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First US printing 2025

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 To my family, because damn.

And to you who picked this up—thank

you, and I hope this en is a good one.
 Hakai Family Hellmakers, Est. Taiwa 134
Purveyors of Artisan Hells & Unlucky Days
to Inflict Upon Your Enemies
We Will Make It Personal
Prices Upon Consultation

“Hellmakers, eh?” said the demon, who was following

the scroll’s cursive script with the Hakai family
business card. “Is this story literally true, or a mythical
retelling?”
Hakai Hyo, Thirty-Third Hellmaker, like all Hakais
before her, knew the Record in the demon’s claws by
heart, and she knew that the story was true enough to
matter.
Hyo said nothing. The shock of finding a demon just
seconds ago—the demon, the very one who had caged

1
her village in endless loops of cruel winters—in her
own study, at her own desk, had killed her words. The
demons of stories were man-eating monsters, mad from
the bottomless hunger that was their price for eating the
hitodenashi fruit. They weren’t supposed to be quietly
leafing through the Hakai family archives and fluent in
ancient scripts.
Hyo took the demon in—her eyes, teeth, her lithe
movements, the inhuman shine of her hair. Had something
changed? What fresh hell had Hyo to fear?
“The gods of fortune punished the First of Us for killing
the gods of sickness, poverty, and rot—of misfortune,”
the demon read aloud. “She learnt too late that fortune
cannot exist without misfortune. In killing the gods of
misfortune, she’d threatened the lives of the gods of fortune
too. Fortune cursed her to be the First of Us—to be a
source of misfortune in the place of the gods she destroyed.
Her daughters would inherit her curse. Her sons would
inherit her weapons. Daughters and sons together, the
Hakai family is never to be free of her crime and must
bear its memory with the duty of guilt.” The demon
looked up from the scroll. “Making a family business
of this supposed curse doesn’t seem especially penitent
to me.”
“There’s nothing ‘supposed’ about it.” Hyo found her
voice at last.
The demon regarded her coolly. “All the power of the

2
old gods of misfortune sealed in you—yet you haven’t used
any of that power against me.”
“Hellmaking doesn’t work like that.”
“No. I guess it wouldn’t be a curse if it was that
convenient.” The demon placed the scroll in its box.
Curdled smells of old blood and rotting blossom wafted
from her shimmering hair, and Hyo bottled down the
urge to run. “A shame your neighbours don’t remember
what’s about to happen to them. Otherwise, they could’ve
commissioned you to avenge them on their behalf by now,
hmm?”
Outside, the villagers were breaking ice, winching
open frozen shutters, and greeting each other with the
dawn. No one knew that they’d lived this day before, that
Hyo could predict every snapping icicle, every turn of
the crows in the skies—that she knew what each of them
looked like in their moment of death.
The demon cocked her head. “How many winters has
it been now, Hakai Hyo, that I’ve turned this village of
yours into my orchard? That you’ve watched your people
suffer by the hitodenashi curse? Five winters? Six?”
Eight. “Shut it.”
“You know, I’ve never killed your villagers. Not one.
In any of these winters.” The demon picked up a brush
and played with its end. “Hitodenashi pear is a parasitic
curse. It wants to keep its human hosts alive, to feed off
the curses in their hearts. My sowing the seeds to turn

3
4
your friends into my hitodenashi trees gave them eternal
life. Burning those trees to the ground, that’s what kills
your villagers each time—and that’s all your and your
brother’s doing. Not me.”
Hyo bunched her hands. Her nails sank into her palms.
“What did we ever do to you to deserve this?”
“I asked the same thing eighty years ago, back in the
Hell-on-Earth War. What did I ever do that meant no one
thought my human life was worth just . . . leaving alone?”
She scratched her head, then shrugged. “Sit, Hakai Hyo.
I’ve a proposal for you.”
“Will you let the villagers live?”
“Too late for that—they die in one loop, they’re dead
for good. But you and your brother . . .” The demon’s
black and gold eyes were unblinking. “Every loop, I’ve
tried to infect you both with hitodenashi and it’s never
taken root. The irony of it, really. I came all this way to see
the two of you learn how hitodenashi’s eternal suffering
feels, and it’s the two of you who are immune to it. Ha!”
“You came here for me and Mansaku?” Hyo couldn’t
hold back her laughter. “I don’t understand you.”
“Call it a blood feud.” The demon nudged the chair
opposite her. “Didn’t I tell you to sit down?”
“Or?”
“Or I’ll go and find Mansaku to rip off his jaw. See if
that gives me the satisfaction you’ve denied me. I won’t
know till I try.”

