I'd been wandering the merchant district for three hours when the smell hit me.
Not the usual scent of salt air and spice merchants that permeated the ivory-walled city. This was different. Rot and incense mixed together, sweet and rancid, like something ancient had been disturbed and wasn't particularly happy about it.
"The fuck?"
I stopped mid-stride, nearly colliding with a traveling merchant hauling supplies toward the retired Diamond Maelstrom. The guy shot me a dirty look but I barely noticed, too focused on tracking the source of that smell. It seemed to be coming from one of the older sections of the city, the parts that had been here long before the Diamond Maelstrom was subdued. Before the tourist rush. Before commerce made everything clean and profitable.
The narrow alley between two weathered buildings beckoned like a dare.
I pressed deeper into the passage, one hand trailing along the sun-bleached stone while the other stayed ready to form hand seals. The armor replica of my sensei clinked softly with each step, a familiar weight that grounded me even as the air grew thicker, heavier. Wrong.
The alley opened into a courtyard that shouldn't exist.
I'd walked this merchant city's streets enough times to know the layout, both the main thoroughfares and the hidden corners where people went to conduct business they didn't want witnesses for. This space wasn't on my mental map. The walls were covered in faded murals depicting creatures I didn't recognize, things with too many limbs and eyes that seemed to follow my movement. Someone had created this place centuries ago, maybe longer, and then sealed it away for reasons that were becoming increasingly obvious as vapor began to curl around my ankles.
"Miasma."
I knew the word instantly, pulled from Shin's memories even though I'd never seen it myself. A spiritual corruption, a manifestation of cursed energy that clung to places where misfortune had pooled and festered. The kind of thing sensible people avoided.
I stepped inside anyway.
The courtyard stretched larger than it should, dimensions that didn't quite make sense in the late afternoon light filtering through gaps in the deteriorating roof. Shadows moved wrong here, pooling in corners that geometry said shouldn't exist. And in the center, partially buried in centuries of accumulated dust and debris, sat a scroll case.
It was black lacquered wood, decorated with silver inlay that formed patterns I couldn't quite follow. They seemed to shift when I looked directly at them, writhing like living things trapped beneath the surface. Around the case, the miasma was thickest, forming an almost solid wall of vapor that pulsed with a rhythm like breathing.
"Well, this is either the stupidest fucking thing I've ever done, or the most interesting. Fifty-fifty odds."
I reached toward the vapor barrier.
The moment my gauntleted hand touched the miasma, it surged. Not attacking—at least not in any conventional sense. Instead, it wrapped around my arm, my shoulder, creeping up toward my face like it was tasting me. Testing me. Looking for something.
Images flashed through my mind. Not memories—mine or Shin's—but something older. Fragments of stories, whispers of things that existed in the spaces between human understanding. Creatures that thrived on misfortune, that fed on the anxiety and dread of mortals. Youkai.
The miasma tightened, and for a moment I felt genuine fear for the first time in my life. Not the adrenaline rush of combat, but something deeper. Primal. The kind of fear that came from realizing you were in the presence of something that operated on rules you didn't understand and couldn't predict.
Then it stopped.
The vapor pulled back, still surrounding me but no longer constricting. Like it had made a decision. Like it had found what it was looking for.
I didn't waste time questioning it. My fingers closed around the scroll case and yanked it free from its resting place. The moment I did, the miasma exploded outward, filling the entire courtyard in a thick, choking cloud that blotted out the sun.
And then she appeared.
Not walking. Not materializing. Just there, like she'd always been standing three feet in front of me and I'd only now noticed. A woman—if you could call her that—with skin like porcelain and eyes that were entirely black, no whites, no iris, just endless darkness that seemed to swallow light. Her hair floated around her head as if she was underwater, each strand moving independently like searching tendrils. She wore robes that might have been white once but were now stained with something that looked disturbingly like old blood.
"Okay, so you're either going to try to kill me, or we're going to have a conversation. Either way works for me."
The woman—the youkai—tilted her head at an angle that was just slightly too far to be human. When she spoke, her voice came from everywhere at once, echoing off the walls and inside my skull simultaneously.
"You reek of a borrowed existence. A soul that should not be, wearing flesh that was never meant for you. Yet the miasma does not reject you. Why?"
I tightened my grip on the scroll case, feeling the weight of it, the age of it.
"Because I'm not pretending to be something I'm not. I was a fury, a voice in someone else's head, and now I'm this. A homunculus with delusions of personhood. I don't fit anywhere, don't belong to anything, and I'm done apologizing for it."
