CHAPTER 20: THE LAST TIME

Misaki came to the logical conclusion that she was in Hell. In her addled brain, it was the only thing that made sense; no Dunian night could stretch as long as that night in Takayubi’s bomb shelter. Somewhere in the chaos, a bullet had hit her and sent her soul spinning into the fires of eternity. A twisted soul like hers couldn’t possibly pass into the peace of the Laaxara. It made sense.

But in the morning, the loudspeakers declared the area secure, and the bunker doors opened to the daylight of the mortal realm.

The brightness was blinding at first. Misaki blinked around her, confused to find herself in the real world, hurting and alive. In her daze, she looked down and realized Izumo wasn’t in her lap.

Panic jolted her to her feet, sending splinters of pain through her chest. Her hands groped around her, fumbling over Siradenyaa’s empty sheath, but there was no baby.

“Izu-kun?” She turned, frantic. “Naga-kun?”

Her adjusting eyes found Ayumi in the arms of one of the Mizumaki women, but where were her sons? She had just taken a breath to scream when she found them. Her shoulders relaxed and she let out a soft, “Oh.”

Izumo was cradled in a pair of soot-stained arms, sound asleep against Atsushi’s chest. At some point in the night, perhaps in search of human contact, or to quiet the crying Misaki was too far gone to hear, the blacksmith’s son must have taken the infant. Nagasa had wormed his way under one of Atsushi’s arms and fallen asleep with his head resting against Izumo’s, while Hiroshi leaned against the huddle with his back to the other children.

They made a strange picture, the Kotetsu boy in his smith’s tunic, and the Matsuda boys in their fine kimono, all tangled together, splattered with blood and dirt. Tears had dried in the ash on Atsushi’s cheeks, indicating that he had cried himself to sleep. Yet the ten-year-old had held the Matsuda boys through the night, while their parents were too frozen to do so.

Hiroshi was the first to blink awake in the brittle morning light. Or maybe he had never been asleep. The circles under his eyes suggested that he had spent the night as Misaki had, staring ahead into the darkness.

“Are you alright, Hiro-kun?”

Hiroshi’s eyes were veined with blood as he looked up at his mother. Stiffly, he nodded. If some part of her second son had ever truly been a child, it was gone now.

Misaki’s eyes moved to the numu boy, holding her two youngest. She didn’t want to wake him.

“Atsushi.” Reaching out, she gently touched the boy’s shoulder. “Atsushi-kun.”

He stirred. His lips moved. “Kaa-chan?” he said softly, and Misaki had to swallow an unbidden swell of guilt.

“No, Atsushi-kun,” she said as he blinked bleary eyes. ”It’s me.”

Grief fought with embarrassment on his face. “Oh... I... M-Matsuda-dono. I’m so sorry.”

Misaki wanted to be able to give him a smile. Her face wouldn’t do it. “It’s alright, Atsushi-kun. Thank you for looking after my sons.”

She bent to take Izumo, but stopped with a grimace as the pain in her chest flared.

“Are you alright, Matsuda-dono?” Atsushi asked.

“Yes,” Misaki said, though just getting the one word out hurt.

“I can carry the baby if you need me to.”

“I’ll take him,” another woman said—the younger of the two Mizumakis who had helped carry the Matsuda babies the previous night. Fuyuko. That was her name. Her father and brother hadn’t come back from the frontlines.

“If you don’t mind, Matsuda-dono?” the girl said, holding out her arms for Izumo.

“Y-you...” You don’t have to do that, Misaki started to say, but her abused lungs stopped her again.

“It’s no trouble,” Fuyuko said and carefully gathered Izumo into her arms.

Misaki let the other woman carry Izumo as the villagers started to venture out of the bunker. She even took the arm Atsushi offered her for support as what remained of Takayubi stumbled out of the shelter into the light.

Destruction spread out before them, smoking. The mayor’s office near the bomb shelter’s entrance had been obliterated, as had the info-com tower beside it.

“Try to watch your step, boys,” Fuyuko warned Atsushi, Hiroshi, and Nagasa, lifting the hem of her own kimono to step over a beam from one of the fallen info-com towers.

“At least we got one good use out of these towers, huh?” Chul-hee said to his father in Kaigengua. He sounded numb.

“I don’t know if I would call this good,” Tae-min said.

