The oppressive weight of Deep Twilight settled over the Imperial City, a darkness so profound it felt tangible. The sky was a uniform, near-black canvas, its lingering hints of indigo and charcoal swallowed by the reign of shadows. A cold, damp chill, born from the ceaseless Raining Season, seeped through the palace's cyclopean walls, clinging to everything with a clammy persistence.
Fujiwara Susumu moved like a ghost through a forgotten service corridor, his soft-soled boots making no sound on the polished stone. He pressed himself to the wall, the frigid stone leeching warmth through the rough wool of his tunic. A breath hitched in his throat, loud in his own ears, and he forced it out in a slow, silent stream. The two letters tucked into the hidden pouch beneath his tunic felt like a burning weight against his skin, a physical reminder of the Prince's intense gaze and the Empress's desperate hope.
Each shadow seemed to writhe in the corner of his eye, each distant, muffled drip of water a footstep. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. He was a messenger, a servant of the Empress, his life one of quiet halls and respectful bows. This—this clandestine flight into the suffocating dark—was the work of spies and assassins.
He reached the small, northern postern gate, a sliver of heavier black against the wall. The guard, one of the Empress's most trusted, stood impassive as a statue, his face lost in the gloom. No words were exchanged. A single, sharp nod was all that passed between them. The sound of the heavy iron bolt being drawn back was a grating shriek that seemed to tear the silence, and Susumu flinched, his hand instinctively flying to the pouch.
The guard pulled the heavy door inward just enough for a man to slip through. The air that breathed in from the outside was different—raw, thick with the smell of wet earth and something else, something acrid and foul. Susumu gave the guard a final, grateful look he knew would not be returned and slid through the opening.
The gate closed behind him with a dull, final thud, the bolt slamming home like a coffin lid. The muffled quiet of the palace was gone, replaced by the hiss of a fine, chilling rain on his face and the profound, unnerving silence of the world beyond the walls. For a moment, he stood frozen, letting his eyes adjust to the deeper blackness.
Just beyond the patch of muddy ground near the gate, tethered to the low-hanging limb of a gnarled shadow-oak, was a horse. It stood patiently, already saddled, its breath pluming in the cold, damp air—a dark, living shape against the suffocating gloom. This was the Empress's final provision. He was alone, but he would not be slow.
With a last, fleeting thought of the palace's torch-lit warmth, Susumu strode to the animal, his hand finding the damp leather of the reins. The horse shifted, nuzzling his hand with a soft snort, a small, startling comfort in the hostile dark. He swung himself into the saddle, the powerful muscle of the steed a solid presence beneath him. He was still terrifyingly alone, but now, he had the gift of speed. He urged the horse forward, away from the stone walls and into the waiting maw of the Shadow-Wood.
The horse, a sturdy bay chosen for endurance, moved at a steady, ground-eating canter. The rhythmic beat of its hooves on the muddy track was a lonely drum in the oppressive silence, a sound both powerful and dangerously loud. Susumu leaned low over the horse's neck, the coarse mane whipping against his cheek, his knuckles white where he gripped the worn leather reins. The Shadow-Wood had swallowed the path whole, its ancient, gnarled trees forming a suffocating canopy that even the faint light of Waxing Twilight could not pierce.
Here, the Blight was no longer a distant report; it was a physical presence. The trees themselves seemed sickly, their branches twisting into grasping, claw-like shapes, their bark weeping a thick, black ichor that smelled metallic and foul, like old blood and rot. The scent clung to the damp air, catching in the back of Susumu's throat. His horse snorted, its ears twitching nervously, its powerful strides losing some of their confidence.
Then came the sounds.
At first, it was a faint, intermittent chittering, so high-pitched he thought it might be the wind whistling through the blighted leaves. But the air was unnervingly still. He strained his ears, his own ragged breathing suddenly loud. A sharp click echoed from the deep woods to his right, like a stone striking rock. Then another from his left. The horse's head came up, its neck muscles bunching.
Susumu's heart hammered against his ribs. Paranoia, sharp and cold, sank its teeth into him. His gaze darted from shadow to shadow, each one a potential ambush. He dug his heels into the horse's flanks, urging it faster, the steady canter breaking into a frantic, mud-splattering gallop. He was no longer just traveling; he was fleeing something he couldn't see. A wet, squelching sound, as if something heavy were being dragged through mud, came from somewhere behind him, and he didn't dare look back. Faint scratching sounds seemed to come from above, from the canopy itself, a sound like claws on bark that sent a fresh wave of terror through him. The world had become a tapestry of unseen, hostile noises, and he was a lone, loud thread racing through it.
