Crimson Blossoms

The iron chains bit into Haruto's wrists as the prison cart lurched over another stone in the mud-slicked road. Rain hammered the wooden slats above his head, but it couldn't wash away the smell—sweat, fear, and the coppery tang of dried blood from where the shackles had rubbed his skin raw.
"Witchcraft," they'd called it. "Consorting with demons."
All because he'd been found standing over his master's body, hands stained red, with no memory of how he'd gotten there. The magistrate hadn't cared about his protests, his confusion, or the three days he'd lost to fevered blackness. The verdict came swift and final: exile to Kagura-no-Sato, a village so remote even the maps showed only blank parchment where it should be.
Haruto pressed his forehead against the cold wood, trying to remember. Anything. But there was only darkness where those three days should have been, and the recurring nightmare—a woman's voice singing a lullaby in a language he didn't know, while crimson flowers bloomed from corpses in an endless field.
The cart jerked to a stop.
"Out," grunted the guard, a scarred man who'd barely spoken the entire three-day journey. He unlocked the door, and Haruto stumbled into the rain.
The first thing he noticed was the silence.
No birds. No insects. Just the hiss of rain against leaves and the distant sound of wind chimes that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The second thing he noticed were the flowers.
Crimson chrysanthemums carpeted the ground in every direction, their petals so red they looked black in the dim light. They grew in impossible places—sprouting from between roof tiles, climbing the shrine gates ahead, even emerging from cracks in the stone road. They shouldn't be blooming at all; it was the wrong season entirely.
"The flowers of the dead," the guard muttered, his hand moving instinctively to touch the prayer beads around his neck. "They say when these bloom out of season, the barrier between worlds grows thin."
Haruto barely heard him. His attention was fixed on the village that materialized through the rain like something from a fever dream. Kagura-no-Sato clung to the mountainside in defiance of nature itself, its buildings seeming to grow from the rock rather than rest upon it. Paper lanterns swayed in the wind, their light painting everything in shades of red and shadow.
But what made his breath catch was the shrine.
It loomed at the village's heart, massive and ancient, its torii gate split cleanly down the middle as if struck by lightning—or something worse. Thick ropes adorned with paper talismans wrapped around it, but even from here, Haruto could see they were frayed, rotting. Whatever they were meant to contain was straining against its bonds.
"Listen carefully, boy." The guard's voice was low, urgent. "I'm to deliver you to the shrine and leave immediately. I won't spend one night in this cursed place, and I advise you to find a way out before the new moon." He thrust a rolled parchment into Haruto's hands—his assignment papers. "The village needs someone to tend the shrine. Someone... expendable. They requested a criminal, specifically. Now I know why."
Before Haruto could respond, the guard was back on the cart, whipping the horses into motion. The wheels sprayed mud as the vehicle lurched back down the mountain road, disappearing into the rain with unseemly haste.
Alone.
Haruto stood in the downpour, chains still on his wrists, staring at a village that felt like it was watching him back. Movement caught his eye—a child stood in the doorway of a nearby house, face pale as porcelain. She stared at him with eyes too old for her young face.
"You smell like her," the girl said in a voice that cracked like dry paper. "The maiden who forgot her duty. The blood that should have been spilled."
"What are you—"
But the girl was gone, the doorway empty except for shadows.
Haruto's hands trembled as he looked down at the parchment. It was already soaked, the ink running, but he could make out the essential details:
*Haruto of Edo, convicted of murder by witchcraft. Sentenced to service at Kagura-no-Sato Shrine until death or Divine pardon. Upon arrival, report to Head Priest Yoshimura. Do not leave the shrine grounds after dark. Do not speak to the villagers about the flowers. Do not enter the sealed chamber beneath the main hall.*
The last line was underlined three times, the ink so heavy it had torn through the paper.
*Under no circumstances should the seal be broken.*
A sound made him look up—a wet, sliding noise, like fabric dragging through mud. Nothing moved among the flowers, but he could feel it now. A presence. Something watching from the spaces between the buildings, from the shadows beneath the shrine's broken gate.
Thunder rolled across the mountain, and in its wake came a new sound: whispers. Hundreds of them, overlapping, coming from the crimson chrysanthemums themselves. He couldn't make out words, but the tone was clear—accusation, hunger, recognition.
Haruto forced his legs to move, walking up the stone path toward the shrine. The flowers parted before his feet as if repelled, leaving a trail of bare earth in his wake. More doors cracked open as he passed, more pale faces appearing in windows, but no one called out, no one approached. They simply watched with those same too-old eyes, lips moving in silent words.
The shrine steps were steep, each one carved with symbols that hurt to look at directly. At the top, the broken torii gate cast its shadow across him, and Haruto felt something fundamental shift, like stepping from one world into another.
An elderly man waited at the shrine's entrance, his priest's robes immaculate despite the rain that somehow didn't seem to touch him. His face was a landscape of wrinkles, but his eyes were sharp, calculating.
"Haruto of Edo," Priest Yoshimura said. It wasn't a question. "Welcome to Kagura-no-Sato. Or perhaps I should say... welcome home."
"I've never been here before."
The priest's smile was thin as a knife blade. "Are you certain? Take a look." He gestured to the shrine's main hall, where a scroll hung depicting a scene from centuries past—a great battle between shrine maidens and a towering demon queen. And there, in the corner of the painting, barely visible, was a young man with a sword.
A young man whose face was identical to Haruto's own.
"You've been here before," the priest continued softly. "In blood, if not in body. The question is—will you make the same choice your ancestor made? Will you stand aside and let the sacrifice proceed? Or will you repeat his mistake and doom us all?"
Before Haruto could respond, a child's scream tore through the village below. It cut off abruptly, swallowed by a silence more terrible than any sound.
And then he saw it.
Behind the priest, visible through the shrine's open doors, something was forming in the shadows. Black smoke that moved with intention, twisting into a vaguely human shape. Where its face should have been was only smooth darkness, broken by two thin red slashes that wept like wounds.
The Shinigami Wraith tilted its head, studying Haruto with interest.
Then it smiled—or what passed for a smile on that faceless void.
And Haruto realized three things at once:
First, he'd been sent here to die.
Second, whatever had happened to him in those three missing days, it had marked him as something the creatures of this place recognized.
Third, the crimson chrysanthemums weren't blooming for the village.
They were blooming for him.
The priest's voice seemed to come from very far away: "Your duties begin at dusk. Until then, I suggest you rest. You'll need your strength for what's coming."
Haruto stood frozen, watching the Wraith dissolve back into shadow, leaving only the echo of whispers and the overwhelming certainty that he had been here before—in another life, another body, another name.
And that he had failed.
The flowers outside the shrine began to bloom brighter, their crimson petals opening like eyes.
Watching.
Waiting.
*Welcome home.*