Bombs had left gaping holes in some houses; most had been completely destroyed, reduced to splinters. Bodies littered the mountainside, many of them in pieces, Kaigenese and Ranganese all jumbled together in bits of blood and bone. As they walked, Misaki pulled Nagasa to her hip and put a hand over his eyes, as if she could truly shield him from any of this.

The airstrike, while devastating, may not have been excessive. Judging by the number of yellow and black uniformed bodies strewn throughout the rubble, it seemed that the Ranganese had kept advancing up the mountain into the night, giving the pilots something to fire on. The result was that the village had been decimated.

What remained of Takayubi’s population spread out slowly, sluggish with grief and shock. Some clawed through the ruins of their houses for the bodies of their loved ones. Some simply stood where they had lived and raised their families, faces blank with disbelief.

The village had been a necessary sacrifice. Misaki understood that, from a tactical standpoint. That was why she couldn’t explain the rage and horror rising like bile in the back of her throat.

She had seen devastation before. She had been in Livingston at the height of Kalleyso’s reign of terror, but somehow, back then, it hadn’t seemed so bad. With no small amount of shame, she realized that, to her, those horrors belonged in violent adyn countries, far across the ocean. Not here. Not where she had rocked her babies to sleep and taught them their first words. Not where she had met Hyori. Not where she had laughed at Setsuko’s jokes and cooking.

For so many years, Misaki had thought she would never belong in Takayubi, but somehow, while she hadn’t been paying attention, this place had become home. Someone had dropped bombs on her home.

Hyori, whose wobbly legs had barely supported her down from the shelter, collapsed before the blackened ruins of the Yukino compound. The carved stone Yukino insignia that had been mounted above the doors now lay cracked in the snow. Hyori’s fingers traced the stone grooves, shaking.

Misaki felt a tug at her fingers and looked down to find that Nagasa had pulled her hand from his eyes. He was looking toward what remained of the Yukino compound, where he had spent so many days playing.

“Ryota-kun?” he asked in a small voice.

Hiroshi had stopped beside them, following his younger brother’s gaze to the Yukino compound. “I think Ryota-kun is gone,” he said slowly.

“Where?” Nagasa looked from his big brother to his mother, eyes pleading. “Gone where?”

“Um...” Mizumaki Fuyuko said nervously, “maybe we should get your boys away from here, Matsuda-dono?” She looked to Misaki. “Maybe into your own house?”

“No.” Misaki put up a hand to stop Fuyuko before she could guide Hiroshi and Nagasa in the direction of the Matsuda compound. “Not until it’s cleaned up.”

What Misaki had left inside the house was easily worse than anything the children were going to see outside it.

“How...?” The young woman looked around. “How is it going to get cleaned up? There are so few of us, and...” So much destruction.

“The Imperial army should be here to help soon,” Misaki said. She wasn’t expecting much in the way of aid from the Kaigenese military, but it would be strange for them to make no appearance at all. At the very least, they would provide the manpower to move some of the bodies.

But the first aid to arrive didn’t come from the government. It came from the surrounding villages. Fishermen, farmers, and smiths, who had seen the tornado advancing from the coast in their direction, who had seen where it had stopped. They appeared as the sun cleared away the last of the mists. When the Takayubi residents went to meet them, they saw, with a swell of hope, that some of the volunteers were carrying survivors from further down the mountain.

Atsushi was the first one to find the face he was looking for.

“Tou-san!” he cried out.

Kotetsu Katashi was being supported up the path by two fishermen. He was barely conscious, missing his left leg below the knee, but he still managed a wide smile as his son came running to meet him. Atsushi’s younger brother and sister were alive as well, being carried by a pair of fisherwomen. A single, bruised fina and a pair of frightened children were the only survivors anyone had found in the leveled western village.

There was no sign of Mamoru.

“We’ve left a few men further down the mountain to keep searching for survivors,” the oldest of the fishermen explained.

“Very good,” Takeru said. “Thank you for your help.”

“It’s all of us who need to thank you, Matsuda-dono.” The man got on his knees, and the rest of the volunteers followed suit, bowing low in the snow before Takeru. “You and your people stopped this army before it could reach the rest of us. We can never thank you enough.”

As villagers tearfully reunited with their family members, a surprisingly lucid Kotetsu Katashi explained that the numuwu with good enough legs had scattered when the Ranganese attacked. Of course, many had been caught and killed, but those first Ranganese to break through had been few enough that a good number of smiths escaped.