The frantic gallop was a punishing rhythm of pounding hooves and jolting impacts. Mud and black soil sprayed from the horse's churning legs. Trees blurred into a smear of grasping, skeletal shapes on either side of the path. Susumu's world had narrowed to the next few feet of treacherous ground, his mind consumed by the chittering, squelching pursuit he could feel but not see.
Suddenly, the horse shied violently, its powerful body stuttering as it dug its hooves into the slick earth. It let out a terrified, high-pitched whinny, nearly unseating him. Susumu fought the reins, his arms aching from the strain, pulling the panicked animal back from a full bolt. His eyes shot forward, scanning the path. There.
Through the hissing rain, a lone figure stood unnaturally still in the middle of the road, their back to him.
Every instinct screamed at Susumu to ride on, to steer the horse around this obstacle and flee into the darkness. But he hesitated. The figure was small, clad in simple villager's rags that were soaked through, their posture one of utter, tragic stillness. It was the stark contrast to his own frantic terror that rooted him to the spot. They were standing still in a world where stillness meant death.
"Go!" Susumu shouted, his voice cracking, raw with desperation. The figure did not move. "It's not safe! Get back to your home! The woods are..." His words trailed off. What could he say? That the woods were listening?
Compassion, or perhaps a fool's sense of duty, warred with his terror and won. He couldn't just leave them. With a final, soothing word to his trembling horse, he dismounted, his boots sinking into the grasping mud. He tied the reins loosely to a low-hanging branch, his hands shaking. Just a moment. He would warn them, and then he would be gone.
"Hello?" he called out, taking a tentative step forward. "Are you injured?"
The figure remained silent. As he drew closer, he could see their head was bowed, their hair plastered to their skull by the rain. He reached out a hand to touch their shoulder. "You must—"
The figure's head snapped up. In a movement too fast, too fluid to be human, it spun and lunged. The impact drove the air from Susumu's lungs as he was tackled, his back slamming into the hard, cold earth. He was pinned, the figure's surprising weight pressing him down. He stared up into its face, and a scream died in his throat.
Its jaw cracked, unhinging with a wet, tearing sound, stretching impossibly wide. From the dark cavern of its throat, thin, glistening black legs began to crawl out, writhing like worms. Its eyes, once human, dissolved into abyssal, pupilless voids. It wasn't a person anymore. It was a shell. A puppet worn from within.
Primal terror erupted in Susumu's chest, a force more powerful than duty, more potent than fear itself. He roared, a wordless sound of pure horror, and kicked upwards with all his strength. His foot connected with the thing's chest, sending it staggering back. He didn't wait. He scrambled backwards through the mud, crab-walking desperately before finding his feet. He didn't look at his horse. He didn't think of the letters. He just ran, abandoning the path and plunging headlong into the treacherous, darkened trees, the sound of his own ragged sobs lost in the endless rain.
A thorny branch lashed across Susumu's face, leaving a stinging welt, but he barely felt it. He ran with the desperate, mindless energy of pure terror, his legs pumping, his lungs burning. The Shadow-Wood was a labyrinth of grasping roots and slick, moss-covered stone. He stumbled, caught himself on the weeping bark of a blighted tree, and pushed onward, his only guide the instinct to put distance between himself and the horror on the road.
The lone, horrifying chittering from behind him was suddenly answered. Another click came from his right, a third from his left, echoing through the suffocating dark. The sounds multiplied, weaving together into a relentless, horrifying chorus that seemed to come from all directions at once.
He risked a glance over his shoulder. The puppet-thing was still coming, its movements a jerky, unnatural lurch. But it was no longer alone. More figures were emerging from the deep woods, their limbs moving at odd, broken angles, their eyes the same abyssal black voids. They didn't run; they shambled with a terrifying, inexorable purpose.
A high, piercing scream of pure animal terror tore through the night—his horse. The sound was cut short with a sickening, wet crunch. Susumu's stomach heaved, and a fresh wave of adrenaline propelled him forward. There was no escape back the way he came.
The pathless woods were a death trap. Ahead, the ground fell away into a steep, muddy embankment, a treacherous scar of erosion and runoff. It was not a path, but it was his only path. Without a second thought, he launched himself over the edge.
