The Sengoku era, within the rugged mountains of the Kanto region.
Clinging to the barren cliffside were the interconnected kilns of the Demon Kiln. Atop this peak of jagged rocks, which had once been the domain of the demon hag Urasue, the red-clad hanyo youth, Inuyasha, stood in a tense confrontation. Goaded by the dying Urasue, he bared his fangs and claws toward the miko who had just been reborn within a body of clay, his hostility plain for all to see.
"Don't move, you fake! Return Kagome's soul right now!" Inuyasha shouted. Hearing his words, Kaede couldn't help but grow anxious.
"Inuyasha, don't be so reckless!" Kaede called out, stepping forward a few paces. She looked at the familiar yet profoundly different miko and said, "You are... perhaps my sister's past life. The dead should rest, and the living should remain in the world; this is the natural order. Past lives are long gone. I hope you can return to the body of this era."
Kaede offered her advice in a gentle tone. Having heard both Inuyasha and Kaede, the miko remained silent for a moment. Then, after a brief pause, she spoke slowly and coldly.
"I refuse."
"What did you say?! Are you saying you don't intend to return Kagome's soul?!" Inuyasha snarled, his aggression intensifying. The miko replied with quiet indifference.
"It is her soul, but it is also mine. Why should I 'return' it?"
Hearing the miko's logic, Inuyasha gritted his teeth in fury. Nearby, the blood-soaked Urasue, lying on the ground at death's door, continued to incite him. "Cough... cough... It's useless... No dead soul can refuse the chance to live again. The only way to save that girl is to destroy the doll! Hurry... destroy her!"
Driven by Urasue's words, Inuyasha finally lunged forward. He swung his claws at the miko, but every one of his movements was anticipated. With a simple side-step, she dodged him with effortless grace.
"Stop running!"
With a furious roar, Inuyasha unleashed a relentless barrage of claw strikes. Amidst the flurry of sharp steps and pivots, the miko danced through the terrifying currents of demonic power. Not even a thread of her garments was nicked by his claws. In her eyes, Inuyasha's frantic, storm-like assault was as slow as a tortoise, every movement following a predictable trail.
"Dammit! It's like Inuyasha's attacks aren't doing anything at all!" the young fox yokai, Shippo, shouted from a distance, watching the battle with concern. Beside him, Kaede nodded grimly.
"My sister's past life seems to be even stronger than imagined. Be careful... Inuyasha," Kaede murmured. She had already sensed that things were beginning to spiral out of control.
After another attack missed its mark, Inuyasha felt a surge of humiliated rage. Feeling as though he were being toyed with like a common dog, he shifted his strategy. This time, he began to funnel massive amounts of demonic power into his claws, intending to use a wide-range strike that would leave her with no room to escape.
"Think you can just hop around forever? Soul-Scattering Iron Claw!" Inuyasha roared as he lunged, his claws glowing with immense demonic energy. As the energy expanded, the attack range widened significantly, engulfing the miko from all sides. For a moment, it seemed she had nowhere to turn.
Facing the incoming claws, the miko stopped dodging. She pointed her finger forward, and a golden light gathered at its tip.
"Golden Light Spell."
As she whispered the incantation, the tip of her finger erupted with a brilliant golden radiance. The light was so intense that those nearby were forced to shield their eyes. The demonic energy from Inuyasha's claws vanished instantly upon contact with the light. Caught within the radiance, Inuyasha felt his exposed skin burning with the agony of being scorched by a furnace. Unable to endure it, he covered his face and turned away in pain.
Further away, Shippo had ducked behind Kaede the moment the light appeared. Urasue, unable to find cover, was engulfed by the radiance; steam rose from her body as she finally perished amidst the agony of the burn. Kaede, being human, felt no discomfort from the light. Instead, she sensed a strange familiarity within it.
