Hakurai had never seen anything like it in his life. He stood on the headland, gazing out at the sea in astonishment. He heard a roar, and in the next instant, dark water started spouting up from the water’s surface.
Is this an eruption?
Unsurprisingly pale, Hakurai hurried down toward the beach. He doubted that Ishiha and Ayura had gone out to sea, but the thought still sent cold sweat running down his spine. When he got there, he found the two of them staring at the eruption from the shore, mouths agape. A wave of relief came over him.
Has the ao god done something?
He knew that the god had been devouring the corpses of the dead as of late. He’d been eating bodies that were adrift in the sea to heal his wounds. Because of that, the dead weren’t washing up on this beach anymore.
Was this related? Or was this a completely different phenomenon?
Natari and the other sea swallows began to gather. This particular beach wasn’t used by the island’s residents, which was why they were able to stay there. It didn’t seem like any islanders were going to turn up now either. They were probably at other beaches or ports, kicking up a big fuss.
The group spent some time just standing there, gazing at the eruption from a distance. It cycled between periods of increased ferocity and subdued lulls, but it showed no signs of abating. Before long, a mass of low clouds accumulated above it. A strange tepid breeze was blowing through the air. The bizarre sight left everyone speechless.
Suddenly, Hakurai felt a single gust that was unlike the wind that the sea was sending in his direction. This one was thin and refreshing—but he knew a gust like that was never a good sign.
This breeze had come from the rocky cliff. He looked over to it, and among the rocks, he could see a pale hand. He got a glimpse of a pale-yellow sleeve with an intricate flower pattern printed. It looked like the hand of a young woman—although it was obviously not that of a living person.
The pale hand was beckoning him over. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve ignored it, but on this occasion, he found himself instinctively beginning to walk over.
The hand pointed toward the water. There was a riffle in front of a rocky area on the shore. Seaweed and other debris often became entangled with the rocks, and fish would get left behind in that shallow area at low tide. Hakurai looked at the area the hand was pointing to. There, he could see a person floating on the water, swaying from side to side. In fact, there were three of them.
They must be fishermen who got caught up in the eruption and got washed up on the shore, Hakurai initially thought—but when he saw what they were wearing, he realized he was wrong. One of them looked like a local, but the other two were dressed like imperial officials, or something along those lines. One of them looked familiar too. He felt he had seen him before—in Ga Province, perhaps?
Before he knew it, the pale hand was gone.
Ishiha had followed Hakurai there and took a peek at the riffle the man was watching. “There are people there!” he shouted.
The other sea swallows ran over to the area. They waded into the water with no hesitation whatsoever and went straight to the three men who washed ashore.
“They’re still breathing,” one person said. That came as no surprise—if they were dead, the ao god would have eaten them already.
The waves lashed against Hakurai’s feet. There was something else stuck in the rocks. At first, he thought it was some wood from a boat—but it couldn’t have been.
It was black. A black sword.
Hakurai picked it up—and at that exact moment, he heard water violently erupt from the sea again.