The keep tower.
In the castle architecture of Japan's Warring States era, the tenshu was the central structure — the lord's residence and command post, the tallest and most formidable building in any fortress.
This one was modest. Three stories only.
But for a minor lord ruling just six villages, raising even this much had cost him everything he had.
Of course, when they say it cost him everything — it was his subjects who paid. Their homes stripped bare, their harvests taken down to the roots.
"Useless! Every last one of you — useless!"
A bellow of rage tore through the main hall at the top floor.
Suda Shigenobu sat on his raised platform, face flushed scarlet, the veins in his forehead standing out like they might burst.
He was in his early forties — short and heavyset, stuffed into a hitatare robe that didn't quite fit, a tachi thrust through his belt. He looked less like a warrior than a merchant who'd grown fat on easy profits.
But a warrior he was, technically speaking.
A bottom-rung retainer of the Hōjō clan of the Kantō region, assigned to this godforsaken stretch of mountains and misery.
The post had offered slim pickings at first.
Then, two years ago, he had stumbled onto a revelation.
He discovered that if he pushed the tax rate a little harder — then a little harder still — the peasants simply endured it. They didn't revolt. They didn't even complain. They just bent their heads and bore it.
So the annual tribute went from forty percent to fifty.
From fifty to sixty.
Then sixty to seventy.
And still that wasn't enough.
There were corvée levies, conscription fees, head taxes, road tolls, marriage-and-mourning dues — every category he could dream up, he collected. If they couldn't pay, he had them seized. If there was no one to seize, he burned their houses down.
Two years of this, and his private storehouses overflowed with grain and copper coin — while the villages under his rule grew poorer and more broken with every passing season.
People fled. People died.
He didn't care.
The Hōjō only wanted their war funding. No one was going to ask him how he collected it.
"My lord, please, calm yourself!"
The man kneeling before him was his house elder — a thin, wizened old retainer pressed so low his forehead nearly touched the floorboards.
"The three western villages truly cannot pay this year. The harvest was dreadful, and after the plague on top of that…"
"I don't want to hear it!"
Suda Shigenobu slammed his fist on the armrest.
"Lord Hōjō has sent word — he's moving against the Imagawa this year, and he's ordered every house to prepare military provisions!"
"I have six villages. Three can't pay their taxes. And then there's the other one—"
He stopped. His expression darkened further.
"What's the situation in Ishimura?"
Ishimura.
The village that had been seized by the toad demon.
The house elder pressed himself even lower.
"My lord… the men sent to collect from Ishimura were turned back again."
"That toad — it simply won't—"
"Worthless!"
Suda Shigenobu spat the word.
He thought about that damned toad. Three months ago, the thing had appeared from nowhere, taken over Ishimura's shrine, and declared itself a deity.
He hadn't taken it seriously at first.
A demon. Find a few exorcists, deal with it. He kept a pack of holy men on the payroll precisely for situations like this — they spent their days performing tricks for credulous peasants, so they'd better be good for something when it actually mattered.
He sent three groups. All three came back.
The exorcists returned with bruised faces and split lips, babbling about divine protection, about how on that creature's home ground it was simply unbeatable.
He sent warriors next.
The warriors couldn't even get close. The miasma rising from the swamp knocked them unconscious before they crossed the threshold.
In the end, he'd had no choice but to grit his teeth, open his purse, and hire the legendary mercenaries.
"Where are the Seven?"
Suda Shigenobu demanded.
The Seven — a mercenary company that operated throughout the Kantō region.
Seven members, as the name suggested. Each one was said to be a master of their craft, and together they took any job that paid, no matter how dirty: wars, assassinations, exorcisms. Utterly without scruples. Their fees were outrageous. They had never yet failed.
The house elder raised his head, discomfort plain on his face.
"My lord… the Seven are still en route. At least three more days before they arrive."
"Three days? That's far too long!"
Suda Shigenobu's expression curdled.
"I paid a fortune, and that's what I get?"
He stood and began pacing the length of the main hall, his footsteps hammering against the wooden floors.
"That toad demands a person every month. Ishimura's peasants are dim, but eventually there'll be no one left to eat. Once it runs out, it'll come crawling into the other villages looking for more — and when it's devoured everyone, who am I going to tax? What exactly do I take to Lord Hōjō then?"
The house elder didn't dare respond. He just pressed himself to the floor and trembled.
Suda Shigenobu waved an irritated hand.
"Get out. Go fetch every exorcist in the castle. All of them."
"If the Seven aren't here yet, then these people had better start earning their keep."
"I refuse to believe that toad has three heads and six arms!"
As he said it, his gaze drifted to the wall of the main hall.
Something hung there — a trophy he'd acquired ten days ago.
A massive weapon shaped like a boomerang, forged from the bones of a demon, giving off a faint, persistent luminescence.
Hiraikotsu.
