The story begins in Tokyo on the fifteenth birthday of Kagome Higurashi, a girl who lives on the grounds of her family's hereditary Shinto shrine with her mother, grandfather and little brother. When she goes into the well house to retrieve her cat, a centipede demon bursts out of the enshrined Bone Eater's Well (骨喰いの井戸 Honekui no Ido) and drags the girl into it. Instead of hitting the bottom of the well, Kagome ends up 500 years in the past (1497) during Japan's Sengoku period. The centipede demon is revealed to have been after a magical jewel known as the Shikon Jewel (四魂の玉 Shikon no Tama, lit. "The Jewel of Four Souls") before being slain by a priestess named Kikyo. Revived by the Shikon Jewel's power in the present time and mistaking her for Kikyo, the demon attempts to kill Kagome to