His feet found no purchase. The world became a dizzying, violent tumble of slick mud, sharp rocks, and tangled roots. He fell, rolled, slid. A searing pain shot through his shoulder as it slammed into a tree. His hands clawed uselessly at the mud, fingers raw. The sky and trees spun into a nauseating, green-and-grey blur. The chorus of chittering was gone, replaced by the rush of wind in his ears and the sickening thuds and scrapes of his own body hitting the earth again and again. For a few terrifying seconds, he was utterly, helplessly airborne, before crashing down one last time with a bone-jarring impact that stole the breath from his body.
He came to rest in a bed of cold, grasping mud, the impact having driven the last vestiges of air from his lungs. For a long moment, there was nothing but the searing pain in his shoulder and the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. The world was a spinning vortex of pain and confusion.
Then, a new sound asserted itself, a deafening, constant roar that vibrated through the very ground he lay on. Susumu pushed himself onto his elbows, his body screaming in protest, and looked to his side. A river, swollen and furious from the Raining Season, churned just feet away. It was a torrent of black, churning water, carrying broken branches and debris in its violent rush. The sheer power of it was a new and terrifying threat, yet its roar had blessedly drowned out the chorus of clicks and chittering.
He was safe. For a second.
A faint, high-pitched chitter cut through the river's drone, carrying down from the top of the embankment he had just fallen from. They were still up there. Searching. The temporary safety of the riverbank was just a cage with an open top.
His hand, shaking and caked with mud, instinctively went to the hidden pouch beneath his tunic. The stiff parchment within was a solid, real thing in a world of spiraling horror.
"No," he whispered, the sound a ragged tear in the air. His voice was hoarse, but it was his. "I cannot die here. The letters... the Empress trusted me." He stared at the churning water, then back up the impossible slope. "Akaruma is too far... I'm lost... I don't even know which way..." His mind, frantic and bruised, latched onto the memory of the Prince's map, the countless hours he had spent studying the routes as a junior messenger. "The routes from the Palace... there are other villages... Ishikabe. The first bulwark. It has to be the closest one from here." His thoughts coalesced, desperation forging a sharp point of clarity. The villagers of Ishikabe were his only hope now. It was the only chance the letters had. "I have to reach them," he said, this time with a sliver of desperate resolve. "I have to."
That single, focused thought became a new kind of fuel. It was no longer about just running away from the spiders; it was about running toward something. Pushing through the fire in his shoulder, Susumu dragged himself to his feet, his eyes scanning not for monsters, but for a way forward along the treacherous riverbank—a path that might, if he was lucky, lead him back to the main road.
The climb was an agony. Every handhold in the slick, muddy embankment sent jolts of fire through Susumu's shoulder. He clawed at exposed roots, dragged his aching body upward, his fingers raw and bleeding. The roar of the river faded below, replaced by the sound of his own ragged gasps and the renewed, distant chorus of chittering from the woods he had fled. Resolve, born of desperation, was the only thing that kept him moving.
Heaving himself over the final lip of the embankment, he collapsed onto the relative flatness of the main road, his body a single, throbbing bruise. But this was not the road he had left. The air was thick and heavy, carrying an acrid, metallic scent that burned his nostrils. The trees that lined the path here were monstrously warped, their branches twisted into contorted, grasping limbs that wept a thick, black ichor, which dripped onto the ground and mixed with the rain to form a treacherous, glistening slick. He was nearing a heart of the infection. He was nearing Ishikabe.
Staggering to his feet, he began to limp down the blighted road. Hope, fragile as it was, fluttered in his chest. Then he saw it—a faint, flickering orange glow against the deep violet of the Deep Twilight sky. A hearth? A watchtower? For a moment, his heart soared. Sanctuary.
The sound reached him next, a discordant symphony of horror that shattered his brief hope. It was not the gentle crackle of a village fire, but the roar of an inferno. The clang of steel, the guttural snarls of inhuman things, and, worst of all, the high, thin screams of men and women.
He scrambled forward, his limp forgotten, and stumbled through the splintered, burning remnants of what had been the western gate. The path opened into a small market square, now a charnel house of overturned carts and sprawled bodies. The sight that met his eyes stole the breath from his lungs and the strength from his legs. Ishikabe was not a sanctuary. It was a slaughterhouse.
Flames licked from the thatched roofs of homes, their doors ripped from their hinges. A crude barricade of carts and timber at the main gate was shattered, and through the breach poured an endless tide of glistening black shapes. Spiders. Dozens of them, many near the size of men, moved with a horrifying, scuttling speed.