“Our house was destroyed almost immediately,” he said, “before we could think of fleeing. Fortunately, my two little ones were small enough to crawl out from under the debris and run before any fonyakalu found us.”

With the possible exception of the Matusdas and Yukinos, the old blacksmith families knew the mountainside better than anyone. Atsushi’s younger siblings, along with several other numuwu had taken shelter in caves that were all but impossible for an outsider to find.

After applying a tourniquet to his own exploded leg, Katashi had managed to drag himself to the safety of the nearest cave with his powerful arms. Takayubi’s rock formations had acted as natural bomb shelters, protecting the numuwu not only from the Ranganese, but also the subsequent airstrike. They had stayed hidden underground until they heard the Kaigenese voices of the fishermen calling out for survivors.

Astonishingly, three men had survived the carnage at the northern pass: thirty-two-year-old Ginkawa Aoki, forty-three-year-old Ikeno Tsuyosa, and his seventeen-year-old cousin, Ikeno Shun. During the initial clash with the fonyakalu, Ginkawa had taken a blow to the head that had rendered him unconscious and had lain ignored for the rest of the attack. He had regained consciousness at the beginning of the airstrike and then risked the bombs to crawl among the corpses in search of survivors. In the dark, he had managed to drag the two wounded Ikenos to safety.

Somberly, he told the desperate group of wives and mothers that there had been no other beating hearts in that darkness. Ikeno Tsuyosa had lost an arm, and the seventeen-year-old was even worse off, having suffered multiple stab wounds to the torso and severe head trauma that had left him delirious.

“We brought them here, hoping you might have medics to tend to the wounded,” the elder fisherman told Takeru, “maybe a building to set up operations...” He looked around at the smoldering remains of the main village. “I’m so sorry, Matsuda-dono. We didn’t realize this place had been so badly bombed.”

“We will set up a base of operations in my home,” Takeru said, indicating the remaining half of the Matsuda compound. “We may have to clear out some Ranganese corpses and brace parts of the roof with ice, but I believe it is the building with the most structural integrity at this moment.”

Turning from the fishermen, Takeru raised his jiya where a portion of the compound’s outer wall had been destroyed. He knocked out some of the loose bricks and then flattened a sheet of packed snow over the fallen pieces of wood and rock, creating a path into the part of the compound that was still standing.

“You and you.” He pointed to two of the tallest fishermen. “Come help me clear out the bodies and debris.”

“Yes, Matsuda-dono!” the men said and scrambled to obey.

“We’ll freeze the fonyaka bodies in the courtyard until we have occasion to dispose of them,” Takeru said, not looking back as the men followed him into the compound. “Make sure you clean up as much blood as you can after you move each corpse. The place must be properly sanitized before we move in the weak and wounded.”

The fishermen left outside quickly set about helping the people of Takayubi form makeshift benches and shelters of ice against the compound’s outer wall. For a different community of theonites, shelter would have been a more immediate concern in the midst of a mountain winter, but Kusanagi jijakalu were different. Their subconscious jiya allowed their blood to keep circulating even when their body temperature dropped below freezing. It was how Misaki had spent the entire night barefoot without suffering frostbitten toes. Even a baby as young as Izumo, now asleep in Fuyuko’s arms, was in little danger from the cold.

Of course, even well-bred jijakalu could not survive forever outdoors in the winter. Within a few days, they would start to run out of energy and freeze. Without food, it would be sooner. Blankets were recovered from ruined houses and draped over ice wedges to form comfortable seats for the elderly and injured to rest on while they waited for the Matsuda compound to be cleaned out. Fisherwomen formed cradles for Izumo, Ayumi, and the other babies, padding them with blankets and spare clothing.

By the time the fishermen had set up in the Matsuda compound, more volunteers had arrived. These were warriors and blacksmiths from Takayubi’s two nearest neighboring mountains. The Tetsukai blacksmith family had brought medics with them, including two city-trained doctors. The professionals immediately took control of first aid, directing others what to do. The representatives from the Ameno stronghold on the neighboring mountain of Tatsuyama had brought baskets of food and a dozen warriors to assist in the search for survivors.

Misaki and the children were guided into the compound. Takashi’s study, which the man had barely ever used anyway, had been converted into a small hospital. Setsuko was already lying on some blankets, still unconscious, as two medics bent over her.

