The Forgotten Maiden's Bloodline

The priest's chambers were deeper in the shrine than Haruto had yet ventured. They descended through corridors that seemed to spiral downward endlessly, the walls growing older and more weathered with each level, until the carefully maintained shrine gave way to something more ancient—rough stone carved with symbols that predated written language.
Priest Yoshimura waited for them in a circular room lit by oil lamps that burned with green flames. The walls were covered in scrolls, some so old they'd turned to brittle parchment, others fresher but still yellowed with age. In the center of the room was a low table surrounded by meditation cushions, and spread across the table's surface were documents that made Haruto's breath catch.
Family trees. Genealogies. Blood records stretching back centuries.
And there, in faded ink, his own family name: Ichinose.
"So you've returned," the priest said, not looking up from the document he was studying. "With a ronin in tow, no less. The auguries were correct, as always."
Shinjiro bowed slightly—respect, but not submission. "Priest Yoshimura. Your reputation precedes you."
"As does yours, dead man." The priest finally looked up, his eyes sharp despite his age. "You should not exist. Your soul should have passed on fifteen years ago when that demon tore your heart from your chest. Yet here you stand, walking, breathing, somehow alive despite being marked by death itself." He gestured to the cushions. "Sit. All of you. We have much to discuss and little time."
They settled around the table. Tsukiko immediately reached for a genealogy chart, but the priest's hand stopped her.
"Not yet, granddaughter. Let us start with what our guardian needs to know." He turned his attention to Haruto, pulling forward a scroll that showed a family tree with Haruto's name at the bottom and branches extending upward through generations. "You asked why you have the face of a man from four hundred years ago. The answer is simple: blood remembers."
"I don't understand."
"Your ancestor—Kenji Ichinose—was the guardian of Kagura-no-Sato when the demon queen was sealed. He was chosen because his bloodline carried a particular gift: the ability to channel spiritual energy through physical action. Warriors blessed by the gods, some called them. Demon slayers. Holy blades." The priest traced a line up the genealogy. "But Kenji had another quality that made him suitable—he was in love with the head shrine maiden, Yuki."
Haruto felt something twist in his chest. "They chose him because he loved her? That's cruel."
"Necessary," the priest corrected. "The seal required two elements: a willing sacrifice from the maiden, and a guardian who would complete the ritual without hesitation. Love was meant to make him strong enough to witness her death. To give her courage in her final moments." His expression darkened. "But love is unpredictable. Love does not follow duty's path."
"He tried to save her," Haruto said.
"He did more than try. He killed three priests when they began the ritual. Wounded a dozen more. He fought his way to Yuki's side, blade in hand, ready to cut her free and damn the consequences." The priest's voice dropped. "But Yuki stopped him. Begged him to let her go. Told him that her death was the only way to save the province, to protect the people she loved."
"And he listened?"
"Eventually. But the damage was done. The ritual had been interrupted. When Yuki finally died, her sacrifice was tainted by violence, by Kenji's regret, by the blood of holy men on sacred ground. The seal was completed, but imperfectly. A prison built on suffering rather than willing acceptance."
Shinjiro leaned forward. "And Kenji? What happened to him?"
"The priests banished him. Stripped him of his title and position. He left Kagura-no-Sato and never returned." The priest pulled out another document—a death certificate. "He married, had children, lived a long life. Died in his sleep at seventy-three, surrounded by family. By all accounts, a peaceful end."
"Then why do I look like him?" Haruto demanded. "Why do I have his face, his memories—"
"Because the seal does not forget." The priest stood, moving to a particular scroll on the wall. He unrolled it to reveal a diagram of the seal chamber, layers upon layers of containment circles and binding prayers. "The seal is alive, in its way. It was created from Yuki's soul, her willing sacrifice transformed into a prison. But because that sacrifice was imperfect, the seal is imperfect. It hungers for completion. It reaches out through the bloodlines connected to its creation, calling them back, trying to finish what was started."
He pointed to a particular symbol in the seal's design. "This is the guardian's mark. It was carved into Kenji's soul when he swore his oath. And through spiritual resonance, it has been passed down through his bloodline, generation after generation, growing fainter with each passing. Until you."
"Why me? I have siblings, cousins—"
"Do you?" The priest's question hung in the air. "Or did you? Check your memories carefully, boy. The seal doesn't just call—it arranges. It removes obstacles, creates circumstances, pushes fate itself to ensure the right pieces fall into place."
Haruto's blood went cold. He tried to remember his family, his childhood, but the memories were foggy, indistinct, like looking through murky water. Had he had siblings? Parents? The faces wouldn't come, replaced by that persistent image of crimson flowers and a woman's voice singing in the darkness.
"What did it do to me?" he whispered.
"Nothing malicious. The seal simply... prioritized your bloodline. Made sure you survived where others didn't. Guided your path until you ended up exactly where you needed to be." The priest's expression was almost pitying. "The three days you don't remember? That was the seal fully awakening the guardian's mark within you. Preparing you. Making you into what Kenji should have been."
