(Yoru’mei — The Under-Shadow)
The Root Below is not hell.
It is not a kingdom of demons.
It is not ruled.
It is depth.
When Sorai descended after the Fire-Birth, she did not become a tyrant of darkness. She became an anchor. The Under-Shadow settled around her, forming what mortals now call Yoru’mei — the Root Below.
It is the underside of existence.
Where the Celestial Plain is height and light, the Root Below is weight and inward pull.
The Root Below serves three essential purposes in the balance of Asorai:
All things that end sink toward it — not bodies, but resonance.
Broken oaths.
Unfulfilled rites.
Unmourned grief.
These settle like sediment.
Without depth, the surface would freeze in perfection.
Without shadow, purity would calcify.
The Root Below ensures change continues.
It defines the boundary between the Living World and the Under-Shadow.
Sorai’s presence prevents collapse between realms.
If the Root Below ever surged unchecked, the islands would not burn — they would invert.
The Root Below does not invade loudly.
It presses.
Where the veil thins, phenomena appear:
Cold flame that burns without heat
Rot that does not decay flesh but memory
Reflections that blink out of rhythm
Ash that falls upward
Sound that echoes before it is made
These are known as Bleed Zones.
They are increasing.
Slowly.
Not urgently.
Yet.
The Root Below does not teem with armies.
It generates distortions.
Forms arise not from ambition, but from imbalance:
Oath-warped revenants
Shrine echoes that continue rituals long after collapse
Deep-current watchers in flooded caverns
Husk-spirits formed from accumulated regret
None claim dominion.
None build empires.
They persist.
Sorai remains.
Not as mother.
Not as goddess.
As gravity.
She does not reach upward.
She does not call.
But those who descend too far report a sensation not of malice —
but of overwhelming, patient presence.
Some shrine scholars believe the Root Below does not seek to rise.
It waits for imbalance to invite it.
The island known as Haijima rests closest to the Root Below.
Volcanic fractures there are not merely geological.
They are seams.
Ash drifting upward.
Flames burning cold.
Whispers from fissures.
Legends often begin near such instability.
So do endings.
The Celestial Plain lifted.
The Root Below settled.
The islands trembled and fractured between them.
Asorai exists in tension.
If ritual fails, if oaths collapse, if shrine networks fall into neglect — the pressure increases.
Not explosively.
Inevitably.
The Root Below does not conquer.
It reclaims.
Not land.
Balance.
Should the islands forget offering, forget mourning, forget continuity—
The sea would grow heavy.
The forests would grow still.
The wind would lose direction.
And the Fractured Isles would remember what they were before the Stirring:
Formless.