The following cycle brought the Raining Season, beginning as a fine mist that clung to the air before thickening into a steady, somber downpour. It was under this weeping sky that Kaito and Kiyomi prepared to depart. Their primary mission—the protection of the sacred relic—compelled them to return to their order, yet they lingered at the threshold of Roki's home.
"Her spirit is strong, but her body is shattered," Kaito murmured to the elder, his gaze drifting toward the room where No One lay unconscious. "She will need allies when she wakes."
Kiyomi offered Sayaka a small, woven ward. "For peaceful rest," she said softly, though her eyes suggested she knew peace would not come easily for the girl. With a final, shared look of profound gratitude and unspoken worry, the priest and priestess ventured back into the Shadow-Wood, leaving Tasuke village to its fate.
Their departure did nothing to lift the pall that had fallen over the community. If anything, it worsened. The massive swarm of ravens that had escorted the refugees from Higashimori did not disperse with the coming rain. Instead, it settled over the village like a living shroud. And it began to grow.
No One's very presence was a magnet for them. Day by day, more ravens were drawn from the deep woods, abandoning their roosts to join the grim, swirling vortex above Elder Roki's home. The sound was a constant, unnerving chorus—a mix of guttural caws and the oppressive beat of a thousand wings that turned the rain-soaked twilight into an unnatural night. Villagers shuttered their windows, whispering of a "death curse" that had followed the refugees, their fearful gazes always returning to their elder's home.
The fear finally boiled over. A delegation, their faces pale and taut in the gloom, confronted Roki outside his house. He met their gaze not with simple deception, but with the heavy weariness of a leader caught in an impossible choice. He did not speak of the girl within, of the impossible debt owed to her. Instead, he chose his words with care, acknowledging the terrifying omen in the sky. He decreed that prayers would be offered daily at the village shrine—a communal plea for deliverance.
It was a fragile shield of hope against a growing tide of dread, an answer he knew would not hold for long. And as the first villagers gathered to light incense against the encroaching dark, their chants swallowed by the rain and the roar of wings, a new horror began to unfold within Roki's walls.
The nightmares came.
As No One lay broken in the unfamiliar bed, the restless sanctuary of her dreams—soaring on black wings—shattered. The feeling of wind beneath feathers dissolved into the memory of small feet on soft earth. In its place rose a ghost she had suppressed for a decade: Kimiko.
For the first time since she had shed her name, she was five years old again in Akamura. The air tasted of pine and damp soil, and the muted light of High Twilight felt warm on her skin. She saw her mother, Houko, her dark hair tied back with a simple red cord, her form a graceful dance of the slayer's art as she moved through a kata. Her eyes, warm as embers glowing in a hearth, found Kimiko's and crinkled into a smile, a silent promise of a hug later. She saw her father, Akio, a pillar of stoic strength, his calloused hands expertly parrying a practice sword from her brother. His movements were fearless and precise, and the rare, approving nod he gave his son felt like the highest praise in the world.
And beside them stood Shio—tall and courageous, his youthful face bright with sweat and determination. "Watch this, Kimi!" he called out, his voice full of laughter as he attempted a difficult maneuver, stumbling slightly but recovering with a grin.
A sunburst of a laugh escaped the little girl. This was her world. This was safety. This was love. She ran toward them, her arms open for a loving embrace, eager to be enveloped in the scent of her mother's hair and the solid strength of her father's arms.
But the moment she drew near, the warm scene fractured. The sounds of the village—the clang of a distant smithy, the laughter—faded into an unnerving silence. Their smiles froze, becoming masks of painted wood. Without a word, their movements now jerky and unnatural, they turned and ran. The shadows of the deep woods seemed to reach for them, swallowing them whole.
A chill of abandonment pierced her heart. "Mama!" she cried, her voice small and thin. "Papa, wait! Shio, don't leave me!" Fearing she would lose them forever, Kimiko ran after them, her joyful smile collapsing into a desperate plea as the distance between them impossibly widened.
Her small legs burned, her lungs ached. She tripped, the world tumbling in a blur of green and brown as her hands and knees scraped against the packed earth, staining her red kimono. As she struggled to rise, a dead weight slammed down, pinning her, suffocating her. It was heavy, and terribly, terribly still. Through a gap under the crushing weight, she saw her parents running back towards her now. Their mouths moved in silent, frantic screams, their faces masks of pure terror. Kimiko tried to reach for them, but she was trapped. She looked up, forcing her head to turn, to see the face of the body pinning her.
It was Shio. His eyes, once full of fire, were wide, glassy, and empty. A line of crimson trickled from the corner of his limp mouth, tracing a path through the dirt on his cheek.
The world dissolved into chaos. From the edge of her vision, a tide of snarling, twisted faces poured from the trees—demons. She saw the gleam of jagged steel, the wet crunch of blades meeting bone, the splintering of her father's sword as he made his final, defiant stand. She heard her mother's last, desperate cry cut short. She tried to scream, but the sound was a strangled, useless thing in her throat. She fought to move, to escape, but her brother's corpse held her fast, an anchor in her own private hell.
Suddenly, she was wrenched from beneath Shio's body, the movement shockingly gentle. She was pulled tight against another form. She looked up and into the face of a shockingly handsome man, his fine silk kimono impossibly clean amidst the carnage. His features were elegant, his smile calm and warm, but his eyes held a cold, ancient amusement. It was Daisuke.
"There now, little one," he whispered, his voice like silken thread. He gently wiped a smudge of dirt from her cheek with his thumb. "The noise is over."
She stared, paralyzed by the horrific disconnect between his soft touch and the massacre behind him. His other hand, impossibly cold, rose and touched her forehead. A searing, white-hot agony erased the world. Then—snap.
