Ash floated like tired snow. Serenia's square held two figures and the space between them.
Ryo knelt, palm flat on broken stone, breath rough. Blood crawled down his wrist and made a small map no one would read. The hilt in his hand felt heavier now that it held nothing.
Kyōrei stood a few steps away, blade low, scar catching gray light. His energy stitched the street into neat lines. Not heavy. Precise.
He didn't raise the steel. Not yet. He set the words first.
"You talk like this city is a person you can carry."
Ryo didn't answer. He couldn't. The throat locked when you'd already shouted everything.
Kyōrei watched the shake in his arms settle into a slow, angry steady. He nodded—good, then— and took one step closer.
"I knew a Hunter like you," he said. "Same vow. Same eyes. Same hands that reached because they had to."
Ryo's jaw set.
Kyōrei didn't hurry. "Mihaya Kure."
The name hung. New. Sharp. It didn't echo; it stuck.
"He said: if I can reach you, you live." Kyōrei's voice stayed even. "He said it like a rule that didn't break."
Ryo's fingers dug into stone. He wanted to stand. He forced himself to listen. He owed Yua and the square that much.
Kyōrei's gaze drifted down the lane where a bent school gate leaned. "Two winters ago. River Quarter. Maw seep under the cobbles. Not a gate, a leak. The kind that eats streets while no one's looking."
He drew a small circle in the air with the tip. "Orders were simple. Seal the breach first, rescue after. You know why."
Ryo knew the math. He hated it.
"Mihaya didn't seal," Kyōrei said. "He heard a child behind a locked door and broke the latch. He pulled three out before the street fell. He went back for four and the leak became a mouth."
Kyōrei stepped to the old market line, toe scuffing a path that had seen feet for years. "Two on his team held the crack with their bodies and their breath. He told them to let go and run. They didn't. He told them again. He went in again."
Ryo saw it without wanting to: a man with a plain face and a clean blade vanishing into a door that shouldn't be real, hand out, voice low, counting for someone who needed numbers to beat panic.
Kyōrei kept his voice flat. "When he came out the last time, he carried a boy who wasn't breathing. He put the boy down on cobble that was still warm and started to seal, finally. He did it alone. He did it right. The leak closed. The mouth starved."
He let silence fall a beat. "We counted later."
Ryo's throat moved. He didn't want the count.
"Eight in the alley," Kyōrei said. "Five on the team. One in his arms. Mihaya Kure made sure the last one breathed again. He didn't."
Ryo shut his eyes. He saw the ramen stall steam, the schoolyard fence, the snow in the yard where his father made him hold a bamboo sword until his hands shook. He saw fingers counting thumbs. He saw himself at the ditch. He saw Yua on stone.
Kyōrei rolled his wrist once, loosening. "He died with his hand open. Good picture. Looks brave."
Ryo's head came up. "It was brave."
Kyōrei didn't argue the word. He watched Ryo stand without help, slow and grim. "It was also late," he said. "There's a difference no one likes to spell."
Ryo's breath dragged. He said the thing he still believed because if he stopped saying it, he didn't know what he was. "If he hadn't reached, that boy dies."
Kyōrei agreed with his eyes. Then disagreed with the line of his mouth. "And five Hunters live to seal the next leak before it eats a district. This is the coin you pretend isn't minted."
Ryo felt the heat again. The kind that fogged breath and made edges soft. He kept his voice level. "If I'm in that alley, I reach him."
"You will," Kyōrei said. "And then you'll learn which names you bought with that hand. You won't like the list."
Ash drifted between them. The bell on the ground didn't ring. Gōshin, hunched near a cracked pillar at the square's edge, watched with flat, human-sad eyes. Steam leaked from its ruined seams. It flinched when voices lifted.
Kyōrei stepped close enough for stitches. "Mihaya's 'I will' killed him. Good death. Pretty story. His captain cried in a quiet room and called it an honor. The report turned into a lesson for children. Everyone learned the wrong thing."
Ryo steadied the empty hilt. "Tell me the right thing."
Kyōrei said it without heat. "Know your hand's reach before you promise a life on it."
Ryo took that in and didn't reject it. Not out loud. Inside, something rebelled anyway. The boy at the ditch didn't back down. He wouldn't today.
Kyōrei's gaze flicked to the hilt. "You aren't Mihaya. That's good. You still have time to become someone who chooses earlier and loses less." He tipped his chin toward the bent school gate. "But you don't know what floor you're standing on. You don't know who built it."
Ryo's shoulders tightened. "Don't."
"You don't know what your mother did so you could hold a steel that listened," he said, tone still even. "You don't know what she broke and what the Realm named it. You don't know why the Maw learns certain names first."
Ryo's chest went tight. "Say her name right."
Kyōrei didn't. He watched the boy flinch where the word landed, then let the moment pass.
