4th Night of the Black Moon, in the Heart of Darkness

photo: Koboldfoto

I heard him before I saw him.

A faint rustling, like dry leaves breaking under invisible footsteps.A breath, heavy and endless.

A whisper, seeping through from the deepest graves of time.

Death.

The Legend

They say he is eternal. But nothing exists without a beginning.

In ancient stories, there was a time without him. A time when life came and stayed, when no shadow stole breath away. But then it happened. A birth—not from light, not from love. But from pain.

In Japanese mythology, it is said that the fire god Kagutsuchi brought death into the world when his mother, Izanami, burned as she gave birth to him. Her flesh charred, her blood seeped into the earth, and with her final scream, he was there—inevitable, unstoppable, a fate beyond return.

Thus, death was born.

And since then, he has never left us.

photo: Koboldfoto

The Idea

I wanted to capture that moment—the fracture between being and nothingness. The first breath of the end.

It should not be the Grim Reaper, not a familiar figure. No, it should be the first shadow that ever fell upon the world, the whisper that no one had ever heard before.

Not as the old man. Not as the woman with black wings. But as what he truly is—the balance, the duality, the inevitability.

Both female and male in one, beyond categorization. A silhouette of mist and bone. A presence that neither embraces nor repels. It simply exists.

I searched for images, for stories, for the first traces of his existence. And there it was—in old films, in the distorted movements of an ungraspable presence.

The birth of death.

photo: Koboldfoto

The Costume

I draped the fabrics over myself, and with every piece, more of me vanished.

The tight skeletal suit clung to my skin, turning me into a mere silhouette—an echo of something that once lived. The plague mask lay cold against my face, the leather hood pressing my features into oblivion. My hands disappeared into black gloves, as if they had never belonged to a living body.

And then, the veil.

Black, wing-like, fastened to my back. No angel, no salvation. Just a shadow that breathed with me, grew with me.

I looked into the mirror. I was no longer myself.

I was him.

The Performance

The first tones of Tokyo echoed through the room—slow, ominous.

I stood still. Death had not yet taken a step.

Then, with an almost imperceptible tremor, I moved. Hesitant at first, as if death itself had not yet understood that it now existed.

A slow, heavy step. A dragging motion across the floor.

photo: Koboldfoto

Then, a jolt.

A sudden thrust into reality, a twitching awakening. The music thickened, and I began to move faster—abrupt, jagged, as if I were only now beginning to grasp my own form.

The veil flared up, spread wide, darkened the light.

Every movement was a birth.Every gesture, a revelation.

The world now knew he was there.

Death had begun.