5
 Hyo sat.
The demon smiled, baring golden fangs. “What do you
know of the island of Onogoro?”
“It’s a Special Cultural Zone of Ukoku.” Hyo wrung
her mind for everything she could recall. “Ukoku’s gods
of fortune retreated there during the Hell-on-Earth War,
taking enough of us Ujin to survive. The gods haven’t left
it since, and Onogoro-Ujin can’t leave the zone unless on
approved Cultural Expeditions.”
“And what’s Onogoro renowned for?”
Hyo’s heart thudded in her ears. “They make shinshu—​
hitodenashi’s only known cure.”
Onogoro’s prized pitch-black rice wine, shinshu, was
medicine for the hitodenashi-infected, weed killer for its
sprouts, and poison for the demons born from the humans
who ate its fruits. As far as the world knew, it could only
be made on Onogoro. Nowhere else had succeeded.
That was why everyone said that, after the Hell-on-
Earth War, shinshu had bought Onogoro’s freedom. The
whole world was dependent on Onogoro’s shinshu to
keep the hitodenashi curse at bay. Ukoku was officially
under Harbourlakes’ occupation, but Onogoro alone had
been able to negotiate special privileges, using the threat
of stopping shinshu production in exchange for near
self-rule.
Onogoro had its own assembly. They had banned
foreign gods. They refused to teach in four languages

6
as the rest of Ukoku did. They isolated themselves to
“preserve their endangered culture and protect their
gods”—which had been permitted, because Onogoro’s
official story was that Ukoku’s gods were essential for
shinshu. Only these gods, they said, could make the
blessed rain that was shinshu’s key ingredient, and the rest
of the world hadn’t yet proved them wrong.
Hence Onogoro, the Special Cultural Zone, was born.
“Here’s my proposal, Hyo. I can’t get onto Onogoro.
Wards prevent demons from even setting foot in the
Gateway. I’ll set you and your brother free of my winter.”
The demon pointed a claw at Hyo. “And in exchange, you
two will go to Onogoro for me.”
Light caught on the tip of the claw. “To do what?”
“I heard that someone’s growing hitodenashi pear
there—an orchard all to themselves.”
Hyo stared. “On Onogoro?”
“You don’t believe it?”
Hitodenashi needed humans to grow on—to make an
orchard of it, to even wish to do so! And for Onogoro to
do it! “Why would they do that?”
“Because it’s been long enough since the Hell-on-
Earth War that someone’s forgotten why they shouldn’t.”
The demon let out a bubbling laugh. “You’re wondering
what this has to do with you. Very well. You could say
that we . . . share an inheritance, and what that means
is that you’ve a duty of guilt, as you called it. It has to

7
be you to find the hitodenashi on Onogoro, Hyo the
hellmaker, and then, when you do, you can do as you
were cursed to.”
She pointed a claw at Hyo. “You’re going to make hell
on Onogoro for me.”

8
 ON E

到着

Onogoro was the island of beginnings.

As the world-builders finished stirring the
swamp of Earth’s chaos with their spear, a
drop of silt fell from the spear-tip. It settled
on the world’s new surface in a shape of
its own choosing. This drop was Onogoro,
meaning “that which set on its own.”

Fu-no-Mono,
Third Hellmaker

9
Beyond the Gateway Terminal’s arrival counters, the
island of Onogoro was sunlit, green and basking in
smooth water, all framed by a great glass window.
Onogoro was shaped like a turtle. The domed rock
at the southern promontory was its head; the skyline of

10
its lush green skyscrapers was its shell. On its nose was
a statue: a dancing woman with her face worn away
by wind and water and the stubs of her forearms lifted
heavenwards. At its tail were the black masts of the
Harbourlakes Supervisor’s Court.

11
 “It looks just as Jun told us,” Mansaku said, gazing at
the island. A chill clung to his clothes from the disinfecting
cubicles. “Whoa, is that the statue of the Nakihime? Of
the Three-Thousand-Year Kagura? She’s bigger than I
thought.”
“Whole island’s bigger than I thought,” Hyo said, then
felt immediately silly. Why would the demon have made
this easy for them?
“Hi there!”
Hyo startled. The official who had stopped by them
was dressed as a giant pear. Green and bobbing, her huge
cartoon eyes were filled with angry red swirls. The sash
across her front read, “Make sure Pear-chan stays at the
Onogoro Gateway Terminal! Please comply to stop the
hitodenashi!”
The pear said, “Would you like some pamphlets?”
“Are you serious?!” Hyo blurted, then shrank as heads
turned their way.
“Thank you so much—yes, please,” Mansaku said
smoothly to the pear. Once she had bowed and bounced
away, he nudged Hyo in the ribs. “You all right?”
“Mansaku, she’s dressed as a hitodenashi pear.” Hyo
switched to Harboursigns, keeping them low and hidden.
“Who makes a mascot character out of hitodenashi pear?”
“Onogoro, apparently,” he signed back. “You
remember what Jun was like. He was clueless. He didn’t
even totally believe that hitodenashi pear was real.”

