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The sun crawled slowly into the sky, spilling its light onto the gallows. Townspeople were gathered around the site, waiting in grim anticipation for the arrival of the cart and the prisoner it carried.
Fools.
Kuragari had been watching them from her place on the mountain above for some time now, arriving a few hours before. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen something like this, and it wouldn’t be the last.
And it was the same prisoner every time.
Last time they’d burned him at the stake, and the time before that they’d beheaded him. What was it this time? A hanging?
She sighed deeply as the cart and its sorrowful horse came over the hill. When would they learn? These weren’t miraculously failed executions, and there was no bleeding the eternity out of that man.
He couldn’t die.
The townspeople raised pitchforks and torches as the cart came closer, and the man sat motionless in the back, his wrists and ankles bound together. His eyes were cast to the ground, empty and hopeless, and if he had a soul, it would have bled through those eyes in a flood of sorrow.
But there was no soul.
There had never been.
Well...maybe there was once. A long time ago, at the dawn of this poor creature’s life, before he had been tainted by the world that hated him so much. Before humanity stripped that soul away, bit by bit, it shined so brightly, illuminating the earth that bore him with its silver glow.
But it was gone now, beaten out of him by hatred and cruelty and many, many spears and farm tools.
The cart arrived at the gallows, and the man was dragged up the steps by guards with vicious spears. Kuragari watched closely, knowing the only reason she’d never been on those same gallows was because of her mastery of disguise. She would have taught him her art if she’d had the chance.
But the humans came for him too quickly.
The noose was fitted around the man’s neck, and he was condemned for the thousandth time among thousands of times to come.
“Before you stands the blight of our world, a horrific monster that will feed on the flesh and blood of your children,” the priest said, raising his arms to the sky. “It is an abomination, an unnatural creature that thinks it can cheat Death’s scythe. We will tolerate no such beast in our land, and today we will destroy it forever!”
The townspeople cheered, raising their pitchforks and torches into the air, and the trapdoor vanished with a loud clang. The man plunged downward, and a loud crack split the early morning air. It had barely sounded before the townspeople swarmed his hanging body with their weapons, stabbing and hacking at him and setting fire to his torn, grimy clothes and ghostly skin.
Kuragari barely stopped herself from drawing her swords and running down there to kill the humans. She’d seen this before. So many times. Too many times. And the outcome would be the same.
So just like all those other times, she had to stay here in the shadows. She couldn’t reveal herself to the humans, not after so many millennia of hiding among them, not unless she wanted an eternity like this man’s eternity.
An eternity of hell.
***
He never asked to be a god.
The spears and farm tools stabbed into him again and again, and he couldn’t ever hope to estimate the blood that was pouring out of his body. There was so much of it. It was endless, just like his existence, just like everything in his world. Time dragged on, never daring to chase him to Death’s door, not even when he begged it to.
I can’t chase a god, Time would say. Your eternity is your cross to bear.
Utsuro didn’t want that cross. He didn’t want anything.
He was indifferent to the pain now, but he clenched his teeth against it, though it was a different pain he was fighting: the pain of living, of existing, of being in this world. He hated it more than anything.
An end. Please. I want an end.
Where...is the end?
The shouts of the humans grew louder and louder, a sweeping flood of hellish noise that was all too familiar to him. It was an almost friendly song now, and they were supposed to be the chorus of demons that would escort him to the end of everything. Only there wasn’t an end, and every time he thought he might have gotten there, he was thrown right back into this empty existence, this void of suffering.
“Devil!” the humans shouted. “Renounce your eternity!”
Utsuro smiled, the emptiest of smiles to ever curse this world.
If only I could, humans.
If only I could.
Then he slipped the noose off his neck and dropped to the ground, narrowly avoiding slipping in his own blood. Gore dripped down his body as his skin and bones stitched back together, tendrils of silver smoke rising from his form, and the townspeople tried to beat him down, hacking into his flesh again and again. But he reached out and seized a man’s neck and snapped it cleanly in his hands, and the humans scattered, screaming for their lives.
You are fortunate creatures.
Utsuro pursued them, picking up discarded weapons to slice them into pieces as he ran.
Your lives will end here and now. You will not be born again. You do not live in emptiness. You have no eternity...and yet so many of you want it.
So please.
Come take mine.
The bloody corpses of the townspeople crumbled to the ground, and the others screamed as Utsuro came closer.
I have no will to stay in this world. It’s all empty...so empty.
He cut the humans down, their limbs scattering onto the bloody grass.
So please.
Take my cross.
The site was silent now, and the wind whispered through his hair, promising him it would never carry him anywhere. He dropped the gory weapons in his hands, letting them clatter to the ground with the corpses, and then he looked at the sky, a place so vast and empty.
Take my eternity.