Story:

When the rune seal pillar shattered behind the holy waterfall, the dark ripple rolled outward through the mountain's ley lines like a scream through still water—and it immediately alerted the entire Yamato Shrine.

In the main temple, Shrine Master Kannagi Chitose was seated with Shiro and the other senior mikos, discussing the progress of Ai and Mai's rehabilitation—the twin Amatsu sisters' cleansing, their slow recovery, the troubling reports from the falls.

Tea steamed. Records lay open. It was, until that moment, a quiet evening of careful hope.

Then the ripple hit.

Every miko in the room gasped as one—the sheer intensity of the malicious intent in that evil mana wave washing through the temple floorboards, through their bare feet, through their trained and sanctified bones.

This was no stray corruption, no wandering stain. Malice this concentrated, this deliberate, was a herald's banner: something big was incoming.

Chitose and Shiro were the most mana-sensitive of them all—and both heads snapped toward the same point, both pairs of eyes staring through the temple wall, fixed on the backyard, on the direction of the holy waterfall.

"What... what is that?" Shiro whispered, her hand rising halfway to her own chest. "That's not a wandering aura, that's a—a signature, that's—"