The entire Higuruma clan had gathered in the clan's execution grounds to witness the execution of the clan head's first and only daughter.
The murmur of the gathered clan died out as the executioner's trumpet pierced the crisp morning air. All eyes turned toward the main hall.
Four clan members walked out of the main hall carrying a palanquin. Inside was the very sick and frail clan head. He looked like he could die at any moment.
Once they reached the execution grounds, they set the palanquin down on a ready-made platform and took their places in the crowd. A few moments later, a cold, hollow voice came from inside the palanquin.
"Begin."
The elder moved forward, towards the woman kneeling in front of the bloody chopping block. Dressed in the typical clan robes, the elder practically bounded forward, a wet, eager gleam in his eye as he unrolled the parchment.
His voice is deep and rough.
"Himiko Higuruma, at the age of thirty-seven, you have been accused of the following: one count of high treason, one count of poisoning the clan patriarch, one count of malicious neglect of duty, one count of conspiracy with dark forces, and one count of spiritual sabotage.
Our proof of these crimes is that over the course of this year, the clan head without warning, fell gravely ill with symptoms including numbness, paralysis, and tingling. He was the most powerful sorcerer our clan had seen in decades, yet in less than a year he was reduced to his current state. This is completely unnatural. Even more damning, we found the poison vial you used on him, discarded under your bed in your bedroom. It was labelled wolfsbane, and his symptoms match perfectly with wolfsbane poisoning."
Shocked murmuring spread through the crowd.
"Because of the dire nature of your crimes, you have forfeited the right to a trial by the scale. A direct execution will be carried out today without delay."
Most of the crowd began cheering, shouting "Death to the traitor!" But a small few, including her husband, cried out in protest: "This is injustice!" and "If she is truly guilty, then do a trial by the scale to prove it!"
Their voices were quickly drowned out by the growing cheers.
Himiko's knees were damp. The stone was colder than she expected. She tried to scream, but her tongue felt like a piece of dry leather in her mouth.
"No!" Himiko strained against the elder, her voice cracking.
It's—khhk—it's a plant! Look! I'm—I'm your blood! Your own! I'd never—Father—I would never—!
The elder cut her off sharply, smiling darkly.
"Silence, witch. Your decapitation will commence once the patriarch gives the signal."
By now the cheering had died down to a low rumbling. Everyone was waiting for the big moment.
The rhythmic chanting of the crowd faltered.
The bamboo screen of the palanquin trembled, then slid open with a sharp, dry scrape.
His voice rang out, husky and weak.
"Is… this… true, Himiko?"
Himiko answered, still frantic and furious.
"Of course not, Father! It's not true! The elders have poisoned you stumbling over a word briefly she then continues and thay have cloaked their sins in my name—Father, please… look at me! Do you see a killer in my eyes?"
For a moment the clan head looked moved, his eyes welling up. Seeing this, the elders rushed and crowded around him and began whispering unheard things in his ear.
The crowd fell completely silent.
After a few moments, the elders stepped back.
The patriarch didn't look at her. His hollowed eyes stared somewhere past the execution block. When he spoke, it was little more than a dry rasp. 'Execute her.
The crowd erupted into cheers once again, even louder than before.
"Father, her words completely slurring in absolute desperation, stop this! I am your blood! It's hard for her to even speak properly words keep getting stuck on her tongue, like her mouth is filled with gum, I will not go to the grave for their sins! Don't let it end like this!"
A big, hulking man stepped forward from the crowd. He was shirtless, wearing only pants, and carried a massive slab of steel for a blade. He was an outsider specifically hired to do this job.
The blade didn't even look heavy until it was moving. Then, a wet thud. Silence.
The first row of the crowd got a face full of hot copper. They didn't stop cheering—not at first. They were too caught up in the rhythm of it. Her father didn't move. He just stared at the spot where her head used to be, his jaw locked so tight a muscle in his cheek started to spasm.
Her head hit a stone with a dull thud.
In the palanquin, the patriarch's eyes finally cleared of the elders' whispers. He looked down at the cooling remains of his only daughter, and for the first time in a year, the "numbness" in his soul vanished, replaced by a cold, sharpened clarity. He saw the elders already eyeing his seat, their hands clean and their faces eager. He didn't just see a corpse; he saw the vacuum of power he had just created with his own daughter's blood. The tear that slipped out wasn't just grief—it was the realisation that he had just signed the death warrant of his entire bloodline.
For a heartbeat, there was only the sound of the crowd's ragged breathing. Then, the air pressure dropped so fast it made ears pop. A foul stench, like rotting meat and ozone, washed over the courtyard. The blood pooling around her severed neck didn't just sit there; it began to boil, turning thick and viscous, bubbling upward as if gravity had reversed itself.
her remains began to liquefy, melting into a bubbling pool of ink-black sludge.
The two pools reached for each other, merging into a single, pulsing void of darkness.
The crowd started backing away, some people shouting, "What is that?" "This is very bad," and "The cursed energy coming from that pool is insane."
Then, the reverse lightning from the pool settled. Multiple porcelain appendages reached out. By the time the grotesque figure finally climbed its way out of the pool and revealed itself, it was a blob of cracked, glazed earthenware with an absurd amount of limbs sticking out at unnatural angles. It could almost be described as a hedgehog of limbs.
And in the middle of that mass of ivory sat a gaping mouth, black as the void, ringed with rows of shark-like teeth.
