“Irontown is rebuilding,” he said quietly. “Eboshi is helping the lepers plant rice. The women are forging plowshares, not guns.”

San’s jaw tightened. “I pulled you . She was just… there.”

“Moro’s tooth,” San said. “And moss from the den where I was found. Wear it. It will remind the spirits that you are… permitted.”

“And you?”

He sat down at the edge of the spring, letting his lame leg stretch out. The curse had receded from a writhing serpent to a faint, dark bruise on his forearm. It would never leave entirely. He was a bridge now—a thing stretched between two worlds, belonging fully to neither.

Ashitaka stood. He winced—his leg still ached—but he stood straight.

San had not spoken to him in three days. Not since the head of the Forest Spirit had been returned, not since the land had begun its slow, painful crawl back from the brink of decay. The green was returning—new moss on blackened stones, timid shoots of bamboo pushing through ash—but something between them had turned to stone.