But the people of this bulwark were not dying quietly. A line of militia, men in scarred leather jerkins, held what was left of the gate with spears and shields, their faces grim masks of terror and defiance. A massive spider crashed into their line, its serrated legs scything through the air, and a man's scream was cut short. Another defender, a woman with a heavy woodsman's axe, swung with desperate strength, cleaving into a spider's thorax, only to be tackled from the side by an infected villager—a puppet of twitching limbs and an unhinged jaw, the same horror Susumu had fled on the road.
He saw it all with a terrible, paralyzing clarity. A man, his leg severed below the knee, cried out as a swarm of smaller spiders dragged him from the light of the fires into the shadows. A young woman, her face frozen in a mask of defiance, was bitten in the neck by a spider that dropped from a rooftop, her bright blood a stark splash against the rain-slicked mud. Even the adventurers who called this village a temporary home were falling; a man in gleaming mail was expertly parrying a spider's lunges with his sword, only to cry out as the ground beneath him gave way and a new horror erupted from the earth to pull him down.
This was a fortified village, a place of defenders, and it was being broken. Annihilated.
A chittering hiss exploded directly behind him, and Susumu's blood ran cold. He had no time to turn, no time even to scream, before a shadow launched itself at his back. A spear shaft blurred past his head, its iron tip punching through the spider's carapace with a sickening crunch. The adventurer, a broad-shouldered man with a bloody gash on his cheek, slammed the butt of his spear into the ground, pinning the writhing, dying creature just inches from Susumu. "GET OUT OF HERE!" the man roared, his voice hoarse with battle and desperation. "RUN! THE VILLAGE IS LOST!" The adventurer ripped his spear free and turned to face another skittering horror, but as he did, an infected villager grappled him from behind. The man's eyes widened in shock as teeth sank into his shoulder. His scream was cut short with a wet gurgle as the spider in front of him lunged, its fangs tearing into his midsection. Blood and viscera poured onto the muddy ground.
Susumu's mind fractured. The letters, the mission, the Empress—it all felt like a foolish dream from another lifetime. He was a fool who had brought a plea for help to a graveyard. His mind, though broken, frantically sought a path. Out. Need to get out. Not the west gate, that's where I came from, it's swarming... the north gate. It's the only way. A sound, a choked sob, escaped his own throat, and it was enough to break his paralysis. He turned, stumbling backward, his new thought to flee north, to flee this vision of hell. His boot caught on a piece of shattered timber from the failed barricade, and he went down hard, sprawling in the blood-soaked mud at the edge of the carnage.
He scrambled on his hands and knees, crawling, his dignity stripped away, his entire being reduced to a single, primal need to escape. He pushed himself up, planting a hand on the ground to find his footing.
The earth beneath his palm erupted.
Dirt and black ichor sprayed into his face as a cluster of glistening, spear-point legs burst from the soil, followed by a chittering, hungry maw. He threw himself backward with a scream, the spider's fangs snapping shut on empty air, inches from where his head had been. That final, intimate brush with death gave him a last, insane burst of energy, and he ran towards the northern gate, his heart a wild animal trapped in the cage of his ribs.
The final, desperate burst of energy propelled Susumu away from the slaughterhouse of Ishikabe. He scrambled onto the northern road, a dark ribbon leading away from the inferno.
Behind him, the cacophony shifted. The sharp, insistent chittering that had been moments from ending him seemed to swerve, diverted by new sounds—the panicked shouts and screams of other villagers who had also tried to flee into the night. He heard them being overtaken, their terror a brief, sharp note in the symphony of carnage. He had sealed their fate; his escape had inadvertently served them up as easier prey. The thought was a shard of ice in his gut, but he did not stop. He could not.
He ran, his body a screaming chorus of pain. His shoulder throbbed with a deep, grinding ache, and his lungs felt as if they were filled with fire and ash. Each footfall was a jarring impact that traveled up his legs, which had turned to leaden weights. The only thing keeping him upright was the sheer, animal will to live.
Above, the sky began its almost imperceptible shift. The deepest, most oppressive blacks of Deep Twilight's heart softened slightly to the darkest charcoals and ink-blue indigos, a subtle stirring that hinted at the inevitable, distant return of light. It was the third phase, the Promise of Return, but it offered no comfort, serving only to sharpen the edges of the monstrous silhouettes of the trees around him.
