“Seriously, what the hell, Koharu?!”
She didn’t respond to the flustered panic in my voice. Instead, she turned slightly, revealing her left shoulder. That was when I noticed the thick bandage wound around it.
“If you look at this,” she said softly, “I think you’ll understand. Why I’m here. Why I’ve become nothing more than a burden.”
She began unwrapping the cloth slowly, methodically. And when the final layer fell away, I understood.
I went silent.
A mark had been scorched into her skin, just below the curve of her shoulder, a bruised violet sigil, roughly the size of a fist. It pulsed faintly, as if it were still alive. Still active.
“I see,” I said at last. “That explains everything.”
The pieces clicked into place. The delay in the Serpent of Eightfold Calamities’ revival. The fall of her village. The abnormal strength of the attacking ogres. The quiet war already brewing beneath the surface while the rest of the world bickered over petty politics and pointless class placements.
All while Cordelia was already overburdened with her own battles.
This wasn’t the time for infighting. And yet, here we were, still acting like idiots.
I sighed deeply.
The sigil burned into Koharu’s shoulder wasn’t just a scar. It was a curse. A highly specific, extremely targeted curse.
“You showed me that as proof,” I said, voice low. “So I’m guessing you already know exactly what it is.”
She nodded, her expression heavy. “For the heir of the Saegusa line… it’s the worst kind of debilitation.”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “That mark disables all forms of physical enhancement: spells, skills, even enchanted gear. It nullifies everything.”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
Another sigh escaped me, sharper this time. “Koharu?”
“What is it?” she asked, looking up.
“I’m guessing the curse isn’t just on your shoulder,” I said slowly. “You’ve probably got symptoms elsewhere, like your skin, fingertips, maybe your legs or arms. Somewhere on the surface.”
Koharu froze, her eyes widening in shock. She went completely still, breath catching.
Yeah. I figured as much. That kind of detail wasn’t something an outsider could just guess. And yet, I knew. Thanks to the Dragon King’s Library, that walking cheat code disguised as a collection of ancient texts, I’d pieced it together.
“How… How do you know that?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
I gave her a dry smile. “Good question. Let’s just say I read a lot. Now… show me.”
Reluctantly, she reached for the cloth still wrapped around her lower torso. She unwound it slowly, revealing her stomach and the mess beneath.
I winced. “Damn. That’s bad.”
“The skin’s peeling,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “And it’s partially infected.”
There it was, plain to see: the true weight of her condition. The curse hadn’t just sealed away her strength; it had tainted her body so deeply she could no longer serve as a Divine Vessel Priestess. Her soul was impure, her vessel corrupted. No god could descend into a shrine that had been defiled.
And curses of this caliber didn’t happen overnight. They took time, years, sometimes decades, to prepare. Hair stolen during childhood, sacred objects tampered with, or tainted food laced with spiritual poison. In some cases, the victim’s sleeping quarters would be surrounded and sealed with intricate magic, rendering them vulnerable over long periods. It was the slowest kind of kill: a calculated, spiritual suffocation.
Based on the signs, I was willing to bet she had been subjected to all those methods at once.
Which meant whoever had done this hadn’t just been powerful; they’d been methodical. Patient. And very, very thorough.
Her clan had clearly been exceptional as calamity wardens. But when it came to dealing with people? They’d been far too trusting.
“So,” I said, voice low, “who did this to you?”
She looked down. “I don’t know.”
I tilted my head back and stared up at the sky in silent exasperation. Of course, she doesn’t. She really is an idiot sometimes, isn’t she?
If she’d taken even five minutes to think it through, she could’ve figured it out. The Saegusa clan wasn’t political. They didn’t tax, didn’t interfere, and didn’t even fight unless it was against the seal-bearers of calamity. They were the most inoffensive force in all the Eastern lands. No personal ambitions, no strategic land, no control over resources.
So if someone went out of their way to sabotage them? It wasn’t about money. It wasn’t about territory.
It was about power. Their power.
Someone, somewhere, had looked at the Saegusa clan and decided their strength was too dangerous to be allowed to exist.
The Hero of the East, by tradition, was always born into the ancestral line of the Onmyōdō founders, a legacy of balance and shadow. And that bloodline had always stood in quiet opposition to the Saegusa shrine, the highest seat of divine Shinto authority. In other words, if anyone had reason to resent Saegusa’s power, it was them.
And from what I could see, the curse that defiled her wasn’t some random hex. Its oily, clinging structure was unmistakably that of an Onmyōdō working: layered, meticulous, and insidious.
There was only one suspect. No need to look further.
As if to confirm the thought, Saegusa’s expression grew solemn. Her voice was soft as she said, “The god I serve is enshrined at a solar shrine. The Sun God.”
“I know,” I murmured.
“My role is that of a battle priestess. In times of war, I’m meant to protect the village.”
“I know.”
“When the Ogre Generals surrounded our home… all the men went out to fight. They gave their lives to hold the line. And I… I stepped forward to face my first battle as the shrine’s chosen warrior.”
I stayed silent, watching her face carefully.
“They believed in me,” she whispered. “They believed that if they just bought me a little time… if I could just receive the descent… then the god would save us.”
I glanced at her shoulder, the place where her curse still festered, glowing faintly beneath her skin. The place where the divine had refused to come.
“And when the moment came…” Her voice cracked. “The god never descended.”
Of course, it hadn’t. She was trying to invoke holy power while her body was wrapped in a deep, malignant curse, an infection that shut down divine magic at the root. It had been hopeless from the start.
She lowered her lashes. Her expression twisted into something like a smile, but there was madness at the edges. “Hey, Ryuto-kun… Do you get it? I couldn’t do anything. Nothing. While my village was being overrun, while the ogres trampled our homes and our fields, stole our food, our gold, dragged our women away…”
Her voice trembled. “I just stood there. Powerless. The little ones called me ‘Miko-neesama.’ Kids my own age called me Lady Koharu. The elders called me their battle priestess, their protector. Everyone treated me with such warmth, such trust… and in the end, I couldn’t do a damn thing.”
She bit her lip, hard enough that blood welled up between her teeth.
“When they realized I couldn’t call down the god, I saw it. On their faces. Rage. Grief. Terror. And… acceptance. All of it. They looked at me with everything they had left, and they smiled. They still smiled.”
Her voice broke entirely.
And then the tears came. Silent, unrelenting. They slid down her cheeks as if pulled by the full weight of the lives that had once depended on her, and the guilt that had crushed her in their absence.
“And then?” I prompted quietly.
Her voice trembled, but she continued. “They smiled. Sad, but still gentle. That was the last thing they gave me… before they locked me away in the shrine’s underground chamber. And after that…” Her voice caught. “The Ogre Generals and the Ogre King overwhelmed the village. And everything was lost.”