"⚠️ Content Warning: Contains graphic violence, death, and mature themes. Reader discretion is advised."
The tavern door didn't creak. It didn't slam. It simply… ceased to exist.
One moment, it was there — solid, aged wood. The next, it dissolved in silence, replaced by a slow, unnatural draft that extinguished each candle, one by one. Shadows swallowed the room.
— "Tora… do you feel that?" Utsuki's voice trembled.
— "Feel what?"
— "Fear. But not ours."
A sound like broken breath echoed above. Then again. Something crawled across the ceiling, invisible to the eye.
A metallic chime, razor-thin, cut through the stillness — like a spiderweb made of silver being plucked.
Then she appeared.
A woman, cloaked in skin-tight obsidian armor, dropped soundlessly from the rafters. She didn't fall — she descended, like smoke, like a phantom. From her hands unraveled gleaming threads of metal, thin as hair, swaying gently like predators tasting the air.
— "Gin Utsuki," she said. Her voice was silk soaked in venom. "You've chosen a terrible place to die."
Tora was on her feet in an instant, dagger in hand. Toki stared, paralyzed. Utsuki, however, took a single, steady step forward.
— "You're here for me. Not them. Let them leave."
The assassin's smile was slow and joyless.
— "If you are the target, they are… collateral."
With a flick of her fingers, the threads launched.
Tora was fast — faster than most — grabbing a decorative shield from the wall and throwing it up. It was sliced clean in two before it even left her hand.
Toki ducked instinctively, only to feel Utsuki yank him down just as a filament hissed past his head, cutting off a lock of his hair and slicing through a ceramic jug behind him.
— "What the fuck is that?!" Tora spat, clutching her bleeding shoulder.
— "Reactive memetic filament. Magic," Utsuki said grimly. "Lethal. Beyond anything you've seen."
Another thread shot forward, embedding into Tora's thigh. She howled in pain but didn't fall.
— "That all you got, you wired-up bitch?! COME ON!" Tora screamed, limping forward with blood gushing from her leg.
— "She wants you angry," Utsuki muttered. "Don't give her what she wants."
The assassin looked amused, letting her threads weave and orbit around her like silver serpents.
— "Don't run. Let me show you how quickly the body can unmake itself."
Utsuki took a deep breath and raised both arms. Two curved daggers slid from her sleeves, glowing faintly with inner light. She crossed them, catching the first wave of threads with a clang that sent sparks flying.
— "Toki, take Tora and go! I'll hold her!"
— "LIKE HELL I WILL!" Tora screamed. "I'm not letting you die alone!"
But Utsuki was already moving. She surged forward, daggers flashing in complex, precise arcs. Her form was not rage — it was calculation, discipline, a practiced dance of survival.
She leapt across overturned tables and deflected threads as they lunged toward Toki. One hissed past her face, slashing open her cheek. Another wrapped around three fingers — which she cut off herself to escape it.
The assassin blinked in surprise.
Blood dripped from Utsuki's hand, but she didn't flinch.
— "Interesting," the assassin murmured. "You wounded me. That hasn't happened in years."
— "You'll leave them alone," Utsuki growled.
They clashed — one wielding pure death, the other holding nothing back. Thread against steel, mind against instinct. Sparks showered across broken furniture and corpses. A child lay dead under a table, her small hand still clutching a broken bread roll.
Toki trembled, paralyzed by the carnage. His ears rang with Tora's groans and the whistle of threads. Utsuki was bleeding — small cuts everywhere, death by a thousand slices.
— "Why?" Toki asked aloud, to no one.
Utsuki turned her head slightly, tears in her eyes.
— "Because… in another life, you'd have been the one who saved me."
Then, without hesitation, she threw herself into a web of threads meant for Toki.
The scream that left her lips was unnatural — raw, gurgling.
Filaments pierced her abdomen, her chest, her thighs. Blood erupted from her mouth in thick ribbons as she dropped to her knees, legs twitching, bowels spilling.
— "NO!" Toki screamed.
— "Utsuki, goddammit!" Tora cried, dragging herself toward her.
The assassin tilted her head, watching Utsuki's body writhe in its final death throes.
— "None have ever resisted like you. I'll remember your name."
— "Toki… live," Utsuki rasped, barely audible. "Let at least one of us… matter."
Her final breath shuddered from her lungs, and her hand fell limp.
Tora's sob was more of a snarl as she hurled a broken blade at the assassin. It was deflected effortlessly.