No One's own scream finally tore free, a horrifying, inhuman sound she had never made before. In the Deep Twilight, Sayaka burst into the room to find her thrashing, her eyes wide with a terror that wasn't in the room. Simultaneously, the sky outside erupted. The cawing of the ravens became a deafening roar as their circling radius exploded outward, engulfing the entire village. Panicked villagers, believing the winged curse was descending to devour them, fled their homes only to recoil in greater fear from the suffocating, living tornado of black wings.
On the floor, No One was still lost, trying to crawl away from her nightmare on one good arm, escaping a memory that was everywhere. After several failed attempts to shake her awake, Sayaka acted with grim purpose. She hurried to a locked wooden chest, retrieving a small, dark pouch. Inside was the powdered, carefully processed root of torikabuto—a plant that was a deadly poison in the wild, but a powerful, dangerous sedative in her skilled hands. Mixing the dark powder into a small amount of hot water, she created a bitter, inky-black draught. As Roki held the violently struggling girl still, Sayaka gently but firmly administered the potent concoction.
Slowly, the violent thrashing subsided, her screams softening into ragged breaths. Outside, the deafening roar of the ravens quieted to an oppressive, swirling silence. But their presence remained—a siege upon the village. Roki and Sayaka exchanged a look of dread. Tasuke village was now in peril, not from a demon they could fight, but from the tormented soul of the girl who had saved Higashimori.
By the time Waxing Twilight cast its fragile light through the downpour, Roki's exhaustion was a physical weight. He and Sayaka had not slept. They were confronted at their door by a small group of villagers, their faces hollowed by fear.
"Elder, we cannot endure this," one man pleaded, his voice trembling. "The sky is a wound that will not close. The children do not sleep. It is a curse."
Roki, his shoulders slumped and his eyes sunken, could only offer them the same fragile defense. "Pray," he said, his voice thin and frayed. "Pray at the village shrine." He offered no other explanation, retreating from their desperate faces and closing the door on his cursed home, leaving them to their futile rituals.
Later that night, as Deep Twilight consumed the world in its tangible blackness, the cycle of horror began anew. It started with a whimper before erupting into raw, ragged shrieks. Trapped in her own mind, No One thrashed against an enemy no one else could see.
She dreamt she was standing in the great hall of the northern temple again. The air was unnaturally cold and thick with the cloying scent of incense mixed with something else, something metallic and sour—the coppery tang of spilled blood and the stench of rot. The monks were all there, standing amidst the prayer cushions, not in meditation, but as a silent, spectral audience. Their faces were pale masks of cold fury, and she recognized them. There was the young one, his right shoulder a mangled, empty space. There was the large monk, a dark, weeping wound in his thigh. There was the last one she had killed, his eyes wide with the same terrified defiance he'd held in death.
"Murderer," the head monk said, his voice a low hiss that echoed in the cavernous hall.
They began to circle her, their movements slow and deliberate. "We were innocent," another whispered, the sound crawling up her spine. "We offered you sanctuary."
"You defiled our home," a third accused. "You brought your curse to our sacred ground."
"It's your fault," they began to chant, their voices overlapping into a hateful chorus. "It's your fault we are dead. We would be alive if not for you."
Panic seized her. She was weaponless, her right arm hanging numb and useless at her side—a phantom limb even in her dreams. "I..." she stammered, the words fumbling, feeling like ash in her mouth. "I didn't... I thought you were..." She tried to apologize, to explain the spiders she'd seen before, but the words wouldn't form. Her guilt was a physical weight, crushing her lungs.
The head monk smiled, a chilling, unnatural expression that stretched his lips too far. "Oh, you mean these spiders?"
His mouth unhinged with the sound of tearing flesh and cracking bone. From the gaping, dark maw, a pair of glistening black legs, thin and bristly, forced their way out, followed by a bulbous, pulsating body. A grotesque Arachnoid Horror, its carapace shining like polished obsidian and its multiple ruby-red eyes gleaming with malice, squeezed itself from the monk's ruined throat and dropped to the floor with a wet smack.
One by one, the other monks began to transform. Their bodies convulsed with sporadic, inhuman jerks as the horrors within clawed their way out, a grotesque birth born from her own guilt. The air filled with the chitinous clicking of a hundred tiny, sharp legs skittering on stone. The swarm crawled over her, their weight and their clammy, bristly legs a disgusting caress on her exposed skin. She tried to bolt, but the ring of monstrous bodies was a solid, living wall.
She fell, swarmed by a tide of clicking bodies. The sour stench of them was suffocating. More spiders crawled up her legs, her arms, their venom-tipped mandibles snapping hungrily. One scrambled onto her face, its legs tickling her lips, trying to force its way into her mouth as she screamed and screamed.
Sayaka rushed in again, but No One was unreachable. The torikabuto had to be prepared—a desperate, dangerous ritual that was becoming terrifyingly familiar. Roki's own muscles burned with exhaustion as he wrestled with the girl's one good arm, his strength barely enough to contain her frenzied attempts to escape the nightmare. It was a battle against her terror, and it was taking a visible toll on him.
Once the tea was administered, all they could do was wait. The violent thrashing slowly calmed, but outside, the raven swarm flared, a visible, audible representation of her agony. In their homes, the people of Tasuke lay awake, prisoners caught between the demon-haunted woods outside and the supernatural storm raging within their walls, praying for a dawn that brought no relief.
The following day, High Twilight did little to pierce the gloom. A heavy, relentless downpour beat against the village, its rhythm as ceaseless as the vortex of ravens still circling overhead.
Inside, No One lay unnervingly still, a stark contrast to the violent thrashing of her nights. Her body was motionless, but silent tears flowed from the corners of her eyes, tracing paths down her temples into her matted hair—a river of grief with no end. She was no longer in Roki's home but in the cold, empty space of her own mind. In the featureless dark, a single figure stood before her: Kimiko, the five-year-old girl she had been forced to kill to survive.
