Kiri Kiri Bozu

Kiri Kiri Bozu are forest-born yokai that cling to places where grief and old promises pool: abandoned shrines, overgrown moorings, and the hollows beneath ancient beeches. Folktales say a pious child's wish once bound their anger in a bell; a bell broken by time or theft weakens that binding and lets the creature sicken the living with spectral cold. Hunters leave small bells on pathways as a ward, and some villages hang dozens on their gates to keep the mist at bay. Scholars of uncanny phenomena, such as Mirek Tanl of the Riverstone Archives, argue these dolls are not truly undead but fey shaped by ritual grief—spindled hopes given form. The Kawaji Conclave, a ring of shrine-keepers in the western timberlands, maintain detailed rites to repair the bell’s seal; they will barter a mended chime for stories of those who vanished in the fog. Tales say a Kiri Kiri Bozu will sometimes bargain for a new bell: give it a clear, ringing piece and it will trade the name of a lost traveler... for a price.

Imagine a small, hand-sewn teru teru bozu roughly the size of a halfling child, floating a foot or two off the ground. Its body is a single sack of aged, off-white linen stitched crudely with dark thread; seams are visible and slightly puckered. The 'face' is a charcoal smear: two dark bruises where eyes might be and a thin horizontal slash for a mouth that sometimes seems to open. Around its neck hangs a frayed cord bearing a battered bell split along one seam—the bell’s interior shows bright, unnaturally polished metal as if something inside is still moving. From the bottom of its sack drifts a low, tattered fringe that evaporates into mist. The mist it emits clings to underbrush and stones, forming thin ribbons that glow faintly in moonlight. Scale reference: about 2–3 feet tall, hovering knee-high to a human; often drawn among gnarled roots and low fog.