Hailing from the Land of the Rising Sun, Ran had grown up on tales of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He'd felt he'd only ever relate to those events as stories, but seeing the Knave girl accept the knife from the demon, he had a terror driven suspicion that he was going relate to those events today in a manner even the devil himself would be terrified by.
Even the creature within him was at peace as the heavy weight of the history they were about to experience settled upon the landscape like a blanket of gravity.
From a hill outside the City of Souls, Ran watched the demon afar place the cube on the obsidian altar he conjured upon thin air. The cube was small. It was no larger than a skull, but it radiated a wrongness so total, the entire city paused.
Even the Lagarakei, raging in the horizon—from its arrested point in the silent void—seemed to halt its continent-sized tendrils, as if it too recognized the scent of finality.
As for the Hakokage Box.
It pulsed.
A single breath of red light escaped from the etched seams of its obsidian bone skin, and it was as though every damned soul in the city felt their spine boil.
Ran's throat closed. His organo-metallic flesh rippled, shifting. It had recognized this thing before his mind did.
Above, the Knave girl bared her chest and raised the ceremonial dagger.
"No," Ran whispered.
The blade plunged.
Blood hissed across the cube's surface.
The air folded inward.
The city vanished in a flash so blinding, it erased color itself. White... all he could see was white as his world went blind... then negative white... then reality collapsed.
The flame from the Hakokage did not emerge, it broke free. In the space between a breath and the thought of that breath, everything burned.
It burned faster than light.
Buildings were not destroyed, they ceased to have ever existed. The fire from the box moved faster than thought, outracing memory, ripping time apart like rotted paper.
Demons screamed, then it was as though they never were. The damned souls evaporated, their afterlives undone.
Even the ground beneath Ran disintegrated. Not into ash. Not dust. Not debris. Just nothing.
Not void.
Nothingness.
No sound. No heat. No concept of up or down. Even agony couldn't live here.
And yet… he remained.
Ran floated in a state between being and not-being. His body shredded, reknitted, and burned again.
His organo-metallic flesh fought a war against the eternal fire, constantly regenerating what should not be. His bones sizzled; nerves fried, regrew, screamed, and fried again. And the flame spoke.
It wasn't words, not really. It was truths with teeth, infernal ideas etched in flame. Thoughts with wants. That ached. That hated.
"Power is a lie built on weakness. We are the only power, the beginning and the end of everything."
"Burn until even the concept of fire dies."
"Feel all sorrow. Then feel more."
Emotions flooded him from the depth of the flames.
Wrath that was not his, grief like a thousand genocides, ecstasy that was molten and vile. He convulsed, sobbing soundlessly in the vacuum of non-existence. But even that was stolen from him. His mind became a screen for the hellfire's projections.
Time stretched. Collapsed. Recurred. Died. A moment lasted forever and ended before it began.
Then—
Something cracked.
The Knave girl who opened the Hakokage had been the first consumed, but now, fragments of her essence, twisted and flaming, whirled past Ran in burning spirals. The fire did not care for allegiance. It did not obey.
It only hated.
Ran clenched his hands, his flesh peeling from molten bone as his organo-metallic armor flared under impossible stress. Somehow, he was adapting. The more it burned him, the more his skin hardened, the more his body resisted. Not immune, but strengthening and enduring.
He screamed into nothing, and for the first time, something heard.
A sliver of the Hakokage's flame peeled toward him, curious. Not in the way a beast might stalk prey, but like a god wondering why an ant still walked inside an apocalypse.
The flame touched his chest.
Everything in him broke.
But from that fracture… something new formed.
He collapsed onto the expanse of nothingness, around him, a crater of erased reality, untouched by time or matter. The nothingness retreated, bound once again.
The Hakokage was closing.
But it had not forgotten him.
Ran laid there, panting, alive only by design of something older than flame, burning with eldritch power, and watching through from within him.
"Thank you," he said to the creature inside him.
"It was not my doing alone, else you would be dead."
"Then who else contributed to my survival?" Ran asked, grunting as his body rapidly healed from the ordeal.
"You have the soul of a half Yosei, that and the Aura from the Queen of Severance helped me in keeping you from being consumed by the Hakokage's flame. The flame also found you curious. You are lucky beyond possibility, Kaito Ran."
Ran nodded. He didn't need to be told that.
Standing up, he found that he was floating in nothingness. He felt, somewhat spiritually, like he was floating, he couldn't actually see anything.
"This is not a void," he whispered.
"The Flames of the Hakokage burns sound, matter, concepts, time, the abstracts, and everything that contributes to existence. The only thing you have to guide you now is the spiritual realm."
"But I know nothing about spirituality, I can't even use my kin."
"Well, it's good you have me then."
Ran bet he'd have felt his heart skip a beat if his heartbeat wasn't already irregular due to the nature of Naraku.
He hadn't still gotten over his fear and hatred for the creature within him. "How can I trust you?"
"I just saved your life, young mortal. If I wanted you dead I could have left you to the flames."
Ran guessed that was fair, but he still didn't feel like he could trust the Lagarakei, but at least he could pretend to.
"Alright. You can use your eldritch power in concert with my spirit to guide us back to what remains of the realm of souls in Naraku?"
"Indeed. But I doubt anything remains of that place. The flame probably has spread to other parts of Naraku, I don't know how Xin plans on closing the box now that he has opened it."
"That was Xin? The Prince of Souls?" Ran asked, unable to believe that was the being who may have dominion over his father now.
If his father was still alive after all this. No, he shook his head, he must not think of that.
"Alright, how do we get back to hell?" Ran said, uttering a question he'd never thought would ever come out of his mouth.
"Lete show you how to tap into the ethereal with my eldritch force and open your spirit to the genies."
"Genies!" Ran felt a rage building inside of him. "Why do I need to open my spirit to those monsters?"
"They are the servants of Naraku. Your will is their nature, they obey and they serve. They are your quickest way out of this place."
Ran could not believe this. In one day he'd been told of a mythical shaman who broke hell, witnessed hell throw a tantrum, met a man who was in hell for fornicating with his offspring, survived his second Lagarakei attack, saw the Hakokage Box with his own two eyes, survived the Flames of the Hakokage, confirmed that there was a Lagarakei inside him and talked to it.
Certainly this couldn't be just one day? He felt like he'd gained the experiences of over twenty Kagami-hankyos.
And now he was considering asking a genie for their service.
What have I become?