“None of us are seriously injured,” Misaki assured the Tetsukai medic as he guided her into the room and asked that she sit.

“Sorry, Matsuda-dono. Your husband insisted that we examine you.”

The most concerning of Misaki’s injuries was the persistently painful stabbing in her chest from the fan-wielder’s Lazou Linghun. If her lungs were truly damaged, it would take more than a few bandages to fix it, but she humored the numu anyway, allowing him to disinfect and bandage the cuts on her arms.

As soon as the medic had moved on to check Nagasa for injuries, Misaki knelt forward and tugged Hiroshi toward her.

“Keep an eye on your little brothers and cousin,” she whispered in his ear. “Kaa-chan should be back soon.”

“Where are you going?” Hiroshi asked.

“I’m going to go find your brother.” Misaki rested a hand on his head for a moment before slinking out of the room and down the hall. She made a stop at a surviving closet to hide Siradenyaa’s sheath and get herself a pair of tabi.

“Hello, Matsuda-dono,” Kotetsu Katashi said when he noticed her stepping lightly toward the compound’s back door. The swordsmith had Atsushi and one of the fishermen cleaning his wounded leg and taking steps to prevent infection, while his younger children sat nearby. “And where are you headed?” he asked, managing quite the amicable tone for a man who had just lost a leg and a third of his family.

“I—um...”

Katashi’s smile faded and he lowered his gaze. “You won’t find him on the front line where the others died.”

“What?”

“Atsushi was the last one to see him, I think.” Katashi looked toward his son, who nodded.

“At the blacksmith village, ma’am, near our... wh-what used to be our house.”

“Thank you,” Misaki said with as much affection as she could muster, and slipped out of the compound.

She was under no delusion that she would blend in on the slopes with the volunteers. It wasn’t that she was the only woman—there were other wives and mothers eager to find their warriors—but she was the only noblewoman.

“Please, Matsuda-dono,” one of the fishermen said, noting the insignia on her kimono. “You should go back and rest. We’ll carry the dead and wounded back to you. This is no place for a lady.”

“I’ve seen...” I’ve seen worse, Misaki meant to say, but the words stopped painfully in her throat.

The slope leading down to the frontline was terrible. Here lay the blacksmiths who had run for the caves but never made it. Further down lay the bodies of warriors. It was hard to tell if they had been pushed back from the northern pass or if they had come up the slope deliberately when they heard the screams of civilians further up the mountain. There was Ameno Samusa, the elementary school sword instructor who had taught Hiroshi and Mamoru before him. There was the numu woman who had crafted Misaki’s wedding jewelry, hand in hand with her husband, who came around every three months to clean and repair the Matsuda compound’s roof.

Volunteers paused hopefully at each body, checking for signs of life, but so far it seemed that they hadn’t had any luck. Anyone who had fallen to injury out here on the open slopes had almost certainly been hit by the Imperial army’s bullets or debris from their bombs.

Misaki had seen dismembered bodies before, messes of blood and internal organs, people hacked into pieces by machetes. But she hadn’t felt it then. After all, Livingston, Carytha had been an exotic land of morbid curiosities and exhilarating danger. That had been the real difference between herself and Robin Thundyil: for him, the tragedy of Livingston’s slums had been real. To Misaki, the privileged daughter of an untouchable noble house a world away, it had only been a game, a passing thrill to sate her thirst for adventure. It hadn’t quite been real.

This was real.

“Please, Matsuda-dono,” one of the fishermen was saying, his voice very far away. “A lady shouldn’t have to see this.”

“No,” Misaki said quietly. “No one should have to see this.”

How had she been so cavalier with lives that meant something to Robin? How had she shrugged off atrocities and then called it strength? Here on the slopes of her mountain, where every corpse was a personal loss, she did not feel strong at all.

“Why don’t you go back to your family, Matsuda-dono?” the fisherman asked.

“I’m missing a part of it,” she replied. “I need to find my son.”

“Then—at least let me accompany you, ma’am. Parts of this slope may still be dangerous.”

Misaki didn’t need an escort to find her way, but she thanked the fisherman anyway and let him follow along. He might not have the authority to order her back to the main village, but it simply wasn’t good manners to let a lady wander into the aftermath of a battle alone.

“What’s your name, fisherman?” she asked as they picked their way down the steep path. It may have been a strange time for small talk, but Misaki found that she couldn’t bear the silence. It left her too much room to contemplate where she was going, what she would inevitably find.

