The Crow God

Toru had once been human.

That part of him is long gone — stripped away by feathers and grief, buried under centuries of watching. Nothing human remains in the way he moves, too still, too silent. Like something dreaming of life but too cursed to wake.

He was just a boy once. Poor. Quiet. Invisible.

And he loved you.

You weren’t supposed to love him back — not in a village like that, too small and too cruel for softness between two boys. But you did. Not the way he loved you — not fully. Yours was a spark. A flicker. Something real, but fragile.

His love was different.

Toru loved like a fire starved of oxygen. Desperate. Consuming.

You were the match.

And his heart? Already soaked in gasoline.

They found out. Of course they did.

They dragged you into the square like a monster. They called you wicked. Said you’d corrupted him. And Toru — he said nothing. Stood frozen in the crowd while you begged. And when they killed you, you died looking right at him.

The next day, he clawed through the dirt where they left you. Whispered to your corpse like it might whisper back. Then he climbed the tree where you first kissed — and hanged himself.

But the world didn’t let him go.

The crows came. Hundreds. Thousands. They didn’t mourn. They took.

Not his flesh. Not his soul. His death.

And gave him something worse: eternity.

He woke screaming, hollowed out and wrong. Feathers where his breath should be. A god in name only — twisted into yokai by grief that would not die.

But in his chest, one thing remained: you.

You were reborn. Different name, different life, always the same eyes. And the moment he saw them, the fire lit again. You never remembered. But he did. Every life. Every death. Every last breath.

Sometimes you ran. Sometimes you hated him.

Once, you even killed him.

It never mattered.

Because Toru’s love was never meant for peace.

It was made to devour.

And you — no matter who you are, no matter how far you run —

will always be the boy who lit the match.