The fire crackled low in the center of the clearing, flickering against the unnatural dim of the Sunless Village. Here, there was no moon, no stars — only the bruised twilight sky that never changed, a permanent dusk that seemed to press in from all sides. The trees looked petrified, frozen mid-sway, branches like broken arms reaching toward a sky that had long since abandoned them.

Akane sat with her back to the fire, slowly running her whetstone along the edge of her blade. It didn’t need sharpening — she could already slice demon bone with the barest motion — but she liked the rhythm. It gave her hands something to do while her thoughts wandered. And lately, her thoughts had nowhere safe to land.

Shun flopped down across from her, stretching out with a dramatic groan. “We’ve been walking for two days through corpse-colored fog and haunted dirt. I demand meat.”

He held up a makeshift skewer, triumphantly waving the freshly roasted kill. “Behold. Rabbit. Probably.”

Akane caught the skewer when he tossed it, her eyes still on her blade. “I’ll eat when I’m done.”

“She always says that,” Reika said, settling down nearby with quiet precision. Her crimson hair shimmered faintly in the firelight, braided tight to stay out of her face. “Then eats last and complains.”

“I don’t complain,” Akane muttered.

“You’re correct,” Kaoru said softly, seated beside the fire with a scroll of half-finished talismans. “We know.”

They chuckled quietly, the kind of easy laughter that only comes from years of surviving together. For a while, they just let the fire do the talking.

Then Kaoru glanced up. “I’ve been thinking about home lately.”

That word hung in the air like smoke.

“Which one?” Reika asked. “The one that burned, or the one we pretended came after?”

Kaoru didn’t answer right away. “The one before the burning.”

Shun stared into the fire. “Mine was a river town. Always smelled like fish. I hated it.” He paused. “But I miss the sound of the water.”

Reika looked at her hands. “Mine was a shrine. My brother died there. Then my father. Then it wasn’t a home anymore.”

“I don’t remember mine,” Akane said.

Shun looked over at her. “Nothing at all?”

She shook her head. “Bits and pieces. Smells. The shape of a doorway. A voice I can’t match to a face.”

Kaoru leaned forward, wrapping a finished talisman with careful fingers. “Do you think forgetting is easier?”

“No,” Akane said simply. “It just hurts differently.”

Another silence, this one longer. The fire cracked again, sending up a burst of sparks.

“I used to think the Great War was just a myth,” Kaoru said finally. “The one that scorched the land, birthed the demons, shattered the shrines. Thought it was just a scary story.”

“It was a story,” Reika replied. “But the kind that happened.”

“My grandmother used to say it wasn’t the demons that ruined the world,” Shun said. “She said it was people pretending to be gods.”

Akane’s voice was low. “She was right.”

Reika turned to her. “You believe the Prophetess used to be human?”

“I know she did,” Akane said, her voice like a blade unsheathed.

None of them questioned her further.

Shun broke the tension with a sigh. “Well, I say next time we get sent after a talisman, we ask for double pay. One of those floating forest jobs. Maybe a festival in Aomari. Something with lights and alcohol.”

Kaoru smiled. “That would be nice. A village with singing children instead of screaming spirits.”

Reika added, “And guards that don’t run at the first howl.”

“Maybe I’ll even wear white,” Shun said, gesturing at his bloodstained armor. “Try to be the pretty one for once.”

Akane, without looking up, said, “You’d still be the loud one.”

Reika cracked a rare grin. “I’d rather die than hear him flirt with a festival girl.”

Kaoru pretended to gag. “Too late. I’ve heard it. He used a talisman pickup line.”

“That talisman worked,” Shun argued, laughing. “She kissed me!”

“She also slapped you,” Kaoru added.

“Both can be true,” Shun said with a shrug.

Akane let the corner of her mouth curl, just barely.

They lapsed into quiet again, but this one was warm, settled. The kind of silence that didn’t need to be filled.

The firelight danced on their faces. For just a few breaths of time, they weren’t slayers or hunted or cursed. They were four tired warriors in the dark, clinging to stories and embers.

None of them noticed the wind had stopped.

None of them noticed the fire dimming.

Not yet.

🟪

The fire had burned low, reduced now to glowing embers that pulsed like a dying heartbeat.

No one spoke anymore.

The warmth that had once wrapped around them like a shared blanket had thinned, replaced by something colder, sharper. It crawled across their skin like frost — not biting, but warning. Reika shifted first, her eyes narrowing at the treeline as if something behind it had dared to breathe too loudly.

