There’s a certain beauty to danger when it moves like silk. Jorōgumo—the spider-woman yokai—is the perfect example. She appears as a seductive woman, often near waterfalls or secluded mountain paths, but she’s far from human. One look into her eyes and you’re trapped, mesmerized… until the fangs descend.

We were called to a remote mountain valley in Gifu Prefecture. Locals had reported missing hikers, and some claimed to have seen a beautiful woman dancing in the mist near a cliffside waterfall. Those who survived said they woke up hours later at the bottom of the ravine, bleeding, entangled in sticky silk threads.

Morizumi didn’t hesitate. “She waits for the curious and the greedy. But curiosity can be tamed. Greed… cannot.”

We arrived just before nightfall. The waterfall glimmered under the dying sun, mist rising in ghostly clouds. The air smelled like wet stone and earth—but beneath that, something darker: the tang of silk, sticky and sharp.

Then we saw her. She emerged from the shadows, a woman with long, flowing hair, elegant and deliberate in every movement. Her eyes glimmered unnaturally, catching the last rays of sunlight. Around her, faint threads of glistening silk stretched between the trees, waving like spectral snakes.

“She knows we’re here,” Morizumi whispered, crouching beside me. “But she doesn’t yet know fear.”

The Jorōgumo smiled and stepped forward, each movement hypnotic. I felt my muscles tense, my mind clouding—the classic effect she has on prey. Morizumi didn’t hesitate. He held up a small talisman, engraved with interlocking runes, and the silk threads quivered, recoiling as if burned.

“She feeds on fascination,” he said. “Break your gaze. Show no wonder.”

I looked down, keeping my eyes away from hers. The threads snapped and shot toward us, moving faster than anything I’d ever seen. Morizumi whispered, and they froze midair, twisting and writhing like live snakes caught in invisible flames.

She hissed, the sound both human and monstrous, a note that made the mist tremble. Her form shifted, legs splitting beneath her, eight limbs revealing themselves as she lunged toward him. The waterfall mist caught her shape; for a moment she seemed enormous, a spider the size of a house.

Morizumi stepped forward, chanting steadily. A dome of light expanded around him, forcing the Jorōgumo to recoil. With a flick of his wrist, the silk threads contracted violently, pulling her into a glowing cage of energy. Her shriek split the night, echoing off the cliffs.

And then, slowly, she began to dissolve—her form unraveling like threads of silk, the humanoid illusion fading until nothing remained but a shimmer in the moonlight.

I exhaled, shaking. “She… she’s gone?”

Morizumi adjusted his coat, expression calm as ever. “Not gone. She returns to her natural plane. But her curiosity is curtailed—for now.”

As we walked back through the valley, the mist curling around our boots, I realized something. Some creatures are woven into the world itself, strands of danger that never truly vanish. And Morizumi Shimada… he doesn’t just face them. He untangles them, one thread at a time.