"Why didn't you save me?" the ghost of herself asked, her voice thin and accusatory. Her hair was a knotted mess, her face and kimono stained with dirt. "Why didn't you save Mama, Papa, and big brother?"
Tears now streamed down Kimiko's small, ghostly face. No One stood silent, paralyzed. There were no words, no actions that could ever make it better.
"I hate you," the little girl whispered, the words striking with more force than any physical blow. "I hate you more than they hated me."
As she spoke, the specters of Akamura's villagers materialized from the darkness behind her, their faces grim, their eyes glaring with judgment. A low murmur rippled through the ghostly crowd, a tide of venomous whispers she remembered all too well.
"The cursed one..." a woman hissed.
"Her carelessness cost us everything," another spat.
Then a new, more monstrous accusation took shape. "She didn't just get them killed," a man's voice declared, sharp with certainty. "Her weakness... her presence... she was the weapon that broke our finest squad. She might as well have held the blade herself."
The murmur grew into a chorus of agreement. "She killed them. She killed Kinichi Kimiko. She killed them all."
From the crowd, Elder Tanaka stepped forward, his expression carved from pure hatred. His voice was the same cold nail that had sealed her fate all those years ago.
"So, the monster finally shows its face," he sneered, his eyes locking onto hers. "We see you. A ghost hiding in the skin of a girl who should have died. You carry the stain of their deaths because you are the one who dealt the blow." He leaned closer, his spectral face contorting with rage. "Why are you still here? Why don't you just die and let them have peace?"
The final words echoed, twisting through the darkness of her mind until they were no longer an accusation from a ghost, but a genuine question taking root in the barren soil of her soul. The hatred of her village, the grief of her inner child—it all coalesced into a single, unbearable truth. She was guilty.
More tears spilled from No One's eyes, and her own voice, barely a whisper, gave the question life.
"Why don't I just give up… and die?"
Her tear-blurred eyes finally shut, and she drifted from one nightmare into the next, an unwelcoming slumber that offered no escape.
Later that Deep Twilight cycle, the fragile quiet was torn apart again. The now-routine eruption of screams from Roki's home was met by the frenzied cawing of the raven swarm, a nightly ritual of terror that held the village hostage.
No One dreamt she was in a dark cave. The air, cold and stagnant, tasted of wet stone and old decay. There was no torch, no light to pierce the oppressive blackness that seemed to swallow sound itself. As she wandered, searching for an exit, a pair of cruel, phosphorescent eyes ignited in the distance. Then another, and another. A chorus of grim, guttural laughter echoed around her, a wet, cackling sound that promised violence as the hulking, stooped shapes of goblins began to shuffle closer.
Again, she was weaponless. Her hands scrabbled against the damp stone, finding no rocks or sticks to fight with. Panic seized her, and she turned and ran, her bare feet slapping against the cold, wet floor. Her heart hammered against her ribs as the laughter and the heavy, slapping footfalls of multiple entities gave chase. The stone walls, slick with a foul-smoping ooze, began to close in.
The tunnel split ahead—left or right? The cackling seemed to echo from both directions. She chose left, a random, desperate guess, her breath tearing in ragged bursts.
The passage twisted, forcing her to a hunched-over shuffle, the rough stone scraping against her back. It forked again, and she plunged straight ahead, into a tunnel that grew progressively narrower. Soon she was forced to her hands and knees, the stagnant air thick with the smell of decay. Cold, wet dirt packed itself under her fingernails and ground into her knees, but she pressed on, her eyes fixed on a faint, sickly light that flickered far ahead—a promise of escape.
The entities were gaining. She could feel their filthy, sharp claws scratching at her feet and ankles, a constant, terrifying reminder of their pursuit. The passage shrank again until she could no longer crawl. The ceiling was so low it ground against her cheek as she turned her head sideways, forcing herself into the impossibly tight space on her stomach. Her hair filled with wet dirt and mud. She swam through the earth in a desperate scramble, her fingers digging into the packed dirt, clawing for purchase as she heaved her body forward inch by agonizing inch through the tight, unforgiving passage.
The laughter was directly behind her now, their guttural sounds vibrating through the stone. Their claws raked her ankles, struggling to get a solid grip as she kicked and squirmed forward. The light ahead grew brighter. Hope surged, raw and powerful. It looked like an exit, a way out into the open air. With a final, desperate heave, she pulled herself through the tightest squeeze and into a slightly larger space.
But the light was a trick, a figment of her imagination that winked out, plunging her into absolute darkness. She hit a dead end, her face pressing into a wall of damp, packed earth. She began to claw at it, her breath coming in ragged sobs as the laughter and the sound of bodies grew deafeningly close. Then, a hand, strong and grimy, clamped around her ankle like a manacle and dragged her back into the darkness.
She was in the faintly lit goblin chamber. The foul stench of unwashed bodies, stale blood, and excrement filled the air. They were all around her, their chittering excitement a terrifying sound as they began clawing at her skin, their sharp nails tearing away her wolf pelts. A desperate instinct screamed at her to flee, but a wave of bodies slammed down on her back, their weight crushing the air from her lungs. Grimy hands and knees pinned her limbs to the floor; she was utterly immobilized as their sharp claws continued to rip her clothes apart.
A brute of a hobgoblin stood before her, leering down with yellowed teeth as the last of her bandages were ripped from her body. He made crude, mocking gestures, a vile pantomime of her impending fate. Beyond him, her eyes fixed on the true horror of the chamber: the violated corpses of the dead human mothers, their lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling, their bodies discarded amidst their dead goblinoid children. It was a vision of the future that was soon to be hers.
"Calm down! Wake up!" Roki screamed, his own voice hoarse with exhaustion as he struggled to pin her thrashing body to the shikibuton. His arms, strained beyond their limits, screamed in protest. A flailing arm sent the first small bowl of the dark liquid crashing against the wall, the precious, dangerous draught lost. Sayaka stifled a cry of frustration, her face a mask of grim determination as she prepared the second dose with trembling hands, knowing their chances were dwindling.
