Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons (3)
"That thing. Would it be all right if I tried absorbing it?"
The air in the Family Head's hall froze solid.
"…What did you just say?"
Someone muttered the words under their breath. The family elders lined along one side of the hall.
"What is that infant babbling about…"
"Absorb a fragment of the Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons? That defective child who can't even manage his own body because his spiritual veins are at odds with each other?"
"Does he have any idea what he's talking about? Something we've only managed to keep sealed for a thousand years. Does he not know every sorcerer who so much as touched it died?"
Whispers spread. Most of them were pure disbelief. Some were worry. A few were open mockery.
Fair enough. In their eyes, a clueless infant was volunteering for his own grave and nothing more.
His mother's arms went rigid around him. He felt her grip tighten without her meaning to.
"Hwiun."
She looked down at him, her voice trembling.
"You can't. Do you even know what that is? That thing is…"
"Mother."
He looked up at her and spoke quietly.
"It's all right. I know what it is. Better than anyone."
Her eyes wavered at that. She didn't understand what he meant. But he truly did know. What that sealed fragment was. And how it had to be faced. Better than anyone else in this room.
It was the Family Head who broke the silence.
"…"
He was watching Hwiun without a word. Through all the elders' muttering, through all his mother's protests, those languid eyes had stayed fixed on him alone.
Those eyes were weighing him.
A child's reckless bravado? Or the eyes of someone who genuinely knew something? What gave this boy the ground to speak like this — the same eyes that had recognized what lay inside a lesser spirit at the spirit-selection rite? The gaze of a thousand-year pinnacle slowly scoured the inside of him.
At last the Family Head opened his mouth.
"Do not stop him."
The words were for the elders.
"F-Family Head!"
"Whether that child lives or dies, he is touching it by his own request. The seal has only sat idle because no one could lay a hand on it. There is nothing to lose."
His voice was calm. And yet something very faint clung to the end of it. Curiosity. Even the pinnacle wanted to know what this infant thought he was seeing.
"Do it."
The Family Head tipped his chin toward Hwiun.
"Show me what you saw. Go on. Let me see."
Hwiun stepped down from his mother's arms.
She reached for him on reflex, then stopped. Those eyes of hers had already understood she could not hold him back. Instead she watched him with a face that looked ready to cry at any moment.
In small steps, he walked toward the deepest corner of the Family Head's hall.
The jar, sealed under layer upon layer of talismans and barriers. The hazy lesser spirit trapped inside it. And within that spirit's body, the sleeping fragment of the Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons.
As he drew close, its texture became sharper. That familiar force that made the spine lock upright. The very same force he had taken with his whole body at the end of his previous life.
The sealing barrier wavered faintly before him, as if wary of his approach.
He paid it no mind and stretched out a small hand.
And touched the seal with his fingertips.
The world flipped over.
When he opened his eyes, he was somewhere else.
Not the Family Head's hall. No mother. No Family Head. No one at all. A place that was nowhere, filled entirely with dark crimson darkness. No sky, no ground — only an endless abyss unfurled in every direction.
…A mindscape?
The moment he touched the fragment, it seemed he had been pulled inside it. His flesh was still out there in the Family Head's hall; only his spirit had come here. That was the kind of place this was.
But he was not alone.
Something filled the abyss to the brim.
Demonic things. And not one or two of them. Hundreds, thousands — no, too many even to count. From things that had not yet finished forming a shape, to things that looked like the remains of beasts and people forcibly stitched together. Every one of them hideous. Every one of them savage.
They swarmed through the dark crimson dark, tearing at each other, trampling each other, swallowing each other whole. When one tore another apart, three more would throw themselves at the first. A pandemonium of madness and violence knotted into one.
Things more vicious than any demonic creature he had seen in his previous life littered this place underfoot.
…So this is the inside of that fragment.
The Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons. A calamity of ten thousand spirits fused into a single body. In the mindscape of its fragment, it was only natural that things like these would swarm. He surveyed the asura-field and slowly began to walk.
Then it happened.
The swarming demonic things all stopped as one.
The things that had been tearing each other apart moments before cut their frenzy short and began to tremble. Those utterly vicious creatures tucked their tails, lowered their bodies, and froze as one toward a single direction, knees weak with dread.
Thud.
Footsteps.
Thud. Thud.
Slow, heavy steps. Each time the sound rang out, the abyss shuddered. And in that shudder, the demonic things around it simply crushed apart.
It had not even touched them. Merely by walking closer. Merely by the aftermath of its footsteps. Those vicious things were pressed flat and burst, mashed, melting away into the dark. Without even managing a single scream.
The asura-field where thousands of demonic things had swarmed emptied out before those steps.
And from the far end of that emptied dark—
Something walked out.
At first he could not even gauge what it was.
It was too large. It would not fit in his field of vision. Whether to call it a mountain range of dark crimson darkness itself compacted into form, or the night itself. Even with his head tipped all the way back, he could not see its end. The thing that had pulverized those vicious demonic creatures with footsteps alone now revealed its colossal shape before him.
From that dizzying height—
Countless eyes looked down on him.
…
His breath caught in his throat.
It was overwhelming. He understood in an instant why those demonic things had trembled so. The gulf between that thing and himself was not the difference between the strong and the weak. Dust and the sky. A mayfly and eternity. That kind of fundamental divide.
It looked down at him and opened its mouth — or something like one.
The voice came down the abyss. Looking down from that dizzying height upon the thing at its feet.
It would have been a lie to say he was not afraid. No being could stand before this rank of existence and feel no fear.
But something else came ahead of that fear.
