Page 126 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

“And yet,” another said, “it instead drew power from us. From our souls. From the lives of our people.”

“And thus,” another said, holding up a smoky hand, “we became these.”

Seventeen hundred years? Yumi reeled, trying to comprehend that. “But…where did hion come from?” she whispered. “So much of thisis confusing. How much of my world was real, and how much fake? What evenarewe?”

All four turned to her, as if seeing her anew. Their darkness lengthened, their white eyes glowing. They went from willowy shadows to full nightmares in a smooth transition.

“No!” Yumi said. “Don’t let the machine control you! We can stop it.”

“Why?” the lead scholar asked.

“We created it,” another said.

“It is our purpose.”

“Our energy.”

“Ourart.”

As they spoke, their figures blended together, their voices losing individuality. Though she’d been able to tell them apart at first—hearing in their voices the men she’d spied on in the tent—now they just became nightmares.

“It is life.”

“All obey. All souls.”

“All of us.”

“Except…” one said, hesitating.

Again all of them fixated on her.

“Except for the yoki-hijo,” one whispered. “All obey the machine. Except…those who are too powerful. Except those who have been blessed by the spirits. You it cannot control. You, it must keep captive instead.”

Emotion welled up inside Yumi. It meant…it meant she was real. Or had been real, until that day centuries ago when they’d activated the machine. When they’d brought the shroud and hion alike. It meant that she was herself, but somehow centuries old? Still, that daunted her.

“My memories…” she whispered.

“Scrubbed each day,” the nightmares hissed in unison. “You’ve lived nearly two thousand years in the same town, Yumi. Doing the same things. Thinking the same thoughts. You are both incredibly old and eternally naive.”

“And now that you do not accept our treatment—”

“—more extreme measures must be taken.”

Their eyes widened, white bores directly through them. Their forms darkened further. As they rose and began to move toward her purposefully.

Yumi ran.

All right.At this point, some of you might be confused.

If so, you’re in good company. Because all of this confused the hell out of me when it began. Let me go over it again, laying out the threads as I’ve been able to gather them. Together they might present for you a tapestry of understanding.

Seventeen hundred years before our story started, a machine was activated at the great Torish festival of the spirits. Not the tiny machine you’ve seen; that was a prototype. The real machine was something far greater. Scholars had crafted it to stack stones, attract spirits, and then use them as a power source.

They’d miscalculated, however, because the machine sawallsouls—not just the spirits that lived beneath the ground—as a viable power source. When first turned on, it washungry. It needed strength to follow its instructions to stack stones, and it wanted an overwhelming amount of power to jump-start its work. No spirits were available. So it instead reached out and seized the nearest sources it could find: the souls of the people of Torio.

Let this be a lesson. When you Awaken a device like this, be very,verycareful what Commands you give it to follow.

This machine immediately began feeding on them, destroying their bodies and harvesting their Investiture. The result was the shroud, sprayed into the air, left to rain down and blanket the land. A dark miasma literally crafted from the dead, everyone’s Identities evaporated and transformed into this dark force. Imagine it like…the tar that decomposed bodies sometimes turn into over many years of incredible pressure. The shroud is that, except souls, left as refuse from the machine’s initial activation.

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