His gaze, wild and searching, caught on a shape that broke the endless, jagged line of the forest canopy. To his left, a colossal mountain peak pierced the bruised sky, its stony shoulders rising above the Shadow-Wood. A flicker of memory, unearthed from hours spent studying maps in the Prince's quiet study, ignited in his fractured mind. The northern mountains… Akamura. The slayer village was nestled somewhere in these ranges. It was his destination. His only destination.
The main road was a clear path, but it was also exposed. The thought of another open-ground ambush was unbearable. Driven by this new, desperate landmark, Susumu veered off the road, scrambling into the underbrush at the base of the rising mountain. He followed its edge, the ground becoming steeper, more treacherous. The forest thinned as the terrain grew more rugged, eventually giving way to a narrow, precarious track clinging to the sheer rock face of the mountain itself. The cliff plunged into a black, unseen abyss on his right. This was the path. It had to be.
Though no spiders were in immediate pursuit, his terror remained a living thing, a constant companion. He scanned the sky for winged horrors, the trees for silent predators, and the very ground he walked on for signs of bursting, chittering death.
The path narrowed to a treacherous ledge, barely wider than his two feet, slick with rain and weeping ichor. The sheer rock face rose to his left, offering scant, sharp handholds, while to his right, there was nothing but a black, yawning abyss. Susumu pressed his body flat against the cliff wall, the cold, wet stone biting into his cheek. Every step was a prayer, his exhausted legs trembling with the effort of control.
He reached for a new handhold, his fingers finding a jutting piece of rock. He shifted his weight. A sickening, grinding sound was his only warning as the rock crumbled under his grip. His footing vanished. For a heart-stopping second, he was falling, a raw scream of pure terror tearing from his throat as he plunged into the void.
His free hand shot out by pure instinct, his fingers snagging on a sharp, unyielding edge of stone. His body slammed violently against the cliff face, the impact knocking the wind from him and sending a blinding flash of pain through his injured shoulder. He dangled there, scrabbling with his boots for purchase, his mind a whiteout of panic. He found a small foothold and pressed himself back against the wall, frozen, not daring to breathe.
His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, wild thing threatening to burst from his chest. Blood trickled from his fingertips, which were scraped raw from his desperate, life-saving grip. He made the mistake of looking down. Far, far below, the tops of the ancient trees of the Shadow-Wood were hazy, spidery shapes, a distant, fatal promise of the ground. One wrong move, one moment of lost strength, and he would be nothing but a falling scream.
A faint click from above drew his gaze upward. On the cliff face, perhaps fifty feet above him, a sleek black spider was descending on a single, glistening strand of silk, its multiple eyes catching the faint light. His gaze dropped back to the abyss below, and his blood ran cold. In the deep gloom at the base of the cliff, other dark shapes were moving among the rocks, skittering with an unmistakable, many-legged gait. They were above him and below him. He was trapped, pinned between the fall and the fangs, paralyzed in the heart of a waking nightmare.
With a choked sob, Susumu forced his frozen limbs to move. He didn't dare look up or down; his world was the next few inches of slick, treacherous rock. He pushed forward along the ledge, his bloody fingers screaming with every new grip, his body fueled by a terror that had burned past exhaustion. The spider on its silken thread descended faster, and the skittering from below grew louder. He lunged, throwing himself across the last few feet of the ledge and tumbling into the relative safety of the underbrush as the cliff path ended. He was back in the woods, and he ran, his only thought to escape the cliff that had almost been his tomb.
The world shifted. The frantic, close-up terror of the hunted gave way to the patient, watchful gaze of the hunters.
Asano Kiri, Soma Haruo, and Iwai Hayato were positioned in a silent, triangular formation just inside the perimeter of the Akamura woods. Kiri, the squad leader, was a woman whose calm, steady authority was underscored by the thin, white scar that traced a line across her right cheek. Beside her stood Soma Haruo, a broad-shouldered, seasoned slayer whose weathered face spoke of countless patrols. The youngest, Iwai Hayato, was coiled intensity, his sharp eyes never resting, his hand never far from the hilt of his sword.
The sky above was shifting from the deepest indigos of night into the pale, ghostly rose and dusty mauve of first-phase Waxing Twilight. To the uninitiated, it was a moment of fragile beauty, but to the slayers, it was the "witching hour," when the creatures of the night made their last, most desperate pushes. Their black uniforms and the signature darkened red armor—shoulder pads, bracers, and shin guards—were stained with mud and darker ichor, the crimson accents of their belts dulled by the night's brutal work. Their faces were grim and shadowed with fatigue after dispatching the blighted creatures that had encroached on their territory all through Deep Twilight.
