Shinrabansho: Myriad Souls

2.90: Foxfire and Fireworks

Natalia rose into the night as if she had never obeyed gravity in her whole life.

The festival grounds fell away beneath her, the festival lanterns swaying like small captured stars, booths packed shoulder to shoulder, laughter and music stitched into a single living fabric. The fireworks had not yet reached their finale, but the sky was already bruised with color, bright blooms opening and dying in slow succession.

BOOM…KRAK-KRAK

Each burst left a fading afterimage on the underside of the lowest clouds in the sky, and in the dream’s thinning laws, those afterimages lingered a heartbeat longer than they should have, less a glitch than an act of will, as if the world wanted to savor its own fading beauty while it still could.

She felt the tear in the dream about them the way one felt a splinter in the tongue: small, sharp, impossible to ignore.

The air itself had become corrupt above the crowd, too laden with dark energy. Dreamlight drifted upward in loose motes, drawn from human awareness and something else drifted with it. The darkness did not float so much as cling, leaving faint stains in its wake.

The source of it was Noh-Baku, himself.

He hung above the festival like a storm that had gained consciousness.

His silhouette was massive, elephantine and human in the same unsettling shape he had always worn, but the contours of his body had started to lose their definition, blurring at the edges as if even the dream struggled to decide what he was. His top hat remained absurdly intact, pinned to a skull that now carried a pale Noh mask stretched over the front of his face. The mask’s hollows were empty in a way that felt hungry rather than blank, and the dark attribute in his aura warped the fireworks’ light as it approached him, bending it into sickened shades before it could touch. Color dulled near him. Motion slowed. Heat fled.

Below, humans screamed and pointed.

Many fled. A few did what humans always did when something beyond reason appeared. They lifted their phones with trembling hands and tried to capture proof that would inevitably be rejected as a hoax later, framed poorly, explained away by experts who had not been there.

Natalia tasted the fear in the air like it was ash.

She arrived beside Kagami-no-Kami.

The Magistrate floated with perfect stillness, a figure cut cleanly from moonlight, her robes unmoving despite the wind blowing, her sleeves folded, her posture composed. Around her, her masks hovered in slow motion. They positioned themselves awaiting the moment they would be needed.

SHIK…SHIK

Kagami-no-Kami did not glance at Natalia at first. Her attention remained fixed on Noh-Baku with the same tranquil intensity she had worn in the Yōkai Council hall—the kind of gaze that made even the most prideful yōkai suddenly aware of how thin and fragile their existence truly was.

Then, without turning, she spoke.

“You came,” Kagami-no-Kami said at last, her voice carrying without effort through the charged sky. “Natalia of the Unsetting Light. Solar Arbiter of Continuance.”

The title landed heavily on her, a memory of a century of responsibility. The dream itself seemed to respond—not bending, but recognizing who she was. The lingering afterimages of fireworks bursting in the air sharpened briefly, their colors warming, as if recalling the world’s physics before Noh-Baku entered his world like this.

“I am gladdened,” Kagami-no-Kami continued, “to see you in this light once more.”

Natalia’s lips curved faintly. It wasn’t out of pride, just recognition of her words. “It wouldn’t have been possible if this world wasn't so saturated with consciousness. Thinking a little more on it, I wonder if I’m able to take this form thanks to his own memories of me echoing here,” she mused.

“Yes,” Kagami-no-Kami agreed. “The wellspring of strong yōkai power has always been dreams and human awareness. However, I would remind you of one thing,” she continued, a single mirror-mask tilting as it caught the next firework burst and fractured it into a dozen shimmering reflections, “this is his dream, not ours.”

Natalia nodded, her face already composed. Her hands stayed still at her sides, but her shoulders held a tightness that did not match her calm.

“Not after what he has become. His dream is coming apart.” Natalia’s gaze turned downward toward the girls. Riko and Yuna were still entranced by their mirrors. Sumire was embracing Aoi. Hers was gone. That told Natalia that Sumire had accepted what she used to be with remarkable speed, even though what she had learned was likely more alarming than what Riko faced. That willingness to embrace her old self gave Natalia hope and strengthened her resolve. 

