The wind had picked up, scattering the falling snow into fine mist across the shrine grounds.
Seigi waited, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her posture impeccable even in her uncertainty. She watched Raito with an unreadable look, as if bracing herself for some profound revelation.
Instead, he spoke casually, almost lazily, as if he were commenting on the weather.
"You could just kill bad people."
The words hung in the air like a knife.
Seigi stiffened, her eyes narrowing slightly—not out of fear, but out of something colder. Disapproval.
"No," she said sharply.
Raito shrugged, unfazed."Fine. I'm not going to force you."
He leaned back against the stone, tilting his head up again to watch the snow swirl above them.
"But answer me something," he continued, his voice still calm, almost indifferent. "What punishment should people who commit the worst crimes get?"
Seigi opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
Murder. Exploitation. Betrayal so deep it tore lives apart. She thought she knew the answer once—thought that justice was clean and simple, black and white.
But now?
The words tangled on her tongue.
There was no easy answer anymore.
She looked down at her hands instead, silent.
Raito didn't mock her for her hesitation.
He simply went on, still watching the clouds like they might offer some clue neither of them had found yet.
"And what about the people who believed the priest?" he asked, voice low. "What about the ones who didn't just listen to him, but acted? Set fire to your shrine. Turned on you without proof. Some of them probably knew better, but went along with it anyway because it was easier. Safer."
Seigi pressed her lips into a thin line, her chest tightening.
She remembered their faces.
The farmers whose fields she had blessed. The mothers whose sick children she had healed. The village elders who once bowed to her and left offerings of rice and sake at her altar.
Their tearful faces, illuminated by the flames they themselves had lit.
"There's a story," Raito said after a moment, his tone shifting—quieter now, more serious.
Seigi looked at him, and he met her gaze without blinking.
"I read about it once. An old folktale from these mountains."
He let the snow fall between them for a beat longer before continuing.
"It said there was a priest who convinced an entire village that a kami was a demon. The people turned on the kami, destroyed her shrine. Thought they'd won."
Seigi felt the cold press tighter against her, as if the snow itself were closing around her ribs.
"But the priest wasn't satisfied," Raito said. His voice was like a thread pulling tighter around a wound. "He led them into the mountains. Promised them salvation, new blessings. But instead, they found death. The whole village. No survivors."
The cold deepened.
The snow fell harder.
And still, Raito looked at her without malice, without pity. Just quiet certainty.
"If the kami in that story was you," he said, "then the people you tried to save... all died anyway."
Seigi stared at him.
Her breath misted in the frozen air, but her lungs felt too tight, too hollow. Deep down, she had suspected as much—suspected that her attempt to minimize harm had, in the end, solved nothing.
She had left them to their own devices, hoping time and nature would heal their hearts.
But human hearts didn't always heal.
Sometimes they rotted.
And sometimes they took others with them when they fell.
Seigi closed her eyes briefly, as if the weight of centuries pressed harder behind her eyelids.
When she opened them again, Raito was still there—silent, unmoving, waiting.
Not pushing her.
Not pleading with her.
Just... there.
And somehow, that made it worse.
Because it meant the decision—the responsibility—was still hers to make.
And no divine power, no seal, no centuries of silence would change that.