Kagachi-sama Onagusame Tatematsurimasu Remaster... ❲VERIFIED❳

The bell in his hand rang once, of its own accord. The sound did not fade. It echoed into the hollow, and something answered.

Somewhere above, the clay bell rang again. A single, lonely note. Kagachi-sama Onagusame Tatematsurimasu Remaster...

The shrine to Kagachi-sama was not a building. It was a hollow: a wound in the earth where a great serpent was said to have coiled and died centuries ago. Or perhaps it was not dead. That was the ambiguity his grandmother had warned him about. The bell in his hand rang once, of its own accord

He opened his mouth to scream the closing chant—the words that sealed the hollow for another year. But something was already coiled around his tongue. Not a serpent. His own name, the one he had never offered, now being pulled from him like a silver thread. Somewhere above, the clay bell rang again

We gave it pieces of ourselves, he realized. And over centuries, we forgot how much we gave.