There were many spins on the legend he had heard, be it from the vagrants from the seedy pubs, the merchants from the market, the samurai stationed at Zaodo, some takes more embellished than the others. But no matter the teller, when it came down to it, they all told the same tale— of a goddess born from the sea foam.

Demons once dominated these islands, feared and revered in equal measure— aspects of the world given form and life, fickle as the earth they lived on, perhaps bringing fortune and bounty one day, and disaster the next. Generations of labor and toil could be crushed underfoot in a single night. Villages could be shielded from calamity by mere whim. Fear and awe of the world gripped the humans; as if to placate these chaotic forces, they began to worship them.

The people of the villages that would one day become Nagaoka once worshipped a demon god.

It began with the attacks from the demons of the mountains, their leader a monstrous oni, his eyes like burning coals, his stature towering over buildings, his club the size of a full-grown tree, said to be able to strike up a storm of flame with a single swing. These villages were not strong. Their defenses could not hold. When faced with certain destruction, they sought to delay it, to cling to life, to strike a bargain with the demon god: that the village should be spared, in exchange for a sacrifice.

And so, each month, for years and generations to come, they would select a villager to send to the mountains as an offering to the demon god, their fates unknown, better left unimagined. Even so, they resented this fate.

Be it a response to their pleas, a whim of the earth, or sheer coincidence, their prayers were answered.

A goddess was born from the sea foam, from the shoals of the seaside— and that is where all the tales’ similarities end. Some said she was born in answer to the villagers’ prayers, and rose to do battle against the demons of the mountains, one force of nature against the other. Or that she was mistaken for a simple village girl abandoned by the shore, who came to live with the villagers as one of them and was fatefully chosen one day to be the sacrifice, a choice that ended in the demon god’s destruction. Or that she struck up her own bargain with the demon god, a plea to spare the village and take her instead— the final sacrifice.

Like the very sea foam she was born from, her life was fleeting, fated to end as quickly as it came; most versions of the tale ended with her death. Most versions that he had heard also liked to embellish her life with romance, as such legends like to do. That in her brief life as a human, she fell in love with a man from the village and fathered his child, who would continue her legacy in both duty in name, a legacy that survived to this day.