"Anything?" Kiri murmured, her voice a low command.
"Ground's still weeping," replied Haruo, pointing his chin at a patch of earth that glistened with black fluid. "They're trying to corrupt the soil this close now."
Hayato merely shook his head, his gaze fixed on the trees.
Then they saw him. A lone figure, crashing through the underbrush with reckless abandon, his clothes torn, his movements a frantic, stumbling sprint. He was coming from the direction of the spider-infested cliffs. Kiri's hand went up, a fist. Her two comrades froze, melting deeper into the shadows.
"One, alone," Haruo whispered. "Looks like a survivor."
"Or bait," Hayato countered, his voice a low hiss, his hand already on the hilt of his wakizashi. "He's making too much noise."
"Protocol," Kiri stated, her voice leaving no room for argument. "He could be infected. He could be a decoy. We neutralize, then we question. On my mark."
Susumu burst into a small clearing, his lungs heaving, his eyes wild with a terror they had seen a hundred times. He was a cornered animal.
"Now," Kiri breathed.
They moved as one. It was not a charge; it was a silent, lethal convergence. Iwai Hayato shot forward, his movements a low, powerful blur. He hit Susumu from the side, a solid, targeted impact that sent the messenger sprawling. Before Susumu could even process the new attack, Soma Haruo was on him, rolling him onto his stomach and pinning his arms, while Kiri stood over them, her katana drawn, her eyes scanning the perimeter for any pursuit.
Hayato straddled Susumu's back, pressing a knee hard into his spine to hold him down. He drew his wakizashi, the short blade gleaming in the pale twilight, and raised it high, ready to plunge it into the base of Susumu's neck.
"No! Please!" A raw, human scream of terror and pleading erupted from Susumu, his voice breaking. "Message! I have a message for the Elder! Don't kill me!"
"Hold," Kiri commanded, her voice sharp as steel.
Hayato froze, the tip of his blade hovering inches from Susumu's skin, his knuckles white with tension.
Kiri knelt, her eyes missing nothing. The man was covered in mud and blood, but there were no signs of the Blight's puppets—no abyssal eyes, no unnaturally moving limbs. His terror was genuine, human. During the tackle, the hidden pouch beneath his tunic had been torn, revealing the edge of a sealed parchment.
"A messenger," she stated, her gaze meeting Hayato's. She looked at Haruo. "Get off him."
The two men moved back, though their weapons remained ready. Kiri holstered her katana and offered a hand to Susumu. "Your escort?" she asked, her voice softening from a commander's bark to a professional inquiry.
Susumu, sobbing with relief, could only shake his head, the full weight of the night's horror crashing down on him.
"Killed," Haruo surmised, his tone matter-of-fact. "He's the only one who made it through."
Kiri nodded, pulling Susumu to his feet. "We're taking you to the village. You need the infirmary." She glanced at her youngest squad member. "Hayato, notify Elder Tanaka. Immediately."
The infirmary in Akamura was a place of stark, utilitarian purpose, steeped in the scents of sharp antiseptic herbs, boiled linen, and the lingering, metallic tang of old blood.
Kiri, the squad leader, stood with her arms crossed, her authority underscored by the thin, faded scar that traced a line across her right cheek. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into a long, practical ponytail, while her bangs, parted to the left, swept down in a wide wave that partially concealed her other cheek. The darkened red of her shoulder pads and bracers was smeared with grime, a stark contrast to the clean lines of the infirmary. Her black uniform still dripped onto the stone floor. Nearby, Haruo—a broad-shouldered man with a slightly crooked nose and practical, short-cropped black hair—methodically wiped down his wakizashi. While his hands were focused, each movement precise and practiced, his gaze remained alert, constantly scanning the room. His own dark red shin guards were caked with mud from the long, brutal night.
On a low cot, Susumu thrashed against the medics tending to him. Hasegawa Hisako, her face etched with lines of exhaustion but eyes sharp and focused, worked to clean a deep gash on his arm. Beside her, Mochizuki Michio, a burly young man, pinned Susumu's flailing limbs with a gentle but unyielding grip.
"Hold him steady, Michio," the woman directed, her voice calm. "The mud is packed in deep."