The nightmares were only getting worse. After a long, agonizing struggle, they finally managed to force the bitter torikabuto draught down her throat—a desperate, brutal act of salvation that felt like drowning her as her screams were punctuated by choking and renewed flailing.
But soon, the potent herbs took hold. Her movements calmed, and her screams finally broke into choked, shuddering sobs. Too exhausted to get up, Roki simply collapsed beside her, laying there in the quiet defeat of their small victory. Sayaka lay down next to her husband, a small island of shared comfort in the hell that had consumed their lives.
During the next High Twilight, the fragile hope of the remaining villagers shattered. A handful of families decided that any fate was better than this slow, suffocating dread. Clutching what few belongings they could carry, they made a desperate run from their homes, their goal the village of Kawaakari to the west. They would take their chances with the demons of the Shadow-Wood rather than stay another night under the cursed sky.
For the others, fear was a stronger cage than any wall. They remained trapped, only daring to leave their homes in quick, terrified scurries to the village storehouse for food and supplies. They knew all too well that their rations were dwindling. The news of Tasuke's plight had spread; traveling merchants and supply caravans now detoured widely around the village, unwilling to approach the "death curse" that consumed it.
Their last resort was their elder. A crowd gathered once more, their voices frayed with panic, begging Roki to send for aid. With the monks gone, only the demon slayers could save them.
Roki, a hollowed-out version of the man he was just days ago, listened to their pleas, his own exhaustion a heavy cloak. He knew he couldn't call the slayers—they would see the Mark on the girl's forehead, feel the power of the curse, and "deal with" the source. He had to lie to protect her, even if it cost him his people.
"We don't have the money to pay them," he said, his voice trembling with a fatigue that looked like fear. "To hire slayers to fight a curse of this magnitude... it would be a price we couldn't afford even in a good season." He couldn't meet their eyes. He simply turned his back on their heartbroken faces and retreated into his home.
The door sliding shut was the sound of their final hope dying. The prayers at the shrine were unanswered. The village had no funds for saviors. Fleeing now felt like suicide—a choice between being eaten by the demons of the wood or the feathered demon that haunted their sky. They were trapped, helpless, and hopeless. Death, it seemed, would soon consume them all.
A month had passed under the weeping sky. The village supplies had drained to almost nothing, and while No One's violent nightmares had subsided, they were replaced by a quiet, waking despair. She lay as a hollowed-out shell, her only movement the silent, ceaseless river of tears that flowed from vacant eyes. Her will was as broken as her body; she was consumed by a quiet yearning for the oblivion she was too weak to seek. Roki could only stand and watch her wither away, while Sayaka wept for the dying girl and the dying village.
On one fateful Deep Twilight cycle, as the rain hammered down with unusual intensity, No One's consciousness drifted. Her mind wandered into the ravens, and she flew high above the storm. The vortex of black wings still consumed the village, but their caws were sporadic, tired. The world shunned Tasuke, yet through the storm, she saw them: a series of torches, bobbing and weaving through the woods, heading directly for the village. And they were moving fast. Who would willingly approach a place the rest of the world now shunned?
Her mind didn't have to wander long. Bandits.
Her eyes snapped open in the dark room, her heart suddenly pounding. Through the eyes of the flock, she watched as fifteen men on horseback burst through the village perimeter. Their torch flames, flickering weakly against the downpour, were touched to the eaves of the nearest homes. One by one, the walls of Tasuke village caught fire, the vortex of black wings a mere veil the riders were willing to pierce.
Villagers ran from their burning homes into the mud, their screams of panic swallowed by the storm. Men who rushed out to defend their families were cut down from horseback before they could raise a weapon. The bandits' arrogant laughter mixed with the cries of women and children, who were brutalized and thrown to the cold, wet ground.
The sound of splintering wood and shrieks of terror finally reached Roki. He burst into No One's room and rushed to her side, his face a mask of terror. "We have to go!" he yelled, grabbing her unresponsive arm. "Bandits! They're burning the village!"
The words, the screams, the chaos outside—it all pierced the fog of her despair. Her heart hammered in her chest, a war drum coming to life.
"Give me my katana," she muttered, her voice a hoarse whisper.
"You're too weak! You'll die out there!" Roki exclaimed, trying to pull her to her feet.
You'll die out there. The words echoed in her mind, but it was not Roki's voice she heard. It was the sneering, hateful voice of Elder Tanaka. His spectral face superimposed itself over Roki's, his eyes filled with condemnation.
Something inside her snapped. Her face hardened, the river of tears instantly forgotten. A decade of buried resilience, of defiance against those who had cast her out, surged forth and consumed her fear.
Her vacant eyes ignited with a cold fire. She shook Roki's hands off her, her body suddenly taut with purpose. Her voice was no longer a whisper, but a low, dangerous command. "Give me. My katana."
Roki and Sayaka recoiled from the sudden, terrifying shift in her demeanor. Fearing what this new, cold version of the girl might do, but fearing the bandits more, Sayaka retrieved the sheathed katana.
She handed the weapon to No One. "Be careful," Roki pleaded, his voice thin with dread. "These men are ruthless."
No One took the sword, its familiar weight a grim comfort in her left hand. "So am I," she said, her voice devoid of all emotion save for a chilling certainty. "They are already dead. Their bodies will float in the mud before the twilight changes."
No One's eyes closed for a moment, her hand resting on the sheathed katana. Then, they snapped open, wide and alert. The roar of flames battling the rain, the splintering of wood, the arrogant shouts of invaders—the sounds crashed over her, silencing the ghosts in her mind. Though her body screamed in protest and a daze of pain clouded her senses, a deeper, primal instinct ignited—a cold, sharp spike of adrenaline that cut through the despair. Get up. Fight. Or you will die here, trapped and helpless.
