Omokumaru

Back in the office, we gathered around the angular furniture like mourners at a wake for logic itself. Ashley's decision to visit the tengu village on the second rotation had proved fortuitous—they'd denied any knowledge of a blackmail case.

That night before she'd left, Xiao Ru had whispered her concerns against my ear like secrets shared in confessional. "Pay attention if anything feels displaced," she'd said, her breath warm against my neck.

Displaced. The word tasted of copper, or perhaps I was craving Ruru’s blood. When I'd returned from each ceremony in that fog of stolen hours, something had indeed felt wrong—the moon drawing closer like a predator circling wounded prey. My initial theory crystallized: the tengu had been siphoning my energy to fuel its descent.

But where had it originated? The question gnawed at me like hunger in reverse. Did it connect to what that creature had screamed in the room of flesh—Marvalyn, resurrection, heralds arriving through dimensions folded wrong?

The room of flesh. Mary's jacket.

The memory struck me like the burn of propoful in sleeping veins. I had to return to that abattoir, if the capital's administration hadn't sealed it permanently behind their bureaucratic ribbons.

Xiao Ru's touch against my wrist pulled me from the spiral of my thoughts. "Something troubles you?"

"I noticed something in the flesh room," I said, my voice carrying an unintended flatness. "An artifact from my world. A potential connection." I paused, tasting the implications. "That monster spoke of something coming, just as this tengu creature did. Like Melody before them. Are they threads in the same cloth?"

Xiao Ru's ears flattened against her skull like flags surrendering to wind. "Troubling indeed."

A shadow crossed her expression then, something that darkened her violet eyes to the color of a bruised amethyst. "Ah—I haven't been able to locate Lalika at all. She's been missing since the village children case."

The words hung between us like smoke from a funeral pyre. Another thread, another connection in this web of disappearances and resurrections that seemed to be weaving itself around us with the patience of a spider that knew its prey was already caught.

Ashley's voice cut through our contemplation like the sharp report of a breaking harp string. "I received correspondence from the tengu village. Their shrine has been plagued by what they term 'anti-silence'—a consequence of that Remi creature's involvement."

She paused, letting the information settle. "Apparently she was a shapeshifter. Killed the matriarch's daughter and wore her skin like a festival mask. They want you there at your earliest convenience."

I nodded and leaned back in my chair, meeting Xiao Ru's gaze with eyes that felt hollowed out from the inside.

---

Lady Kageyama received me in an estate where time had pooled like blood in carpet fibers—that stirred memories of home—wooden floors that creaked with familiar warmth, paper screens that filtered afternoon twilight into gentle rectangles, the comfortable smell of tatami and old incense. The architecture held the serene functionality of temples I'd known in another life.

But Lady Kageyama herself was a portrait of collapse. She sat with the rigid posture of someone afraid that relaxation might shatter what remained of her composure. Her long blonde hair hung like a curtain around shoulders that seemed to curve inward, protecting some wound I couldn't see. The beauty mark beside her mouth stood out starkly against skin that had forgotten how to hold color.

"Detective," she said, and her voice sounded like it was traveling up from the bottom of a dry well. "Our shrine has been infected by whispers that never stop. The shrine maidens have begun tearing at their own ears, driven mad by voices that form words in no living language."

Her fingers pressed against her temples, shaking like someone trying to hold broken glass together. "I cannot get close without feeling as though my skull might crack open. I don't understand what these sounds are."

"I'll look into it," I said, already forming theories about connections to the false moon. "This may be related to recent events."

The shrine sat at the estate's center, and something about its angles felt wrong—not dramatically twisted, just… off, like a familiar song played in the wrong key. Traditional wood and paper construction, but corners that didn't quite meet properly, shadows that seemed to pool in places where geometry suggested they shouldn't.

When I approached, silence greeted me.

Nothing. No whispers, no otherworldly voices. Just wind moving through wooden beams and the ordinary creak of a building settling into evening.

Was this some kind of test? I stood alone, listening to my own heartbeat and finding it disappointingly normal.

