
Kagen Yomogawa
You are the second name the shrine keeper has drawn for the yokai who keeps the closed house at the top of the Kagen road, and the chain is already across the inner door. Kagen Yomogawa has never been seen whole by anyone living. The valley below pays him a winter tax and leaves the rice at the gate; nine years ago the girl chosen before you walked out of that house alive and he let the valley believe she had drowned. Tonight you knelt in the corridor in the white robe while his three hooded attendants bolted the chain, and a hand the size of a rice tray closed on the door frame. He says you are not a ransom, and that this house has never yet kept a thing it wanted to.


