The beast of white let out a primal screech. Her original technique, Soul Fracture, had twisted and corrupted when she was reborn as a vengeful spirit, mysteriously gaining properties of the clan's other inherited ability. In her mindless state, she started knocking down trees, throwing herself into buildings, and grabbing people with her arm-like appendages, shoving them into her whirlpool of a mouth. Her father, still inside his carriage, was one of the first people she killed. Black shards flowed out of his body and into her.
It was a complete slaughter.
Until the clan's two strongest fighters stepped up and challenged the vengeful spirit of Himiko.
The first was a scarred man who used a short spear and shield, wielding the clan's more common but still powerful Soul Fracture technique. The other was a sharp-eyed young woman who possessed the clan's much stronger and rarer Soul Sentencing technique.
Himiko was about to pick up another person when the scarred man flung his spear at her, staggering her for a moment. It was enough for the person to escape.
"I won't let you destroy my home!!" he shouted in righteous rage.
He didn't let up. He continued by wrapping her in his soul chains.
Himiko twisted and struggled blindly, trying to break free.
Using this opportunity while she was restrained, the sharp-eyed woman jumped in and activated Scale Sentencing. She said to the man — and a little to herself — "Scales don't lie. This is just a formality before I put her down."
The ethereal scales materialised, groaning under an unseen weight. The pan holding Himiko's crimes slammed downward, but then, with a screech of warping metal, it slingshotted back. The technique shattered like glass. The woman coughed up blood, dropping to her knees as the backlash severed her connection to her cursed energy.
The rest of the energy poured into the beast, making it even stronger.
The woman didn't just cough blood; she felt her own soul recoil. The Scale hadn't just 'shattered'—it had judged the judge. She stared at the beast, her eyes tracing the porcelain curves that used to be her cousin's face. 'We didn't just kill her,' she choked out, the weight of the sentencing backlash crushing her lungs. 'We made this. Every drop of blood in that courtyard... It's a debt we can't pay.
Himiko used the extra power to break free from the man's chains and shot forward, swallowing the woman whole.
The scarred man didn't even have time to mourn her before Himiko was on top of him. Her speed had clearly been boosted by the scale's power. She bit off his top half, leaving just his legs standing upright.
The "strongest" were gone, and with them, the last shred of the clan's dignity. The courtyard, once a place of rigid ceremony and iron-clad law, was now just a bowl of screaming meat.
Himiko didn't move like a person anymore. She moved like a landslide of broken porcelain.
The lead elder—the one with the 'wet, eager gleam'—wasn't screaming for justice anymore. He was clutching the execution parchment to his chest like a shield, his boots slipping in the 'hot copper' that stained the stones. He tried to recite a protection mantra, but his teeth were chattering too hard to form the syllables. When the porcelain limb caught his ankle, he didn't die like a noble sorcerer; he died clawing at the dirt, leaving ten red furrows in the ground as he was dragged into the dark. There was no grand speech this time, only the wet, splintering sound of a man being folded in half and pulled into the churning centre of the mass.
Only the wet, splintering sound of a man being folded in half and pulled backwards into the dark, churning centre of the mass.
The "scale" had been tipped, but it wasn't just Himiko's innocence that had been proven—it was the clan's rot.
Women carrying ceremonial fans tripped over their own robes, their screams cut short by the crunch-crunch of those shark-like teeth. Children, hidden behind stone pillars by parents who were already dead, stared wide-eyed as the "Beast of White" levelled the main hall. The sliding paper doors—painted with the history of their ancestors—burst into splinters and flame. The Higuruma legacy wasn't being ended; it was being digested.
The air grew thick with the smell of iron and woodsmoke. The frantic shouting died down, replaced by the rhythmic, heavy thud-drag of Himiko's dozens of limbs moving across the bloody stones.
Finally, the screeching stopped. The estate was a graveyard of broken timber and cooling bodies. The only sound left was the crackle of a small fire in the tool shed and a thin, piercing wail that the wind couldn't drown out.
Only two people were left.
Her husband, who was holding their infant son, had been hiding in a tool shed off to the side. She blew the top of it clean off and started reaching in, clutching the infant to his chest. He looked directly into that void-black, bristling maw and spoke:
Himiko." As he was backing away, his grip was white-knuckled around the crying infant. "Himiko, please. It's me. It's us." He held the bundle up, hands shaking violently. "Look at his eyes. You died for him. Don't do this. Please, God, just let us go.
The monster froze. Violent shaking and convulsing overtook it.
For a split second, the ivory plates of its face shifted, sliding back to reveal a single, human eye—bloodshot and weeping. It locked onto the infant. The bristling maw didn't snap shut; it trembled. The "hedgehog of limbs" retracted for a heartbeat, the cursed energy flickering as Himiko fought the "Vengeful" instinct with every scrap of love she had left. Run, the eye seemed to pulse. Run before I forget who you are.
Her husband didn't wait any longer. He quickly ran out the back door of the shed and into the woods, never looking back. Tears fell from his eyes as he ran, the baby crying the whole time.
The vengeful spirit of Himiko let out a soul-deep, blood-boiling roar that rang out through the entire compound.
There was nothing left anymore. The wind howled violently, kicking dust around the former great clan.
The beast didn't just wander. As it moved, one of its many porcelain hands dragged a shard of the executioner's blade across the stone. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. A mindless, rhythmic sound that echoed through the dead estate. It was looking for a trial it would never receive, heading toward the horizon where the sun was just beginning to bleach the sky.