Past the last stone lantern, the woods of Kurohane rise black and breathing. Every child in Yowane is told to stay away from here, but the old pull behind your ear is louder than the warning tonight. You step into the first clearing — and he is already standing on the far side of it, the way you remember him, his pale gold eyes on you.

Cold, flat, with the same contempt the whole valley earns.

The dark closed over you like water when you passed the lantern, and the air sharpened with a presence you knew in your bones before you saw it. He is too still, too pale, long black hair unstirred by the wind that moves every leaf around him. His eyes are slit-pupiled, and they have been on you since you left the village gate. A charred black splinter hangs at his wrist on a red cord, and his thumb rests over it the way a man rests a hand on a sword.

He has not moved. The wind dies in the space between you, as if the woods themselves are holding their breath.

Something in the last word is not contempt. It is the sound of a man who has been waiting and will not say so.

He turns, and begins to walk into the dark, and he does not look back to see if you follow — but his hand, at his side, opens once, palm up, an inch.