“… Give her back,” the beast snarls. It takes effort to listen to her. Above, the world is collapsing in a blur of weathered rock and trees and bushes and stranded animals whose bodies are crushed in apocalyptic rain; below, the nuclear lake shifts and stirs, bubbling from dispersed temperature left by Yukari’s thunderstorm, gigantic eyes shaped from rancor watching from the depths, a weapon of mass destruction from the Outside World in its stomach, and… A-And… and through my heart a cursed blade. A lapse of momentum had led me here, Hakurei blessings gnawing at my flesh and coagulating blood, akin to a serpent’s bite.

Legs had faltered, and black spots had littered my vision. All Yukari needed.

She twists the blade, simmering eyes looking past mine and to the floating four-leaf clover above my shoulder. “… G-Give my Sekai back.” She presses as a hulking mass coated in blood, penciled to the likeness of a human’s painting regarding nightmares, barrels towards her in explosive rage.

Sekai…

I blink, lungs bulging with nonexistent oxygen. “Echoes…?” I parrot, looking into those infinite eyes, seeking something I know I’ll never find and if I did, then I wouldn’t comprehend. Centuries lived on this Earth, yet those words—‘I'm your daughter, Mother Kasen’—shook me like none else. The blue sapling flutters, and the hands claw at our legs more desperately, as if attempting to take us away from this mind garden and what happens beyond the lake's surface, which trembles and rings, breached. Impending doom soon…

Sekai nods, fidgeting with her hands, anxious. “Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people—every one of them has left an impression in my soul,” she smiles. “Father Anon gave me his kindness, Mother Yukari…” A smile that falters. “… she gave me resilience. No one without a spring of such would’ve survived a millennium of her torment.” Infinite eyes come back to me; her features are mine. “You’ve gifted me a deep trauma, Mother Kasen.”

My spine straightens, a lump bulges in my throat. “T-Trauma…?”

She raises a hand toward me, as if to placate. “Good, bad—it doesn’t matter to me. I can hate, and I can love; I can be a monster and I can be so impossibly gentle. None of that is mine; everything was gifted… And everything will be cherished.” I scowl, but though I stand lucid, words don’t come to the forefront. She echoes me, hence ‘mother’. Taking my silence as a cue, she continues, her smile a soft thing. “The trauma you’ve gifted me helped me cope with this power of mine. No other who’s visited the place True Mother built had such a troubled struggle with their sense of self… A million echoes; it’s easy to forget, beneath all of them, I exist.” She looks at the little sapling.

Silence is reborn, albeit briefly. Inside my chest, the heart swells with a most dreadful heat—rage. “Our circumstances are different, child.” I stammer, containing that rage the best I can. Lower lip trembles, eyes narrow—despite this bodiless state, I feel every change. “Douji is… someone else; that’s why when she got sealed away, only I remained. We are not the same.” A thrumming guilt comes with those words, followed by bloodied memories.

Koutei, thousands of Makaians, that Dollmaker—Hana…

… Before them, mountainous remains of those I'd devoured.

I shake my head to dispel them, formless body shivering, both at the yearning of suicide and… Something—someone. “You can lie to me, Mother Kasen, but don’t lie to yourself—not anymore.” She coos, like a whisper of the wind. It drags my eyes back to hers, infinity marred in sadness. “It’s impossible to run from your sins forever…” My breath hitches, and my lips dry. Koutei's dead, Makai—they screamed, they pleaded. They were evil spirits, and they cried for mercy—is nothing but razed land. Ibaraki-Douji has killed like no other oni ever before her. I want to claw at my throat; breathing feels insurmountable.

“… I-I never wanted to be this kind of animal—why should the things natural to a beast be considered sins?!” The words leave me in a slurry. Hands grasping at my legs pull with greater strength. They go ignored. Sekai looks at me with such terrible sadness.

Her sadness—I hate it. I hate the way she looks at me and that she calls me her mother.

Reimu had looked so very innocent when she was 10.

“They're not my sins! They're hers! When she got sealed, I finally got to live—m-my life started then, not… In those days,” Reimu was grumpy and aloof but kind and tender. Approachable. Lectures or long sermons did not intimidate her.

Those days felt like a responsibility to uphold.

Why am I thinking of Reimu…?

“… We are not the same. Never will be—but I can stop Douji…” It always comes back to that animal, to suicide. It’s the only proper way to finish this nightmare.

A setting sun gives way to soft night.

I miss Reimu Hakurei.

“… Eventually, Mother Kasen,” Sekai resumes, saddened. “Your sins catch up.”

Every instinct of mine screams danger.

My mind reels.

The beast draws near.