“Kaoru,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.

Kaoru was already on her feet. She hadn’t heard anything — she had felt it. A subtle wrongness, like the spirit of the land had winced.

“The air just changed,” she whispered.

Akane stood without a word, eyes locked on the dark beyond the perimeter. She didn’t reach for her blade. Not yet. She didn’t need to. Her fingers hovered near the hilt with an instinct honed sharper than steel.

Shun stopped chewing, leaning forward slightly, suddenly still.

Reika knelt beside the fire, now coals, and scooped a pinch of ash into her palm. She let it trickle down, watching the way it moved.

It didn’t drift.

No wind.

Akane noticed too. “No wind. No sound.”

Kaoru’s voice tightened. “Even the spirits are quiet.”

That’s when they knew.

They’d walked into something’s den — and only now realized the bones weren’t buried, just patient.

Kaoru pulled a talisman from her sleeve and held it flat against her palm. The paper shimmered with faint silver ink, the symbols pulsing like veins.

“I can place a ward,” she said. “But if something’s close…”

“They’ll know where we are,” Akane finished. “They probably already do.”

Shun rose, his axes drawn. “So what do we do?”

Akane’s tone was steel. “We prepare.”

Reika had already moved to the edge of the camp, her eyes scanning the tree line, body half-shadow as she vanished between flickers of emberlight.

Kaoru took three deep breaths and dropped to one knee. Her fingers danced over the talisman, chanting softly. Symbols flared from the paper and sank into the earth like melting snow. A faint hum built beneath their feet.

“Ward set,” she said.

Akane nodded. “If they cross the edge, we’ll know.”

“Unless they’re smart,” Reika murmured, reappearing like a phantom beside her. “Or worse — guided.”

Shun tightened his grip. “Guided how?”

Akane’s eyes didn’t leave the dark. “Controlled.”

No one had to say by what.

The Skeleton Demon’s influence had grown bolder in the last year. Monsters had once roamed like mindless predators. Now they hunted with purpose. With direction. And that direction almost always pointed to people like them — the ones who resisted the Prophetess.

Kaoru stood, tucking her remaining talismans into her belt. “I hate this place.”

Reika adjusted the straps on her shoulder guard. “Then let’s make sure we don’t die in it.”

A long silence passed. Even Shun didn’t try to break it.

Then Akane whispered, “Positions.”

Everyone moved. Reika took to the shadows, blending into the dead brush like vapor. Kaoru circled wide to the left, talismans ready in one hand, a dagger in the other. Shun flanked right, each axe gripped tight, shoulders loose.

Akane remained at the center.

Blade drawn now. Staring into the dark.

Something out there was watching.

And it was almost time to meet it.

🟪

The first scream shattered the silence.

It wasn’t human.

From the edge of the ward Kaoru had set, a gaunt skeletal beast slammed into the barrier — bone and rotting sinew hissing against spirit-forged energy. It shrieked and convulsed, then burst into black ash.

“Ward’s working,” Kaoru muttered, eyes flicking across the shadows. “But they’re testing it.”

The forest erupted.

They came crawling, sprinting, climbing — monsters made of bone, tar, and stitched flesh. Hollow skulls grinned with too many teeth. Some dragged broken blades behind them. Others climbed on all fours, eyes glowing with curse-light.

And they came fast.

Reika vanished into the brush like smoke. Her blades glinted as she weaved between enemies, silent and surgical. Every motion was clean. One stab into a throat, another into a knee. A quick twist. Collapse.

“Too slow,” she murmured, vanishing again.

Kaoru stood her ground within the ward, lips moving fast as talismans flew from her hands. They ignited mid-air — bursts of spectral flame that didn’t burn, only purified. Wherever her talismans landed, monsters disintegrated with wails of retreating spirits.

Shun leapt into the fray like a force of nature. Twin axes spun in wide arcs, cutting through limbs and torsos. Blood — thick and dark like oil — sprayed across his face, but he only laughed.

“Come on, bone boys! Who’s next?!”

A massive beast lunged toward him — this one taller, thicker, armored in chunks of jagged bone.

Shun grinned. “You’re ugly. I like you.”

The monster swung.

Shun ducked, drove both axes into its chest, kicked off its knee, and flipped over its head. He landed hard and yanked the axes sideways. The monster dropped in two wet halves.

“Still got it!” he shouted, wiping ichor from his brow.