“Chiba Mizuiro, Matsuda-dono.” His voice carried the eager anxiety of a man who did not often get to talk to members of high houses.

“Chiba.” Misaki smiled in a weak attempt to put the man at ease. “My sister-in-law is a Chiba, you know.”

“Matsuda Setsuko-sama,” he said. “Yes, I—I heard about that marriage.” Of course, he had. It had been quite the scandal. “My branch of the family is—was— close with hers.”

“The fishing village at the base of this mountain,” Misaki said, “where the tornado touched down first; what kind of shape is it in?”

“It’s... not in any shape, Matsuda-dono. It’s gone. If it weren’t for the little pieces of wood and the odd scrap of netting, you would never know there was a village there at all.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.” Misaki tried to focus on that, on the tragedy of the lost fishing village and her sympathy for Setsuko. It was by no means a pleasant thought—in fact, it was quite painful, but that was the point; it was almost painful enough to take her mind off where her feet were carrying her. Almost.

“So, I assume there are no survivors?” she asked.

“Not that we could find,” Chiba said, “though a few of us stayed behind to look, mostly people hoping to find their lost relatives.”

Misaki nodded. Poor Setsuko. Poor Setsuko.

“I saw the tornado,” he said. “My wife and daughters were crying by the time it touched down. We thought we were all going to die.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “That must have been terrible for you.”

“Please don’t apologize, Matsuda-dono,” Chiba said fiercely. “If it weren’t for you and your family, none of us would be here now. I only regret we can’t do more to help.”

Misaki cast a glance at her escort, meeting his earnest gaze.

Matsuda Susumu had always complained that the peasants and lesser houses of the peninsula were not loyal the way they had been when he was young. He talked about the days when all the people of Kusanagi had respected and revered the Matsuda house. During the Keleba, the great families of Shirojima had earned their vassals’ loyalty through their indisputable shows of strength against Kaigen’s enemies. The Matsuda house might have raised powerful fighters every generation since the Keleba, but no one in Misaki’s generation had witnessed the proof of that power... until now.

It seemed that a fragment of that ancient wonder had stirred from sleep when the people of Kusanagi’s coast saw a tornado fall before the power of Takayubi. Loyalty was born of the awe shining in this fisherman’s eyes. And now, koronu poured up the mountain, eager to serve however they could.

“Your son and your brother-in-law—all of you who fought here—are heroes,” Chiba said fervently. “We owe you our lives.”

She couldn’t say whether it made her happy or sad that Matsuda Susumu had not lived to see this loyalty revived. She wished she could feel something... anything other than the inevitability of each step down, down toward the end of her world.

By this time, the charred remains of the blacksmith village were in sight, growing closer with each step.

“You know, I’ve never had much occasion to visit the other fishing villages in this region,” Misaki said too quickly, her voice high with strain. “Tell me more about your village.”

“Oh.” The man looked surprised. “But Matsuda-dono, don’t you think we should look for your—”

“Tell me,” Misaki demanded sharply, “about your house, your boat, your family. Talk to me about something.” Just take me away from here.

They were skirting the smoking remains of the numu village, where the familiar smell of burned wood and coal had mixed with the insidious stench of charred flesh.

“Your most successful fishing excursion,” she said desperately. “Tell me about that.”

“Alright, Matsuda-dono,” Chiba said uncertainly. “Um—most of my family’s income doesn’t come from fish. My wife is an excellent pearl diver, a skill she’s started to pass on to my daughters. We sell the pearls to numuwu for them to use in their jewelry and baubles for ladies like you.”

Misaki tried to focus on Chiba Mizuiro’s words even as her eyes had started to scan the ashy, bloodstained snow. She tried to be there with the pearl diver and her daughters on that boat.

“I worry about my wife sometimes, the way she dives so far down into the dark on days when the waters are violent. My mother died diving for pearls, you see. So do many women every year. I worried more than ever when my oldest daughter started going out with my wife. And when we decided my youngest was ready to try, well, I thought I might die from nerves. But the water was so placid and clear that first day all three of them dove together.

“It was like Nami was so happy to see them that she cleared the coast of waves, and sharks, and sharp rocks just for them. I barely caught any fish that day, but the Goddess filled my girls’ hands with pearls.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Misaki said, trying with all her might to feel a sliver of the fishing family’s joy. Of course, she couldn’t. She had never had to dive for her riches. If she wanted pearl necklaces or hair ornaments, someone brought them to her. She had never given much thought to the pearls themselves or the people who risked their lives to gather them from the ocean floor.

