In the quiet courtyard of the Kamisato Estate, maple shadows danced beneath the twilight, and all was still.
Ji Bai sat before a stone table, a scroll of rice paper spread out before him. The fragrance of ink slowly filled the air. His fingers trembled slightly as the memory of Kamisato Ayaka's voice echoed in his mind:
"I would like you… to paint Her Excellency, the Shogun."
He closed his eyes slowly.
That rainy night in the city came flooding back—the wind, the storm, the divine figure cloaked in violet lightning. She wasn't merely a deity; she was thunder given form, the embodiment of silence and pressure, of eternity unmoved.
But this time, he wasn't on a rainy street corner.
This time, he was in the garden of one of the most powerful clans in Inazuma… and he held the brush again.
He knew—once the ink touched the page, there would be no turning back.
He dipped the brush, the tip drinking the ink like thunder gathering above the horizon.
The first stroke landed.
In that instant, the breeze halted. The maple leaves stilled mid-fall.
Ayaka stood silently under the eaves, saying nothing. Yet she felt it too—the shift in the air, the faint taste of lightning on the tongue.
Ji Bai was completely immersed. His brush moved like flowing water across the page. Each stroke did not just sketch her appearance—it sought to grasp something deeper.
Her presence.
Her divinity.
Her silence.
Her weight.
The image began to take shape: a woman in flowing violet robes, her blade at her side. Her eyes had not yet been drawn, but already he could feel them.
Watching.
Suddenly, from the cloudless sky above, a deep and distant thunder rumbled.
It did not come from the heavens.
It came from the paper.
Ji Bai froze. The edges of the scroll shimmered faintly, a thin arc of violet light crawling across the ink like living lightning.
He stared, breath caught. "Is… is she responding?"
His voice caught in his throat, pressed low by a fear he couldn't name. It trembled despite his effort to hold it firm.
It was as if a gaze had fallen upon him—not from behind, not from Ayaka—but from somewhere far above, far beyond.
Somewhere divine.
Something was watching him from within the painting.
From within the storm.
Ayaka stepped forward cautiously, gazing at the half-formed image. "She feels it," she said softly. "You've stirred her awareness."
Ji Bai slowly set the brush down.
The thunder was gone, but the paper still pulsed faintly with leftover power.
What he had drawn was not a finished portrait, yet already, it felt as though the Shogun herself might step from the page, eyes open, blade drawn.
"This… this isn't just a painting anymore," Ayaka said, her voice filled with awe.
Ji Bai rolled up the scroll, the ink still damp, the lightning still lingering.
"No," he murmured. "It's a passage."
The wind stirred again, carrying cherry blossoms across the courtyard.
Far away, atop Tenshukaku, a violet figure stirred.
She opened her eyes, her gaze turning quietly toward the east.
Her expression unchanged, her tone calm—but her words carried weight:
"He is still painting."