She reached for her pelts, for the familiar, comforting weight of her armor, but her hands found only the thin cotton of the dark blue kimono Sayaka had given her. A fleeting memory of the inferno at Higashimori flashed in her mind—her gear, her history, was nothing but ash. This borrowed garment was all she had.
With a painful, deliberate lurch, she pushed past the agony of her injuries and moved towards the entrance. Roki's face crumpled, his voice a choked, desperate plea. "Be safe," he wept, but his words were lost in the roar of the storm.
She stepped outside. The cold rain hit her like a physical blow, plastering her dark hair to her scalp and making the thin kimono cling to her bruised body. Before her was a hell of fire and water. Torches cut weakly through the downpour, casting a sickly orange glow on streams of mud and ash. Homes that had stood for generations were now roaring pyres against the perpetual twilight.
This was no chaotic raid; it was an extermination. She saw bandits on horseback move with practiced cruelty, cutting down any man who rushed out to defend his home. Another group dismounted, dragging screaming women and children from the burning buildings, beating them to the ground with casual brutality. Their cries of terror and pain echoed in the storm, a cacophony of horror that settled in her gut like a cold stone.
A hulking figure on a warhorse, the leader of the bandits, laughed as rain sluiced from his leather armor. He gestured with a steel gauntlet at the churning sky.
"See, boys?" he bellowed over the storm, his grin a flash of yellowed teeth. "All that cawing is just noise! This village's 'curse' is nothing but a coward hiding behind a flock of dumb birds. We'll finish the job."
"You're right, boss!" another bandit shouted, pulling his horse up alongside. "They just fly around! Haven't so much as pecked one of us!"
A third rider, his face wild with bloodlust, joined them. "When we find the thing makin' 'em fly, I wanna kill it!"
The boss let out a sharp, arrogant laugh. "Not if I kill it first! Burn everything! Burn the shrine, too! Flush it out! Whatever demon is hiding in this mudhole won't escape me."
Heeding the command, one of the riders broke away, hurling his torch onto the roof of another hut. The damp thatch sputtered for a moment before catching, smoking out anyone who dared to stay inside before the flames consumed the walls.
The sky was in the Heart of Shadows, a near-uniform black so profound it felt tangible, a bruised heaven that offered no stars, only the violent, flickering light of the fires below. No One slowly walked out from Roki's home. Just as she cleared the threshold, a group of bandits arrived to decimate the house, their horses steaming in the torrential rain, their forms bulky and menacing. They quickly dismounted, their faces grim under their hoods, swords drawn. Two approached her, their eyes widening slightly in surprise at the sight of the lone, injured woman in a flimsy kimono standing in their path, while the third made an attempt to ignite the house with his torch.
A fatal error. They focused on the wrong target.
No One met the two bandits head-on. Pain shot through her body with every pained, deliberate step. Her left arm, gripping the katana, felt weak, clumsy compared to her usual fluid grace. But instinct, sharp and absolute, took over.
The storm bled from the sky like a wound—deep violet clouds slashed by lightning, the downpour deafening as it hammered earth and ash, mud swirling around her bare feet. No One stood in the center of the madness, her soaked kimono clinging to her frail, bruised body, black hair plastered to her pale face, rain streaming into her eyes. In her left hand, the katana wavered, trembling with each breath she fought to take. Her right arm hung limply, a useless weight. The world was chaos—smoke and screams, the sickening crunch of flesh under bootheels, the smell of wet earth and burning wood.
The first bandit laughed, a harsh, cruel sound. He saw the injured woman, the single sword. "Look what we got here. Thought you could—"
He didn't finish. Flash. The Mark on her forehead screamed a warning—a searing, split-second vision of his blade slicing across her throat, the world tilting sideways. Her own blade, reacting to the vision of her death, screamed through the rain. It cut through the storm's roar in a desperate, horizontal arc that slashed across his throat before he could complete his swing. He fell with a gurgle, his torch hissing out in the mud. In the sky above, the anxious silence of the raven swarm broke, a chorus of sharp, approving caws cutting through the rain, signaling her shift from dormant to active predator.
The second rushed forward in a rage. Flash.—His blade cutting deep across her shoulder, the grating of bone, a scream of agony… She was too slow, her battered body refusing to react with its usual impossible speed. His sword grazed her, a sharp sting atop the deep ache, but she pirouetted with the impact, using his momentum against him, and buried her katana in his chest.
She tore the blade free with a grunt of effort, the steel slick with blood and rain. Her knees buckled as she slipped on the wet ground—she was too weak, the combined effort and pain overwhelming. But instinct screamed louder than pain.
As she fought to push herself up from the mud, her vision swimming, she saw the third bandit, his back to her, holding a sputtering torch to the wall of Roki's home. A new surge of protective fury cut through her pain. With a raw cry, she surged up from the mud and launched into a desperate, staggering charge toward him.
Her vision swam as she fought to push herself up from the mud. Through the rain and smoke, she saw the third bandit, his back to her, holding a sputtering torch to the wall of Roki's home. A new surge of protective fury, hot and sharp, cut through the cold agony of her injuries. With a raw, animalistic cry that tore from her throat, she hauled herself from the mud and launched into a desperate, staggering charge toward him.
The scattered, approving caws from the raven flock overhead converged at the sound of her cry, sharpening into a focused, aggressive roar that mirrored her charge. Hearing the unholy sound, the bandit spun around, yanking his torch away from the rain-soaked wood with a frustrated curse. He saw her—this mud-caked, bleeding thing stumbling toward him—and his frustration twisted into a cruel grin. It was an easy kill. He dropped the useless torch into the slurry and raised his sword, charging to meet her.
