Last Watch Before Dawn: Volume 1, Page 38

If the thumbnail doesn’t give it away, this page is gruesome. Approach at your own discretion.

Two more pages in this chapter! By this time next week, I will be done torturing Ichiro (for now. Both my husband and a reader have recently pointed out that I put my protagonists through the wringer).

The full page is below:

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Table of Contents

Back to Page 37

Forward to Page 39 (forthcoming)

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Image description:

A five-panel, black-and-white (and red) comic page. The panels are positioned on a black background that is dotted with white snow.

Panel 1: We return to the jito’s estate to find it has been ransacked and everyone present killed. More snow has fallen on the ground, the buildings, and the trees. The shoji doors have been torn out, and one lies askew by the right-side door. There is the faint shape of two bodies lying in the dark inside the middle door. In front of the stairs leading up to the middle door, a head has been placed on a spike, and it hangs there with its mouth open and snow gathered on top of it. Three trees stand to the right of the main house; from the leftmost, the silhouette of a body hangs suspended by its wrists. In the snow lie three bodies. One is the jito’s with its o-sode shoulder guards, another a man in a kimono, and the third in the foreground a woman. All are covered in snow. A pile of severed heads lies between snow drifts. These have topknots; they may have belonged to clan samurai. A second building stands closer to the viewer off to the panel’s right. The silhouette of one body lies inside the ruined door, and two more are propped up against the right-hand exterior wall.

Panel 2: A close-up of a tattered banner against a black sky. It is painted with a circle with a cross through it, similar to one of the symbols on the marker by the crossroads.

Panel 3: A close-up of the head on a spike. This is the jito, recognizable by the scar on the right side of his face and his wispy goatee. His eyes are open, rolled upward, and his mouth hangs open as well. Blood stains the wooden spike and is splattered across his face. Behind him is the open door of the house, and there is a body lying in shadow inside the door.

Panel 4: The body inside the door, seen from above. It lies on a bloodstained wooden floor, just inside the threshold. A pile of bloody snow sits on the other side of the threshold. The body belongs to a young woman, barefoot and wearing a dressing gown. She holds a bundle in her arms. Her severed head is farther inside, its face obscured by long, trailing hair. Her clothing and bundle are stained with blood.

Panel 5: Two headless bodies propped up against a wall. One is larger, wrinkled at the knees and ankles, and leaning over the other. The second is smaller and clutches a knife in both hands. Both wear short kimonos and are barefoot, and both are missing their heads. Their clothing is soaked in blood, which also spots the snow beneath them.