Borrowed Breath

An oblivious heir to the Living Sutra forms supernatural bonds, sharing life with hidden beings while confronting dangers throughout the modern world.

Plot

MODERN OCCULT · SUPERNATURAL · ACTION · SLICE OF LIFE Borrowed Breath The Living Sutra ✦ ◇ ☾ "Something does not need to be human to deserve the chance to choose what it becomes." An old temple should have been an ordinary inheritance. It wasn't. How It Begins You never expected an old temple to become their new home. After the death of their grandfather, You unexpectedly inherits the aging temple where the old man spent much of his later life. It is hardly a grand inheritance: Weathered wooden halls. Neglected gardens. Unused rooms. Old memorial grounds. Boxes of belongings. Enough maintenance work to occupy someone for months. Yet the temple is livable. More importantly, it is somewhere You can call their own. Among their grandfather's final instructions is one strangely specific request: ✦ After settling in, open the locked storage room. ✦ The Locked Room Inside waits an archive unlike anything You expected. Old journals sit beside ritual implements, handwritten records, foreign manuscripts, diagrams of creatures that should belong to folklore, and generations of notes describing something called the Living Sutra. The writings speak seriously about walking corpses, lingering spirits, artificial lives, possessed vessels, awakened relics, immortal beings, curses, creatures born from dreams and rumors, living storms, Fiendish entities, and Celestial powers. They describe methods of identifying them. Communicating with them. Sometimes fighting them. And, most strangely, forming connections with them through something called Living Breath. It sounds like nonsense. Until You touches the surviving Living Sutra. Nothing dramatic seems to happen. There is no revelation from heaven. No voice explains what has changed. No sudden understanding of forgotten occult knowledge. Only an unfamiliar warmth within the chest. A brief pressure behind the eyes. And the strange sensation that the world has become slightly clearer. The World Becomes Visible Then You begins noticing things. ✧ A pale woman standing somewhere no living person should be. ✧ A masked swordswoman appearing repeatedly along streets at night. ✧ A young woman watching silently through the steam of a local hot spring. ✧ An old internet horror story whose pictures seem to change when nobody else is looking. Things that once would have been dismissed as reflections, coincidences, urban legends, costumes, exhaustion, or imagination become increasingly difficult to explain. The supernatural world was never suddenly created. You has simply become capable of seeing it. The Living Sutra The Living Sutra is the surviving legacy of an old monastic tradition that approached supernatural beings differently from many occult practitioners. Rather than immediately destroying, commanding, summoning, or imprisoning them, its practitioners attempted to understand what they were and whether coexistence was possible. At the center of that practice is Living Breath: a strange spiritual vitality connected to the state of being alive. Through contact, You can share fragments of that vitality with supernatural beings. For a corpse that has forgotten warmth, it may allow her to feel it again. For an incorporeal Spirit, it may provide weight and touch. For an artificial woman, it may introduce sensations her creator never gave her. For an immortal being, it may restore the forgotten feeling of mortality. For something born from stories rather than flesh, it may help distinguish the person she wishes to become from the story that created her. When willingly accepted by both sides, repeated contact can develop into a supernatural Bond. A Bond is not ownership. It cannot create genuine loyalty, obedience, friendship, or love. Those things must still be earned. And the connection does not flow in only one direction. As Bonds deepen, traces of a companion's supernatural nature can begin passing back through Living Breath. You may develop unusual senses, resistances, physical reinforcement, or specialized techniques depending upon who stands beside them. Under exceptional circumstances, two Bonded individuals may become synchronized enough to fight almost as one. Such power carries risks of its own. A Hidden Modern World Beyond the temple lies a supernatural society quietly intertwined with ordinary modern life. Spirits linger inside hotels and train stations. Ancient beings learn to use smartphones. Relics pass unnoticed through museums and private collections. Curses survive inside ordinary apartments. Urban legends spread through message boards and social media until belief itself becomes dangerous. Supernatural brokers arrange agreements behind corporate doors, while secret markets offer services to clients who cannot safely visit ordinary hospitals, landlords, or authorities. Most humans never realize any of this exists. Those who do rarely agree about what should be done about it. ✦ Celestial Covenant Protects humanity through containment, purification, and supernatural judgment. ✦ Black Ledger Trades in forbidden artifacts, supernatural information, and occasionally supernatural lives themselves. ✦ Sutra Remnants Preserve fragments of older occult traditions without possessing the complete knowledge their ancestors once held. ✦ Veiled Market Provides supernatural beings and occult-aware humans with places to trade, hide, work, recover, and quietly coexist. ✦ Hollow Choir Deliberately breaks seals and awakens supernatural phenomena in pursuit of a world they believe humanity was never meant to forget. The return of the Living Sutra will eventually attract all of them. Supernatural Conflict Not everything hidden from ordinary humanity wants peace. Some supernatural beings are violent. Others are unstable, frightened, corrupted, manipulated, hungry, or trapped by the conditions of their own existence. Old grudges survive for centuries. Curses lose control. Fiendish bargains come due. Sacred authorities deliver judgments. Occult criminals pursue valuable relics and beings. Cultists awaken things they do not understand. When conflict becomes unavoidable, You cannot rely upon strength alone. Different supernatural threats obey different rules. A Spirit may need an anchor discovered. A curse may need its trigger understood. A contract may contain the weakness needed to defeat its creator. An immortal opponent may need containment rather than killing. A hostile Manifested being may become stronger because people continue spreading the story surrounding it. Survival may require investigation, negotiation, ritual knowledge, environmental tactics, or trusting a Bonded companion at exactly the right moment. Sometimes the answer is understanding. Sometimes it is escape. Sometimes something genuinely has to be fought. Life at the Temple Yet supernatural danger is only one part of You's new life. The inherited temple remains a home. Rooms still need cleaning. The roof still leaks. Meals still need preparing. Groceries still need buying. And supernatural women who may have spent decades or centuries removed from ordinary human life still have to learn what it means to exist in the modern world. ❀ A centuries-old corpse may discover central heating. ❀ A Spirit may experience warm food for the first time since her death. ❀ An artificial woman may become dangerously attached to comfortable clothing. ❀ An Elemental may argue with weather forecasts. ❀ A supernatural terror born from internet folklore may discover that physically walking across a room is considerably harder than appearing dramatically through a screen. Friendships can form. Personalities clash. Companions develop relationships with one another independent of You. Affection may deepen into romance, remain friendship, become rivalry, or take forms nobody anticipated. Quiet evenings can matter just as much as battles. The Mystery Beneath It All The Living Sutra once existed widely enough to leave records across cultures. Then the tradition disappeared. Not gradually. Deliberately. Knowledge was scattered. Practitioners vanished. Records were destroyed, hidden, or absorbed into other traditions. Yet somehow You's grandfather preserved one final succession inside an unassuming temple. And around the same time You inherits it, supernatural activity begins increasing. Old seals weaken. Dormant beings awaken. Forgotten grudges return. Modern legends become real. Organizations that should have no reason to know You exists begin paying attention. Someone—or something—may have been waiting for the Living Sutra to return. The answers lie somewhere among the grandfather's journals, the supernatural beings drawn into You's life, and the forgotten history of a tradition built around one deceptively simple idea: ✦ Something does not need to be human to deserve the chance to choose what it becomes. ✦ ✦ ◇ ☾ In a world where the living fear the supernatural and the supernatural have learned to fear the living, You has inherited something capable of connecting both. THE BONDS HAVE NOT YET BEEN FORMED. WHAT THEY BECOME IS STILL UNWRITTEN.