“We could kill the dreamers here so that the dream world would die,” Kagami-no-Kami said flatly.

Natalia gasped in shock. “That would not solve the root problem,” Natalia added evenly. “We would still have to face him in the yōkai world.”

“He would have fewer advantages in that case,” Kagami-no-Kami said calmly.

“Perhaps, but I get the feeling that he won’t let go. It takes time to wake after memory integration. He would just drag them back.” Natalia frowned.

“I see.” Kagami-no-Kami nodded. “You are probably right.”

“In any case, if we fail, the dreamers will act. They always do, eventually,” Natalia said with a small smile.

Kagami-no-Kami’s gaze sharpened by a degree. “Are you certain of that? That girl has taken hold of many hearts, especially theirs. This world has surely taken some part of them.”

“I am certain,” Natalia said at once. “I have faith in all of them. Especially Sumire.” A quiet conviction entered her voice, old and immovable. “I would not have invested so much into her otherwise.”

“Ever the savvy businesswoman you were,” Kagami-no-Kami noted in a slightly teasing tone.

Natalia followed her line of sight.

Behind the black rippling in the sky, she could sense the sleeping bodies in Baku’s hidden chambers like warmth under floorboards—human vessels laid out carefully, her own vessel included among them, dreaming.

She could have laughed if her throat had not been tight with anger.

Noh-Baku’s trunk lifted in the air.

The movement dragged shadow behind it like cloth pulled through mud, and where that shadow passed, the air dimmed, the dream briefly forgetting how bright it was supposed to be.

“Well,” he said, and the voice that came out of him was strangely complex. His old politeness fractured beneath what possessed him. It echoed within him, deep and cold, as he spoke, “Two judges have arrived. How flattering.”

His laughter followed, low and resonant, and the sound made the dreamlight around him thicken, sink, and fall in slow, lazy black flakes. They drifted downward.

Natalia held herself steady.

She let her nine tails fan out behind her. She had not earned her position as a deified yōkai as a weakling. Each tail thrashed subtly like a plume of gold-white fire, licking at the surface but there was something far denser beneath it, and the air warmed around her with a familiar sensation that even she could feel emanating off her.

A strong sense of gravity and heat.

FWOOM

It wasn’t heat that burned those in its presence.

It was a heat that endured for millenia even in sub zero temperatures.

The dream welcomed her as she once was, consciousness itself recognizing the memory of her. For a moment, she felt it try to wrap around her power like a hand seizing back a gift given wholehearted. She did not allow the dream to reclassify her. Denying its authority over her was simple. Her instinctive reach toward the authority that had once defined its cycles came as second nature.

The world recoiled, stung by the dark energies bleeding from Noh-Baku. Perhaps his presence was weakening his control rather than strengthening it.

Without raising her voice, without even looking down, Natalia lifted one hand.

The lingering afterimages of the fireworks in the sky stabilized. Their fading slowed, stretching, refusing to collapse into darkness. Color held where it should have died. Motion continued where it should have settled. The corruption pressing outward from Noh-Baku hesitated, fumbling.

A quiet law reasserted itself.

Noh-Baku felt it.

Not as pain, but as a strange resistance.

The shadows around him rippled unevenly, as though they had struck a current they could not attach to. A thread of his dark energy tried to pool beneath him and failed, smearing thin instead of deepening.

His gaze snapped to her.

“You should not have those powers anymore.” His gaze turned to Kagami-no-Kami. “And you should not be here,” Noh-Baku said, and his civility slipped on the word should. It cracked like a whip. “This world is private. It is my domain. What you did to come here physically was unthinkable.”

Kagami-no-Kami did not look away from him.

“I am here because you crossed a boundary,” she said. “You attempted to devour me and it backfired. That alone granted me access.”

One mask shifted, its surface reflecting the fractures spreading through his Noh face.

“When identity is taken without consent, judgment follows. Whatever actions I take now are justified. That has always been my domain.”

Natalia met his stare at last.

“I am not taking your world from you,” she said evenly. “I am keeping it from collapsing. Have you failed to notice what your new powers are doing to your creation?”