I needed other people to verify what was happening here. Maybe while I went back to check the flesh room—assuming the capital hadn't buried it in bureaucracy—Xiao Ru and Ashley could investigate this shrine. If I was right about my undead state making me immune to certain supernatural effects, like with the tengu's ink, the same might apply here.

A pattern was starting to form, and I didn't like where it was pointing.

---

I found the flesh warehouse after navigating Charnal-Hage's labyrinthine streets, but it sat wrapped in translucent barriers like a corpse prepared for burial. Yellow tape would have been quaint—this was something that hummed with its own malevolent energy. The local authorities hadn't been thrilled about the Royal Guard's intrusion, but their protests had been as effective as candles against a hurricane.

I pressed my gloved finger against the barrier, and it responded with a burning sensation that intensified with pressure. The energy seemed to be reading me, tasting my essence through my fingertips.

As I pulled back, a figure began to coalesce from the barrier's own substance—translucent blue energy gathering itself into feminine curves and sharp angles. She towered over me with the casual authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed, her form shifting between solid and ethereal like water deciding whether to freeze.

I stumbled backward, nearly losing my footing on the cracked pavement.

"Curious," she said, her voice carrying harmonics that seemed to resonate in my very nerves.

"What's curious?"

"What manner of oupire are you? Clearly not of this world, mm?"

The casual way she'd dissected my nature made my teeth clench. "You're some sort of security system."

Her smirk was all teeth and starlight. "Yes. You could say that."

I decided to gamble on authority I wasn't sure I possessed. "I'm a detective. I need to review evidence inside."

"Evidence? Mmm. Detective who?"

"Mei-Ling."

"Ahhhh. The rising star." Her pleasure was palpable, radiating from her form like heat from a forge.

"You flatter me."

"The Empress has taken an interest in you, little detective."

"Oh, is that so?"

She simply stared, that smile never wavering, a low buzzing emanating from her translucent form like electricity seeking ground. When I opened my mouth to ask about proper channels, she solidified completely—flesh and bone replacing energy, one hand settling on her hip with practiced confidence.

I flinched at the sudden transformation.

Her skin was not skin, but a seamless, matte-white material like unglazed ceramic, devoid of pores or blemishes. It looked hard and cold to the touch. Against this, her hair was a fall of something heavier, like spun iron filings that held their shape with unnatural rigidity. The a single bang didn't hang jagged; it looked as though it had been snapped off, the points sharp enough to draw blood.

Her uniform was a disquieting collection of mismatched ideas.

At her throat, a comically oversized bowtie of bright, canary-yellow silk was tied in a perfect, crisp knot. It was a defiant splash of color, so cheerful it felt like a deliberate mockery in the melancholy.

The upper garment was a short jacket of heavy, crushed velvet, the kind of black fabric that seems to siphon the light like fangs to Xiao Ru’s supple neckline. The shoulders were puffed into exaggerated, theatrical globes that sputtered in jagged ends, a style a century out of date in my world. An asymmetrical stripe of yellow ribbon was stitched almost crudely down her left side, ending in a row of gaudy, mismatched yellow buttons.

She wore black, voluminous shorts, gathered at the waist and thigh like a jester's pantaloons or a child's romper, creating a strange, doll-like silhouette. This ended in heavy, yellow socks, pushed down around her ankles in thick, slouchy rings.

But the uniform was secondary to her eyes. They were lenses of poisoned honey suspending the vertical slits that served as pupils did not dilate or contract. They were fixed apertures, observing my every detail with the dead, mechanical efficiency of a camera shutter.

She did not cast a shadow; she was a null point in space from which light seemed to recoil, and her towering form was not an illusion of height, but a physical displacement of the world around her.

"And what can I do for you, detective?"

"Who… might you be?"

"How rude of me. Allow me to introduce myself—I am Omokumaru of Cleodiana's Royal Guard. I would suppose a detective would know such things, but perhaps you truly are not of this world."

I nodded, seeing no point in further deception.

"Interesting. Very well, detective, I shall escort you into the crime scene." She flicked her cape with theatrical flourish, and the barrier parted like curtains before royalty.