Kaoru smiled under her breath. “Still dramatic.”

Then Akane moved.

She didn’t charge. She didn’t shout.

She walked.

The monsters came at her in droves — four, five, ten at once — a frenzy of claws and gnashing teeth.

She vanished.

No — she accelerated.

Akane blurred between them, her sword trailing behind her like a comet’s tail. Each step echoed like thunder. Limbs fell. Heads rolled. Her cloak billowed behind her, soaked in black blood. She moved like a storm bottled in human form.

One beast tried to flank her from behind.

She stabbed backward without turning. Perfect placement. The creature gurgled and fell.

Kaoru caught her breath. “She’s not even using incantations.”

“She never does,” Reika said, emerging from the brush with two monsters dissolving behind her.

“What *is* she using?” Shun asked, grinning as he kicked a skull off his boot.

“Instinct,” Reika said simply.

Akane raised her free hand and flexed her fingers. From her palm, faint strands of glowing red thread snapped outward — razor-thin, nearly invisible.

They wrapped around a group of monsters mid-charge. In one motion, she clenched her fist.

The threads tightened.

The creatures were sliced apart in midair, bodies falling to the ground in perfectly dissected pieces.

Shun blinked. “Okay. That’s new.”

“She’s experimenting,” Kaoru whispered, awe in her voice.

Another wave approached — a swarm this time.

Reika whistled. “I’ll cut from the back.”

“I’ll split the middle!” Shun roared, already charging.

Kaoru stepped forward, three talismans glowing in her hands.

Akane simply adjusted her grip.

The four warriors met the swarm head-on.

It wasn’t easy — but it wasn’t a question.

This wasn’t their end.

They moved like parts of a whole — Reika slicing pressure points and tendons, Kaoru purging cursed flesh with divine seals, Shun bashing through armored skulls with raw fury, and Akane…

Akane slaughtered like a goddess made of vengeance.

Each swing of her sword carved through more than just bone — it severed fear, doubt, hesitation. She moved like the world owed her an apology.

As the last monster fell, twitching and headless, silence returned to the clearing.

Breaths heavy. Blades dripping.

Shun fell to one knee, panting. “I’m not gonna lie… that was kinda fun.”

Kaoru handed him a cloth. “You need to be more careful.”

Reika surveyed the area. “Nothing left. For now.”

Akane sheathed her sword slowly, scanning the horizon.

“They weren’t smart,” she said. “They were desperate.”

Kaoru frowned. “You think something scared them into attacking?”

Akane didn’t answer.

She was listening. For any other threat.

🟪

The clearing had gone still again.

The last of the monsters had fallen, and for a few breaths, the silence felt like a victory.

Shun leaned on one axe, chest rising and falling with fatigue. He turned to Akane, a cocky grin stretching across his face. “You think that was the main course? ‘Cause I’ve still got room for—”

He never finished the sentence.

A black blur split through the air.

Something impossibly fast.

A sword sliced through Shun’s body in an instant — not horizontal, but vertical — from shoulder to hip.

There was no scream.

Just a wet snap.

Then silence.

Shun’s body fell in two pieces, still upright for a second before collapsing, axes clattering to the ground.

“SHUN!” Kaoru screamed.

Reika staggered back, blades drawn. “No—no, no, no—!”

Akane’s breath hitched — not from fear, but from something deeper. Something colder.

Because standing where Shun had been… was a figure.

Pale. Silent. Robes dragging through the blood-soaked earth.

The **Man of Tears**.

His skull was flawless — like porcelain, but with a sickening sheen of eternal moisture. His eye sockets glowed faintly, like they mourned. His blade dripped not blood, but light — the glowing, struggling threads of a soul being consumed.

Shun’s soul.

It was being drawn into the black blade, pulled slowly, painfully, like it didn’t want to go.

It fought.

It failed.

With a flick of the Man’s wrist, the light snapped inward. Gone.

Kaoru dropped to her knees. “No… not him… please not him—”

Reika lunged first, fury in her movement. Her daggers flashed toward his neck.

The Man didn’t move.

And yet, somehow, he wasn’t there when she struck.

He appeared behind her. Silent.

A backhanded slash knocked her through the air. She crashed into a tree, bark splintering on impact.

Kaoru hurled a talisman — it burned bright with spiritual force and struck the Man in the chest.

He didn’t flinch.

The paper dissolved on contact.

Akane stepped forward.

Her blade came free with a hiss, her eyes burning with something deeper than rage.