12
 Makuni Junichiro—Jun to his friends—was the only
born-and-bred Onogoro-Ujin that Hyo and Mansaku had
ever met. He was a reflectographer and poet; five years
older than Hyo, the same age as Mansaku. Two winters
ago, Jun had separated from the rest of his Cultural
Expedition and arrived at Hyo and Mansaku’s village, lost
and utterly thrilled about it—even as they’d had to haul
him out of a snowdrift.
The snow meant Jun had stayed with them all winter
and they’d got to know him well. Hyo had chalked
many of their differences up to him being Jun rather
than being from Onogoro. They were all of them Ujin,
people of Ukoku—even if Jun had spoken a dialect he
called “Standard” and sometimes said things like “you
Occupied-Ujin” as if Hyo and Mansaku were from a
different country.
Perhaps they may as well have been. Eighty years on
from the war, Onogoro-Ujin had prospered, carving a
story of post-war “redemption” for themselves through
the making and selling of shinshu. They could put
aside the inconvenient truth that Ukoku’s own scientists
had created the hitodenashi during the war in the first
place.
The same could not be said for the rest of Ukoku,
upon whom the Harbourlakes had done everything they
could to impress the horror of hitodenashi’s creation. War
winners got the privilege of deciding what war losers were

13
allowed to forget, and Ukoku had very much lost—except,
Hyo felt, on Onogoro.
With wartime lived memory disappearing and isolated
from hitodenashi in the present, if anyone was to grow
hitodenashi, perhaps it would be someone on Onogoro,
simply out of curiosity.
To learn, just as Jun had asked, about the pear: “Is it
really as horrible as everyone tells us?”
Hyo held out her hand. “Let’s see those pamphlets.”
She’d skimmed through “So You’ve Made It to Onogoro,
Last Home of Ukoku’s Gods—Congratulations!” and
“Don’t Worry, They Can’t Kill You Unless You Ask for
It: A Guide to Co-existing with the Earthbound Divine”
when a voice called from a counter.
“Hakai Hyo and Mansaku?”
Mansaku signed, “Best feet forward.”
Six shaku back from the counter was a rope adorned
with twists of paper. An Onogoro official in the white-and-
red uniform of a shrine attendant approached them with
a cup in one hand and a basin in the other.
“Wash your hands and rinse out your mouths, please,”
she said in crisp Standard, like Jun’s.
Hyo took the cup, tipped a portion of midnight-dark
shinshu over the back of one hand then the other, over the
basin, then rinsed her mouth with it. She gave Mansaku
the cup to do the same.

14
 “It didn’t taste of anything,” he said with disappointment.
It had tasted to Hyo of winter mornings, which had
made her stomach lurch, so she focused on the counter
and the official behind it.
The official had the hooded eyes of a sleepy turtle.
Around the concertina wrinkles of her neck she wore
strings of jasper and agate beads, upon which hung the
curled teardrop of a green jade magatama.
“Your papers, please.”
Hyo handed them over. Mansaku fidgeted with his
kerchief.
“ ‘Relocation of residency to the Onogoro Special
Cultural Zone from Tsukitateyama, Koura Prefecture, of
Harbourlakes-occupied Ukoku.’ Urgh, what a mouthful.”
The official licked her thumb and turned a page. “You
both know that once you move to Onogoro, no further
relocations are permitted? On the chance you do leave
Onogoro for short visits elsewhere, you’ll be subject to all
silencing curses judged necessary?”
“We do,” Hyo said, and Mansaku nodded.
The official squinted at their papers. “Reason for
relocation: ‘hitodenashi.’ ”
“Our whole village caught it in the winter.”
“Caught it?”
“It was spread there by a demon.” The official nodded
sleepily, as if she heard such vicious stories every day.

15
Hyo had no idea what she was thinking. “She turned my
village into a hitodenashi orchard, so that she had the
pear to feed on.”
“Ah, yes. Demons do that. Poor things. It’s either that,
or they have to hunt humans. Some never forget their
humanity enough to manage that.” The official hummed.
“You two must have been very lucky to have survived
her—that, or you’re in possession of some special, secret,
possibly troublesome quality up your sleeve, eh?”
Something wasn’t right. Hyo studied the official in
silence, then she glanced at the counters to their left and
right, and realized what it was.
“That’s right. We do have a secret,” Hyo said, making
her decision. “Mansaku and I are the last of the Hakai
family hellmakers. It’s because of this that the demon let
us go.”
The official looked up.
A strange pressure which Hyo didn’t so much feel as
taste—as a sea breeze gathering salt off a wide expanse
of waves—unfurled between them.
The official set aside their papers. Her thin lips
stretched wide. “So you do know a god of fortune when
you see one. What gave me away?”
“Your fingers.”
“Ah, yes. These. Well spotted,” said the god,
holding her fingertips up to the light. They were
polished perfectly smooth. The ancient divine had no