The assassin raised a finger.
— "Enough drama. Now… the ring."
Tora stared at Utsuki's broken, blood-drenched corpse.
Her eyes — once full of quiet strength and reluctant warmth — were now fixed on nothing. Lifeless. Glassy. Her jaw hung slack, twitching faintly from the dying nerves. The floor beneath her was soaked in arterial red, steaming in the chill of the room.
The assassin turned toward Tora, voice calm, unbothered.
— "She delayed the inevitable. And now you will mourn her for less time than it took me to carve her apart."
Tora rose to her feet. Her breath came in broken, animal bursts. Tears blurred her vision, mixing with sweat and blood running down her temple.
— "She was more human than you'll ever be, you fucking wire-witch."
Her voice cracked, but the rage inside her was molten.
— "You killed my grandfather. You killed the only person left in this world who didn't walk away from me."
— "Ah," the assassin mused, almost smiling. "You're the granddaughter of Araki Jin. The monster-turned-saint. I thought I recognized that grit."
Tora drew the short, curved blade from her belt. Her knuckles turned white around the hilt.
— "You think grit is all that's left in me?" she hissed. "I'll show you what's left."
Without waiting for another breath, she charged.
Tora's first strike was a feint — aimed for the assassin's face, redirected to the gut. The assassin barely moved, flicking a thread to parry. The filament sliced Tora's forearm open, deep and wet. She didn't flinch.
Tora spun low, trying to cut under the web. Her blade grazed the assassin's thigh — not deep, but enough to draw blood.
The assassin frowned.
— "You do bleed," Tora growled.
The assassin responded in kind.
Threads lashed out in an arc. One nicked Tora's cheek. Another sliced across her left side, shallow but burning. A third nearly took her nose off — she ducked just in time, feeling the air split beside her ear.
— "Keep moving!" she thought. "Don't stop, don't stop, don't—"
Too late.
A thread curved back like a scorpion's tail and slashed across her back, from shoulder to hip. She screamed but didn't fall. She twisted, striking upward with the knife. Another thread wrapped her wrist. It yanked.
SNAP.
Bone cracked audibly. Her wrist dangled loose.
Still, she stabbed with her off-hand, driving the blade at the assassin's eye. Metal met metal — a deflecting filament — sparks showered. A line of blood opened across Tora's stomach.
— "Still standing?" the assassin asked, eyebrows slightly raised.
— "Still spitting in your face."
Tora's mind flashed — her grandfather's laugh, the way his hands always smelled of smoke and steel. The stories of war he never wanted to tell. How he taught her to swing a blade, not to kill, but to protect.
Then: Utsuki, the way she covered them both, how she bled for a boy she barely knew, how her last words had been not about herself — but about them.
That grief made her reckless.
She lunged again.
The assassin raised both hands, threads rising like a blooming iron flower. Tora ducked one line, pivoted into a slide, and stabbed upward, catching the assassin in the side again. This time deeper.
The assassin flinched.
Then retaliated.
With a flurry of threads.
Tora screamed as her leg was sliced from thigh to knee. One filament caught her across the chin, opening it to the bone. Her vision swam — blood in her eyes, blood in her mouth.
She raised her blade — only to see it sliced in half.
Then her hand.
It happened so fast she didn't realize it was gone until she looked down.
A thread looped around her wrist and with a wet snap, her right hand flew from her body and smacked against the doorframe. Fingers still curled in defiance.
The pain was... beyond sound.
Her scream came seconds late, ragged and broken. She fell back, crawling with her remaining arm, eyes wide with agony.
The assassin approached slowly, threads spiraling lazily.
— "You've lasted longer than most. Your pain is... inspiring."
— "Go to hell," Tora spat, blood bubbling on her lips.
— "I've already been there. I burned it down."
The assassin whipped a thread down. It pierced Tora's gut.
Another slashed diagonally across her belly. Her intestines bulged from the wound like pale, wet snakes.
Tora gasped, trying to push them back in with her shaking hand.
She looked toward Toki, slumped against the wall, face pale, lips blue.
— "Don't die for nothing..." she mouthed.
Toki's eyes snapped open, the metallic scent of blood thick in his nostrils. The world around him was a blur of crimson and chaos. He could barely comprehend the scene: Utsuki's lifeless body sprawled across the floor, her sacrifice etched into every wound; Tora, mutilated and gasping, her remaining hand clutching her abdomen in a futile attempt to hold herself together.