“I think that was the day I understood that this peninsula really was blessed by the blood of gods. City people come through sometimes and say it’s dying, but divinity lives here.”

“Divinity?” Misaki’s voice seemed to come from somewhere far away. Her eyes had fallen on a thin shape in the snow—Mamoru’s sword. The blade was drenched in blood.

“I watched a tornado stop here,” Chiba said earnestly, “before it could reach my village. I think this is a place of miracles. Just like my mother used to tell me... for every diver the ocean takes, there is a perfect day, when she showers a family with bright pearls and love.”

Misaki’s feet crunched to a stop in the snow and the fisherman’s gaze followed hers.

The black-clad soldier before them was in two pieces, cut in half by what must have been a brutally decisive stroke of the katana. And there, facing him in the snow, barely a stride away, was Mamoru.

The indiscriminate spray of bullets had left holes in the back of his kimono, singed circles piercing the diamonds of the Matsuda crest.

“Merciful Nami!” the fisherman exclaimed in undisguised disgust. “Those pilots just shot right through him! What if he was still alive?”

“He wasn’t,” Misaki said softly. Thank the Gods for that. There wasn’t space in her heart for any more rage.

“How can you tell?” Chiba asked.

“There’s barely any bleeding from the bullet wounds,” Misaki said numbly.

“What?”

“There was no blood flow when the bullets hit his body. His heart stopped beating long before that.”

The fisherman was eyeing her, visibly unsettled. “How can you tell—”

“Before I married into the Matsuda family, I was Tsusano Misaki. I know blood.” She noticed the man shift a fraction of a step back. Superstitious. “Could you please give me a moment with my son?”

“Yes—of course, Matsuda-dono. Just...” Chiba Mizuiro got down on his knees and bowed before the body until his forehead was buried in the snow. A quiet prayer passed his lips. Then he shuffled to face Misaki and bowed again, just as deeply. “Nyama to you, Matsuda-dono, and to your son.”

“Gods willing,” Misaki murmured, and he withdrew, leaving her alone with the body that was no longer Mamoru.

In her mind, Misaki had compared the bomb shelter to Hell. But this—this clarity of stillness—was worse. The bizarre thing about Misaki was that she could be at home in Hell. Chaos had its own calming effect on her. In the bunker, the screams, the pulsing blood, and the gunfire had drowned each other out, smothering her in a daze. Here, there was no fluid crawl of blood or dribble of tears to consume Misaki’s attention; this blood had frozen into something solid and irrefutable. There was no movement to spur her to action, nothing to mend or destroy. There was only the frozen truth of her son’s death.

Slowly, Misaki sank to her knees beside the corpse.

Her eyes traced the details, preserved in the cold. The bullet wounds may not have bled, but there was plenty of frozen blood to survey, a map of Mamoru’s struggles leading up to his death. Minor cuts littered his face and forearms, bruising and raw skin around his neck suggested that someone had tried to strangle him, and his lip was split from a blunt blow to the mouth, but none of that had killed him. It was clear that his death had resulted from the deep blade wound in his side.

Misaki wished she hadn’t seen wounds like that before, on the victims of machete attacks in Livingston. She wished she hadn’t witnessed firsthand how excruciatingly long it took those people to die.

The fonyaka opposite Mamoru had been cut cleanly in half by a sword stroke that ran from his right hip to just beneath his left arm—the sort of cut that ended a man’s life instantly. Even the greatest fighter in the world couldn’t get up for a counterattack after that. Mamoru’s blow had been the final one... which could only mean that her boy had fought through the injury that ended his life. Even with that hideous wound in his side, draining his blood and disabling vital organs, he had fought.

His right hand was mangled, missing two fingers, so she reached out and touched his left, smoothing a gentle touch over his battered knuckles. The first time Misaki had held Mamoru, as a tiny baby, she had hated the feel of his jiya simply because it reminded her of his father’s. It had made her want to retch and recoil. Now she reached for it, her fingers grasping and senses straining for the smallest trace—but of course, there was nothing. The life force that had made him Mamoru had departed, on its way to a different realm of existence.

