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.
"N-no!" Himiko strained against the elder, her voice cracking and breaking apart. "It's— khhk— it's a p-plant! Look! I'm— I'm your b-blood! Your own! I'd n-never— Father— I would n-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 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 panicking, words tumbling over each other.
"Of c-course not, F-Father! It's n-not true! The e-elders have p-poisoned you— F-Father, p-lease… look at m-me! Do you s-see a k-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.
"F-Father!" Himiko's words completely slurring in absolute desperation, everything crashing together in her mouth. "S-stop this! I am your b-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 n-not go to the g-grave for their s-sins! Don't l-let it end l-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 ivory 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.
That was when everything turned into a nightmare.
The first to die was some distant cousin who tried to run. The creature snatched him up with three limbs at once, slammed him against a stone pillar so hard his spine snapped like dry wood, then shoved what was left of him straight into that black hole of a mouth. You could hear the crunching from twenty feet away. Someone's grandmother screamed — not in terror, but in pure disgust — because the sound reminded her of eating crab legs.
The elders tried to form a line, like that would do anything. The lead one, the one with the wet gleam in his eye, was still clutching that stupid parchment like it was a shield. The creature grabbed his ankle and dragged him across the ground. He left ten long red scratches in the dirt before he disappeared into the churning center with a wet crunch. No heroic last words. Just the sound of a man being folded in half backwards.
Women carrying ceremonial fans tripped over their own robes, their screams cut short by that same crunch-crunch of teeth working through bone. One kid, maybe eight years old, was hiding behind a pillar. His mother was already gone. He watched the whole thing with these huge, empty eyes, like his brain had already checked out. The creature didn't even notice him at first — it was too busy tearing through the main group, limbs swinging like broken tree branches.
The main hall went next. The sliding paper doors painted with centuries of clan history burst apart as the creature rammed straight through them. All that history — ancestors, battles, old oaths — turned into splinters and smoke in under ten seconds. The Higuruma legacy was being chewed up and swallowed.
The air grew thick with the smell of iron and burning wood. The frantic shouting slowly died down, replaced by the heavy, rhythmic thud-drag of all those extra limbs moving across the bloody stones. Someone tried to fight back with a weak technique — a little burst of light that did nothing but make the creature angrier. It grabbed that person by the throat, lifted them up, and squeezed until the neck made a sound like a wet twig snapping.
The "strongest" of the clan finally stepped up — the scarred man with the short spear and shield, and the sharp-eyed young woman with the rare technique.
The scarred man flung his spear first. It actually staggered the creature for a moment,
The guy didn't let up, and quickly activated his soul chains binding Himiko,The woman used that opening to activate her scale technique. She muttered something about scales not lying, but the moment the scale appeared it went haywire. One side slammed down hard, then shot back up with a screech of warping metal. The whole thing shattered like glass. The woman coughed up blood and dropped to her knees, her soul taking the backlash.
The extra power poured straight into the beast, making it even stronger.
The woman stared at the creature, her eyes tracing the 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 our 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 the creature was on top of him. His speed had clearly been boosted by the scale's power. She bit off his top half, leaving just his legs standing upright like some sick statue.
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.
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 one of the ivory limbs 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 backwards into the churning centre of the mass.
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 levelled the main hall. The sliding paper doors — painted with the history of their ancestors — burst into splinters and flame. smell of iron and woodsmoke. The frantic shouting died down, replaced by the rhythmic, heavy thud-drag of the creature'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. The creature blew the top of it clean off and started reaching in. He clutched the baby tighter, 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 whatever was left of 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 ivory 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.