"I killed my master during those three days, didn't I?"
"No." The priest shook his head. "Your master died of a stroke. Natural causes. But the seal arranged for you to be found standing over his body, to be accused, to be sent here. It needed you in Kagura-no-Sato, needed you marked as a criminal so no one would search for you when—" He stopped.
"When I die completing the ritual," Haruto finished bitterly.
"When you fulfill your ancestor's oath," the priest corrected. "There is a difference."
Tsukiko had been quiet during all this, but now she spoke up, her voice strained: "Grandfather, if the seal manipulated Haruto's life to bring him here, what about me? What about my mother?"
The priest's face went carefully blank. "Granddaughter—"
"Tell me." Her hands were shaking. "Tell me the truth."
A long silence. Then: "Your mother was chosen. Selected from five potential bloodline candidates because her spiritual resonance was purest. She was brought here, married to a man she'd never met, and died giving birth to you because—" His voice cracked. "Because the seal demanded an early payment. A promise of sacrifice to come."
Tsukiko stood abruptly, tears streaming down her face. "So I'm not even a person. I'm just... currency. A down payment on a four-hundred-year-old debt."
"You are my granddaughter," the priest said fiercely. "You are loved. You are—"
"Expendable." She laughed bitterly. "That's what you mean when you say 'necessary,' isn't it? That some lives matter less than others. That I matter less."
"That is not—"
But Tsukiko was already leaving, pushing past them and disappearing into the corridor. Haruto moved to follow, but the priest stopped him.
"Let her go. She needs time to process this."
"She needs someone who isn't you," Haruto shot back. "Someone who doesn't see her as a ritual sacrifice."
"And you think you're that person?" The priest's eyes were hard. "You, who will have to wield the blade that kills her? Who will have to look into her eyes as she dies and know that you chose duty over mercy?" He leaned closer. "Make no mistake, boy. If you complete the ritual, you will carry that weight forever. Just as Kenji did. The only difference is whether her death means something or means nothing."
Shinjiro had been examining the seal diagram during this exchange. Now he spoke, his voice carefully neutral: "You said there were three paths in your augury. The guardian completes the ritual, the seal breaks, or..." He looked up. "Tell me about the forsaken road."
The priest's expression shifted—surprise, then calculation. "You would actually consider it? Walking between worlds, entering the seal chamber itself, negotiating with a demon queen who has had four centuries to plot?"
"I've done stupider things. Usually right before dying." Shinjiro's smile was grim. "But if there's a chance, however small, that I can spare that girl the fate you've designed for her..."
"Noble. Foolish, but noble." The priest pulled out a different scroll, this one covered in diagrams that hurt to look at directly—impossible geometries, angles that shouldn't exist. "The forsaken road is a path between states of being. Life and death. Reality and void. Spirit and flesh. Only those who exist in multiple states simultaneously can walk it."
"Like someone who died and came back."
"Precisely. When that demon killed you fifteen years ago, you spent three days in the realm between. Most souls pass through in moments, but you... lingered. Whether by accident, fate, or your own stubbornness, you remained in that gray space long enough to become attuned to it. When you were resurrected—"
"I was never told how that happened," Shinjiro interrupted. "I simply woke up, my wounds healed, the demon dead. No explanation."
The priest studied him thoughtfully. "Then someone intervened. Someone powerful enough to pull a soul back from the brink. Do you remember anything from those three days?"
Shinjiro's jaw tightened. "Darkness. Cold. A woman's voice, singing. And... laughter. A child's laughter, but wrong. Distorted."
Haruto's blood went cold. "I've heard that laughter. In the village, from the corrupted children."
"Because it's the same source," the priest said grimly. "The demon queen's influence extends beyond her physical prison. She can reach out, touch souls that wander too close to death's threshold. If she encountered you during those three days, if she's the one who brought you back..." He trailed off, his expression troubled.
"Then I'm compromised," Shinjiro finished. "If I enter the seal chamber, she'll have hooks in me already. Ways to manipulate me."
"Or," the priest countered, "she made a mistake. By resurrecting you, she created someone who could potentially walk the forsaken road, enter her prison, and do what no one else can—speak to her as an equal. Someone who has experienced death and returned. Someone she cannot simply kill because you're already marked by death itself."
"That's a lot of assumptions built on hope and desperation."
"It is. But what else do we have?" The priest gestured to the genealogies, the seal diagrams, the centuries of documented failure. "Four hundred years of this cycle. Four hundred years of suffering, of imperfect seals and corrupted villages and maidens dying in agony to buy us a few more generations. If there's even a chance to break that cycle..."
Shinjiro was quiet for a long moment. Then he asked, "What would I need to do?"
The priest's relief was palpable. "First, you would need to enter a state of near-death. Not fully dead—that would sever your connection to this world completely—but close enough that the barrier between realms becomes thin. Then, with the proper rituals to guide you, you could project your consciousness along the forsaken road, following it down to the seal chamber's spiritual core."
"And once I'm there?"
