of the hall.

But within that darkness, the glow of Cursed Energy surged like a tide in Madara's Sharingan.

Countless trails of Cursed Energy were clearly visible in the dark.

The woman in white glowed, the stuffed toy glowed, the walls glowed, the floor glowed-the entire hall was submerged in an ocean of malicious Cursed Energy.

In the darkness, countless pairs of red eyes opened.

Densely packed, they covered the walls, the ceiling, every inch of space.

All those eyes were watching him.

Madara tightened his grip on the hilt. Cursed Energy flowed along the blade, producing a low hum.

Yet the corners of his mouth lifted slightly with the excitement of facing a challenge.

"Now that's more like it."

He spoke softly, his voice clearly audible in the deathly silent darkness.

The Tanto left its sheath, its edge glowing a ghostly blue under the infusion of Cursed Energy, like the only star in the dark.