"He's burning with fever," Michio grunted. "And he won't stop whispering."
Susumu's eyes, wide and unseeing, fixed on the thatched ceiling as if he saw horrors no one else could. His voice, a dry, rattling hiss, babbled: "Legs… so many legs… crawling from his mouth. From the ground… they come from the ground…"
The infirmary was a tense bubble of controlled chaos. Michio, the burly medic, grunted with effort as he struggled to hold Susumu down on the cot. The messenger, though wiry, fought with the unreasoning strength of pure terror, his eyes wide and locked on a horror only he could see.
"Get them off me!" Susumu shrieked, his voice raw. "The legs… crawling…!"
"Hold him, Michio! His fever is making him delirious," Hisako said, her voice a strained calm as she tried to dab his dirt-caked face with a wet cloth. "It's alright, son. You're safe here."
Susumu's tattered tunic, soaked with a foul mixture of mud and ichor, clung to his skin. Michio, seeing that it wouldn't come off easily without causing more distress, gripped the frayed collar and ripped the fabric down the middle. As the ruined garment fell away, a small, stained leather pouch, previously hidden in an inner pocket, was dislodged and fell to the stone floor with a soft, heavy thud.
The sound cut through Susumu's frantic babbling for a half-second. Before the medics could even register what it was, Kiri moved with the swift, economic grace of a predator. She took two silent steps and scooped the pouch from the floor. Her sharp eyes took in the quality of the leather and the two distinct, hard shapes of wax-sealed letters within. It was a messenger's parcel. This was the proof she needed.
As she straightened up, the pouch clutched in her hand, the infirmary's wooden door slid open with a soft, authoritative hiss.
The younger slayer from patrol bowed deeply as Elder Tanaka entered. The room fell silent, save for Susumu's panicked breathing. Tanaka—lean, straight-backed, his face weathered but alert—wore simple, dark red robes, the mark of his village. At his side stood a hulking guard, impassive, hand resting on a sheathed katana.
By now, the medics had stripped and washed Susumu, revealing a body marred by cuts and bruises. Though bandaged, the true damage was deeper. Susumu had scrambled off the cot, huddling in the far corner, trembling, rocking, his hands over his head, his babbling punctuated by sobs and sudden screams.
Kiri stepped forward and bowed. "Tanaka-sama. We found this on him. He claims to be a messenger." She offered the letters.
Tanaka took them, his gaze flicking from the letters to the broken man in the corner, noting the darting eyes and absolute terror. He heard the whispered fragments: "…can't go back… sealed their fate… Ishikabe is gone…"
He broke the seal on the first letter, his sharp eyes scanning the elegant, urgent script. It was signed by Prince Kurogane Issei. The Prince wrote not of scattered demon attacks, but of a calculated, spreading Blight, its source festering in the kingdom's unprotected eastern territories. The request was as bold as it was unprecedented: Issei urged him to meet with the Elder of Shiroyama to form a joint operation, combining two elite squads from their respective villages to strike at the Blight's source. The Prince, clearly bypassing all official channels, concluded with a simple, pragmatic offer: send word of acceptance, and the full, non-negotiable fee for both squads would be paid before a single slayer was deployed.
Folding the letter, his expression unreadable, Tanaka looked again at Susumu—whose mind was now irretrievably lost. Tanaka's thoughts turned cold and pragmatic: Susumu's babbling could incite panic, he was a liability, a drain on resources, and leaving him in this state was no kindness.
Tanaka turned to his guard, his voice flat and emotionless.
"His mind is gone, making him a danger to morale. Take him to the back pits—be quick and silent about it."
The guard nodded. Kiri's jaw tightened briefly, but her face remained composed. The medics lowered their eyes, accepting the grim necessity.
Without another glance at the doomed messenger, Elder Tanaka turned his full attention to Asano Kiri. He held out the second, unopened letter. "This is for the Elder of Shiroyama. The Prince's fears about the Blight are not only founded, they are understated."
He placed the letter in her hand, his gaze intense. "This message must get there with all possible speed. The path will be more dangerous than any patrol you have ever undertaken. Find the best scout you can trust. You and your squad will be their escort. See that it's done, Kiri."
He then took the letter back for a moment, stamping the wax with his own personal seal, a mark of Akamura's authority. He handed it back to her. "Go. The fate of more than just our village may depend on it."
The room returned to its work—efficient, unflinching, and shaped by the harsh realities of a world at war with nightmares.