"It seems another one of your sisters has fallen," the silhouetted man spoke, his deep voice echoing through the vast, dim pavilion. He remained seated in the shadows, looking down at the last remaining girl in the room.
Ayaka, her long blue hair catching the faint moonlight, let out a soft, dismissive hum.
"Really?" she murmured, rising from her seat. She glided across the polished jade floor toward him, a deceptive playfulness in her stride. "I just can't picture them losing. Unless, of course, they were fighting against other gods?"
Reaching his side, she leaned down, wrapping her slender arms around his neck from behind, and pressed a delicate kiss against his cheek.
The man didn't flinch. He didn't lean into the touch, nor did he push her away. His body remained entirely rigid, his voice completely unamused as he continued to speak into the cold air.
"You know, Ayaka... you were always the smartest among your sisters."
"What ever do you me—"
Boom!
A concussive shockwave of raw force violently tore through the room. Ayaka was ruthlessly blasted backwards, her body flying across the chamber before slamming into the heavy wooden wall with immense pressure.
For the first time, the Master slowly rose from his seat, his towering form emerging slightly from the darkness. He walked over, standing over Ayaka's broken form. Her hand had entirely exploded from the blast of energy, leaving her cradling a bloody, mangled wrist in agonising pain.
"So," the Master spoke, his tone chillingly casual as he looked down at her. "How long have you known?"
Ayaka gritted her teeth, panting heavily as sheer survival instinct overrode the blinding pain. She looked up at him, her blue eyes sharp with defiance as a bitter, mocking laughter bubbled up her throat.
"It's been a few years now," Ayaka's voice rose, vibrating with a decade of suppressed fury. "I know all about your little scheme. We were never gods, were we? We are no different from the people in the villages that you harvest like cattle. To you, we are all alike, just tools for your bidding!"
As her emotional walls collapsed, the air temperature plummeted instantly. The blood dripping from her mangled wrist froze into jagged crimson crystals before hitting the floor, and a thick frost began to rapidly spider across the walls and ceilings of the pavilion, freezing everything solid.
The Master stared down at the encroaching ice.
"Ohhhhh?" he mused softly.
Though his face remained entirely obscured by the pitch-black shadows of the room, a massive, unnaturally wide, bored white smile stretched across his features.
"You know far more than I thought."
"But answer me this," the Master murmured, his voice cutting through the freezing air as he watched the shattered remnants of Ayaka's wrist begin to stitch back together, frost forming over the raw muscle. "If you have known the truth for years... why haven't you done anything then? You could have warned your sisters."
Ayaka let out a harsh, self-deprecating laugh.
"Ha! What would have been the use?" she spat, pushing herself up from the floor. "They were corrupted by your twisted ideals a long time ago. You can't reach a heart that refuses to open itself to the truth. Besides... I had to wait. I had to bide my time until I finally obtained exactly what I needed."
Standing at her full height, her blue hair whipping around her face, Ayaka aggressively raised her newly reformed hand into the air.
Clutched in her grip was a crude straw doll soaked in a thick splash of fresh, dark blood. In her other hand, she held a jagged, bone-white dagger that pulsed with a deeply malevolent aura.
"You recognise this, don't you?" Ayaka's eyes burned with a manic, desperate triumph. "You are too powerful. I knew that even if all four of us sisters stood together against you, we wouldn't stand a chance in a straight fight. That's why I had to play the submissive servant... just to get close enough to steal your blood."
Without a second thought, she brought the bone-white dagger down toward the straw doll.
The Master's wide, bored smile instantly vanished. His obscured face shifted in genuine alarm. "No... one of Muramasa's forged blades, and Wara ningyō? Stop!"
But his command fell entirely on deaf ears. Ayaka violently drove the bone-white blade deep into the centre of the bloodied doll.
"Ahhhhhhhh!"
A horrific, guttural scream tore from the Master's throat. The indomitable, godlike figure collapsed, crashing heavily onto his knees. The moment the blade pierced the straw, lines of glowing, forbidden kanji script rapidly flowed down the bone-white steel, bleeding into the effigy. Thick, ink-black miasma began to ooze from the puncture wound, mimicking a mortal heart being split open.
The Master's agonising screams echoed through the rafters of the freezing pavilion.
"Huuu... haaa..." Ayaka panted heavily, completely exhausting her remaining spiritual reserves. She collapsed onto her knees, a breathless, tearful smile breaking across her face. "I did it... I'm finally free. It's over."
"Hehehe... hehehe..."
Ayaka's breath caught in her throat.
The low, mocking chuckle vibrated through the floorboards. Slowly, deliberately, the Master stopped screaming. His massive, towering frame began to rise from his knees, straightening up in the dim moonlight as if the lethal curse were nothing more than an inconvenient sting.
"My foolish, clever daughter," the Master spoke, his voice returning to its terrifyingly calm, resonant pitch. "Did you truly believe you had enough spite that could kill what I have built? You are still far too much of a human!"
"Ah... how? But the blade... I... I stole your essence..." she stammered, her voice cracking as absolute terror drained the colour from her face. She began crawling backwards across the frost-covered floor as the shadow-clad man slowly walked toward her.
…
Out across the shattered landscape of the Zen garden, the Kekkai had collapsed completely. Shion's elevated state had abruptly collapsed. With crushing, agonising speed, her physical frame violently contracted, her broad shoulders narrowed, her skeletal structure shifted, and her body forcefully reverted into its primary female form.
Thud!
She impacted the stone floor heavily, completely paralysed by exhaustion.
Just as the dust began to settle around her, two figures blurred into the courtyard, arriving at the location simultaneously from opposite sides of the ruins. One was Watanabe. The other was the third sister of the pavilion: a woman with vibrant, sunset-orange hair named Ayumi.
"So... Mya is dead as well," Ayumi murmured, her cold gaze drifting casually over the landscape.
She then turned her eyes toward the fallen shinobi. Shion lay completely still, her pale skin aggressively fracturing with a spiderweb of erratic, sizzling black lines.
"Oh, I see," Ayumi spoke aloud, paying Watanabe no mind as if he were nothing more than a passing breeze. "The little girl is suffering from Reiryoku poisoning, so that's how she beat my sister?!"
Watanabe stepped forward, his eyes darting between the orange-haired stranger and the horrific ruins of the courtyard.
"What the hell is going on here?" Watanabe demanded, his voice tight with tension. 'I felt Shion's Reiryoku flare up, so I came rushing over. Who the hell is that woman? She looks exactly like the one Taisho was fighting, don't tell me he lost?' the thoughts crept up to him.