He raised the blade a finger-width. "Final words then. Go learn. Then come argue the hour when you don't swing first and think later."
He stepped in.
Ryo lifted the empty hilt anyway. His feet found the dip in the stone. He turned his shoulder to hide the bad ribs and set his weight to deny the cut the angle it wanted. He knew he couldn't stop it. He did it anyway.
Kyōrei's energy pinched the air into a narrow line. Clean finish. No show.
He drove the strike—and it stopped on cloth.
Not blocked. Caught.
A new hand held the edge between two fingers, not bleeding. Gray fabric. Callused thumb. The hood over that arm hid a face in deeper shadow than a day like this should make.
The square blinked.
Kyōrei adjusted instinctively. He twisted his energy, rolled the cut, tried to free steel. The hand didn't care. It squeezed and the blade hummed, the note souring, like even steel didn't like being held that way.
Kyōrei slid back one step, then another. The hooded figure stayed where they were, between the edge and the boy with nothing in his hand.
Ryo froze. The air changed around the figure—Seishu drawn tight and cold, not wide. It made the world here and nowhere else. It didn't roar. It held.
Kyōrei's voice went low. Not surprised. Measuring. "You."
No answer. The figure lifted their free hand and tore the space beside them like wet cloth. Not light. Not fire. Stone groaned at the wrong pitch. A dark mouth opened where street had been.
Gōshin staggered up with a sound that hurt to hear, rage and fear fighting in a body that didn't have room for both. The hood didn't look at it. The pressure around them tilted, and the creature slid across stone like the world had decided that was downhill. It clawed for purchase, left furrows, lost.
Kyōrei's stance got small. Serious. Blade now at a guard that meant respect. He didn't run. He didn't posture. He glanced once at Ryo—fast, hard—and then put the look away like a coin no one could spend yet.
The hood moved a wrist.
Kyōrei's feet left the ground a thumb's width. Not by force. By decision the air agreed with.
He cut reflexively. The blade shaved cloth and found nothing it could name. The hood turned their hand and placed him. It felt like being filed. He landed at the lip of the tear.
Gōshin slammed into him a heartbeat later, driven by energy that had no hands. The two of them found the dark together. Stone swallowed their shapes up to the knee, then the hip.
Kyōrei set his teeth. He drove Seishu down his legs and into the lip of the not-street and stood. For a second the mouth refused to have him. He met the hood's shadow and gave a look that promised this wasn't finished.
"You drag me today," he said. Calm as always. "I walk back."
The hood tilted once—the smallest refusal.
They twisted their hand as if turning a latch. The air made a hard sound. Kyōrei and the beast slid. The square kept them an instant longer, then let go.
The tear closed like water forgetting a stone.
Silence fell.
Ash drifted down in a thin sheet. The bell didn't ring. Somewhere far off, a door banged twice, decided to stay.
Ryo stood very still. The world was too loud when things didn't move.
The hood's shoulders rose and fell once. They didn't look at him. They looked at the place where the tear had been and kept looking, as if waiting for it to make the wrong decision.
Ryo found his voice where it had been hiding under everything. "Who—"
A hand came up—palm out. Not unkind. Don't.
The figure turned their head just enough that he could see the line of a cheek in shadow. Familiar in a way that hurt. Not who. How. The set of the jaw. The way the breath didn't waste heat.
They stepped past him. Close. Cold. Not dangerous to him. Dangerous to whatever came next.
The energy they carried folded small and slid into the cracks of the square. They reached the edge of the street and vanished. No tear. No show. They simply stopped being where eyes could keep them.
Ryo stood with an empty hilt, ash settling on his shoulders like a tired cloak.
He looked toward the cavern mouth.
He saw the line of rock where Yua lay out of sight. He pictured her chest moving. He counted because someone had to. He counted because Kyōrei had, once, in an alley with a door. He counted because Mihaya Kure had counted until counting stole his last breath.
One. Two. Three.
He breathed with the numbers. His ribs hurt. His hand hurt more.
He thought of the boy in the ditch. He thought of his mother's thumbs counting his fingers. He thought of his father's voice telling him not to admire small sacrifices. Do them. Wash your hands.
He looked at the hilt.
He hated how light it was.
He put it away anyway. He put a palm on the street and let Serenia's weight push back. It didn't apologize. He didn't ask it to.
"I will," he said, quiet enough to belong to stone. Not shouted. Not vowed for an audience. Said to a square that had watched better men break.
He added the part Kyōrei would demand later, whether he wanted to or not.
"I will prove them wrong."
He set his shoulders and turned toward the cavern. The ash kept falling. The city kept breathing wrong. Somewhere far off, a gate that wasn't a gate watched him put one foot in front of the other.
Mihaya Kure's name sat in his chest like a small, heavy thing.
He carried it.
The square stayed silent and let him.
🌀 End Of Chapter Thirteen