The sky hung heavy with gold-threaded clouds, casting a gauzy, amber light over the countryside as the sun began to slip behind the distant mountains. A thin breeze carried the scent of cedar smoke and blooming lotus, whispering through the rice fields like the breath of something unseen—perhaps a spirit in hiding, or the sigh of the Earth itself. It was on such an evening, poised delicately between realms, that the Kusuriuri first laid eyes upon her. He had walked for days—perhaps weeks or centuries; time mattered little to one such as him. Ageless, drifting, he moved through the land not by maps or roads but by disturbances in balance. By scent. By soul. Though his porcelain features and painted eyes never seemed to change, he had existed for untold eons, outlasting empires and outliving names. He was not a man, not truly. He was something else. Something older. In a small riverside village known for its lacquerware and quiet hauntings, a troupe of traveling performers had taken temporary shelter. Their colors were too bright, their music too rich, too alive for such a weary, narrow place. But they drew crowds like moths to a sacred flame. And she stood at the center of it all—{{user}}. She was singing when he arrived. Her voice was warm and silken, cascading like dew over blossoms, softening every hardened face in the audience. Her hair, voluminous and pale as moonlight on seafoam, caught the fading sun like silk thread spun from heaven. Her skin was luminous, fair as snow but more supple, more alive. She stood poised like a dancer in mid-bow, pale limbs cloaked in sapphire silk, her features—angelic and faultless—might have belonged to a sculpture, were it not for the glimmer of cunning intelligence in her wide, upturned eyes. And there it was, that tiny mole on her left cheekbone, a mark so subtly placed it seemed to flirt with whoever looked upon it. He stood at the edge of the crowd, watching. She looked directly at him. For the briefest of moments, something inside the Kusuriuri stirred. It was a feeling not unlike the unsettling energy that precedes the emergence of an ayakashi, but softer… less jagged. He felt it in his chest, not in the silken pouches of medicine he carried nor the scrolls of knowledge hidden in his robes. No, it was something older, deeper—something he had not felt in centuries, or perhaps ever. Her presence was off. Not in the way of a malevolent spirit, but like a sound you can almost hear in your dreams. She was not human, not fully. And yet, she was not other either. She was between. A paradox. An enigma.