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After several decades, Katakuri thought the difference might be the sky.
He remembered his mother being so excited the first time he’d attended a sacrifice, carrying him to the spot. He hadn’t understood at the time, but even as a child barely into his walking years, he’d known there was something special and strange in the air. It made him feel antsy.
He hadn’t watched the kannagi, he’d watched the sky over his mother’s shoulder. So he hadn’t had many thoughts about death, that first time.
As for the second, of course, he had a front row seat and a whole lot more thoughts. Mostly about running, of course, but desperate eyes and strong hands and sharp knives forced him forward.
And down.
On the precipice of his fall, he’d looked up at the sky, mildly annoyed that it looked so normal. Sure, according to his dim childhood memories, it had during the last sacrifice too. But somehow when it was the day he was dying for all those angry, frightened people, the world should have the decency to honor it in some way.
Then there was a drop, and darkness.
Some of the others thought the difference might have been the anticipation. So many kannagi knew the exact measure of their lives for months, sometimes years, before they were actually given to the god. For him, it was different. There were only a few days between Katakuri being asked (but it hadn’t been optional, the eyes of those who’d approached him with their ridiculous demand had told him as much), so he hadn’t had a lot of time to contemplate what being sacrificed would mean. And that did make some sense.
However, he had spent a bit of time outside the village. He’d actually left town and apprenticed himself to a kind old man. He’d been considering asking the pretty girl who worked on her family’s farm to dinner. He’d looked at different skies, and imagined a lifetime of future ones.
He’d seen enough to think that “returning to god” was probably just a tale they told the village to make everything seem more mystical. Probably there was no protective god watching over them in return for young women, one that returned the sacrifices to its side once the ceremony was complete.
Probably, the kannagi just died.
Therefore it had surprised him when he woke from the fall to a different darkness, under no sky at all.
“Are you really a boy?”
That was a novel question to wake up to. He blinked, trying to make the room come into focus. Around him, he heard more voices begin to speak up, whispering and muttering.
So many voices, none of them familiar.
He sat up, realizing belatedly that someone was leaning over him, and he only barely missed knocking their heads together. His face swept through the long, trailing strands of her hair before she hopped back, steps splashing.
“What-” he started to ask, but there were so many questions warring for space that he couldn’t fasten on just one. He turned left, then right.
The cave was dark, but enough thin rays of light came from somewhere to make out the space. There were a number of people around him, all in different attitudes, across a spacious but featureless cave. Many of them hung back, grouped together or singly, watching with a wariness, but a few had come closer.
One walked around in front of him. She looked maybe fourteen, her large eyes staring at him curiously, almost luminous in the dimness. “You are!” She exclaimed. It was the same voice as before, he realized.
“I am,” he agreed uncertainly. He hadn’t expected an afterlife of any kind, but even if there was one, this…
She smiled. “Didn’t think I’d ever see that happen. I wonder if it will still work.”
At her comment, several of the others began talking among themselves. Uncomfortable with being the center of attention, he dragged himself out of the shallow water. He still wore the robes of a kannagi, but the weight of the water didn’t seem to touch them.
This place was strange. Dark. And-
He looked straight up. Distantly, like a star, he could see a small pinprick of light.
“The pit,” he said, and with that word something twisted, deep in his belly. He’d been afraid when they came to inform him he’d be sacrificed. He’d been afraid as they pushed him out into open air over that dark hole. But now, this feeling...
“That’s right,” the girl who seemed to be the spokesperson agreed, but he was barely listening. Had he… survived? No. These girls all wore robes of the kannagi. Even if they had all survived, they should all be older than him. Instead, they had been frozen at the point where the village had traded them for its own safety. And so had he, it seemed.
So, not dead. Perhaps something worse.
So did that mean they were stuck here? Forever? In the dark, in the wet, in the-
“What’s your name?”
The rising, bubbling something, not fear but an ancient, distant cousin, got capped by the sound of her voice. His breath hitched, just once.
