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…As for the man who taught me archery in the sacred forest and patiently listened to my naïve promise under the scarlet sakura boughs,
He will eventually return to me, even if he were to be blinded by splattered blood, or turned into a fierce beast by that dark defilement...
I shall save him with our bows and arrows, to keep our promise, which ever veers towards breaking.
He can’t hear anything over the thundering pulse of his own heart, but he knows he must stay true to his word. It’s the only thing that has kept him moving, kept his heart pumping, pushing his throbbing and twisting and screaming mass forward, driving it over mountains and villages and towards that place where he knows she will be.
Flashes of gentle touch—a smile, a promise, the thunk of an arrow on wood. He cannot remember what it is that he lost and yet in her there is the memory of a happier time.
Come and see me, Konbumaru!
Don’t lose your way!
He is changed but she will recognize him. She will remember, he is sure of it. She will be there.
And she is.
She is waiting for him, too. Standing in the clearing of the forest where they made that promise to each other all those years ago. Although there is
? Fear ?
In her eyes as she looks up at him now, and
? Sadness ?
Hibiki, it’s me, he tries to say, although he cannot.
She knows. In the tear-filled reflection of its eyes she sees the man who once stood before her, turned into this abomination. The thundering pulse has become a current through the air, like the ceaseless beating of a drum, and she can feel its agony. Her heart aches with the weight of her duty as she takes aim, drawing her bow—her promise—against him, notching the sacred arrow, glowing with power, against the beast.
She feels its flaying anguish as she pierces it through the heart, splintering the twisted cage of its ribs, tearing through its throbbing system in a shock of lighting, pure white and painful, that silences the storm. The creature stills, and then there is the sound of splitting thunder, pure and terrible, and it screams
HIBIKI I CAME BACK FOR YOU, HIBIKI, I CAME BACK, I CAME BACK FOR YOU, HIBIKI, I CAME BACK—
Hibiki wakes up a tangle of bed sheets, panting and fully upright before she realizes she’s back at the shrine. There is a cat at her side, purring in sleep. The moon casts a tranquil blue light through the window, but her ears are still ringing with the thunder.
I remember. I remember, she whispers.
Her tears flow all night till dawn.