The youkai moved closer, gliding across the ground without actually walking. The miasma parted around her like it was bowing.
"Misfortune follows you. Curses your footsteps. You spread discord without intention, chaos without malice. You are..." She paused, those black eyes boring into mine. "...kin."
"I'm what now?"
"The miasma recognizes one who exists in the spaces between. Neither fully one thing nor another. Shunned by those who fear what they cannot categorize. We are the same, little misfortune. Born of necessity, defined by what we are not."
She reached out with fingers that were too long, too thin, ending in nails like black talons. I didn't flinch when she pressed one finger against my chest, right over where my heart should be. Cold radiated from that single point of contact, spreading through my entire body.
"You opened the seal. You claimed the contract. Now the question remains—can you wield what you have taken?"
The miasma surged again, this time pouring directly into me through that point of contact. It flooded my system, mixing with my chakra, tainting it with something ancient and wrong and powerful. I gasped, dropping to one knee as the sensation overwhelmed every nerve.
It felt like drowning in anxiety, in paranoia, in the creeping dread that came from knowing something terrible was about to happen but not knowing when or how. It was every moment of Shin's despair I'd ever embodied, every dark thought I'd whispered into his consciousness, concentrated into pure energy and forced through my chakra network.
"Fuck... you..."
I pushed back. Not with chakra, not with technique, but with sheer stubborn refusal to submit. I'd spent my entire existence as someone else's shadow, someone else's burden. I'd been sealed, suppressed, and silenced. I'd been given a body of my own specifically so I could stop being controlled.
I wasn't about to let some ancient vapor bitch take that away.
The miasma recoiled, surprised. The youkai's expression shifted—was that a smile? Hard to tell without a mouth that moved properly.
"Yes. This is why the seal opened for you. Not power. Not bloodline. Spite. Magnificent spite born from refusal to be anything other than what you choose."
She withdrew her hand and the pressure eased. The miasma settled, no longer trying to consume me but instead... waiting. Expectant.
"So what now? Do I sign the scroll in blood? Dance around three times? What's the contract require?"
"Recognition. We youkai are bound not by worship or reverence, but by acknowledgment of what we are. You must accept that to call upon us is to invite misfortune. To spread curses. To be shunned by those who fear the chaos you embody."
I laughed. Actually laughed, the sound harsh and genuine.
"I've been the monster in someone's head for my entire fucking life, lady. I've been the fury people feared, the violence they couldn't control. Being shunned? Being the thing people want to keep locked away? That's not a consequence. That's just a fucking Tuesday afternoon."
The youkai's smile definitely widened this time.
"Then speak your name, my little fury. Let that contract hear who claims dominion over disorder and misfortune."
I stood, legs still shaking slightly from the residual effects of the miasma, and opened the scroll case. Inside, the parchment was covered in names written in a language I couldn't read, each one glowing with a faint, sickly light. At the bottom, blank space waited.
I bit my thumb—no hesitation, no ceremony—and pressed my bloody thumbprint to the paper.
"Chikamatsu Kohana. Former shadow, current fuck-up, future problem for everyone who thinks they can tell me who to be."
The scroll flared with black light. The miasma in the courtyard condensed, swirling around me in a vortex that lifted me off my feet. For a moment, I was at the center of a storm of cursed energy, every particle of it pressing against my skin, my bones, my very existence.
Then it was over.
The courtyard was just a courtyard again. Old, forgotten, but no longer actively hostile. The youkai remained, watching me with those endless black eyes.
"The contract is sealed. When misfortune is needed, call upon my children. When chaos must spread, we will answer. And know this, my little fury—you are no longer alone in your cursed existence."
"Good. Being alone was getting boring anyway."
She faded like smoke, leaving only the faintest trace of that rot-and-incense smell. I was left standing there, scroll case in hand, with a new weight settling into my chakra network. Not heavy. Not burdensome.
Just present. Waiting to be used.
I tucked the scroll case into my coat and headed back toward the main streets. Behind me, the alley seemed to seal itself, walls shifting to close off the courtyard like it had never existed at all.
My reflection in a merchant's window caught my eye as I passed. For just a moment, I could see it—the faint shimmer of miasma clinging to my shoulders like a cloak, visible only to those who knew what to look for.
"Yeah. This is gonna be fucking fun."
Misfortune followed my footsteps now. Not as a curse, but as a companion.
And I was absolutely fine with that.