"You cursed bitch!" he bellowed, his voice a roar that challenged the storm itself as he swung his sword in a powerful overhead arc. "You'll pay for my men! And this house burns after you do!"
Flash. The Mark on her forehead erupted with a searing, split-second vision—the heavy blade cleaving down through her shoulder and into her chest, a brutal, definitive end.
Her desperate charge was already committed; she couldn't stop or dodge. Acting on the premonition of her own death, she threw herself low, her feet sliding out from under her in the treacherous mud. She dropped into a low crouch, sliding under the whistling arc of his sword, which passed harmlessly over her head. He was overextended, his body exposed for a fatal instant.
From her crouched position, she drove her katana upward with a guttural cry, a brutal, pragmatic thrust that required no grace, only instinct. The blade slid cleanly between his ribs, punching through leather and flesh into his heart.
His eyes went wide with shock, the curse dying on his lips in a wet gurgle. He looked down at the sword buried in his chest, then at the bleeding, mud-caked woman at his feet, his mind unable to process his own death. He collapsed beside her, a dead weight in the pouring rain. She pushed his body away, her breath coming in ragged, painful gasps as she used her katana to push herself back to her feet.
Three more came at once, their faces shifting from confidence to a mix of rage and dawning unease. No One exhaled, a ragged breath. She gritted her teeth, raising the katana to guard.
The first's axe came down. Clang. She parried it, a shockwave of agony shooting up her arm. Her injured ribs screamed. She twisted, catching the second one's sword on the flat of her blade. The third lunged with a spear. Flash.—A searing pain in her thigh, the spear plunging deep, falling helpless…
She stepped aside—but not fast enough. Her mind saw the danger, her instinct screamed to move, but her body betrayed her. The spearpoint tore through the muscle of her thigh. A scream was ripped from her throat—not of fear, but of pure, defiant fury. In that instant, her agony resonated outwards. The sky exploded. The anxious cawing became a deafening, furious roar as the entire flock descended into a chaotic, churning maelstrom, a perfect mirror to the tempest that had just been unleashed within her.
With a roar of her own, she stabbed her katana into the muddy ground, using it as an anchor. Fighting through the blinding pain, she gripped the spear shaft protruding from her leg with her left hand and, with a brutal yank, pulled it free. The sickening tear of flesh was answered by another raw cry. Hot blood mingled with the rain, soaking her kimono crimson. The bandit who had speared her stared, horrified by the act. She gave him no time to recover. She lunged, ignoring the fire in her leg, and drove the blood-slick point of the spear straight through his chest.
Flash.—A sword cutting deep into her back, hitting the ground… A bandit who had circled behind her surged forward. No One spun on her good leg, swinging the gruesome spear in a wild arc and driving its sharp end into his abdomen. She let the spear fall, a discarded weapon slick with blood, and yanked her katana from the mud, the cold steel a familiar weight in her left hand. The last man from the trio, the axe wielder, stared at her, his chest heaving with rage and a flicker of fear. He watched his two comrades die in seconds, and now this bleeding, broken woman stood before him, ready for more.
With a furious roar, he tightened his grip, placing both hands on the haft of his heavy axe. He put his full weight into a mighty overhead swing, aiming to split her in two.
She felt too slow, her fresh leg injury turning the thought of a swift dodge into a fantasy. Her only choice was to meet the blow. She raised her katana to block.
Clang.
The impact was bone-shattering. A shockwave of force traveled down the katana and into her arm, and the sheer power of the two-handed blow knocked her off her feet, sending her sprawling backward into the mud. Her injured ribs screamed in protest.
He laughed, a cruel, triumphant sound, and advanced on her as she struggled to get up. He raised his axe again for another devastating swing. She managed to get to one knee, bringing her blade up just in time.
Clang.
The second block was even worse. The force drove her back down, slamming her shoulder into the mud and knocking the air from her lungs. She gasped, her vision swimming with black spots.
The bandit loomed over her, a dark, hulking shape against the fires of the distant village, his victory assured. He raised the axe a third time, gripping it with both hands for the final, brutal execution, and brought it swinging down.
This time, she didn't block. Fueled by a surge of desperate energy, she rolled hard to her left, the slick mud aiding her movement as the heavy axe head buried itself in the earth where she had been a moment before. Before he could wrench the weapon free, she rose to one knee, her katana held tight in her left hand.
With a pained cry, she swung the blade in a wide, horizontal arc, slicing deep into his side and grating against his ribs. He roared, not in triumph, but in sudden, sharp agony, stumbling back a step as his hands went to the gushing wound.
That was the only opening she needed. Using the momentum of her slash, she spun, planting her good foot and rising to her full height. As he turned toward her, his face a mask of pained disbelief, she brought her katana down with all her force onto the back of his exposed neck.
The bandit's roar was cut short with a wet, gurgling sound. His head toppled from his shoulders and landed in the mud with a soft thud. For a moment, his headless body stood, silhouetted against the untouched wall of Roki's home, before it too collapsed.
No One stood over the headless corpse, her small frame wracked with ragged, shallow breaths. She leaned heavily on her katana, its blade jammed into the mud like a crutch, the only thing holding her upright. Rain sluiced through her dark hair, washing streaks of blood from a graze on her shoulder and from a deep, grievous puncture wound in her right thigh, where the spear had torn through muscle. The dark blue kimono was soaked a shade of blackish-red, clinging to her leg. Through it all, she glared at the remaining bandits, her eyes burning with a feral light that dared them to come closer.
For a few heartbeats, the world was reduced to the roar of the storm, the hiss of rain on burning timber, and the sound of her own pained breathing.
The bandit leader, who had been directing the slaughter from afar, finally turns his full attention to the stalemate in front of Roki's home. He sees the six bodies scattered in the mud and the lone, bleeding figure responsible. His face twists in disbelief, then darkens with wounded pride and rage.