Looking at the suffering yokai and seeing herself unharmed, Kaede realized that this light contained a trace of a familiar essence. She immediately thought of the Demon-Slaying Power her sister had once wielded. Both were effective only against yokai and harmless to humans. However, Kikyo's Demon-Slaying Power primarily manifested as a means to bind and seal a yokai's energy; it was more accurately described as a sealing power. This light, though similar in nature, was far more direct and violent. Its mere touch could erase demonic energy and wound or even kill the yokai it touched. It was an absolute, dominating power.
"Ah, it burns!"
Still scorched by the golden light, Inuyasha tried to find cover. But at that moment, a sharp cracking sound echoed from the source of the brilliance.
Crack!
The golden light vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Inuyasha exhaled sharply, his body still smoking. Burn marks had appeared across half of his face, but the rest of his body was protected by his Fire-Rat Robe.
"Huh? That's it?" Inuyasha asked, confused. If that light had continued, he would have had no way to fight back; he would have been burned alive if he hadn't found cover. Why had such a powerful technique stopped so suddenly? Driven by this question, Inuyasha looked toward the miko. She stood in place, silently staring at her own hands with an unreadable expression.
Inuyasha followed her gaze and saw that her pale hands and palms were covered in deep fissures, like cracked porcelain. These cracks spread across her skin, extending up her arms, onto her body beneath her miko robes, and even appearing on her neck and face.
"W-What is that?" Inuyasha stammered in surprise. At that moment, Kaede's voice reached him from behind.
"Inuyasha! She can release a Demon-Slaying Power even more potent than Sister Kikyo's, but she cannot sustain it! At her core, she is currently a monster made of clay! She is also a 'demon' that can be purified by such power! Using it causes a backlash against her own body. In this state, she surely cannot use that power again! Do not fear!"
Based on her own experiences and knowledge, Kaede had deduced the relationship between the miko's body and her power. She shouted the information to Inuyasha immediately. Hearing this, Inuyasha felt a wave of relief and joy.
"Ha! So that's how it is! Thanks, old hag!" Inuyasha shouted as he regained his composure, his fighting spirit reigniting.
"Hmph! That last trick was pretty impressive, but did you forget that you're one of the monsters now? Since you can't use that power anymore, it's my turn!" Inuyasha reached for his waist, gripping the hilt of a battered tachi. As he drew it, a brilliant light erupted from the sheath. When the light faded, Inuyasha held a massive, broad blade radiating a thick demonic aura, with a tuft of white fur at the guard.
"That is..." At the sight of the demonic blade, the miko froze for a moment as if remembering something. But in that instant, Inuyasha had already charged.
"It's all up to you! Tessaiga!"
As Inuyasha lunged, the miko used her quick movements to dodge his strike once more. Seeing his initial blow fail, Inuyasha pressed his advantage, swinging the blade in a continuous, rapid assault. The miko was forced back step by step by the relentless edge of the blade.
"Haha! I knew it! You can't use that power anymore, can you? If you do, you'll fall apart yourself! Now be a good girl and go back into Kagome's body before I smash you to pieces!" Inuyasha shouted arrogantly as he drove her back. Hearing his words, the miko's expression hardened.
"Uka? What are you talking about?" Inuyasha asked, confused by her mutterings. However, his offensive did not slacken; instead, he pushed even harder, shrinking the space around her. On the surface, it seemed Inuyasha held the upper hand, but the miko's suppression was due to several factors.
Her clay body was already damaged, making her movements increasingly difficult. Furthermore, the two other consciousnesses within her soul were arguing with growing intensity, their spiritual fluctuations making it impossible to draw upon her own spiritual power. With the Golden Light Spell unusable due to the backlash, her spiritual power blocked by inner turmoil, and her physical form failing, the miko made a decision to use a power that should never have reappeared in this world.
"Pardon my presumption."
After a quiet, whispered prayer, her expression sharpened. A ring of profound blackness appeared around her pupils, and the space within one of her hands began to ripple and fluctuate.
"There's an opening!" Inuyasha roared, swinging Tessaiga toward a flaw in her defense. But as the sharp blade neared her face, the clear sound of metal clashing rang through the mountains.