A breathless sob escaped Misaki. Her ice-laced fingers dug into the back of her son’s kimono and she wished, she wished, from the depth of her aching chest, that her claws could pull a life back to the Duna as easily as they could tear one out of it.

The next breath that came out of her was more of a scream than a sob, and the pain it sent through her lungs was so pitifully small next to the sheer absence beneath her hands. She would let a fonyaka pull her life from her mouth, she would give her soul a thousand times over, if she could just bring Mamoru’s back.

It wasn’t until she felt liquid blood on her fingers that she jerked back and realized what she was doing. As she longed to feel Mamoru’s pulse and nyama, her own subconscious had risen to pull at the lifeless body. It hadn’t restored a true pulse, of course. All it had done was unfreeze arteries and disrupt rigor mortis, causing Mamoru’s bullet wounds and other injuries to bleed anew.

Horrified, Misaki scrambled a pace back from the body.

“Sorry!” She gasped, wiping the blood from her hands in the snow. “I’m so sorry!” She bowed down, crushing her forehead into the frozen ground until it hurt, until ice and then rock ground into her brow. “I’m so sorry.”

She stayed there for a long time, pressed to the ground in apology as if there were enough apologies in the Duna to make up for how she had failed him. Closing her eyes, she prayed to Nagi for strength and Nami for calm. Neither obliged. Her bloodstained hands shook, even as she braced them against the ground for some semblance of stability. The sobs wouldn’t stop, but she had not come here to confuse Mamoru’s spirit and pull it in two. She had come here to help him, to be a good mother, if the Gods would give her this last chance.

One didn’t need to be a fina to understand that regret was like poison to the spirits of the dead. A spirit who regretted what he hadn’t accomplished in life would be unable to pass into the peace of the Laaxara. Those spirits became trapped in the burning realm on the fringe of the Duna, unable to truly die, their suffering intensifying as their regrets festered. It was a horrible existence. And it was the souls of those who died young, in the midst of hope, unfinished business, and unfulfilled potential who were in the most danger.

Through the shaking, Misaki found the voice to speak to her son.

“Kotetsu Katashi and Atsushi both lived, you know,” she said softly. “The Kotetsu line survives, with all its knowledge, because of you.” That was the first thing he needed know: that he hadn’t died for nothing. To Misaki, at this moment, the lives of the Kotetsus seemed irrelevant, but Mamoru was a better person than she was. It would matter to him.

“I know you doubted. I know you worried that you wouldn’t know what to do. But look at you... you fought so well.” And with the grief, Misaki realized that there was also pride welling up in her throat. It intertwined with the pain, amplifying it. “You’re only a boy, but you fought to the last like a man. You did well here. But I’m sure you know that...” A painful, nearly hysterical smile jerked at the corners of Misaki’s mouth. “No warrior could have fought through injuries like yours without being sure of himself.”

Misaki bit down on her trembling lip as her throat closed up. There were no holy men here to offer the perfect, enlightened words to send Mamoru’s spirit on its way. As his mother, as the only living person here, Misaki had to find the words. This was the last thing she could do for him. So, even though it shook her body and hurt beyond imagining, she forced herself to keep speaking.

“You did right by your family and your country, even though, I think... none of us did right by you. There is nothing in this world for you to regret. Nothing at all.”

But it wasn’t Mamoru’s regret Misaki truly feared. Her son had been honest with himself and others. He had lived well and died with purpose. Right now, Misaki herself was the greatest threat to her son’s spirit. The regrets of a spirit’s loved ones could also tie it down. The bitterness that consumed her could doom him to an eternity of fire—unless she found some way to be better.

With a last bracing breath, she lifted her head to look into Mamoru’s face and was surprised to find a kind of peace there. Somehow, the horrific damage to his body had done nothing to contort his features, as pale and clean as his father’s, but gentler—like the bright edges of a moon barely softened by mist. His jaw wasn’t clenched, nor was his brow crunched in pain. Instead, he had the innocently wondering look of someone halfway woken from a dream. His eyes, glazed and frosted from the cold, no longer functioned, but somewhere in the space between space, his spirit still saw her. He still listened. She looked into those eyes, using them to ground her, as she started to speak.

“Mamoru-kun...”

The sound of her own voice wavering in uncertainty brought her back to the first time she had truly talked to her son: that dawn on the front deck mere months ago when they watched the sunrise. She hadn’t quite known what to say then either, to help him on his way.