[I am using my: Discovery of Contract of Your Choice - Youkai]
Not the usual scent of salt air and spice merchants that permeated the ivory-walled city. This was different. Rot and incense mixed together, sweet and rancid, like something ancient had been disturbed and wasn't particularly happy about it.
"The fuck?"
I stopped mid-stride, nearly colliding with a traveling merchant hauling supplies toward the retired Diamond Maelstrom. The guy shot me a dirty look but I barely noticed, too focused on tracking the source of that smell. It seemed to be coming from one of the older sections of the city, the parts that had been here long before the Diamond Maelstrom was subdued. Before the tourist rush. Before commerce made everything clean and profitable.
The narrow alley between two weathered buildings beckoned like a dare.
I pressed deeper into the passage, one hand trailing along the sun-bleached stone while the other stayed ready to form hand seals. The armor replica of my sensei clinked softly with each step, a familiar weight that grounded me even as the air grew thicker, heavier. Wrong.
The alley opened into a courtyard that shouldn't exist.
I'd walked this merchant city's streets enough times to know the layout, both the main thoroughfares and the hidden corners where people went to conduct business they didn't want witnesses for. This space wasn't on my mental map. The walls were covered in faded murals depicting creatures I didn't recognize, things with too many limbs and eyes that seemed to follow my movement. Someone had created this place centuries ago, maybe longer, and then sealed it away for reasons that were becoming increasingly obvious as vapor began to curl around my ankles.
"Miasma."
I knew the word instantly, pulled from Shin's memories even though I'd never seen it myself. A spiritual corruption, a manifestation of cursed energy that clung to places where misfortune had pooled and festered. The kind of thing sensible people avoided.
I stepped inside anyway.
The courtyard stretched larger than it should, dimensions that didn't quite make sense in the late afternoon light filtering through gaps in the deteriorating roof. Shadows moved wrong here, pooling in corners that geometry said shouldn't exist. And in the center, partially buried in centuries of accumulated dust and debris, sat a scroll case.
It was black lacquered wood, decorated with silver inlay that formed patterns I couldn't quite follow. They seemed to shift when I looked directly at them, writhing like living things trapped beneath the surface. Around the case, the miasma was thickest, forming an almost solid wall of vapor that pulsed with a rhythm like breathing.
"Well, this is either the stupidest fucking thing I've ever done, or the most interesting. Fifty-fifty odds."
I reached toward the vapor barrier.
The moment my gauntleted hand touched the miasma, it surged. Not attacking—at least not in any conventional sense. Instead, it wrapped around my arm, my shoulder, creeping up toward my face like it was tasting me. Testing me. Looking for something.
Images flashed through my mind. Not memories—mine or Shin's—but something older. Fragments of stories, whispers of things that existed in the spaces between human understanding. Creatures that thrived on misfortune, that fed on the anxiety and dread of mortals. Youkai.
The miasma tightened, and for a moment I felt genuine fear for the first time in my life. Not the adrenaline rush of combat, but something deeper. Primal. The kind of fear that came from realizing you were in the presence of something that operated on rules you didn't understand and couldn't predict.
Then it stopped.
The vapor pulled back, still surrounding me but no longer constricting. Like it had made a decision. Like it had found what it was looking for.
I didn't waste time questioning it. My fingers closed around the scroll case and yanked it free from its resting place. The moment I did, the miasma exploded outward, filling the entire courtyard in a thick, choking cloud that blotted out the sun.
And then she appeared.
Not walking. Not materializing. Just there, like she'd always been standing three feet in front of me and I'd only now noticed. A woman—if you could call her that—with skin like porcelain and eyes that were entirely black, no whites, no iris, just endless darkness that seemed to swallow light. Her hair floated around her head as if she was underwater, each strand moving independently like searching tendrils. She wore robes that might have been white once but were now stained with something that looked disturbingly like old blood.
"Okay, so you're either going to try to kill me, or we're going to have a conversation. Either way works for me."
The woman—the youkai—tilted her head at an angle that was just slightly too far to be human. When she spoke, her voice came from everywhere at once, echoing off the walls and inside my skull simultaneously.
"You reek of a borrowed existence. A soul that should not be, wearing flesh that was never meant for you. Yet the miasma does not reject you. Why?"
I tightened my grip on the scroll case, feeling the weight of it, the age of it.
"Because I'm not pretending to be something I'm not. I was a fury, a voice in someone else's head, and now I'm this. A homunculus with delusions of personhood. I don't fit anywhere, don't belong to anything, and I'm done apologizing for it."
