The narrow service tunnel offered little sanctuary. Yuki pressed himself into the damp alcove, the burns on his arms throbbing in sync with the fading echo of the Spider's web. The sweet, rotten scent still clung to his nostrils, a phantom reminder of the creature's hunger. He had escaped, but the terror lingered, a cold serpent coiled in his gut.
It tasted you, Kage's voice whispered, a cold sliver of satisfaction. The corruption. The power. It will crave that flavor now. It will hunt you.
Yuki didn't need the reminder. The image of the Spider's smiling proboscis-mouth, its dozens of jewel-like eyes, the trapped victims wrapped in its glistening web, was seared into his mind. His power wasn't just a weapon; it was a beacon, attracting things that fed on darkness.
He needed to move. To get back to the surface, to the relative anonymity of the city streets. He pushed himself up, wincing at the pain in his arms. The burns were deep, weeping a clear, viscous fluid that wasn't quite blood. The scars around them pulsed faintly, hungry and resentful.
He chose a tunnel branching upwards, hoping it led towards a maintenance shaft or an old exit. The air grew slightly less foul, the darkness less absolute. He moved cautiously, listening for any sound – the scrape of the exorcist's boots, the dissonant thrum of the Spider's web, the skittering of unseen things.
He rounded a bend and stumbled into a scene from a nightmare.
The tunnel opened into a wider junction where several passages converged. And in the center of this junction, a battle raged.
The exorcist was there, its dark coat whipping around it as it moved with blinding speed, the etched rod a blur of pure light. It was fighting the Spider.
The creature was even more terrifying in the open. Its bloated body pulsed, its eight multi-jointed legs scuttling and striking with blinding speed, the razor-sharp points gouging deep furrows in the concrete walls. Its dozens of eyes glittered with malevolent intelligence. Its proboscis-mouth lashed out like whips, dripping corrosive fluid that sizzled where it landed.
But the exorcist was a whirlwind of righteous fury. It moved with impossible grace, the rod deflecting the Spider's strikes, the pure light clashing against the creature's chitinous limbs in showers of sparks. Symbols flared to life on the walls and floor wherever the rod struck, glowing with binding power.
Yuki froze, hidden in the shadow of the tunnel mouth. He was caught between two predators. The hunter who saw him as an abomination to be purified. The monster that saw him as a corrupt delicacy to be consumed.
The Spider shrieked, a sound of fury and pain as the exorcist's rod scored a deep gash along one of its legs, ichor spraying. It retaliated with blinding speed, two legs striking simultaneously. The exorcist dodged one, but the second grazed its shoulder, tearing through the dark coat and drawing a line of dark blood. The exorcist grunted, stumbling back.
The Spider pressed its advantage, lunging forward, its proboscis-mouth wide, dripping corrosive acid. The exorcist raised the rod in a defensive gesture, pure light flaring…
And Yuki moved.
Not to help the exorcist. Not to help the Spider. But to survive.
He saw the Spider's lunge, the exorcist's defensive stance. He saw the trajectory of the dripping acid. He saw a cluster of old, rusted fuel barrels stacked carelessly near the junction wall. And he saw the exorcist's back turned, exposed.
The Spider's acid wouldn't just hit the exorcist. It would hit the barrels.
Yuki didn't think. He acted on instinct, fueled by terror and the chaotic remnants of Kage's surge in the warehouse. He thrust out his hands, not aiming at either combatant, but at the floor between them and the fuel barrels.
Scatter!
Crimson energy erupted, not as focused blasts, but as a wide, concussive wave of shadow and force. It slammed into the concrete floor, cracking it, sending debris flying. It struck the Spider's legs, causing it to stumble mid-lunge. It washed over the exorcist, throwing it off balance.
Most importantly, it hit the stack of fuel barrels.
They didn't explode. They ruptured.
Rusted metal gave way with a groan. Decades-old industrial fuel, thick and viscous, gushed out in a foul-smelling black tide. It flooded the junction, swirling around the legs of the startled Spider and the stumbling exorcist.
The Spider shrieked, not in pain, but in outrage as the foul liquid coated its limbs. The exorcist cursed, stumbling back, trying to avoid the spreading pool.
Then, a spark.
From the exorcist's rod, still flaring with pure light. Or from a piece of debris striking concrete. It didn't matter.
The fuel ignited.
A fireball erupted in the confined junction, a roar of orange and black smoke that filled the tunnel with intense heat and the stench of burning petroleum and chitin. The shockwave threw Yuki backwards into the tunnel wall, the impact knocking the wind from him.
He struggled to his knees, coughing in the acrid smoke. Through the flickering flames and thick black smoke, he saw chaos.
The Spider was thrashing wildly, its bloated body partially engulfed in flames, its legs scuttling frantically, trying to escape the burning fuel. Its shrieks were deafening, a sound of agony and rage.
The exorcist was on its knees, its dark coat smoldering, the etched rod lying on the ground nearby. It clutched its shoulder, where the Spider's graze and the fire had taken their toll. Its face, for the first time, showed not cold fury, but pain and a flicker of shock.
And in the center of the inferno, caught in the conflagration, were figures Yuki hadn't seen before. People. Three of them, dressed in ragged clothes, likely homeless people who'd been sheltering in the junction. They were screaming, their silhouettes thrashing against the backdrop of the flames before being consumed by the fire.
Collateral damage.
The realization hit Yuki like a physical blow. His desperate act, meant only to save himself, had ignited a holocaust. He hadn't just disrupted the fight. He'd killed innocents.
The Spider, with a final, agonized shriek that echoed down the tunnels, managed to scuttle away into a side passage, dragging its flaming body, disappearing into the darkness and smoke.
The fire roared, feeding on the fuel and the debris. The junction was becoming an inferno.
Yuki pushed himself up, his body aching, the burns on his arms screaming in protest. He saw the exorcist struggling to rise, saw its eyes, burning with pain and something new – a cold, hard fury directed squarely at Yuki.
This was his chance. While the exorcist was wounded, while the Spider was gone, while the fire raged.
He turned and ran. Not away from the fire, but into it, towards a side tunnel he hoped led upwards, away from the destruction, away from the exorcist's gaze, away from the burning corpses of the people he'd killed.
He ran through smoke and flame, the heat searing his skin, the smell of burning flesh and fuel filling his lungs, the screams of the dying echoing in his ears. He ran not just from the hunters, but from the horrifying truth: in his desperate dance for survival, he had become the monster. He had fed the fire with innocent lives.