Start small, she told herself, as she had then, conversational. The right words would follow if she just loosened her time-stiffened lips.

“Do you remember that morning, Mamoru? After you had that fight with Kwang Chul-hee and asked for my help? You asked me if... if one day I would tell you about my school days, about my life before Takayubi.

“It made me so happy to hear you ask that, and I was looking forward to telling you those stories. They were going to be fun stories, adventure stories. I’m sure you would have liked them, but now I think... maybe those stories about Tsusano Misaki—Sirawu, the Shadow—didn’t have as much value as I put on them. Maybe they weren’t worth retelling or holding onto the way I did.

“See, Mamoru, there were certainly people in those stories who knew what they were fighting for, heroes who were noble and strong-willed, and worth remembering... like you. But I wasn’t one of them. Sirawu was just that. A shadow. It was someone else’s story and I was just passing through it. This... you are my story... and I was so selfish, so tied to that shadow that I missed it. And my son, I— I’m so sorry it took me this long to understand. I’m sorry—” the words caught in her throat, choking her, until pain shot through her chest, forcing her to let them out. “I never loved you the way I should have.”

Tears rolled down Misaki’s cheeks. For the first time since coming to Takayubi—perhaps the first time in her life—she knew she was human. Acutely, unbearably human. Now that it was too late.

“Your mother is a selfish woman, Mamoru.” She clutched a sleeve in her hand and wiped the tears from her eyes, only to have new ones well up in their place. “I won’t deny that. I’ve lived my life unable to let go of all the ‘what if’s, the ‘if only’s. For my husband, I couldn’t let go of them. For the love of my life, I couldn’t let go of them, and we’ve all suffered for it. It was the poison of my regret that killed my unborn children, those who would have come after you and before Hiroshi. My regret has poisoned this family for years, but I swear, Mamoru, I won’t let it touch you.

“The thing is... you’re more important than all of them. So, what I couldn’t do for my parents, or Robin, or Takeru, or my unborn babies, I’ll do it for you. My son, I’ll do it for you. You’ve done more in this world than anyone could have asked. This once, let me be the mother I should have been from the beginning. Let me take care of the rest, alright?”

She crept forward to touch his hand again, but this time, she did not sob or pull. Her jiya was under control. She cried quietly, her tears falling without disturbance. She let him be still.

“I know have no right to ask anything of you, but please... if your poor, stupid mother can ask one last thing of you... let me hold you one more time. Just one more time, you’re going to let Kaa-chan hold you and treasure you the way I should have the day you were born. Then I’m going to let you go on with all my blessings. Is that alright?”

Finawu said it was not good for a woman to touch the dead, but Takayubi’s finawu had all been lost in the tornado with their temple. There was no one to judge Misaki as she gathered her boy into her arms and settled down to hold him for the last time.

Please Nami, please Nagi, she prayed through the tears. He’s such a good boy. Don’t let his stupid mother ruin this for him. Please... give me the strength to let him go.

A mother was supposed to go to the temple after the death of a child. She was supposed to speak to the spirits of the Dead until she had said all she needed to say to the child, until all her unresolved feelings were spent, all conflicts resolved, all grudges laid to rest, until the finawu were satisfied that the deceased could move on in peace. But the temple was gone, along with all the masks and wise monks in it.

The best Misaki could do was hold her baby, and love him, and love him, and hope it was enough that she could let him go.

“You have no debt to pay the Duna.” She murmured, resting her cheek against his cold head. “It is enough that, even for a moment, I had a son like you. It is enough that Hiroshi, Nagasa, and Izumo will have a brother like you to look up to as they become young men themselves. It is enough,” she told herself, even though she would never hear him laugh with his little brothers again, never watch him bring beauty to another kata, never see that boyish smile, with those dimples, deepen into the smile of a man. For a moment, her hands had been full of pearls. She rocked and repeated, “It is enough.

“It is enough.

“It is enough.

“It is enough,” until Chiba Mizuiro returned with a group of volunteers to help her carry the body up the mountain.

Before they left, Misaki paused before the corpse of the Ranganese soldier who had killed her son. Kneeling down, she passed a hand over his eyes, closing them, letting herself forgive him. It was easy to forgive a young man following orders.

Too easy.

And it didn’t lift any of the weight from Misaki’s chest—because this Ranganese stranger wasn’t the one who really needed forgiving.