hosaito obviously didn\u2019t want anyone stumbling across his unseemly research, but living on a private island with a murderous pet nue while surrounding himself with undead of his own making apparently wasn\u2019t secluded enough. To fix this galling error, he created a maze in the shadow plane and linked it between his sake cellar and his laboratory. Because that\u2019s where everyone puts their shadow plane mazes, obviously.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what he was thinking. The shadow plane is <\/span>dangerous<\/span><\/i>, and leaving it open to the material plane like that is equal parts brazen and blithe. Shadows, kytons, nightshades\u2026these creatures and worse could literally just wander through at any time, placing untold numbers of people in very real danger. But from what I can tell from his research journal and personal diaries, Shosaito did not have a strong grasp on the concept of consequences. Frankly, I am surprised he survived his own recklessness.<\/span><\/p>\n O-Sayumi\u2019s clues led us almost straight to her. It was Ivan who figured it out. It wasn\u2019t just the objects inside her inro, but their numbers: one silk cocoon, two rings, and three camphorwood beads. She had divined the correct path through the maze and left us a tactile map of the gates in their correct order. We have no idea what would have happened had we chosen the wrong path, but if the mirror traps were any indicator, we would have been licking some wounds at best.<\/span><\/p>\n While we did find O-Sayumi, what we weren\u2019t expecting was to see another woman with her; their bodies sat, unmoving, on the floor of a lavishly decorated sitting room. Ivan\u2019s spell said they were neither alive nor dead, but I could tell there was a spell in place to prevent them from decomposing. We later learned that the elderly woman was Shosaito\u2019s current wife, and that\u2019s when the whole story came into clear focus.<\/span><\/p>\n He tried to place her soul in O-Sayumi\u2019s body. In his journals, he comments on how much O-Sayumi resembles her long-dead mother, Kaori, the woman he had murdered. I don\u2019t understand what goes through the mind of someone who would kill his first wife, then lust after his own daughter to the point of placing the soul of his second wife in her body. What is wrong with people?<\/span><\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s best not to ask because I really don\u2019t want to know the answer. We\u2019ve confronted many people who have thoroughly corrupted themselves for a supposedly higher cause, but none who had done so purely for selfish reasons. And I am not sure which is worse. There\u2019s no scale for something like this.<\/span><\/p>\n I was not surprised to learn that a man careless enough to create a portal to the shadow plane was also overconfident in his own abilities. His spell went awry, and though his wife\u2019s soul was pulled from her body, it did not enter the pearl he used as the magical jar. Unwilling to return O-Sayumi to <\/span>her<\/span><\/i> body, as that would permanently break the spell and leave his wife\u2019s soul lost forever, he simply\u2026kept them here, like this, and continued his work, desperately searching for magic that would safely reverse what he had done.<\/span><\/p>\n That magic was far beyond him, and it is far beyond us as well. We did the only thing we could do: forcibly break his spell and return O-Sayumi. His wife is now lost forever, her soul condemned to wander the planes, unable to pass on, out of even Pharasma\u2019s reach, and unable to return to life. It\u2019s a horrible thing.<\/span><\/p>\n At first, I was upset about this, to the point where someone\u2014I don\u2019t even remember who\u2014asked why I was spending so much time trying to figure out how to fix it. I answered, \u201cBecause it was not her fault.\u201d And that\u2019s true. Shosaito\u2019s notes show he tried to get his wife to support what he was doing, but she refused. But he did it anyway, without her knowledge. It\u2019s sickening.<\/span><\/p>\n But then we spoke with O-Sayumi and learned his wife knew that he had corrupted the lives of the others on their island. That she was complicit in turning the villagers and their house staff into undead. It was not that, but this business with her soul, that was the bridge too far. And that is what did it for me. \u201c<\/span>That<\/span><\/i> was where the line was?\u201d I said to no one in particular. \u201cNot \u2018let\u2019s make undead from our house staff\u2019, or \u2018let\u2019s unleash ghoul fever on the village\u2019?\u201d Eternal punishment may be disproportionate to her crime, but she was far from innocent.<\/span><\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n