The villagers hoisted Ranmaru between them, his arms slung over their shoulders. He barely stirred, lips parting only to let a faint groan slip as they began the slow descent toward the valley. Torches flickered, shadows dancing along the trees, casting his pale face in brief halos of orange.
Yet behind them, the oni's corpse twitched.
At first, it was subtle—the faint spasms of a body refusing to accept death. Then, violently, its torso bulged. Flesh stretched tight, veins bursting as black ichor hissed against the soil. A wet, snapping sound echoed as ribs cracked outward.
The villagers froze.
"What—what's happening?!" one of them cried, dropping his torch.
The oni's chest ripped open like rotten leather, and from the steaming cavity, twisted shapes began to claw their way free. Smaller yokai, their forms half-bull, half-ghoul, slithered into the night. Their eyes burned faint red, their claws dripping with bile. They screeched in unison, a chorus that curdled the villagers' blood.
Before the peasants could react, the oni's true soul tore itself from its ruined husk. A gigantic, half-formed wraith dragged upward, its body chained to the splitting corpse, the chains themselves glowing with hellfire. Its tusked jaw opened in a roar that made the trees quake.
"Kill them all," it thundered, its voice rumbling like stone grating against stone. The chains rattled, pulling it back into the burning fissure, but its command remained.
The lesser yokai surged forward.
A farmer swung his pitchfork wildly, stabbing one in the gut—only to watch its maw split open across its belly, devouring his arm whole. His scream was cut short as the creature tore him apart like paper. Another villager tried to run, but a spider-thing leapt onto her back, its fangs sinking deep into her neck as it thrashed, spraying her blood across the trees.
"Run!" the elder shrieked, shoving two children ahead before a claw split him down the spine, his body falling in twitching halves.
One by one, they fell. Throats ripped out, stomachs clawed open, eyes gouged from sockets. The clearing became a massacre of shrieks and torchlight, dying screams echoing into the mountainside.
Ranmaru stirred, his head lolling weakly. Through his fading vision, he saw the slaughter. The peasants who moments ago had carried him with reverence now reduced to mangled bodies. He felt nothing but the bitter taste of irony, and yet—his instincts screamed to move.
But before a yokai's claw could rake across his limp form, the air turned cold.
Mist surged from the treeline.
The onryō descended like a specter, her hair whipping in the wind, her talons wreathed in frost. She tore through one yokai with ease, cleaving it apart in a single slash of her claw. Another leapt at her, but her shriek shattered its form into dust.
She did not come alone. In her other hand, entangled in web-like strands, hung the unconscious hybrid child—its body limp but breathing.
Without hesitation, she swept upward, threads lashing outward, ensnaring Ranmaru's battered form. With a vicious tug, she carried both into the night sky, leaving the villagers below to their fate.
The mountain burned with screams.
The lesser yokai fanned outward in a tide of claws and fire. They poured through the trees, across the ridges, and down toward the valley village. Houses lit with lanterns became funeral pyres in moments, the yokai bursting through doors, dragging families out into the dirt to be devoured alive. The streets ran with blood, the cries of mothers and children twisting into silence beneath the claws of hellspawn.
Smoke climbed into the night, thick and black.
Hours later, another group arrived—hunters armed with steel and talismans, their banners marked with warding sigils. They crested the ridge, but the sight before them stole the breath from their lungs.
The village was gone.
Only fire and corpses remained, yokai still feasting in the streets. The hunters drew steel, faces pale with fury and horror.
"The hellgate…" one whispered, voice hoarse.
Their leader raised his blade, eyes burning.
"Form ranks. Tonight, we end this tide."
With war cries sharp as thunder, the hunters charged into the ruined village, steel flashing against the flood of yokai.
Above, far from the carnage, Ranmaru hung limp in the threads of the onryō, carried higher into the mountains with the unconscious halfling. His chest rose and fell shallow, but still, he lived.
The mountain had not seen its final night of blood.
The hunters surged into the burning village, their boots splashing through blood and ash. Firelight gleamed on steel, talismans fluttering as they drew in close formation.
"Blades up! Keep your lines!" bellowed their leader—a broad man in lacquered armor, his face scarred from old wars. His name was Shiba Kenzō, once a soldier, now captain of the hunter band. In his grip was a great naginata wrapped with sealing charms, its steel glowing faintly with pale-blue warding light.
Beside him strode a lithe woman, her robes inked with sutra marks. Matsuri Aya, shrine-born, carried no blade—only a string of prayer beads and talisman-stuffed sleeves. Her chants wove barriers in the air, slowing the tide of yokai.
Behind them, two brothers fought shoulder-to-shoulder: Taro and Jiro, twin spear-bearers, their weapons burning with oil fire as they skewered spider-things by the dozen. Taro laughed as he fought, fierce and wild, while Jiro's eyes stayed sharp and calculating.
The yokai rushed them like a black tide. Dozens of twisted beasts, some dog-faced, others three-limbed, others little more than crawling heaps of teeth and bile.
"Hold!" Kenzō roared, swinging his naginata in a broad arc. The weapon cleaved three yokai in half, their bodies igniting in blue flame as the seals unraveled them.
Aya's voice rose over the screams, her prayers sharp and cutting. Paper talismans shot from her hands, clinging to yokai flesh. With each chant, one burst into fire, another froze solid, another shrieked as its skin peeled away like paper.
The brothers pressed forward, spears flashing. Jiro skewered one yokai through the chest, pinning it to the earth. Taro drove his flaming spear down its throat, setting the carcass ablaze. "Hah! Another for the pyre!" he howled, but his laugh was cut short when a spider-beast leapt onto his back, sinking fangs into his shoulder.
Jiro shouted, twisting to spear the creature through the skull, but two more yokai swarmed over them. The twins toppled into the mud, their spears stabbing and flaring as ichor sprayed.
"Push them back!" Kenzō roared, swinging his naginata in sweeping strokes, each strike sending waves of ward-light cracking through the horde. "Aya! Cover them!"
Aya's beads cracked in her hands. A dome of shimmering gold light erupted, pushing the yokai away from the twins. But her breath came ragged, sweat glistening as her strength waned.
The hunters were strong, disciplined, but the yokai were endless. For every beast slain, two more crawled from shadow. The village burned around them, screams echoing from alleys where no hunter could reach in time.
Kenzō's arms trembled, his weapon heavy with blood. Still he swung, cutting down another shrieking fiend. His teeth grit as his eyes lifted beyond the flames.
The oni's corpse—where it had fallen in the clearing above the village—was stirring again.
A sound like stone grinding filled the night.
Clang.
Chains rattled, taut against the earth.
Clang. Clang.
Snapping, one by one.
The hunters froze, even as yokai tore at their flanks. Aya's beads slipped from her bloodied fingers. Jiro dragged his brother to his feet, both staring in mute horror.
The corpse split wider, flames hissing out as if from a furnace. A shape rose behind the burning houses, massive, towering, blackened chains cracking off its body.
A horned silhouette, larger than any tree. Its tusks curved like scythes, its jaw opening with a roar that silenced the night.
The true oni emerged. Not the hollow flesh Ranmaru had cut down, but the beast's real form—its soul given flesh by hell's gate.
Chains snapped in showers of sparks, each one echoing like thunder through the mountains.
Shiba Kenzō's knuckles tightened white around his naginata. His voice dropped to a growl:
"By the gods… it's not done."
The hunters stood bloodied, weary, and few in number. Yet before them rose a giant oni, its form blotting out the firelit sky.