An omamori crafted using an art known as Mizuhiki.
It is said to have the power to bind wishes and the reasons for those wishes within itself.

Once, I learned how to manage the affairs of the shrine under the tutelage of a mighty kitsune.
Back then, I was just a young shrine maiden who had just arrived on Narukami from a small fishing village.
I was duller than a teapot and had yet to lose the obstinate impulsiveness and curiosity of a child,
I was always naively skeptical of the elegant but incomprehensible words of Lady Saiguu.

"Everything in the world is entangled. Hence, illusory visions were born out of concrete reality."
"The so-called omamori cannot make one's wishes come true at all, but they can make them eternal through this entanglement."

The Lady Kitsune couldn't help but break out into laughter upon seeing my clueless expression.
She cheerfully knocked my head with her pipe and sneakily changed the subject.

"I suppose you've met your fated one as well, Kanade?"

"What sort of 'fate' could there be with a rude and reckless brute like that!"

"Oh, is that so?"

But darkness engulfed everything in the end.
That "fate," too, was no more.

Surrounded by the black feathers seized by his onrushing blade, the man who is going to become a swordmaster...
...Finally caught the girl who had been untouchable for so many years...

"Yikes, that was a close shave. Well done indeed."
"If your sword hadn't been broken by your strength,"
"I would've died here for sure. So..."

Teruyo, shall we change the venue for our duel next year?
There are a few places I know of where you can also see the scarlet sakura falling...
As he looked around at the small shrine he had destroyed, holding the tengu's trembling hand,
These words lay on the tip of Doukei's tongue even as he stared at the black feathers that he had sliced off.

"You did touch me, after all. I must admit that this is clearly your victory."

Victory has not been decided yet. Let's meet again next year, he wanted to say.

"Now, your sword can even surpass the speed of a tengu."
"I will never forget a single one of our duels in these past thirteen years."
"But as a Tengu, I have duties to the clan that I must fulfill."
"Thinking back, I changed your name in hopes that you might escape from the curse of the oni bloodline."
"With that war, non-human blood grows thinner and thinner."
"Ah well. We should not covet the happy endings that you humans enjoy. But you're different."
"You are now 'Iwakura.' You are no longer the 'Mikoshi' who shoulders the burden of oni blood."

"Goodbye, Doukei, and please forget me."
"Use your sword for the Iwakura bloodline and open a path that belongs to the Iwakura alone."

In the distant past, when Seirai Island had yet to be shrouded by storm clouds, memories would rise and fall like breaths.
In the end, the elegant container that contained thunderstorms and tremors could not be handed over to the one to whom it was promised.

"Did you come to me because the string is broken again? You're such a headache."
"Other than your swordsmanship, you're just an idiotic old gambler, aren't you?"

"Hmph. Don't you look down on me. I learned my archery from a tengu, you know? It's pretty famous, too."
"It's just that I'm too good with a sword, you know? That's why no one ever talks about my archery."
"Actually, now that I think about it, that's such a waste of good archery. How about I teach it to you, then?"

Once upon a time, you mended that idiot's broken seal cage, all the while speaking those harsh words...
Once upon a time, though you used harsh words to divert others, you could not help but smile faintly.

"Please. You're already a Hatamoto with important responsibilities. Why are you still running around looking for trouble?"
"And you're already married too, to a sweet wife no less. Why do you spend your days wandering and gambling, huh?"

You're already...
The question was on the edge of your lips, but you were unable to ask, and you decided never to bring it up again.
If the Lady Saiguu had been here with you, she would surely have put it in a clever and merry way...

"It doesn't matter anymore. I gave myself a holiday, at least for today."
"Let's leave that whole shrine business behind and sneak off to the seaside, just like we did when you were little."

And so he dragged you to the harbor, where you watched the ships sailing back and forth, as if in a trance.
You listened to him talk about Teruyo of the shrine, and how she had inherited her master's beauty and skill.
You listened to him talk about his terrifying nightmares, in which he cut off his own head…
But you both knew that those were just words to hide the melancholy of adulthood.

Later, a long time later,
Overlooking the mossy reefs and the harbor where the two of you once had that quiet rendezvous...
For the gambler to win his bet again, for the sake of praying for his safety...
Once again, you dared to stand upon those heights, holding up the seal cage that you made with your own hands.
Bearing the hope of retrieving those memories, you gathered the power of thunder and lightning.

With his secret sword technique, Tengu Sweeper, Iwakura Doukei became the Kujou Clan's swordsmanship instructor.
He also received the title of "Douin" and founded a successful sword school.
As he headed off to take up his post at the Kujou Estate, Doukei, who had long learned how to drink,
Stepped into the branch shrine that had been utterly destroyed by his completion of the Tengu Sweeper.
Here, in the courtyard of this abandoned branch shrine, he had sparred with the Tengu of Yougou ten times in the last thirteen years.
He remembered his encounter of the black-winged tengu who had called herself the "Teruyo of Yougou"...

Thirteen years went by like a dream
The scarlet snow flies through the shadowed pass like smoke
You have now gone afar

The Sacred Sakura petals fell then, too, as if they were snow from the sky.
The branch shrine had lost the god it worshipped, but it was still in a fine state.
Laughter as clear as spring water echoed between the mountains.
But never again would the two set foot in that desolate yard.

"I've been wondering, Sir Douin, could your sword actually slice through lightning?"
So said the young Kanjou Head, Hiroshi, while sheating his blade. Douin replied thus, woodenly:
"How could that be possible? At most, I'd say that it could strike a Tengu in mid-air."
"That said, though, no one has ever brought a tengu down before. Not even once."

"Is that so? In that case, where does the name of your secret blade, "Tengu Sweeper," come from?"
Seeing that Douin did not answer, the Kanjou Head who had built Ritou up said:
"Ah, if it wasn't for old man Kujou making a move first, I would've loved to recruit you."
"With your sword, even Ako Domeki of Seirai would be no match..."

Like cleaving through the storm clouds, that tengu had given him a new name and a new life.
She threw him the rusty blade and told him to strike her, a tengu, down.
And after his sword broke, these were her last words to him...