When the Maiden of Flames descended from the Heavens to rally and lead the Ten Kingdoms against Windigo and his army of demons and monsters, She had ridden on a falling star.
When Windigo and his army of demons and monsters had been subjugated and imprisoned in Yomi, and the Maiden had released the Elements of Purity into the world and taught the people of the kingdoms to purify their land and protect themselves from corruption, She was left without a way to return to her home in the sky. But the Maiden was an embodiment of the Sun, itself one of the ōkami present when the world was created, and was well-versed in magic and the ways of the spirits, and was nothing if She was not clever.
She gathered the greatest silversmiths from the Ten Kingdoms and commanded them to smelt an enormous quantity of silver, according to Her exact instructions. This molten silver was then to be poured into a circular mold, many shaku across, which had a shallow pool of water below it while the smiths prayed to the earthly spirits that inhabited the world with them. When the silver had cooled, the mold was removed and the silver was anointed with more water while the smiths prayed. The silver was then to be polished for one day each with small stones, and then with fine sand, and then with ash, all while the smiths prayed. Finally, it was anointed once more with water, and the silver disc had become a mirror which perfectly reflected every detail of the world, including those which mortals were not able to see unassisted.
The Maiden of Flames, the kings and queens of the Ten Kingdoms, the mighty phoenixes She had created, the silversmiths, and many more then carried this mirror deep into a forest near what was known as Jindaiyama, a mountain so tall it could be seen from almost anywhere in the Ten Kingdoms, that was filled with magic. In forest, She led the procession to a small stream, and ordered many of the trees cut down and the stumps removed, and the wood from the trees to be cut into timber. A shrine was built around the mirror, and a second shrine around that. A great torii was built, and the shrines became separated from the world of mortals. Around the outer shrine, a great garden was planted to thank the forest spirits that had sacrificed their trees that the shrines could be built. Many stones were brought from along the bank of the stream and were used to construct a well where water from the stream was collected, as well as a small pathway through the garden. Finally, a great stone wall was constructed around the shrines and gardens, with an enormous wooden and metal gate becoming the only way in or out.
The Maiden instructed several of the people who had come with Her in the ways of the spirits. How to contact them, how to appease them, how to interpret their desires, and told them that it was now their task to maintain the relationship between mortals and spirits, and so made them the first priests and priestesses. Their training completed, the Maiden entered into the inner shrine, and channeling the magic of the Sun, turned the mirror into a gateway to the Heavens, which she stepped through and returned home.
It was from this mirror that the origin of mirror making was derived, as well as the origin of priests and shrines, and the origin of the relationship between the world of mortals and the world of spirits, and so it became known as the Origin Mirror.
As time passed and the Ten Kingdoms descended into chaos once more, the spirits of the forest became distrustful of mortals and began to chase them away, before secluding themselves. Reports of malevolent yōkai, and even bakemono <shapeshifters> in the forest began to spread, and the people avoided the forest. This forest, becoming ever more foreboding, became known as Mei-shinrin, or the Dark Wood. When the Sun returned as the Empress of light, Philomena, she did not attempt to guide mortals back to the Origin Mirror, feeling that her presence would only upset the spirit of the forest further.
As more time passed, the location of the Origin Mirror became lost, and the Mirror itself passed into legend and became known only by avid students of history. Until one night, one thousand years after Windigo was first sealed away in Yomi, when a Demon Queller from the capital of Heavenspire, and an artist, an inventor, a merchant, a rancher, and a priest from the village of Taiyō-sen set foot nervously into Mei-shinrin in an effort to save the world for a second time.