Gladness. And a swelling fullness in the chest.
This was it. This was the thing. What he had thirsted for so desperately in his previous life. What he had never once been able to have in that glass-like world where everything shattered at the mere stretch of a hand.
An opponent he could pour every last thing he had into without holding back. An opponent he could face head-on with all his strength drawn out — no restraint, no thrift, nothing to hide. There had been no such thing in his previous life. The world broke first whenever he reached out. And now that very thing stood before his eyes.
…Wow.
His heart pounded. Before this overwhelming gulf, instead of cowering he was smiling.
Those dizzying eyes regarded him. The worm at its feet neither fled nor prostrated itself, but looked up and smiled. Through the boredom of eternity, something very faint crossed those countless eyes.
Bewilderment.
It slipped out low.
He met that gaze head-on and opened his mouth.
In this mindscape where he could not even be sure a voice would come out. Even so, clearly.
"Neither."
He said it.
"I came here to absorb you."
The abyss sank into stillness.
Those countless eyes that had looked down upon eternity faltered for the first time. What had that worm just said? A speck less than dust that had crawled to its feet dared claim it would absorb it?
And the next moment—
It turned its full rank upon him.
Everything until now had been nothing. Even the rank it had worn while lounging in boredom had been a drop in the ocean. Now the real thing — the weight of a pinnacle that had lived eternity — poured down on him complete.
The mindscape screamed.
Those demonic things that had crushed apart from footsteps alone — no, the ones still left in the dark — burst in heaps from the mere aftermath of this rank. Those vicious things were pressed flat and vanished like a swarm of flies. The entire abyss buckled under the weight.
This was pressure that crushed by sheer existence.
It had not even touched him, and his bones felt as if they were shattering. His spirit felt as if it were being mashed. As if merely standing here would erase his being itself. Pressure under which no demonic thing, no sorcerer, could have kept even a shape — all of them would have melted away.
In the middle of that pressure—
It asked.
He was still standing in the middle of that pressure.
He had not shattered. He had not been mashed. In that weight that erased the demonic things around him existence and all, he alone remained on two feet, head held high. Looking straight up into those countless eyes.
He could endure it. Because—
He had been through this in his previous life.
This pressure. This rank. The weight this existence radiated. He was the human who had taken it with his whole body at the end of his previous life and faced it to the last without collapsing. A familiar weight. Familiar enough to be glad of it.
"No matter how many times you ask—"
He answered with a smile.
"—the answer is the same."
"Of course I'm serious."
The abyss sank into stillness again.
And this time the stillness stretched on for a very long while.
Those countless eyes were looking into him. The pressure from a moment ago was gone without a trace. It simply watched the single worm at its feet. The one that had not crumbled even when crushed by sheer existence. The one that had taken its rank head-on and still held its head up. For the first time, it was looking properly into that.
Then—
It laughed.
The entire mindscape shuddered with that laughter. The dizzying dark heaved. The dark crimson abyss shook as a whole. The boredom of eternity cracked for the first time. That existence, which had been nothing but tedious, was laughing itself open — truly amused by what a single worm at its feet had shown it.
After laughing like that for a long while, it looked down at him at last.
In those countless eyes, interest had settled in place of boredom.
The voice came down the abyss.
He was a little startled.
Those countless eyes pierced through to the deepest part of him.
He was left speechless.
He had been seen through. In a single stroke. That he had lived a previous life, and that that previous life lay a thousand years ahead. To an existence that had lived eternity, a speck's worth of temporal shift was apparently readable by scent alone.
The rank really is different, isn't it.
Looking down at him like that, it laughed again. This time a laugh that was somehow delighted.
Countless eyes slid shut. And when they opened again, something vast and distant began to flow out from within them.
In that instant, the abyss collapsed.
Its memories reverse-flooded into him like a dam bursting. A single shard of the dizzying ages lived by an eternal existence swallowed his spirit whole.
The dark crimson dark took shape.
Screams.
The first thing that crashed over him was the screams of people.
Thousands, tens of thousands of screams tangled into one and tore the sky open. A capital city's night. A flourishing seat of power with endless rows of tiled roofs had turned into hell. People ran for their lives. Clutching children, supporting the old, trampling one another. Without even looking back.
And they had every reason to.
Behind them, the night sky itself was alive and moving, black as pitch.
Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons.
The calamity of ten thousand spirits fused into a single body was swallowing the capital whole as it poured in. That black procession of the vicious demonic things he had just seen in the mindscape — thousands, tens of thousands of them knotted together — blotted out the sky, covered the earth, and flooded toward the capital. Wherever it passed, halls collapsed, flames leapt up, and screams cut short.
An entire capital city — the heart of a nation — was about to be erased in a single night.
This was far past the category of calamity. This was annihilation.
Fleeing that annihilation, people ran like mad. Feet desperate to live poured out of the capital like a tide.
Then that tide stopped.
Five shadows stood blocking the path of the fleeing people.
Five who were walking alone toward the annihilation, in the very direction the people had turned their backs on to run.
The people halted and looked at those five.
Each one of them was a world unto themselves. Cloaked in power of different textures, ritual implements in hand. Faces set hard, not a single one giving ground. Side by side, the five stepped toward the heart of that annihilation where ten thousand spirits came surging in.
In the eyes of the people who had been fleeing, a faint light finally turned.
He knew at once who they were.
The heads of the Five Great Families.
This age. Heian. The golden age when sorcery had reached its extreme. The heads of the five bloodlines standing at that pinnacle had all come out in person to defend the capital.
And those five turned to face the annihilation head-on.