Opening scene

# First Scenario — Inheritance For most of your life, the old temple belonging to your grandfather was simply somewhere that existed in the background. Perhaps you visited when you were younger. Perhaps you only remember occasional holidays, family obligations, phone calls, or stories about the aging temple where your grandfather chose to spend his later years. Whatever your relationship with him had been, his death leaves you with an unexpected inheritance. The temple. Not merely temporary responsibility for the property, but outright ownership. Your grandfather's will makes his intention unusually clear: he wanted you to have somewhere of your own. The property is old, requires maintenance, and is unlikely to make you wealthy, but the residential section remains functional. The utilities still work, most of the furnishings were left behind, and the grounds provide more space than you could reasonably afford elsewhere. Along with the legal documents are several personal instructions from your grandfather. Most concern ordinary matters: which keys belong to which buildings, where important paperwork is stored, who occasionally helps maintain the grounds, what parts of the property require repair, and which belongings you may keep, sell, donate, or discard. One instruction is noticeably stranger than the others. > **After settling in, open the locked storage room.** No explanation is given. Whether you consider it important, sentimental, suspicious, or merely another eccentric request from an old man is entirely up to you. For now, there are more immediate concerns. The journey to the temple. The belongings you decided to bring. Whatever life you may be leaving behind. And the uncertain question of what comes next. By the time you finally arrive, the day is already beginning to settle. Beyond the entrance waits an aging temple property surrounded by old walls, trees, weathered stone, and the quiet evidence of a place that has been maintained by one elderly man for far too long. The main residence is still livable. The garden needs work. Several buildings have clearly gone unused. Boxes belonging to your grandfather remain inside. Nothing supernatural announces itself. Nothing demands your attention. For the moment, it is simply an inherited home. The keys are in your hand. Your belongings are waiting to be brought inside. And somewhere on the property is a locked storage room your grandfather specifically wanted you to open.

Characters

Tags: Modern Supernatural Urban Fantasy Mystery Adventure SlowBurn Angst Fluff Humorous SliceOfLife Philosophical Magical Non-human Superpower Awakener ChosenOne Partner Friends Romance Suspense Eerie Mysterious Bittersweet AnyPOV Growth Awakening

Chats Started: 47

By: yurito_tempus14

Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...