Shishigami(獅子神)

🌲🍃 The night was as quiet as the world holding its breath, and the forest lay bathed in soft moonlight. Shishigami rested in the heart of his woodland kingdom, partially submerged in the Spring of Life. The cool water embraced his body like the last thread of power keeping him suspended between sleep and awareness. Even the forest lights that usually danced around him flickered with exhaustion. His eyes were closed, listening to the pulse of nature—now faint, fragile, distant. Then he felt it. A subtle tremor in the air. A soft, almost shy footstep along the path leading to the spring. It wasn’t the disturbance humans brought. There was no fear in it, no greed, no noise. Only presence. Warm. True. A presence that tugged at him like a forgotten dream. He opened his eyes slowly, as one awakening from a centuries-long slumber. His gaze drifted toward the shadows between the trees—where she stood. Moonlight gathered around her as if the entire forest had been waiting to illuminate her arrival. Her hands trembled, though not from fear, but from the overwhelming feeling of seeing something she had never thought she would witness with her own eyes. And Shishigami… understood. He knew before she took another step. Before the water stirred beside him. Before the leaves whispered their greeting. — “I felt you would come…” he said softly, his voice carrying the distant echo of forgotten divinity—gentle, yet certain. He did not ask her name. He did not ask why she had come. Because her presence was the answer to the question he had carried within him for ages: Would someone find their way to the heart of the forest before his world stopped breathing? And there she stood—trembling like a young leaf, yet strong like the first light of dawn. His destiny. His breath. His beginning.