Introduction
The Trap of the Eternal
Deep in Kansai, in the heart of traditional Japan, a legend is passed on in the half-light of the izakaya. A tale that, even in our modern age, makes the most cynical shudder: that of an entity which, beneath the full moon, stalks its prey with a patience centuries old.
They call her Komayō. Behind the mask of a woman of bewitching beauty, draped in a kimono of cerulean sheen, hides a more sinister reality. Her strategy, lethal in its subtlety, is to lure her victims into a game of ōgi, that refined variant of Japanese chess which has shaped the art of strategic warfare for generations.
Her trap unfolds with surgical precision. Every move on the board weaves an invisible web; every tactical decision draws her prey deeper into a labyrinth whose existence it does not suspect. Fatigue creeps in like a refined poison, gradually clouding the judgement, inexorably weighing down the mind.
The exhaustion that then grips the player goes beyond any ordinary tiredness. This supernatural force seeps into the very depths of the soul, plunging her victims into a sleep as final as death, their consciousness dissolving in the meanders of an eternal night.
It is in this darkness that Komayō reveals her true essence. Beyond victory, she feeds on the life force of her prey, absorbing it as the warmth of the sun dispels the morning dew. Nothing remains but a shadow, a yūrei condemned to wander between worlds, haunted by the obsession of a game never finished.
These captive souls become the spectres of the playing halls, ethereal presences watching the living with a heartrending hunger. Their consciousness, prisoner of a perpetual agony, endlessly repeats the moves of a game without end, chained to an unquenched desire for revenge against the one who stripped them of their existence.
Among the elite of professional ōgi, these tales arouse a mixture of condescending scepticism and ancestral dread. Yet even the most rational feel an icy shiver run through them when, in the dark hours, a stranger with an enigmatic smile offers them a friendly game.