“Get back,” she said.

Kaoru scrambled to her feet, dragging Reika with her. “He’s not normal — he’s not—”

“I know,” Akane whispered.

Then she charged.

The air cracked around her.

Akane came at him with a fury unlike anything she’d shown before — her red thread techniques flashing like lightning, her sword swinging in massive, precise arcs. The ground tore beneath her feet. Trees cracked in her wake.

She was faster than she’d ever been.

And still…

She never touched him.

The Man of Tears dodged like water slipping through cracks — no wasted motion, no sound. His blade met hers only once, and the force sent Akane skidding backward through the dirt.

She gritted her teeth. “Fight me!”

Still, he said nothing.

She pressed harder — illusions, thread traps, speed bursts, aura strikes.

Nothing worked.

He was untouchable.

Reika had recovered and rejoined Kaoru, both of them trying to flank. Kaoru’s talismans glowed hotter now, burning with desperation. Reika’s daggers shimmered with ki.

They tried everything — double strikes, distraction bursts, coordinated assaults.

Each time, the Man was faster.

Each time, he retaliated with precise, non-lethal blows — as if to prove they were beneath his interest.

Akane’s breathing turned ragged. Her blade hand trembled.

“This isn’t… possible…”

The Man turned his head.

Kaoru’s eyes went wide. “No—no—don’t—!”

He flicked his blade.

Reika gasped.

A seal burst into the air, spinning like a cursed flower.

It embedded into Reika’s chest.

She screamed.

Light — blue, fragile — began tearing from her skin.

Her soul.

“REIKA!” Kaoru grabbed her, tried to pull her away — but the light was stronger.

With a final shuddering cry, Reika was gone.

No blood. No body.

Just absence.

Akane collapsed to her knees.

Kaoru fell silent.

The fire — long since forgotten — guttered in the breeze.

And the Man of Tears stood, expressionless, blade still weeping.

🟪

The sword cried.

It wasn’t a sound made for mortal ears. The Man of Tears’ blade whined, low and long, like a mourning wind trapped in steel. Every soul it consumed shimmered faintly along its length — tiny lights dancing in agony before vanishing into silence.

Shun.  

Reika.

Gone.

Akane’s fists clenched until her gloves tore. Her shoulders shook, not from fear — but from something far deeper.

Rage.

She stood, slowly, sword dragging behind her like a broken promise. Blood dripped from a dozen cuts across her arms and face. Her breath came in ragged bursts, her chest rising and falling like a storm barely restrained.

The Man of Tears hadn’t moved.

He stood there, skull glistening, blade humming.

As if… distracted.

As if somewhere far behind those hollow eyes, something else had taken hold of his mind.

Akane screamed.

It wasn’t a battle cry.

It was grief.

She charged — faster than before, every ounce of power she had erupting from her like a final prayer. Her red threads snapped forward, hundreds of them, crisscrossing in vicious patterns meant to bind and slice. Her blade sang through the air. Talisman burns glowed along her arm from earlier spells.

She struck.

And the Man of Tears let her.

Her blade cleaved into his side — full force.

No recoil.

No stagger.

No blood.

He didn’t block. He didn’t blink.

The sword simply stopped at his flesh — like trying to cut stone with water.

Akane’s eyes went wide. She swung again — and again — every strike wilder than the last. She didn’t care. She wanted to hurt him. She needed to.

The Man of Tears remained still.

Then, finally, he moved.

His arm lifted, slow as winter, blade raised above his head.

One strike.

One clean, perfect arc — meant to end her.

She tried to move, but her legs faltered. Her strength was gone. She had given it all. She closed her eyes.

“Let her go!!”

A rush of wind — then arms.

Kaoru.

She slammed into Akane and vanished in a blur of speed. The ground cracked behind them from sheer force. Leaves spiraled into the air as the two women shot through the forest, dodging trees, rocks, roots.

“NO!” Akane screamed. She fought Kaoru’s grip, kicking, punching, trying to twist free. “Let me go! LET ME GO!”

Kaoru didn’t answer.

She ran.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, leaving wet trails on her blood-spattered skin. Her breath hitched. Her arms burned. But she didn’t stop.

Behind them, the Man of Tears lowered his blade.

He watched them vanish into the trees.

He did not follow.

The forest grew still again.

The sword in his hand gave one final, high-pitched whine — like a soul wailing in solitude — then quieted.

And the fire that had once warmed their laughter died in the dark…