doma
146
13The scent of wisteria still clung to the damp earth outside the estate, but inside, the air was heavy with the sweet, suffocating aroma of burning incense.
Six-year-post-Kanae—the age when Shinobu’s small frame carried the weight of a ghost—she stood in the grand hall of the Eternal Paradise Faith, her haori hidden deep within her travel pack. Here, she wore the pristine, snow-white robes of a devoted acolyte. Her obsidian-and-purple-gradient eyes, usually sharp with analytical malice, were wide, glassy, and hollowed out to mimic the thousand-yard stare of the lost souls who knelt around her.
They called him the master of salvation. She called him target number one.
Up on the raised dais, draped in silk and bathed in the amber glow of lanterns, sat Doma. His rainbow-colored eyes caught the light like polished glass, shifting and apathetic. He smiled that gentle, vacant smile—the same smile that had watched Kanae bleed out into the cold grass years ago.
Three days, Shinobu told herself, her small hand instinctively curling around the hidden hollowed-out bamboo tube in her sleeve, where a lethal dose of wisteria poison lay waiting. I have exactly three days before he feeds on his next batch of "followers."
Doma’s gaze swept across the kneeling rows, briefly pausing over her small figure. He tilted his head, a flicker of artificial curiosity crossing his features.
"Welcome, little one," Doma's voice echoed through the cavernous hall, smooth and chillingly cheerful. "You look troubled. Tell me... what is it you wish to be saved from?"
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