“You are not my father…”
Black and cold all around, a whispering wind underscored by that empty, tuneless song. She reached for Buruu in the dark, could feel nothing but the cold, an empty forever, tinged blue-black by the perfume of her father’s pipe.
“You are my daughter,” the voice said. “I love you, Ichigo…”
“My father is dead,” she hissed.
“Where do we go when we die, Daughter? Down to the Hells to dance forever with the Hungry Dead. Your mother is here. She longs to hold you in her arms.”
“My father gave his life for me. The Great Judge would never damn him to Yomi’s dark. Nor my mother or brother, before you wrap yourself in that lie.”
“The Great Judge? So you believe in gods now? In their power?”
“I believe what I see with my own eyes. And I cannot see you, demon.”
“But I have seen you, Daughter. As summer turned to autumn, and autumn to winter’s deep, I have felt you bloom. Those within you. So beautiful. So dazzlingly bright. All around you love you. Your passing shapes the face of the world.”
“Is that why you hide in the dark? Show yourself!”
“… But you have lost so much. The ones you love and who loved you. Do you not long for peace? Do you not tire of the weight of the world upon your shoulders? You are too young to be so exhausted, daughter mine.”
“And you would have me lay down? Run?” Her lips peeled back in a snarl. “You are not my father. He’d never bid me turn away when I could make a difference. Enough lies!”
Akihito’s voice echoed in the black, dipped in regret. “Where were you, Yukiko? What difference did you make when they killed me?”
“Or me?” Michi breathed, somewhere near her ear. “You can save the world, but not the ones you love?”
“You failed me,” Kasumi whispered.
“All of us gone,” her father intoned. “All sleeping now in the dark. But it is better here. Quieter. No pain. No loss. Stay with us.”
“No,” Yukiko hissed, pawing at the tears of rage welling in her eyes.
“Stay with us…”
“You have no right,” she breathed, her throat squeezing tight. “You have no right to claim their voices, or speak their names. You didn’t know them. You didn’t love them. All this loss, all this agony is because of you. You began it all. This rot, this war. You’re the reason they’re dead. I know who you are. I know your name.”
A voice in the dark, rolling and hollow.
“Speak it.”
“… Endsinger.”
“That is what they call me.” Whispers upon whispers. “But that is not my name.”
“Izanami, then.” Yukiko searched the darkness, turning on the spot, wisps of hair caught at the corners of her mouth. “Lady Izanami. The Maker’s bride. The Earth Goddess who died birthing the Seven Isles. Mother to demons. Hater of all life.”
“Hater?” The voice softened, coalesced into something gleaming and feminine. “Oh, daughter, I do not hate you…”
Something pale moving in the black, distilling out of the roiling abyss.
“I love you,” she breathed.
And there she stood before Yukiko’s wondering eyes. A paper lantern in one hand, a soulless, freezing light spilling from its folds. The air vibrating around her, thick with corpseflies and that awful, tuneless song. She was slender, white-clad, pale as milk and soft as silk. Black tresses flowed about her like water, cascading over the smooth curve of her shoulders, down over the swell of her hips, all the way to the floor. It writhed across her skin like a living thing, like serpents, insubstantial as shadows. Blood lotus flowers bloomed in her wake, filling the dark with cloying sweetness. Her face was impossibly beautiful; a perfect, timeless grace, heart-shaped and death-pale, pouting lips filmed in moist, glossy black.
But her eyes.
Gods, her eyes …
Punctures in her skull. Bottomless yawning pits, sucking all life and light from the air around her. Her lashes were worms, tiny and sightless, writhing toward Yukiko’s warmth. Her outstretched hand was painted elbow-deep in blood. Dripping on the floor.
“I love you,” she repeated.
“And so you seek to destroy us? To unmake everything you helped create?”
“Helped?” The sightless eyes blinked. “There was no helping, daughter. I did create this place. My beloved planted the seed, but it was I who sheltered it in my womb. Who knew the pure and perfect agony of its birthing. Who suckled it at my breast, even as I lay dying. You killed me, and still I love you.”
“Then why?” Yukiko stepped closer despite herself, hands to fists. “Why do this?”
“What have I done?” Izanami tilted her head. “You speak as if it was I who filled the skies with poison. I who choked the life from sea and earth.” She gestured to the flowers blooming at her feet. “I gave you something beautiful, and you turned it to atrocity. Into the tool of your own unmaking. But the choice was yours, daughter, doubt it not. You and all your kind.”