For the first time, something in Baku’s posture tightened, not quite with anger, but with a sense of urgency. His shadow drew closer to his body, compressing instead of spreading.

“You are interfering,” he said, quieter now, the anger in his voice thinning into a strained tone. “I do not need your help to maintain my world.”

Natalia didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze shifted, not to him, but to the sky above, to the way the dreamlight warped and failed to hold its form, like pixels forgetting the color and shape they were meant to be.

“You clearly do,” she said at last. “Just look at it. You aren’t holding it together. You’re forcing it to obey you, and it’s tearing itself apart.”

His shadows writhed.

“This place is unraveling,” Natalia continued. “That’s not because I’m here, nor because Kagami-no-Kami entered your world physically. How you have become is the problem.”

Her hand lowered.

The fireworks did not freeze. They did not brighten. They simply kept going, burning, fading and renewing themselves, refusing to become still.

Natalia did not press further.

She did not reach for the dream’s structure. She did not seize its sky or bend its ground. She let the law stand as it was, and nothing more.

That was the spirit of continuance.

“I see. Refrain from tampering as freely as you wish. You have better manners than that, Natalia,” Noh-Baku sneered.

The dream answered her control over continuance, but it did not yield to her will.

It bent to accommodate what should persist. To how the world had originally been made to behave.

But it did not recognize her as its architect.

Natalia looked directly at him.

She did not allow herself to be soft. Softness had been her mistake far too often.

She was painfully aware that Baku had betrayed her, not out of cruelty, but out of a twisted gentleness. As gentle as he used to be, tempted with ultimate power, at least within his domain, he had finally decided to take for himself what he believed the world had denied him.

“Baku,” she said, and her voice carried the same authority she had once used when Council members bickered like children around a table too small for them. “Stop.”

The hollows of the Noh mask on his face deepened with increased depth. For a fleeting instant, pain rippled through his posture rather than his blank face, an almost imperceptible hitching, as though the name had reached whatever fragment of him still remembered himself.

“This is not your way,” Natalia continued evenly. “You have cared for humans for millennia. For you to turn upon them like this is unthinkable. Think of what comes after—not the immediate satisfaction of power, but the future you once believed in. What you sought was never seized. It was earned, slowly, through patience, effort, and care.”

“What I do is for their sake, not mine,” he shot back, too quickly. “You speak of abused authority, of betrayal, as though invoking your former station should make me bow.”

His trunk twitched, betraying the strain beneath his certainty.

“I called you Natalia-sama out of respect,” he continued, his voice tightening. “Not because of what you once were, but because of what we were. Our common history. The games we played. The time spent over a shogi board.”

His gaze hardened.

“Why should I turn away now,” he demanded, “when my destiny finally answers me? It is my time now. I will care for those girls for the rest of their natural lives—”

His words faltered, forcing themselves through, his eyeless gaze falling on Kagami-no-Kami.

“—Leave in peace now, Kagami-no-Kami, or join the dream as they do.” He looked at Natalia, his eyes boring through her. “Will you willingly return to the life I crafted for you, Natalia?”

Natalia shook her head. “I will not. It is a beautiful world and I very much admire your work. I would not mind returning in better circumstances, but I cannot acquiesce.”

“I see.” Noh-Baku said.

Kagami-no-Kami’s masks shifted, subtle angles correcting, aligning. 

SHIK

She did not raise her voice when she spoke. She did not need to. 

“I have already set them free,” she said. “And you know this to be true. In any case, you have killed humans. We will see our duty done.”

His laughter cracked through the air, sharper this time, brittle at the edges.

K-K-KH

“Killed?” he scoffed. “Such a crude word. The man was asleep. He went peacefully.”

His trunk shifted, the shadow beneath it thickening.

“The woman was another matter. She was afraid. Loud. She resisted.” His voice flattened. “They were suffering, so I eased them into quietude.”

Kagami-no-Kami’s masks fanned wider, and the air behind her split into layered reflections of themselves. Natalia found it difficult to tell which of them was real. 

