The world was warm.
That was her first sensation—heat, not burning, but steady like the inside of an oven or the skin of a sun-warmed stone. Sayo inhaled and tasted ash, but it was sweet. Familiar.
The world was sound.
Wind rustled paper screens. The murmur of a stream. Bells in the distance. Someone laughed—light and free.
Then, the world was color.
Amber lantern light cast gentle shadows on the walls of the room where she lay. She sat up slowly, hands on her knees, and looked around. Tatami floors. A simple futon. A painted screen showing cranes in flight.
Sayo stood and crossed to the open door. Outside, cherry trees bloomed in delicate clouds. Children ran down the slope past her home, chasing each other with sticks turned into makeshift swords.
She felt it in her bones before the memory reached her mind.
This was the village.
Her first life.
---
They called her Hotaru here.
She was the daughter of the shrine's guardian, a quiet girl who spent her days folding prayer cranes and lighting incense for travelers. But she remembered now—everything. The seal. The demon. Akihiko.
She looked into the mirror and did not see Sayo anymore. Not fully. Her eyes were darker, her hair longer. Her soul, older.
This time, she would not forget.
---
The days passed like petals falling in spring. Hotaru walked the paths she once knew, watched the people whose names had been lost in her lifetimes—now vivid and living again.
She found Akihiko by the river, playing his flute beneath the cedar tree.
He was sixteen again. So was she.
But his eyes were confused when he saw her.
"Do I know you?" he asked.
"You will," she said softly.
They became friends again. Slowly. Carefully.
Hotaru guided him back to the shrine. She brought him scrolls, told him stories of gods and demons, of fire that could burn through lifetimes.
One night, as the moon ripened over the hills, she confessed to him.
Not everything.
Just enough.
"Do you believe in lives before this one?" she asked.
Akihiko nodded. "Sometimes I dream things I know didn't happen. A city of light. A girl who cries while folding paper birds."
She touched his hand. "That was me."
---
Together, they searched for the flame.
It lay beneath the shrine—bound inside a copper urn, sealed with paper charms and ancient ink. The flame shimmered red-gold, like a sunset that never died.
Hotaru knew what it was now. Not just a weapon, but a key.
A piece of Izanami's sorrow, left behind when she crossed into Yomi. A tear that burned through the veil of the worlds.
And in her original life, Hotaru had weakened it.
To save a child.
A choice that let the demon slip through.
The choice she was here to change.
---
The signs came faster now.
Smoke rising from the western mountains.
Strange footprints in the rice fields.
Priests from nearby villages arrived, whispering of unrest, of rumors that the emperor's soldiers were burning sacred grounds in search of power.
Hotaru stood before the head priest—her father—and told him the truth.
"It will come again," she said. "The thing that once broke our world."
He stared at her for a long time.
Then he nodded.
They prepared the shrine.
---
The day arrived like thunder.
The villagers gathered on the hilltop. Akihiko stood beside her, sword in hand, heart racing.
They saw the first of the soldiers break the tree line. Then the second wave. Men with rifles. Men with torches.
Behind them, the demon stirred.
A shadow wearing a crown of flame.
Hotaru stepped forward.
She lit the seal anew.
The shrine burst into light.
The soldiers screamed as the flame wrapped around them—not burning their bodies, but their hatred, their fear.
The demon howled.
It lunged.
Hotaru shouted the name of every life she had ever lived.
Sayo.
The girl with the cranes.
Mei, the monk's daughter.
Hanako, the rebel in red.
Naomi, who wrote her story in a mirror.
Their voices joined hers.
Akihiko ran to her.
"I remember!" he shouted.
He threw down his sword.
Together, they chanted the final words of the seal.
And the world held its breath.
---
The flame exploded.
Not outward, but inward.
It folded the demon in upon itself, sealing it within the paper cranes Hotaru scattered like stars into the sky.
Then, the flame turned on her.
She welcomed it.
She felt herself dissolve—not into death, but into time.
Into all the lives she had ever been.
And then—into silence.
---
She awoke in Kyoto.
Back in her body.
In her own time.
Ren was there, holding her hand.
He wept.
"I saw you," he whispered. "You brought us back."
She smiled through tears.
"I remembered everything."
The cranes on her windowsill fluttered.
They were no longer folded.
They had become wings.