The Minami Kaidō was quieter than it should have been. It wasn't the absence of birds, nor the silence of animals that unsettled Haruki. It was the absence of demons. No mist trailed them. No branch snapped in the undergrowth. No distant scraping of crystalline bristles carried through the trees. That, more than anything, felt wrong.
Rei walked a few steps behind them, too close to danger, too young to witness all of this. Haruki felt her stomach tighten with every step. She said nothing. She did not show it. But her gaze drifted back often. If anything happened, she would reach Rei first.
Kuroda walked beside her in silence. His expression had hardened over the past days—not from exhaustion, but from resolve. His ancestors had betrayed the dragons. The Bloodbreakers had stained the world with blood. He had not chosen the blade, but the past had chosen him. Every step he took seemed to say the same thing: I will not repeat it.
By the end of the first day, they still believed they would cross the forest quickly. By the second, they understood the truth. The Minami Kaidō was no longer a road—only a memory of one. Trees had reclaimed the path. Roots tore through the soil. At times they were forced to carve their way around dense undergrowth. They rested without fire at night, unwilling to draw attention. The silence grew heavier after dusk, as though the forest itself were listening.
On the third morning, they found the first sign: an abandoned hunting trap half-buried beneath fallen leaves. The metal had not rusted. The spring had already snapped open. No blood. No fur. Only a deep indentation in the earth that vanished a few steps later. Kuroda studied it for a long moment before speaking. "It didn't struggle."
Later, a thick tree trunk blocked their path. The wood had split down the center—not from the outside, but from within. The fibers parted cleanly along the grain, as though something had passed straight through it. Not cut. Not torn. Forced. Rei said nothing. Haruki did not either. The forest did not attack them. It simply allowed them to pass.
By the fourth afternoon, the trees began to thin. The soil hardened. The air grew drier. Then the forest ended abruptly.
Beyond it stretched a barren expanse of dust and pale earth, as if the land itself had retreated. In the distance, low walls and rooftops emerged through rising smoke.
Hoshikawa.
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