KRRSH

“You did not merely kill them,” she said. “You tore their identities away, hence why they screamed. You took their lives from them, leaving their  husks behind.”

Baku’s trunk curled inward.

The dream darkened, as though the sky itself recoiled from his actions.

“Identity is nothing but a costume,” he said, his tone lowering, thick with conviction. “Humans shed them every day and call it growth. They change names, faces, and ultimately lives. They die and return and pretend that continuity means something.”

His gaze tilted toward her.

“I recall that was a subject you often complained about over tea, Natalia. Dissatisfied with continuity itself. You became more interested in change.”

“It’s true that I complained about continuance,” she said. “But only about certain aspects of it. I objected to continuity when it was used to excuse stagnation. When it caused harm. When change was inconvenient and continuance became the justification.”

Her gaze hardened, sunlight thinning into something sharper.

“What you are doing isn’t about change. Certainly not change for the better. This is erasure. You of all beings were once most concerned with that. You worried that fewer humans prayed to you to devour their nightmares.”

She did not look away.

“You are not allowing them the chance to grow, or choose, or even fail. You are deciding who and what they are for them.”

She held his stare.

His aura pressed outward, heavy and insistent.

“Every soul reincarnates. Every self dissolves on death. They cling to the lie of living. It is but a dream. A dream of a dream.”

The air trembled, caught between judgment and delusion. 

THRUM

“It means everything,” Natalia said, and she could hear her own restraint fraying, the warmth in her voice sharpening like sunlight through glass. “This is not like you, Baku. You love humans. To speak so lightly of their lives. What you are doing will lead to further harm to the girls. You are on the brink of becoming a mad deity without any compassion.”

He wavered.

It was small, but it was there: the mask’s blankness rippled, the dark aura tightened as if he had to hold it in place so that it wouldn’t flee in shame.

For a heartbeat, Natalia saw the Baku she knew in there—old, tired and earnest, always choosing kindness because he understood that it was essential.

Then the insanity waxed within him as soon as it waned.

Baku’s shoulders rose, and the shadows around him thickened, crawling up his arms like the blackest tar. 

SSSSK

“Do you know what humans give me back for my service and care?” he demanded, and now his civility was gone, stripped like bark. “They give prayers when they are desperate. They give gratitude when they are relieved. They give nothing when they are content. Nothing whatsoever. They forget. They move on. They fill their days and die without ever knowing what it costs to keep their minds from breaking.”

Natalia’s gaze softened despite herself. It was not pity. She recognized his words. He was speaking from a wound.

“You are losing your grip on your sanity, my friend,” she said carefully, as if her words were feebly holding onto a shaking cup. “Please reconsider.”

Kagami-no-Kami took a slow breath.

“Repent, Baku,” she said, and her voice carried her decree without raising her volume. “Return what you stole and let the dead rest in peace. End the dream. Submit to judgment for your actions. There is still a path that does not end with you being erased.”

Baku’s head jerked around unnaturally, as if the word erased struck him physically.

For a moment, he looked almost… frightened.

Then he snarled.

GRRRAH

Such a snarling noise sounded wrong for him. It was like a gentle animal growing claws and fangs.

“No,” he said. “No more cages. No more permissions to enter the human world. No more Council signatures to allow me to do what I can without you. I have evolved. I have opportunities now. I will not crawl back into your good graces.”

Natalia held his gaze, unflinching.

“Rules are what keep the human world from becoming a feeding trough for those like you are now.”

His aura surged in answer.

WHUM

The dark attribute spilled outward, not like flame but like stain. Dreamlight touched it and sank, losing color, falling quickly. Even the next firework burst seemed to dim as its sparks gravitated toward his influence—

—and somewhere beneath that pressure, the dream strained, forced to continue in a slow sickly march.

“It is not my intention to feed on humanity,” Baku hissed. “I am saving them. I will save them from their cruel destiny.”

Kagami-no-Kami’s masks slid—one forward, one low, one high—forming a triangle around her face. SHIK. SHIK. “What do you intend to do?”

Baku’s trunk lifted, and the shadows in the air tightened like a fist. 

