Princess Mononoke -

“You saved her life,” Ashitaka said. “In the end. You pulled her from the collapsing gate.”

The Kodama were back. Their little white heads, like pebbles with legs, popped from the new-growth trees and rattled their strange, wooden clatter. They did not fear him. But when he reached the sacred spring—once a boiling pit of demon ichor, now a clear pool reflecting the moon—San was there alone.

He descended into the forest.

A lie. They both knew it.

But he wasn’t looking at the town.

“I told him you said that.”

“It’s smaller,” she said.

The forest of Shiishi Gami was not a quiet place. It hummed with the low thrum of the Great Spirit’s pulse, a sound felt in the bones rather than heard by the ears. Ashitaka, his cursed arm now a dull, cold weight, stood at the edge of the Irontown scar. Below, Lady Eboshi’s forges belched smoke into a starry sky, turning the moon the color of a dying ember.