"Stop torching the huts!" he bellows, his voice cutting through the chaos. "All of you! Get over here, now!"
His remaining eight men abandon their brutal work, converging on their leader, their expressions a mix of confusion and anger. The leader points a thick, gauntleted finger at No One.
"Are you telling me this is what killed six of my men?" he spits, his voice thick with contemptuous disbelief. "A half-drowned girl in a flimsy kimono?" He takes a step forward, his eyes raking over her injured form, but now a flicker of unease has joined his disgust.
He looks from the bodies in the mud to the impossible, bleeding figure still standing before him. His sneer wavers, his arrogance curdling into a new, furious realization.
"So that's it," he snarled, pointing his sword at her. "There's no other demon. There's no trick. You're the curse." His voice rises, a mix of rage and dawning fear. "No human bleeds like that and keeps fighting! We kill you, we break this curse! And I'm going to enjoy sending you back to whatever hell you crawled out of!"
The remaining bandits took an involuntary step back, their eyes wide with a horror that curdled their bloodlust. The laws of the world they understood—of strength, numbers, and pain—were breaking before their eyes. This injured woman, her body a roadmap of wounds that should have been fatal, was not just a fighter; she was an instrument of pure, unyielding violence. Their hesitation was their final mistake.
No One took a single, deliberate step forward, her bare foot sinking into the mud. Each movement was a monumental effort of will against the searing agony in her thigh. Panting, her thin, soaked kimono clinging to her frail form, she raised her head. The sky above, still in the Heart of Shadows, was a churning vortex of black wings. The deafening roar of the flock began to subside, replaced by a low, predatory murmur—the sound of a hundred hunters waiting for the signal.
She locked eyes with the bandit leader. He dismounted, his heavy boots splashing in the mud, and approached with his sword raised high. For a moment, seeing her up close—bleeding, trembling, yet utterly defiant—his sneer faltered. The easy kill he had imagined was gone, replaced by something he couldn't comprehend. He spat into the mud to cover his fear.
"You're dead," he snarled, the bravado in his voice a thin mask over his dawning terror.
She said nothing. Her eyes, burning with a cold, nihilistic rage, were her only reply.
The lull in the fighting was more terrifying than the chaos. The clang of steel and the roar of the storm had been replaced by a tense, heavy silence broken only by the rain and the low, predatory murmur of the ravens overhead. Driven by a dreadful curiosity, Elder Roki slid open the shoji, peering out into the maelstrom.
The sight that met him sent a gasp of horror catching in his throat. His front yard was a ruin, littered with the sprawled, lifeless bodies of six bandits, their forms stark and still in the mud. Just feet from his entrance, standing over the newest corpse, was No One. She leaned heavily on her katana as if it were the only thing holding her upright, her thin kimono soaked in rain and blood that flowed from a fresh, grievous wound in her right thigh.
His mouth fell open, and he raised a trembling hand to cover it as he witnessed the impossible: this small, broken woman glaring with feral, defiant eyes at the hulking bandit leader and the eight men who now circled her. She seemed fearless, an instrument of pure, unyielding violence despite her wounds.
Sayaka appeared beside him, her own heart pounding as disbelief warred with a fierce, rising hope. The frantic, grateful accounts from the Higashimori refugees were still fresh in her mind. They had described a lone warrior who faced down an army of the dead and walked out of a burning village.
Now, she was witnessing that same impossible power firsthand, aimed squarely at the bandits who had come to destroy them. A silent prayer formed on her lips, not for their own safety, but for the victory of the bleeding girl who had become their terrifying, unlikely shield.
With a guttural snarl, the bandit leader motioned to his men. "Stay back! This demon is mine."
He lunged, his sword cutting a wide, powerful arc meant to end the fight before it began. Flash. The Mark on her forehead showed her the blade's path, a vision of it cleaving through her injured ribs. She threw herself back, a clumsy, painful dodge that her wounded leg protested with a fresh spike of agony. She landed unsteadily in the mud, her katana held ready in her left hand.
Seeing her stumble, the leader pressed his advantage, unleashing a furious flurry of attacks. He swung high with powerful slashes and then low with vicious sweeps aimed directly at her injured leg. No One's world narrowed to the silver glint of his blade in the firelight. Guided by the constant, screaming warnings of the Mark, she was driven back in a desperate dance of survival. Clang! A jarring parry would send a shockwave of pain up her weakened arm. A painful, awkward hop would narrowly avoid a sweep aimed at her calf.
She saw openings after each of his attacks, but her injured body betrayed her. She would try to pivot on her ruined thigh to deliver a killing thrust, but a lance of pure agony would rob the movement of its speed and power. The bandit leader would simply laugh, contemptuously knocking her weak attempts aside and repositioning himself, his stance solid and powerful.
He was beginning to tire of the game, his eyes narrowed with a new, grudging respect mixed with his fury. No One knew this couldn't last; a direct confrontation was a slow death. She had to break the rhythm.
After his next furious attack, she allowed her parry to fail more dramatically. With a sharp gasp of pain that sounded all too real, she collapsed onto one knee, her katana arm dropping, its tip dragging in the mud. For a moment, she looked utterly spent, her head bowed as if in final defeat.
The bandit leader's brief flicker of respect vanished, replaced by a triumphant, cruel grin. He had finally broken her. Deciding to end the game, he abandoned wide slashes for a single, definitive killing blow. He lunged forward, channeling his full weight and strength into a powerful thrust aimed directly at her heart.
Flash.—His blade plunging through her chest, pinning her to the earth…
As he committed his full momentum forward, she acted. Dropping even lower, she pivoted on her good knee, allowing his powerful thrust to sail just over her shoulder. His lunge carried him past her, and for a fatal instant, his leading leg—his right thigh—was completely exposed. From her coiled position in the mud, she unleashed a horizontal slash, pouring her remaining strength into the attack. The katana cut a deep, bloody gash across the back of his right thigh.