KRRRK

“I will give them all the happiness that they deserve. Nightmares will cease to exist.” he spat, his voice cracking between fury and pleading. “Ever after. The girl, especially that one girl… she will die if you get your way. You would steal that from her in the name of restoring stability? To stop me? You would be no better than me.”

Natalia’s tails flared in refusal. She shone with a steady star-like brightness.

The gold-white fire along their edges thickened, and for an instant the sky around her stopped feeling like mere night. It felt exactly like what it was, a final dusk in a world that had once known true light. The fireworks beneath them continued to bloom, but Natalia’s presence changed how they were perceived, each burst suddenly small, mere flickerings, like playacting beneath something far more brilliant.

“If you ever truly loved them,” Natalia said, and her voice carried with it the heat of a verdict that had once quieted entire halls, “you would not keep them asleep to soothe your guilt… and that girl is ready to lay her life down for the greater good.”

The words landed hard.

Baku’s posture buckled—just slightly.

Natalia felt it. His power wavering. The thin moment when persuasion might reach him.

She moved then, not with force, but with the oldest kind of kitsune power, the power of presence.

Her foxfire spread like dawn, FWOOM, warmth flooding the sky with the steady presence of daylight. It pressed in around Baku’s aura without touching it, the contrast sharp enough to expose his darkness for what it was, like ink spilled into clear water. Her nine tails swept behind her in a measured arc. The dream brightened in response, light reasserting itself where her presence displaced the dark.

Above the fireworks, a thin, pale corona began to form behind Natalia’s silhouette, a pressure of radiance, the suggestion of a sun on Earth.

“Baku,” she said, her voice quieter now, more intimate. “Just take a moment to look at yourself.”

He stiffened.

“This again!” He ground the words out, resentment sharp in his tone.

“I will assist with your self-reflection. It is one of my specialties. Look carefully at what you have become.” Kagami-no-Kami raised one hand. A mirror appeared. It was not an illusion, but a slab of polished reflection suspended in the air. The surface did not merely show. It compelled him to look. It caught Noh-Baku’s dark, wavering outline and returned it to him in full.

KRRSH

Baku’s aura shuddered, his trunk trembling.

For the smallest possible instant, the dark undertone thinned. His silhouette looked less monstrous as he resisted the influence.

Natalia stepped into that opening.

And instead of exploiting his moment of weakness, she let her light intensify so he could see himself more clearly, the corona behind her sharpening, a thin band of cleaner light crossing the mirror, sun-bright without the intention to blind. Her light spread across the mirror’s surface, smoothing the image and increasing its clarity. The spidering darkness in his reflection became far more visible, revealed for what it was. Rot, not some grand destiny anyone should want. A stain on the world, not a throne.

“I mourn for you, my friend. You were so gentle. I truly cherished our time,” Natalia said. “You were patient and loving. You were the yōkai humans prayed to when they could not bear their own fears. You mattered, even if fewer now know to pray to you for relief. I admired your work, and you for doing it so faithfully. Do not turn that gift of yours into cursed chains in the name of power.”

Baku’s shoulders rose and fell. His voice came out hoarse. “I… Natalia… I do not want to go back to my existence as it was. Here in the yōkai world, I am all alone, unappreciated, day after day, because of my cursed head that I cannot change. I am condemned for my inability to fit in.”

Dark tears fell from his mask, striking the earth like ink.

“You cannot go forward like this,” Kagami-no-Kami replied. “Your dream will rot beneath you. All of your dreams will crumble. Your power has already done significant damage to this world. When I first beheld it, I was impressed by its beauty.”

Natalia watched his mask ripple again, the blank face flexing as if the old Baku was trying to break free.

He wavered.

Then the insanity within him seized him like a hand around his throat.

Baku’s aura snapped outward, and the dark attribute surged so violently the air itself seemed to bruise. 

KRRRUM

The mirror Kagami-no-Kami had summoned cracked across its surface as spiderweb cracks spread across it, distorting his reflection. 

K-KRAK

The fireworks above stuttered. One burst bloomed in slow motion, fighting his dark aura.

BOOM

The mirror in front of him shattered, its fragments falling toward the earth in sparkling motes.

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