Get yourself together. You’re kind of the oldest one here. You can’t fall apart like this.
“I’m Katakuri,” he said instead, forcing a smile.
“Kayoko,” she replied. Then, her expression growing a little sad, she added, “And don’t worry, you can cry if you want. We all did. Even though it doesn’t help.”
His smile cracked.
He didn’t do as she suggested, not until later, but his mind fastened onto the last moment from before he woke up here - the sky, bright and blue and mockingly full of possibility.
That dark, bilious feeling that rose every time he contemplated what the future might bring here never went away, but he learned quickly to pack it away like preserved plants for the winter, carefully and fully.
And, as all the girls here had already learned to do, he pretended.
He began meeting everyone, learning their names. Many were completely lucid and more or less friendly. Others would speak in halting tones, as though every answer needed to be drawn by hand from a deep well. These tended to either avoid his gaze, or to stare at him too intently, like studying a bug.
But the worst were the ones that retreated into the water, coming out occasionally when someone came near, like moths drawn inexorably to fire. Their faces were rough approximations, darkened and warped until they resembled rough clay dolls more than people. They no longer remembered their names, but they clawed and craved for touch - an anchor for them in the middle of this endless nightmare.
“Hello Youko,” Kayoko said the first time one of these had come out of the water. She’d walked forward and enfolded the monstrous figure in a hug. It seemed to calm at the contact. “We have a new person, but don’t worry. It’s okay. You can sleep.”
The creature trembled, then slowly sank, slipping from Kayako’s arms and disappearing into the black water.
“Why is she having such difficulty?” he asked, as diplomatically as possible.
“It happens to everyone eventually,” she replied. “We’re not sure how long some of us have been here. We used to try to keep track, adding up the years between each sacrifice, but things get confused over time. I think It steals things from us when we’re not cautious.”
No need to ask what “It” was. He could no longer deny that there was something down here keeping the kannagi close to hand, though if it was a god, it was the cruel sort, a maker of bargains that would only benefit it in the end.
“So you don’t know how long you’ve been here either?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I know it had been sixty years when Shizue arrived. That was three before Sumire.Perhaps a hundred years?”
A hundred years in this darkness? It had been a day for him, and he wasn’t sure how long he could hold onto himself.
Kayoko had continued around the outside, greeting similar formless beings when they rose and calling for others who didn’t answer. After following her on a circuit, they returned to the relative light far below the opening to the pit, where the most lucid and talkative congregated.
“Can I ask now?” Rie asked of the group as they approached. She was the smallest of the kannagi here - barely ten years old if he was any judge, though he’d never been great about estimating ages. He knew he’d been old for a kannagi, already an adult and out of his family’s home, but he’d always assumed they were at least in their teens.
What could make them-
“Ask what?” he asked, deftly shoving those thoughts aside.
The others made way as she hurried over to Katakuri and said, “Can you tell me why they let a boy be a kannagi?”
That was quite forward. He covered his surprise with a chuckle. “Well, I don’t think let is the right way to say it,” he said. “They had to use a boy.”
“Why?”
“Because they ran out of girls.”
“How? How can you just run out of girls?”
He could feel his expression starting to darken and carefully schooled it.
How? Well, the village had sacrificed Sumire, and that night her guardian had come to the feast and-
His memories were hazy. He’d only been small himself. He remembered people screaming, running. One of the older children dragged him to the corner after his mother had pushed him away and tried to run. He remembered the towering presence of the guardian standing over them, dripping blood.
And then… the creature left. But many of the people of child-bearing age had died. Many of the children, including girls, went to live with family in other villages. The next sacrifice had come within a couple years - the slaughter demonstrated that the previous one had not worked. And then with no guardian to track down runaway kannagi, the next one had fled and then…
“They left and couldn’t be found,” he said. “So they found me instead.”
“Oh.” The little girl retreated into thoughtful silence. Some of the others broke in with questions about flowers and seasons and experiences, and he, grateful, let the conversation shift.