"You would be face-to-face with the demon queen in her truest form. Not the influence we see corrupting the village, not the whispers rising from the seal, but her actual self. Her consciousness, her will, her essence." The priest's voice dropped. "And you would need to convince her to accept a new bargain. New terms for her imprisonment that don't require Yuki's eternal suffering or regular sacrifices to maintain the seal."
"What could I possibly offer her that she doesn't already have?"
"That," the priest said, "is what you'll need to figure out. Demons are not mindless. They bargain, they negotiate, they have wants beyond simple destruction. The queen was powerful enough to threaten an entire province four hundred years ago. She commanded armies, ruled territories, had ambitions. Find out what she wants now, after centuries of imprisonment. Find the one thing she values enough to trade her freedom for it."
Haruto had been listening to all this with growing dread. "This is insane. You're talking about negotiating with something that's been plotting revenge for four hundred years. She'll kill him, or worse—use him to break the seal."
"She might," the priest acknowledged. "Or she might be exactly as desperate as we are. Four hundred years is a long time, even for a demon. She's been trapped in darkness, bound to the suffering soul of the maiden she was sealed with, fed nothing but hatred and pain. That changes a being. Perhaps makes them more reasonable. Perhaps makes them more monstrous." He looked at Shinjiro. "Only one way to find out."
"When?" the ronin asked.
"Tonight. The ritual must be performed at midnight, when the boundary between worlds is thinnest. It will take several hours to prepare, and you'll need to fast, meditate, center yourself. If your mind is cluttered or your spirit clouded, you'll lose your way on the forsaken road and never return."
Shinjiro nodded. "Then I'd better get started."
As they left the priest's chambers, Haruto grabbed Shinjiro's arm. "You can't actually be considering this."
"Why not? You've got a better plan?"
"We could run. Leave the village, find help, get reinforcements—"
"There is no leaving," Shinjiro said gently. "The barrier holds us here as surely as it holds the demons in. And even if we could escape, where would we go? Who would believe us? Who would be powerful enough to help?" He pulled his arm free. "I've spent fifteen years running from my failure. I'm done running."
"This isn't about redemption! This is suicide!"
"Maybe. Maybe not." Shinjiro looked back toward the depths of the shrine, where the seal chamber waited. "But that girl—Tsukiko—she shouldn't have to die because of choices made four hundred years ago. If I can give her a chance, even a small one, I have to try." His expression softened. "Besides, I'm already dead, remember? Have been for fifteen years. This is just... finishing what was interrupted."
He walked away, leaving Haruto alone in the corridor with his thoughts and his doubts and the weight of a sword he was increasingly certain he would have to use.
From somewhere deep in the shrine, he heard singing.
That same lullaby, in that ancient language, but this time he could almost make out words:
*Blood calls to blood**Oath calls to oath**The guardian's blade**The maiden's death**The queen's dark dream**The cycle turns**Again, again, again...*
Haruto found Tsukiko in the garden behind the shrine—a small space that had somehow remained untouched by the crimson chrysanthemums. Real flowers grew here, tended by hand, a pocket of normalcy in the nightmare the village had become.
She was kneeling beside a stone marker, tracing her fingers over carved characters that spelled out a name: Ayame. Her mother.
"Did you know her?" Haruto asked quietly.
"No. She died giving birth to me. But grandfather talks about her sometimes, when he's had too much sake and the loneliness gets to him." Tsukiko's voice was hollow. "He says she was kind. Gentle. That she sang while she worked. That she loved the garden."
"Tsukiko—"
"He also says she cried every night for the first month she was here. That she begged to go home, to see her family, to be anywhere but Kagura-no-Sato." Tsukiko looked up, her eyes red from crying. "They kept her here like a prisoner. Married her to a stranger. Got her pregnant. And when she died, they kept her daughter for the same purpose. Like a family heirloom. Like property."
"I'm so sorry."
"Are you? Or are you just sorry that you have to be the one to kill me?" She stood, facing him. "I've known since I was ten years old that I would die young. Die violently. Die for a purpose I never chose. I've had years to make peace with it. But you—" She laughed bitterly. "You've had what, two days? And you're already planning ways to avoid doing what needs to be done."
"Because it doesn't need to be done! Shinjiro's going to walk the forsaken road, negotiate with the queen—"
"And if he fails? If he dies, or worse, if the queen uses him to break the seal faster? What then?"
Haruto had no answer.
"The new moon is in three days," Tsukiko said. "Three days, and then someone has to choose. You, grandfather, Shinjiro—someone has to decide whether one life is worth more than thousands. And I already know how that math works out."
She walked past him, heading back toward the shrine. But at the edge of the garden, she stopped.
"For what it's worth," she said without turning around, "I don't hate you. I don't blame you. You're trapped in this as much as I am. We're both just... echoes of people who died four hundred years ago. Repeating their mistakes because the seal demands it."
Then she was gone, leaving Haruto alone with the flowers and the stone marker and the terrible certainty that no matter what choice he made, someone was going to die.
The question was whether it would be one death or a thousand.
And whether he could live with himself after.