A light that shone as bright as a newborn's smile was what Miharu searched for.
She travelled the labyrinthine corridors of the castle with fervent intent, her light footsteps matching the rhythm of her beating heart. Miharu made sure to melt into the shadows that collected at the dusty corners of walls and behind forgotten doors.
It wasn't until she came across a long set of stairs that Miharu noticed the light. It emanated from the lowest floor of the castle, where she knew the cells were hidden. Standing at the top of the stairs, she tightened her grip on the axe in her hand. She had been wandering for hours with no rest, fueled only by her anger and pain, and she was finally close to reaching her goal. With her brother in her thoughts, she ventured down the steps.
Miharu moved gingerly, stepping over the crumbling bones of her long-lost precursors. Dozens of skeletons littered the stairs, like a macabre congregation of the dead. Some still had skin and hair attached to them, while others were almost dust.
She avoided touching them, not out of fear but of respect. To her, it was better that they died on their journey rather than reached their destination. The fate that they would have suffered at finding the Igi would have been worse than they would ever know.
She learned that from her brother.
As Miharu moved, the darkness around her only grew more illuminated by the light. When it washed over her, her head was clouded with a sickly-sweet feeling. She grew woozy, tripping over bones and loosening the grip on her axe.
The Igi must have been devastatingly close, because her brother had described this same feeling to Miharu when he had recounted his adventure to her. Try as she might to resist, she couldn't help but follow the pull of the force that led her down the stairs as bones crunched under her boots.
The area at the bottom of the stairs would've been shrouded in a thick blanket of darkness if it wasn't for the light that the divine tree radiated. Miharu shakily approached it, and in recesses of her enchanted mind, she wondered how she knew exactly where to go. She walked through a corridor lined on both sides by cells that were empty except for the remains of past prisoners.
At the very end of the corridor was an alcove. A line of figures stood across it. Behind them stood the Igi, a small, full-grown tree about five feet tall. This area looked nothing like the rest of the derelict castle, not dingy but in top condition. The walls of the alcove were painted white, and there was not a speck of grime polluting it. The floor and corners were clean of cobwebs and bone fragments. It looked like it didn't belong, like the neat structure of another castle had been uprooted and brought to this dying one.
Being so close to the Igi, Miharu's body was overwhelmed with the urge to wish on it, a feeling like a crashing wave of desire washing over her. Like so many others before her, she was ready to approach the tree and ask if for her deepest wants, knowing that it would provide them to her.
But, unlike the others before her, Miharu knew that there was more to it. Something sinister.
She knew that her brother had fallen victim to it, and that she had come to do right by him.
With a clear head and furious heart, Miharu raised her axe and faced off the line of strangers.
"Move," she commanded.
There were five of them, four men and one woman. They wore the same white hooded robes and stone faces. Only the lone woman at the center had her hood drawn up and a large, red circle stitched to the front of her robes. She stepped forward.
"You are the Cui girl," the woman said. Her voice was still waters under a cloudy sky. "Why are you here?"
Miharu did not have to answer that question. The woman already knew the answer to it, and Miharu would not waste her breath voicing it.