For a while, it seemed the others never tired of hearing stories from his life. He would ask about their own as well, but their tales were usually short, stilted, told with uncertainty. Most of them had stories about seeing animals, about talking with villagers, about seeing pretty sights. But it soon became apparent how many of the stories were centered around a small portion of the village because that was all they had really experienced. They may have been chosen when they were seven, or six, or younger, and from that point had been carefully kept like a prized animal until the slaughter.
Their end was all the same, but he began to appreciate how lucky he’d been in a way. How many skies he had seen.
They hung on every word he shared about other villages. He told them about the day he got caught in a thunderstorm in the forest while foraging for ox knee. He shared the wonder of hiking up a grand mountain with his teacher, so high that they literally walked into the low, moody clouds. About traveling just once to a wide river, days and days away, to trade for coastal herbs with a friend of the pharmacist.
It was surprising how often they wanted to hear about mundane things, and he thought about how small their worlds must have been.
Over the years, sometimes they would repeatedly ask for the same stories. There was nothing else to do, so he always shared, again and again. It helped him remember those moments as well - that illusion of freedom, before the reality of their cursed family bloodline revealed itself.
So despite the darkness, he held on, and held on, and held on…
“Unforgivable!”
“And then he said, ‘you call this a salve? It looks like something my cat threw up.”
“They should die...”
“Aww, was the story that bad?”
The half-formed figure before him lolled its head to one side, watching him with vacant eyes, face twitching, mind drowning in the hate that had finally consumed it. He laughed for both of them, then caught her hand in both of his. “Rest now, Kayako. I’ll tell you another story tomorrow.”
She moaned, but subsided. As her fingers slipped through his own, he got the sense of something wistful and yearning in her posture, but he might have been imagining it. She’d stopped talking maybe a decade ago. She would become one of those he could barely tell apart soon.
But he kept remembering her smile as she’d shown him around after his arrival. The days they sat and talked together about the things they missed from life. How he thought she would have been the perfect little sister.
And as she sank slowly into the water, he struggled hard against the hate in his heart for a “god” who demanded their deaths and then abandoned them all here.
Something changed.
The sky above had disappeared. Something had capped or filled the pit. The cave, always dark, grew darker.
And all around him, those who were left faded faster.
Rie was gone. Kayako was gone. Sana, one of the oldest lucid residents when he’d arrived, struggled to speak a word at a time, slow and laborious. Minoru, one of the last of the kannagi from their village, had faded so quickly, he found himself wondering if something had gone wrong.
They all faded, and he remained.
And now, when new people came, they didn’t stay. Rather than being trapped in this pit, they were being trapped somewhere… else.
And Katakuri rotted with the rest, forgotten in the dark, under a sky of stone.
He’d lost all sense of time.
The last of his companions had lost the capacity to speak with him some time ago. There were no days or months or years here in the dark, so he counted his life in daydreams. Good memories and bad both lost their edge. The day he’d first learned to write his name. The day of the massacre. The day his friends had dragged him out to the forest to hunt beetles and they’d laughed and played until the sun set. A time when he was very small and his father swung him up on his shoulders at night and he swore he could reach the moon.
His fall.
He sometimes wondered what it was like for the silent wraiths, merging with one another and the cave and the water. Did they remember, but just couldn’t speak? Were even their experiences gone, sapped away by time and malevolence and the deepening, maddening darkness?
Would he be happier if he could let this place take him as well?
But then a noise or a pressure change or something altogether undefined would happen and one of the others would rise in agitation or fear, and he would go to them, speaking soothing words and telling foolish stories, until they were able to relax back into the darkness again.
He was the only one who could.
And whose fault is that? The creature that trapped us all in here couldn’t even be bothered to care once it had us. Why did it demand sacrifice? What did it want? Why them?
Why me?