He roared, a sound of pure shock and agony, his leg buckling beneath him. As he stumbled, trying to turn back toward her, his left arm swung out wildly for balance. No One used the momentum from her first slash to haul herself back to her feet. Before he could recover his footing, she delivered a quick, rising cut, grazing his exposed left arm.
As the leader staggered back, clutching his wounded leg, his face contorted into a mask of pure, humiliated rage. "What are you waiting for?!" he roared at his men, his voice a pained shriek. "Kill her! Kill this demon now!"
His command broke their horrified stupor. Four of the bandits charged her at once, a wave of steel and fury, while the other four fanned out, their movements creating a "kill box" to cut off any chance of escape.
They expected her to run, to dodge, to fight. They did not expect her to go still.
Realizing certain death was imminent, No One did not retreat into fear, but into the cold, silent core of her being. Her desperate stance softened. Her shoulders, once tense, relaxed. Her head tilted downwards, long black hair shielding her face from the rain as her eyes closed, her mind letting go of the pain, the exhaustion, the chaos. She focused on one thing: her ravens.
And the sky answered. The furious roar of the flock overhead sharpened into a single, deafening, unified shriek. The chaotic vortex stopped circling and descended. They rained down not as a mob, but as an organized, living hailstorm of black wings and sharp talons.
The four bandits charging her were hit first, running headlong into a wall of flapping, clawing bodies. They were blinded, their faces instantly raked with bloody scratches as they threw their arms up in a futile defense. The four flanking bandits were swarmed from behind, the impact of the birds throwing them off-balance. Ravens latched onto their shoulders and heads, pecking viciously at any exposed skin, the sheer force of their flapping wings beating against them like a hundred small clubs. The air filled with the panicked shouts of men and the triumphant shrieks of the flock, a symphony of chaos conducted by the still, silent girl in the center.
No One opened her eyes. They were devoid of fear or rage, holding only an absolute, chilling focus. She gripped her katana with a newfound strength born of pure purpose and charged into the storm she had created.
She moved like a phantom through the chaos. The first bandit she reached was clawing at a raven on his face, his guard completely down. Her katana slid through his back and into his heart without a sound. Before his body hit the ground, she pivoted and drove her blade through the ribs of the second, who was still trying to swat the birds from his eyes. They were silent, efficient executions.
A third bandit, screaming as he tried to pull a bird from his helmet, saw her coming and swung his axe wildly. She ducked under the unfocused swing and hamstrung him with a low, clean slice. As he fell, she ended his life with a simple, downward thrust. Two more stood back-to-back, a failed defense against the avian assault. She approached them from their shared blind spot; a quick lunge severed the spine of the first, and as the second spun around in terror, her blade met his throat.
The last three, their faces bloody masks of horror, saw their comrades being slaughtered. They broke and tried to flee, but the raven swarm responded to her will, forming a dense, flapping wall that hemmed them in, driving them back towards her blade. She met them without haste, cutting them down one by one as they were trapped between the two terrifying forces.
Finally, the last bandit fell to his knees, weeping, a broken man. He looked up and saw her standing over him, her burgundy eyes cold and empty. He opened his mouth to beg, but she simply ended it with a final, silent thrust.
As the last bandit fell, the clearing fell into a jarring silence, broken only by the hiss of rain on burning timber and the low, victorious murmur of the raven swarm overhead. The leader, his leg a ruin, scrambled backward through the mud, his face a mask of abject terror. He kept his eyes locked on No One as she took a slow, deliberate step toward him.
"Wait! Mercy!" he begged, his voice a pathetic, broken thing. "I'll give it all up! The bandit life... everything! We'll help you rebuild! For free!" He fumbled at his belt, pulling out a heavy pouch of coins and flinging it toward her. It landed with a dull thud in the blood-soaked mud at her feet.
No One ignored it. She continued her slow, limping advance, a specter of vengeance, her eyes locked onto his.
Just as she was upon him, she raised her katana high into the air. The leader cried out, raising his arms to shield his face from the killing blow. But the blade was not meant for him. It was a signal. A command.
As she brought her arm down in a sharp, decisive arc, the sky collapsed. The raven swarm descended not as individual birds, but as a single, living vortex of beaks and talons. They engulfed the bandit leader in a whirlwind of black feathers, their frenzied shrieks replacing his own. His screams of agony were muffled and liquid, lost beneath the deafening sound of a thousand beating wings and the horrifying noise of tearing flesh.
In seconds, it was over. The swarm rose as one, flying back into the stormy sky to resume their silent, circling vigil, just as she willed it. Where the man had been, there was only a bloody ruin on the mud-slicked ground, a horrifying tableau of splintered bone and shredded crimson.
A slow, cold grin touched No One's lips. It was not a smile of joy, but one of grim, absolute satisfaction. She had survived, and the curse that had followed her mindlessly was now a weapon fully under her control.
She turned her back on the carnage. Her thoughts, no longer on the fight, shifted to her own primal needs: a bath, new clothes, and rest. Her next destination was Roki's house.
He and Sayaka stood frozen in the opened entrance, their mouths agape, having witnessed the impossible, supernatural execution. As No One limped toward them, a blood-soaked girl who was the calm eye of the storm she had unleashed, they welcomed her inside, their whispered praise for saving them lost in the roar of the rain.
No One said nothing. She let her katana fall to the floor with a heavy clang, shed the ruined, clinging kimono at her feet, and, without a shred of modesty, limped naked and wounded toward the bath. Sayaka, seeing her intent, immediately broke from her shock and hurried to prepare the water, assuming her role as caretaker. Roki, spurred to action, fetched a new kimono, fresh bandages, and the medical kit to tend to the aftermath of a battle he could scarcely comprehend.