Clang!
Inuyasha stared in shock. Tessaiga had not struck the miko's clay body. Instead, it had been parried by a dull, metallic pole. Somewhere, somehow, her hand had produced a strange weapon.
It was a long polearm. The miko held it with one hand; a metallic shaft connected to a triangular, slanted blade at the end. It resembled a scythe but was smaller and straight rather than curved. The weapon was a dull grey, covered in the mottled traces of ages past. Dark gold patterns were inscribed upon it—rectilinear and fluid characters known as seal script.
"W-What kind of weird weapon is this?" Inuyasha stammered. He had lived for nearly two hundred years, yet in this war-torn Sengoku era, he had never seen a weapon like this.
"This is a Ge. A weapon that once flourished in a warring states period—the one from over fifteen hundred years ago."
With a gentle flick, the miko's clay body erupted with immense strength. The force of the impact sent Inuyasha flying back. He landed and struggled to stabilize himself, but when he looked up again, he saw the miko—her body covered in fissures like an ancient ceramic statue—holding the archaic bronze dagger-axe. A profound aura of ancient history radiated from her. Then, the dark gold inscriptions on the bronze Ge began to glow with a faint light, and the abstract, elegant shape of a bird appeared upon its blade.
With a practiced flourish of the weapon, the miko swung the Ge through the air, aimed diagonally at Inuyasha. A sudden, overwhelming sense of mortal danger rose in Inuyasha's heart, and he frantically raised Tessaiga to block.
As the dagger-axe swung, a streak of pure black light flashed through space, almost invisible to the naked eye. Before anyone could truly register it, the black light passed through the raised Tessaiga.
In the next heartbeat, the Tessaiga in Inuyasha's hands snapped in two. The severed half of the blade tumbled to the ground, and the rest of the demonic sword transformed back into its battered, broken tachi form.
"It... it broke? It actually broke!" Inuyasha, Kaede, and Shippo all screamed in disbelief. None of them could have imagined that the powerful demonic sword left by Inuyasha's father would be severed so silently.
Crack!
While they were still reeling from the destruction of Tessaiga, a sharp sound of shifting stone came from behind them. They spun around to look.
What they saw was the massive, towering cliff face sliding diagonally downward at high speed. At first, they didn't understand what was happening, but as they looked higher, they saw the entire peak of the rocky mountain roaring as it slid away along a perfectly flat, jade-smooth cut.
Rumble!
The earth-shaking roar of the mountain peak crashing into the abyss below was deafening. Looking at the cross-section, the cut was impossibly clean.
In that moment, Inuyasha and the others finally understood. The entire mountain peak, along with Tessaiga, had been severed by that invisible strike.
"Ah..."
No one could speak as they stared at the sight. Their mouths hung open as they gazed at the missing mountain peak and the eerily smooth surface left behind. Everything testified to the world-shaking power of that single strike.
Rumble!
Suddenly, another thunderous roar shook them from their stupor. They followed the sound toward the distance and saw, on a direct line from the cut before them, another mountain peak over ten kilometers away had collapsed. Even at that distance, the smooth cut of the distant peak reflected the sunlight with blinding intensity.
The sound of that distant mountain falling echoed in their hearts like the beat of a heavy drum.
'The impact reached that far?!'
A chill ran down their spines. Even the bold and unyielding Inuyasha felt a flicker of terror in his heart.
"T-This is too much... even a Great Yokai wouldn't have such exaggerated power... And just now, what was that energy? It wasn't spiritual power... it wasn't demonic power... what on earth was it?" Inuyasha's legs gave out, and he slumped to the ground. Shippo had already run off to hide, while Kaede turned numbly toward the ancient miko holding the dagger-axe.
"This is... this is practically the power of a god. Are you... are you a god?"
Facing Kaede's question, the miko, whose eyes were still clouded with primordial darkness, answered slowly.
"No. I am not a god. I am the servant of a god. I am her priestess. I am his ritual priest."
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