Story:

A miko rushed into the main temple, skidding on the tatami, a message tube pressed to her chest.

"Shrine Master! Report from the messenger dove—the Fuji village scouts!"

Chitose took the tube, unrolled the strip of paper—and did not gasp, did not sway; simply read, and her face grew ten years older in ten seconds. Then she passed it to the trembling messenger and nodded once.

"Report it out. Let everyone hear."

The young miko swallowed, bowed, and read aloud, voice quavering:

"The scouts report... the sighting of a demon army, all over the hillside north of the Fuji village. The numbers—" her voice caught, "—the numbers are around ten thousand."

The hall went very still.

"A black sea of monster swarming, from tree line to tree line, as far as the eye can see. But—Shrine Master—the scouts insist they are not a mob. The army is organized. Cohesive. Rank upon rank, banners and units, moving as one body."

"They are marching—in formation—and their axis of advance points, apparently—" the girl's voice dropped to a horrified whisper, "—here. The Yamato Shrine."

The strip of paper trembled in her hands.

Everyone in the hall gasped.

Ten thousand. Organized. An army of hell marching in formation—almost certainly under the command of their most notorious, brutal, efficient general: the Black Rose.

The same Black Rose whose campaigns of slow, patient horror the eastern daimyo had stalled for years at the cost of entire provinces.

Ten thousand of hers would be a nightmare to any daimyo's state—a full realm's army required, months of preparation, fortresses and alliances and rice and gold and luck.

A war host no single power in Yamato could meet in the open field.

And the Yamato Shrine, in its ruins, held barely a hundred-odd miko—a third of them wounded, their great ward annihilated, their gate a pile of rubble.

Their fall was almost certain. In sheer numbers, they stood absolutely no chance no matter how they measured it.