The brush did not touch paper.
It touched the world.
As Ji Bai raised it into the air, the space around him responded—not with light, but with reverence. A ring of violet lightning bloomed beneath his feet, inked in ancient sigils that pulsed like the heartbeat of something too old for time. They weren't words—they were names. Forgotten by mortals, buried in silence, but still remembered by the sky.
Thunder split the heavens above Mt. Narukami.
Ji Bai stood between reality and reverie, in that liminal place where spirit and art blurred. The shrine behind him no longer existed. Or rather, it had become something more: a threshold.
His brush moved.
He didn't paint on canvas. He painted through space itself.
Each stroke left a trail of light—a line that shimmered, then held. The air twisted where the marks passed, as though the atmosphere itself was adjusting to accommodate new truth. The storm around him didn't roar in protest. It waited.
"You're not using ink anymore," he murmured.
"You're using will," said the figure beside him—his mirrored self, the one born from divine resonance. "And will, once drawn, leaves a mark on the world."
Ji Bai's strokes formed a shape: a gate.
A torii, like the ones he had walked beneath countless times. But here, forged of thunder and intention, it glowed with sacred consequence. When the last line connected, the gate did not vanish.
It opened.
Wind surged from the rift, laced with backwards-falling sakura petals. The petals glowed faintly, like memories being reversed. Ji Bai heard voices in that wind—not speaking, but remembering. A sea of prayers, old oaths, and names unspoken.
And within them, one voice rose, sharp and clear.
A woman's voice.
"Ji Bai."
He turned.
Raiden Shogun stood at the threshold.
Not a vision. Not a dream.
Her.
She had crossed the gate.
Her hair whipped in the windless storm, her gaze unreadable. She carried no blade, yet the silence that surrounded her was sharper than any steel. She did not approach.
She watched.
Behind her, the painted sky rippled. Others stirred in the shadows—judges, not enemies. Witnesses to whatever this moment would become.
"You've opened a path," she said, voice calm. "Speak. What is your purpose?"
Ji Bai inhaled deeply. His heart pounded against his ribs, but his voice remained steady.
"I do not seek to challenge the gods," he said. "But I will not kneel before what I don't understand. I seek to stand before divinity—and see it clearly."
Lightning danced beneath his feet.
Raiden's eyes narrowed.
"Such ambition is dangerous."
"Art is always dangerous," Ji Bai replied. "Because it shifts what people believe to be possible."
The gate trembled.
For a breathless moment, time seemed to stop.
Then—Raiden raised her hand.
A single spark danced at her fingertip.
It did not strike.
She moved it slowly through the air and drew a single line—her own mark, her own answer. It shimmered for a second, then dissolved into the space between them.
"Then paint," she said. "Let the storm be your judge."
She turned.
And stepped back into the ink-washed void behind the gate.
Ji Bai remained alone—but the gate didn't vanish.It remained.
And for the first time,the sky wasn't merely watching.
It was listening.