Ayakashi are dead and unclean. They are an impure existence that corrode the land and sometimes give birth to monsters. This is a story of an ayakashi mortician who exorcises the defilement and observes the death of the deformed.

The crow doesn't choose the lord is the second installment of Abe's novel Yagarasu series. It is a Japanese-style fantasy that depicts a battle for power in the court, where conspiracies and assassins roar in a world ruled by the Yatagaru clan instead