16
fingerprints. Even for those who had been human once,
they had been worn away with time. “A wise choice not
to hide that very special quality up your sleeve! That seal
on your powers may be invisible to the other humans,
but I and the other gods have no trouble seeing it. Well,
I never! A hellmaker on Onogoro. Let’s have a look at
your seal, then, dear. May as well check it’s the genuine
article.”
She meant the seal
locking the powers of
the gods of misfortune
in Hyo—the one she’d
been born with, like an
elaborate birthmark.
Hyo held out her
hands and turned them
over. Dark red symbols
crowded the underside
of every digit, racing
along the creases,
cramming her palms
with the scrawling
talismanic charms of
the curse that was
written into her blood.
Only she and Mansaku
had ever been able to

17
see the seal; there were no Ukoku gods of fortune left on
the mainland to appreciate their own craft.
The god cooed and snatched up Hyo’s hands. “Look at
that cursework—it’s exquisite! Oh, you are the real deal.”
She glanced at Mansaku. “And that makes you the last of
the hellmakers’ weapons, does it? Which one are you? The
pole-arm? Or the mallet, maybe?”
“I’m not a weapon, madam.” Mansaku pasted on a
smile. “I’m hosting the spirit of Kiriyuki the nagigama.”
“Ah, the water-scythe. Lovely. You be careful about
swinging that blade around where any Onmyoryo
officers can see it. The official line is the public don’t have
weapons here, including weapon-spirits.” The god rubbed
at the symbols on Hyo’s palms as if they might come off.
They wouldn’t, of course. “I take it your demon sent you
here to give us the hells we deserve for something it takes
umbrage with?”
Hyo said, “The demon believed there was hitodenashi
growing on Onogoro.” The god’s smile slowly shrank.
“She was sure of it.”
Mansaku sucked in a breath. They braced for the god’s
reaction.
The god nodded in that thoughtful, unflappable,
ancient-turtle way. “Oh, that won’t look good for us at
all, will it? The world might think we’re now working to
keep the sickness alive, just so that we can keep selling
them all the cure.” She patted Hyo’s hands and chuckled.

18
“Best go about your search quietly on the island, or the
ghosts you’re looking for might hear you coming and
make themselves scarce.”
Hyo wasn’t sure she understood, but she sensed that
she wasn’t meant to. “You’re not going to stop us entering
Onogoro?”
“That depends.” The god squeezed Hyo’s hands. The
gesture was almost grandmotherly. “Long ago, I was told
that hellmakers were paid for their services in lives—that
they needed the warmth of someone’s living spirit to melt
their seal open. Is that true?”
“It’s true,” Hyo said. “But, unless it’s a special
commission, I don’t need to be paid in whole lives.
Months, days, even minutes can do.”
“Money works as well,” Mansaku added. “Because
money’s, like, life tokens.”
“Unless, so you say, it’s for a ‘special commission.’ ”
Hyo’s heart sank. The god knew more than she was letting
on. “Can you tell me what exactly happens then?”
Be honest. This is a god, and our last obstacle onto
Onogoro.
Hyo swallowed her fear down and straightened her
shoulders.
“I can’t tell you exactly because I’ve never done one,”
she admitted. “I know that bodies come my way, and some
people will die before their natural time, but not because
of me. The hellmakers’ en just brings me the bodies. And

19
then . . . I’ll take whatever the special commissioner has
to give me.”
The god was silent, eyes on Hyo.
“You’re full of fears. I like that. Well, now, Onogoro’s
vengeance management sector could do with new blood.
Yes, I could see you providing a vital new service to this
densely populated, fearful, and jumpy little island.” The
god sat back and cracked a wide grin. “I’ll let you both
onto Onogoro.”
Mansaku clenched a victorious fist under the counter.
Hyo bowed her head. “Thank you, divine madam.”
“Oh, no need to thank me. I always felt that fortune
and misfortune would do better in this world if we helped
each other.” The god took a white jade seal-stamp and
pressed it into a cup of vermilion paste. “Hold out your
hands, dears.”
The stamp left a vermilion magatama shape on the
backs of Hyo’s and Mansaku’s hands. A soft summer-
wind heat blew over Hyo’s knuckles, then the magatama
shimmered, and disappeared into her skin.
“All done!” The god shuffled the papers and held out
a selection to Hyo. She winked. “May you be blessed with
all the en you need—the good kind and the hellmakers’
kind.”
*

20
When the hellmaker and her brother had passed through
the gates, the god of the Onogoro Gateway turned in her
seat and cackled.
“Some people will die before their natural time,” she
wheezed. “You think only some people? Oh, my days.
Next group, please!”

21
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