The youkai moved closer, gliding across the ground without actually walking. The miasma parted around her like it was bowing.
"Misfortune follows you. Curses your footsteps. You spread discord without intention, chaos without malice. You are..." She paused, those black eyes boring into mine. "...kin."
"I'm what now?"
"The miasma recognizes one who exists in the spaces between. Neither fully one thing nor another. Shunned by those who fear what they cannot categorize. We are the same, little misfortune. Born of necessity, defined by what we are not."
She reached out with fingers that were too long, too thin, ending in nails like black talons. I didn't flinch when she pressed one finger against my chest, right over where my heart should be. Cold radiated from that single point of contact, spreading through my entire body.
"You opened the seal. You claimed the contract. Now the question remains—can you wield what you have taken?"
The miasma surged again, this time pouring directly into me through that point of contact. It flooded my system, mixing with my chakra, tainting it with something ancient and wrong and powerful. I gasped, dropping to one knee as the sensation overwhelmed every nerve.
It felt like drowning in anxiety, in paranoia, in the creeping dread that came from knowing something terrible was about to happen but not knowing when or how. It was every moment of Shin's despair I'd ever embodied, every dark thought I'd whispered into his consciousness, concentrated into pure energy and forced through my chakra network.
"Fuck... you..."
I pushed back. Not with chakra, not with technique, but with sheer stubborn refusal to submit. I'd spent my entire existence as someone else's shadow, someone else's burden. I'd been sealed, suppressed, and silenced. I'd been given a body of my own specifically so I could stop being controlled.
I wasn't about to let some ancient vapor bitch take that away.
The miasma recoiled, surprised. The youkai's expression shifted—was that a smile? Hard to tell without a mouth that moved properly.
"Yes. This is why the seal opened for you. Not power. Not bloodline. Spite. Magnificent spite born from refusal to be anything other than what you choose."
She withdrew her hand and the pressure eased. The miasma settled, no longer trying to consume me but instead... waiting. Expectant.
"So what now? Do I sign the scroll in blood? Dance around three times? What's the contract require?"
"Recognition. We youkai are bound not by worship or reverence, but by acknowledgment of what we are. You must accept that to call upon us is to invite misfortune. To spread curses. To be shunned by those who fear the chaos you embody."
I laughed. Actually laughed, the sound harsh and genuine.
"I've been the monster in someone's head for my entire fucking life, lady. I've been the fury people feared, the violence they couldn't control. Being shunned? Being the thing people want to keep locked away? That's not a consequence. That's just a fucking Tuesday afternoon."
The youkai's smile definitely widened this time.
"Then speak your name, my little fury. Let that contract hear who claims dominion over disorder and misfortune."
I stood, legs still shaking slightly from the residual effects of the miasma, and opened the scroll case. Inside, the parchment was covered in names written in a language I couldn't read, each one glowing with a faint, sickly light. At the bottom, blank space waited.
I bit my thumb—no hesitation, no ceremony—and pressed my bloody thumbprint to the paper.
"Chikamatsu Kohana. Former shadow, current fuck-up, future problem for everyone who thinks they can tell me who to be."
The scroll flared with black light. The miasma in the courtyard condensed, swirling around me in a vortex that lifted me off my feet. For a moment, I was at the center of a storm of cursed energy, every particle of it pressing against my skin, my bones, my very existence.
Then it was over.
The courtyard was just a courtyard again. Old, forgotten, but no longer actively hostile. The youkai remained, watching me with those endless black eyes.
"The contract is sealed. When misfortune is needed, call upon my children. When chaos must spread, we will answer. And know this, my little fury—you are no longer alone in your cursed existence."
"Good. Being alone was getting boring anyway."
She faded like smoke, leaving only the faintest trace of that rot-and-incense smell. I was left standing there, scroll case in hand, with a new weight settling into my chakra network. Not heavy. Not burdensome.
Just present. Waiting to be used.
I tucked the scroll case into my coat and headed back toward the main streets. Behind me, the alley seemed to seal itself, walls shifting to close off the courtyard like it had never existed at all.
My reflection in a merchant's window caught my eye as I passed. For just a moment, I could see it—the faint shimmer of miasma clinging to my shoulders like a cloak, visible only to those who knew what to look for.
"Yeah. This is gonna be fucking fun."
Misfortune followed my footsteps now. Not as a curse, but as a companion.
And I was absolutely fine with that.
[I am using my: Discovery of Contract of Your Choice - Youkai]