A half-dead old man had been carrying it when he passed through. Suda's soldiers stopped him for an "inspection." The old man claimed it was a heirloom of the Demon Slayer clan, and at first refused with everything he had to hand it over.
But faced with the sheer weight of numbers against him, he'd eventually bowed his head and surrendered it.
Suda Shigenobu looked at Hiraikotsu hanging there on the wall, and let himself smile.
Hanging something like that up beat any scroll or painting for sheer prestige.
Just then —
"My lord!"
A soldier came stumbling into the main hall.
"There are two people at the castle gate!"
"One of them calls herself a shrine maiden — she says she…"
The soldier's voice wavered.
"She says she's killed the toad demon of Ishimura!"
Suda Shigenobu stared.
Killed it?
That toad — the one the Seven hadn't even arrived to deal with yet — someone had already killed it?
"Who are they?"
"A woman in white robes and red hakama, carrying a longbow. And a young man with her who looks like a warrior — pale as a ghost, red eyes, with an aura about him that's… strange."
That description alone was enough to say these were no ordinary people.
But at this point, Suda Shigenobu didn't much care.
He straightened up, his mood brightening, and waved them in with a broad sweep of his arm.
"Let them in."
…
Outside the castle gate.
Kōbe Hikaru tilted his head back to take in the structure before him.
It wasn't a large castle. The walls were packed earth reinforced with stone facing, perhaps two jō in height, with banners planted along the top. The gates were heavy timber, flanked on either side by ashigaru in rough, mismatched armour.
Ashigaru — the foot soldiers of the Warring States era, the lowest rung of the military ladder. Badly equipped, lowly regarded. Farmers who'd picked up spears and put on whatever armour they could find.
Behind the gates lay the castle town — the settlement that had grown up in the fortress's shadow.
In the distance, Kōbe Hikaru could make out the silhouette of the keep tower: three stories of timber construction, its roof a pale grey tile.
For this era, it was a respectable castle.
Even if it fell laughably short of the great lords' residences in Kyoto.
"This is it?"
A voice came from beside him.
Kōbe Hikaru turned.
Nurarihyon had materialized at his side — pipe in his mouth, golden hair catching the light.
"You again."
"Can't miss a good show," Nurarihyon said, perfectly at ease.
"Last night you said you were coming here to deal with the lord. You think I'm going to sit that out?"
He exhaled a lazy curl of smoke, his gold slit-pupils sweeping the keep.
"Let me think — what was this lord's name again? Suda? A bottom-rung Hōjō retainer?"
"How do you know all that?"
"I've been roaming this territory for decades. What don't I know?"
Nurarihyon shrugged.
"I mentioned him before — this one's a nasty piece of work. Two years, and he's bled six villages down to the bone. The man's reputation is so foul even demons won't go near the place."
Kōbe Hikaru said nothing.
He looked to his side.
Kikyō stood there — white robes, red hakama, longbow in hand.
Her expression was as composed and cool as ever, but Kōbe Hikaru could see that her fingers were gripping the bow tighter than usual.
"Let's go in," Kikyō said.
"Mm."
Kōbe Hikaru nodded.
The two of them walked toward the gate.
Nurarihyon fell into step behind them, wearing the expression of a man who'd paid for the best seat in the house.
The gates swung open.
The ashigaru stepped aside, watching the three of them pass with eyes caught between fear and fascination.
Beyond the gate was the main street of the castle town.
Kōbe Hikaru walked and observed.
The road was lined with shops and residences, sparse of foot traffic, heavy with a kind of sunken stillness. Here and there, a few ragged figures hunched against the walls — and when they noticed the newcomers, they shrank back like mice catching a cat's scent.
But the further in they walked, the more the picture shifted.
Near the keep, the buildings became neat and well-kept. Warriors in fine kimono swaggered past without a second glance. Merchants carried their loads and called out their wares. Women in good clothes strolled in the sunlight, laughing easily.
The shops had changed too — from battered stalls selling odds and ends to polished sake houses and restaurants thick with the smell of food.
The air itself tasted different here. It smelled of things cooking.
Kōbe Hikaru's gaze settled on one storefront.
Heaps of white rice, piled in mountains right out in the open, used as a shop display.
Outside the castle walls, the villages were going hungry.
Inside, people used grain as decoration.
"Wrung right out of the people," Nurarihyon said behind him.
There was a rare edge of contempt in his voice.
"This lord scraped everything clean from out there and piled it all in here."
Kōbe Hikaru didn't respond.
He looked ahead.
The keep tower was almost upon them now.
A middle-aged man in a hitatare robe stood at the base of the stone steps, smiling broadly, waiting to receive them.
"So you are the masters who rid Ishimura of its foul demon?"
The man bowed deeply, his manner all practiced humility.
"My lord has been waiting in the main hall. Please, follow me."
Kōbe Hikaru glanced at Kikyō.
The shrine maiden gave a small nod.
The two of them climbed the stone steps.
The doors of the keep tower opened before them.
And inside was another world entirely.
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