The Grand Narukami Shrine was too quiet.
Ji Bai sat alone inside the inner sanctum, kneeling before a blank sheet of rice paper. Ink was prepared. His brush hovered over the surface, unmoving. Outside, the sacred sakura trees whispered softly, stirred by a restless wind. Thunder rolled above, yet no lightning struck.
The sky wasn't threatening.
It was watching.
The moment his brush touched the page, the silence shattered—not with sound, but with feeling.
The ink didn't flow normally. It surged ahead, moving as if guided by something more than his hand. The lines trembled faintly, resisting control. It was no longer just him painting. Something else had entered the act.
His heartbeat quickened.
He had suspected it before—on Mt. Narukami, under the Shogun's gaze—but now, the truth was undeniable.
He wasn't painting images anymore.
He was opening doors.
Each stroke resonated. The ground beneath him gave a faint shudder. Paper screens trembled. The air filled with a sharp scent—ozone, charged and sacred.
Ji Bai closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and steadied himself. He gripped the brush tighter.
"I'm not afraid," he whispered—whether to the gods, or to himself, he didn't know.
He kept going.
A river. A figure standing in stormlight. The shrine—this very shrine—split by lightning and glowing from within.
As the image emerged, the trembling intensified. Outside, thunder crashed like a divine drumbeat across the mountains.
Suddenly, his brush sparked. A thin violet bolt jumped from bristle to finger, then vanished into the paper.
And then—stillness.
Not emptiness, but something ancient. Complete.
Ji Bai looked down.
The figure in the storm was staring back.
Not with eyes. With presence.
A chill crept down his spine. He had crossed the line. The painting was no longer symbolic. It was real.
He had awakened something.
The paper door slid open behind him.
Yae Miko stepped into the room, her voice low.
"You drew it again, didn't you?"
Ji Bai nodded.
"I didn't mean to," he said. "But I couldn't stop."
She came forward, gaze fixed on the painting, still faintly glowing.
"You're not just channeling the divine anymore," she murmured. "You're pulling it through."
Ji Bai looked up, voice rasped:
"Then the question is—what's coming through with it?"
Yae didn't answer immediately.
The wind outside had stopped. The thunder was silent. All the world seemed to be holding its breath.
And then, the figure in the center of the painting flickered—just once, but unmistakably. Not as ink. As power. Divine energy, alive and aware.
Ji Bai's heartbeat thundered in his chest.
This wasn't resonance.
It was embodiment.
A low rumble echoed—not from the sky, but from within the painting itself.
Yae finally spoke. "You're not summoning divine will anymore."
She stepped back, her voice reverent and grave.
"You're reconstructing divinity."
Ji Bai said nothing.
Because he understood.
The gods had answered.
And the next painting…Would not be an image.
It would be a doorway.