Dawn came. I came back to my senses. I was heaving for breath. My arms were heavy as lead. My whole body was soaked with cold sweat and other men's blood. Where the sweat ended and the blood began—I could no longer tell.
And then I looked at what lay before me.
The mountain was gone.
The mountain that had loomed black beyond the mist until last night. Had simply turned into gentle gray swells. Smoke was still rising, thin, here and there.
There was no sound. No birdsong, no chanting, not even the sound of the wind. It was only quiet. Frighteningly quiet.
Slowly, I understood. What had happened here. How many people had been here last night. That many of them were no longer here. Monks. And people who weren't. Every life that had lived on the mountain. With the fire I had set.
I didn't look at the devastation. To be precise—I couldn't look. I simply could not turn my eyes that way. Nor will I write about it. Every one of those lost in that place must have had a name, a life, a tomorrow. I took that from them. I simply cannot bring myself to lay out the weight of it like a spectacle.
Only this much I can say. It could not be undone. Not one thing would ever go back to how it was.
My knees gave way. I put both hands on the ash. And wept as if I were throwing up.
"...I'm sorry."
My voice shook.
"I didn't mean to burn it. I didn't mean to kill..."
"It's my fault. I... I did this..."
It wouldn't stop. The tears, the sobbing, the shaking—none of it would stop. I rubbed my forehead into the ash, and I only, only wept.
My retainers watched me from a distance. And this is what they were whispering to one another.
"Our lord... is roaring at the mountain."
"Having burned the Buddha's mountain to the ground, he roars still, at the heavens."
"That is a ferocious victory cry. The Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, who burns even Mount Hiei—"
No. No. This isn't a victory cry. I'm not rejoicing because I won. I'm just apologizing. Because I've done something that can't be undone. I'm crying for forgiveness.
But that didn't reach anyone. No one knew what my tears meant. The world feared me a little more. The true Demon King, merciless, who burns even the Buddha's mountain.
I remembered that story about hell they told me when I was a child. That those who kill people are boiled in a cauldron. If so, I could fall into hell again and again, and it would never be enough. Even so, I thought, that's fine. Whatever punishment I alone receive, I don't care.
Only—the lives that were lost would never come back. That alone I simply could not bear.
In the ash, weeping, I thought:
—I'd reached my limit.