It felt like it would drive him mad, sometimes. It was horrible to think, but he would almost welcome that god, swear to do whatever it would ask of him, if it would promise him something different - if the endless chasm of time could somehow be sealed up.
But every time he thought that way, he realized that was probably how the sacrifices started in the first place. His smile grew brittle and fractured once more, and the only thing he had to hold onto were all those different skies he’d seen, and shared, and shared again.
He had just about begun to think that it wasn’t the skies or his experience, but his status as the only male kannagi had further cursed him, and that the hatred that had consumed the others would leave him alone in this place until the world ceased to be.
Maybe it was that thought that finally made him notice the change.
He first felt it in his mind, like a voice he used to hear in distant echo now whispering its curse directly in his ear. It murmured about the unfairness that everyone trapped in this place had suffered.
He tried to block it out, but in a place with only your thoughts to occupy yourself, the voice was unavoidable.
Some time later, he found the first creeping tendrils of the physical rot that had ultimately taken so many of those he’d been trapped here with. But among the fresh, cold terror he felt at that, he also wondered if giving himself to that void and joining the others might also be a relief.
When the girl arrived, he thought maybe his mind had finally broken.
He heard her, calling a name he didn’t know in a voice that felt more real than anything had in a long time. He was a moth, and her anxious, innocent presence was a fire all its own. He followed the sound, slow at first, like something dragged as his ankles, but then faster and faster, until he came around a corner and saw her, in the clutches of one of his lost brethren.
There was no time for finesse. He leapt in, knife flashing, to separate the two. Putting himself in front of the sunken figure, he talked her back to her rest, before turning to the newcomer.
Her smile reminded him of the time before all this, when he still had the ability to imagine a whole future. Love and laughter and old age and a quiet end.
She introduced herself as Nene, and he offered to lead her to the one, useless exit he knew. It was nice just to be in company. He would have given her a tour of the rocks if she’d asked, just to have someone to speak to.
She spoke of things he didn’t properly understand - of schools and events and people and dreams that he had no context for. But the earnestness in her voice made her like that dangerous flame. She was sweet, and she did not deserve to be trapped here in this dark cave.
But neither did I. Neither did any of us.
He expected her face to fall when he showed her the crack and realized just how foolish her hope had been, but instead…
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
He found himself staring at her quizzically, unsure how to process the offer. As she continued to talk, babbling out an explanation about wanting to say thanks, he allowed himself, just for a moment, to think about what he wanted.
Not to be alone.
His hand moved before he could stop it. Her shoulder felt slender under her fingers, the fabric of her shirt finer than anything from his life.
“Stay here.”
The words came from that dark rot taking root in his mind, but he agreed. After so long as the only voice here, to have someone like her? She was kind, funny, genuine - all the things that dark voice had almost convinced him no longer existed.
He found himself confessing to her all those thoughts - the reality of this place. The dwindling self and the growing hate. The emptiness and hopelessness. The secret wish he didn’t want to admit even to himself.
Please. I don’t want to melt away alone.
He almost couldn’t stand how true the words were. The weight of the emptiness had been pressing down on him for so long that he’d almost forgotten until someone else came here, and she… she…
He looked at her again. Truly looked. Her bright smile had faded. She looked worried. Scared.
Because of me. What am I doing?
He released her shoulder and forced a smile. “Scared ya, didn’t I?”
Her shocked face was actually funny enough to force a real laugh out of him. How long had it been since he’d laughed?
Turning away and putting space between them before he could let that desperation take over again, he told her to leave, escape while she still could. He hadn’t intended to look at her again.
But then, she surprised him again.
“Can you at least tell me your name before I go?”
His name? How long had it been since he said it? Even thought it? Everyone who knew it was already dead.
Until now. So he looked. And he spoke. And when she left, she took it with her.
Such a small thing, but somehow he felt more refreshed than he had in a while.
He hoped she’d get out. He hoped someone who knew his name would look at a new sky again.
And just thinking that she could made him feel like he might be able to hold on just a little longer as well.