The world came to a screeching halt.

Every ounce of rage quelled in ice, and what lay before and around me had lost meaning. Yukari’s words repeated as the wind whispered past that window I’d look toward, crouched in a corner of the decaying shrine, moldy and dusty and a gathering of pests. At that time, I was just another pest, lingering in a hungry daze and simmering in paralyzing bitterness. It was a silent hell I ignored since I escaped it with Ran’s help… I’m sitting there again.

Hell. Again.

Yukari’s expression is demonic, like Douji's. It gnaws on the flesh, draws the blood—her eyes tell me she knows exactly what I am feeling, and she enjoys it.

… Hana is better than I. She’ll always be better than I.

She’s faced many trials and challenges—she bore bravery in escaping my claws; she fought Keine’s Festival and the monsters that’d sprung up that day… She’s facing this war with utmost cruelty and drive. Thoughts swirl back to how she treated Chen, the rage bubbling in her eyes.

She’s deeply hurt, and she fights anyway.

Hana is fighting for her father and for her Gensokyo.

H-Hana is the best thing I did with my life.

My daughter had a rough life; she rose above it again and again.

S-She’s… pure.

“NOOOOOOOOOO—” A strangled cry came, yet what I felt first was a crushing wave of shame spreading inside my guts like a rot. It brought me back to reality as steel whizzed and miko instincts screamed, Gohei swatting the cursed metal inches away from my face. Loose threads of dark hair drifted as Yukari flattened the blade and sunk a knee into my chest, no Float meaning the pain boomed through me as I arched outwards, flaming wings coiling and blood blossoming through clenched teeth. Once more unable to Float, the paper-like mikos moved by my command, most of them with Hana, meaning the defense I’d put against Yukari’s power was feeble, the pain biting through the Gohei and mincing the bone and meat of my only wrist, this cold gurgle leaving my throat as I scurried away from Yukari.

Only a second, maybe two.

The surrounding thunderstorm broke and coalesced as if sucked by a typhoon, yet Yukari paid no attention to it; predatory eyes lay all over me as she closed the distance within the instant. “Absolutely fantastic, isn’t it, Reimu?! She’s your daughter indeed! A rapist and a beast that’d defile even her father to seek a crumb of pleasure,” she rasps, my leg kicking midair aiming for her face, yet she caught the foot and pulled me towards the already throttling blade. A paper-like miko bombed against Yukari with her Gohei, the sword deflecting it as one more generation burst into flames, consumed to pay back the energy used for what moved her. In bygone eras, the Hakurei Shrine was sizable and powerful, with dozens of trained mikos for each fresh generation.

The strongest periods—Sengoku, Heian, Kamakura—saw the strongest mikos.

I’m but a shadow of them.

Hana is better. Hana is… pure…

The pounding shame and regret echoing inside aren’t mine. They’re true, and they are real—they are Hana’s.

Hundreds of mikos had burst into flames to, somehow, destroy the purple thunderstorm, Hana’s power eluding me; what did not was the searing pain that’d crossed me, tears threatening to spill and muscles clenching for but a second. It paid off, as from absolute nowhere she appeared, tall and powerful behind Yukari as the Yakumo woman sailed towards me, that accursed blade a centimeter away from slicing me, the sacrifices of many miko abundant yet ignored. Hana brandished her Gohei and Yukari, expecting to meet the sacred wood, had wide eyes as a condensed storm met the blade and overwhelmed Douji’s Manipulation of Understanding—was that what it’s called?—, striking the Sage and sending her careening to the blue lake below as a mighty thunder dispelled in one fell swoop.

Ah, I see it now: hundreds of dying mikos had held that thunder together, and they vanish in ethereal dust around Hana, her clothes swaying gently, her lungs working laboriously.

We stand before each other, and silence reigns.

Not a moment passes, and she’s crying, quivering like a leaf. She clutches her Gohei, dressed in her torn ascot—the one I made her, I see it now—and the hairpin her father gave her. Shame buzzes inside, a beating heart of its own. “M-Mother, I… s-she did things t-to… I never meant to; I always h-hated, and—”

“—Your father…” she stops, and the sobbing swells as one of her hands reaches to her face, trying to hide it. I can feel how she wants to turn away and dart towards Yukari, the bloodlust overwhelming me for a moment. A bloodlust I do share; it is not one ounce comparable to the love I have for my daughter. “… He asked me to protect you.”

Hana freezes, then looks at me with her big, red eyes.

A warrior perches on the surface.

She’s still a child, asking for her mother.

“M-Mother, I—”

She doesn’t finish. Rather, she catches my limp body.

Death is here.

The last thing I see is an emerging smudge of horned pink.