No matter how many times I look around me, it’s challenging to remember this is not Keine-sensei’s festival. There are no people burning or having their eyes melt out of the sockets, nor does a golden haze of death prowl forth. Around the Moriya shrine, in and out, people of all Gensokyo flock in either trembling or dazed states, be they the survivors of the festival itself or Kappa and Tengu that couldn’t return in time from that 'nuclear' blast or just wide-eyed Youkai that thought themselves powerful enough to take part in the Clash of Sages, seeking glory… I look towards that towering azure tree in the distance as I try to recover my breath, watching a fog of kaleidoscopic colors blanketing almost the whole basin of Gensokyo like a mist, surrounding its roots, and I feel my arms grow numb.

A dead dragon's roars sizzle in my eardrums, hurting. Protruding from the fog, that dragon’s skeleton was spottable.

Sanae-sama prepared us to partake in that war, for we'd thought ourselves fit for anything after the sulfur of Keine-sensei’s revolution. All we had to do was wait for Suwako-sama’s signal, and we’d leave post and lend our efforts.

The signal never came. Despite myself, I am glad it never came.

A once blue sky was now a deep, pulsating red, like a healthy artery, and something about the monolithic tree seemed almost… breathing—alive. Whatever it was happening beyond the many protections Kanako-sama—she walks around the wounded and frail, her winds soothing and stitching where needed. No Inaba or human doctors, only prayers and small blessings—, and Suwako-sama—her small hands pressed against the ground, her brow pouring sweat and her eyes wide. The ground and dirt and sediment thrummed with a life of their own, and the shakes harassing Youkai Mountain did not topple the foundations of the Moriya Shrine—had in place, it was something a simple human shrine maiden could not see through. That doesn’t mean inactivity, with legs taking me from patient to patient, assessing wounds and doing everything to keep the situation from worsening. “Sayori-chan, where’s Sanae-sama? My h-hands hurts…” One of the youngest mikos, barely eleven years old, whines, almost tumbling from where she’s squatting, eyes sunk yet broad and trembling hands fashioned into a prayer. A woman lies before her, likely one from the Myouren whose faithful had been brought here, their warriors all having fought the terrible battle in the HSE.

I fix my glasses; throat locks. Sanae-sama isn’t answering our prayers, and neither Kanako-sama nor Suwako-sama has leeway to go out looking for her with that scary mist.

… H-Hopefully, Hana-chan is taking care of her.

Hana-chan is strong.

The strongest of all young mikos.

While she and Sanae-sama battle, we have to keep things working out in the shrine, people happy and alive so their prayers can keep on flowing. Words prepare in the pit of my mouth—reassurance, strength. Words Hana-chan or Sanae-sama would say…

“WATCH OUT!” A firm exclamation reverberates through the shrine, brimming with despair. It’s Suwako-sama’s.

Cataclysmic.

A rumble louder than any I’d heard during Keine-sensei’s festival, counting the gruesome moments I had the sun in my hands, roared through Gensokyo, eyes wide craning towards its origins. Terror cruised through my body in waves, pupils constricting as a most incomprehensible sight unfurled before me: Youkai Mountain had cracked open like an egg. One gigantic debris cloud yawned towards the red sky, pillars of purple electricity guiding it and loudly crackling like a solar storm, those horrible things Sanae-sama taught us about.

The thunderbolts had shot from the Underground and reached beyond the branches of the blue tree, which swallowed them up in a surge of boiling blood. My ears bled from the grinding sounds; massive clumps of earth, brimstone and every manner of rock dissolving under the heat of the electricity exploded in a cone in all directions—

—Many showering towards us.

Though the skies had clouded further, impending death was more than perceivable. Uncontrollable and massive, and without Sanae-sama’s magic, like during Keine-sensei’s festival, what could a simple miko do…?

… I can’t…

S-Sanae-sama, Hana-chan…?

Storms lifted from one moment to the next, and tons of magmatic debris barreling towards the shrine halted midair. “Hijiri!” Kanako-sama hollers. Her mighty winds lift around the shrine, smothering people’s wails of fear that hadn’t reached my ears and shielding us from Vesuvius. Some large boulders and clumps of soil, many trees still rooted to them, too heavy and destructive to be stopped by winds, made haste for the shrine—

“Kai!” Floating isles that vaporized as the recovering Buddhist nun met them above. S-So much power… She winced in pain, her voice hissed. “Suwako, what’s happening?!” She looked at the frog goddess on the patio with hands on the ground.

The worst news echoed from her, eyes broad: “The mountain—it’s swallowing itself!”