The snow never stopped falling.
Rūpu Rīpā wandered through the city for days, listening to the whispers of Isshun Shinda. Every corner, every shadowed alley, every breath of rumor carried the childs name. A cursed child. A bringer of death. A survivor of things no human should have survived.
Each time Rūpu heard it, he remembered the eyes staring back at him in the forest—cold, proud, wounded. He remembered the way Isshun had spat "monster" at him, not because he hated Rūpu alone, but because he hated the reflection of himself he thought he saw in Rūpu's horns.
And so Rūpu searched. Not to prove himself. Not to fight. But because in Isshun's pain, he saw an answer he had never been given.
It was on the seventh night when the snow deepened, and the streets grew empty. The moon hung pale and swollen above the roofs, its light silver against the frost. In the courtyard of an abandoned shrine, he found him.
Isshun stood beneath the gate, his ragged dark blue kimono fluttering in the winter wind. Faded moon symbols lined the fabric, though most were shredded with time. His left arm hung low, and on it glinted a short dagger strapped to a belt. The blade was small, but sharp, as though it had been polished again and again, the only companion he had left.
When Isshun saw him, his lips curled into a bitter smile.
"So you came after me, horned freak." His voice was steady, though Rūpu could hear the weariness beneath it. "I told you. I don't need your pity."
Rūpu took a step forward. His breath rose in clouds, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of one sword. He did not draw both. Just one. He wanted this to be something other than slaughter.
"I'm not here to pity you," Rūpu said softly. "I just... want to understand."
Isshun's eyes hardened. "Understand? You don't understand anything. You don't know what it's like to be hated for the way you were born. You don't know what it's like to carry death with you, everywhere you go!"
Rūpu's throat tightened. "I do." His hand brushed the horns on his head. "I've lived it every day."
But the words did not soften Isshun's rage. They sharpened it. His dagger slid free from the strap with a metallic whisper, and he lifted it into the moonlight.
"Then if you really understand," Isshun growled, "prove it with your blade."
The snow thickened, swirling like ash as the two children faced each other beneath the shrine gate. Neither older than seven, but each bearing the weight of lifetimes.
And then the battle began.
Isshun moved first. His dagger flashed from his left arm, slicing upward in a strike too fast for his size. Rūpu twisted back, the blade grazing his kimono. He drew one of his two swords—the steel glimmered red in the moonlight—and parried, the clash ringing out through the empty shrine.
The sound was wrong. Children should have been laughing here, playing in the snow. Instead, the night was filled with the scrape of steel and the hiss of breath.
Isshun fought like a cornered wolf, every strike desperate, every movement born of survival. His kimono flared as he spun, the dagger biting again and again toward Rūpu's throat, his heart, his stomach.
Rūpu fought differently. His sword carried weight. Each swing echoed the sorrow of his past, the heaviness of his father's grave, the loneliness of his horns. He did not attack with fury, but with restraint, his strikes measured, his blade angled to defend as much as to wound.
Their eyes locked as steel met steel. Sparks leapt into the snow, dying instantly in the frost.
"You fight like someone who doesn't want to kill me," Isshun hissed, his dagger pressing hard against Rūpu's sword. "Why? Do you think I'm weak? Do you think I can't handle death?"
Rūpu's arms trembled under the force. "No. I fight like someone who doesn't want to lose the only person who might understand me."
For a moment, Isshun faltered. His eyes widened—not in softness, but in fury at the words. With a snarl, he twisted his body, slamming his elbow into Rūpu's gut and driving him back into the snow. The dagger came down, gleaming.
Rūpu rolled, the blade striking sparks against stone. He rose with his sword arcing upward, the air slicing with the resonance of his sorrow. His Makigatsu technique shivered through the night, the sound like a wail carried on the wind.
Isshun staggered, not from the blade itself, but from the weight behind it—the raw grief that seemed to press against his skin. He spat blood into the snow, glaring through it.
"You think your sadness makes you strong?" Isshun growled. "Then I'll show you mine."
His dagger blurred again, this time striking not for Rūpu's body, but his blade. Steel shrieked against steel, the impact jolting Rūpu's arms. Isshun pressed harder, his face twisted with rage.
"I lost everyone too!" he screamed. "Family, friends—gone! Every time I close my eyes, they're there, bleeding, dying—and I live. I live when they don't! You want to understand me? Then die with me!"
The words cut deeper than the dagger ever could.
Rūpu's sword faltered. For a heartbeat, he saw himself in Isshun: a child kneeling in the snow beside a grave, coins clutched to his heart. Two children, broken by the world, forced to carry sorrow they should never have known.
But only one could survive this moment.
The fight raged on, each strike a conversation neither could speak aloud. The clash of their weapons echoed their loneliness, their anger, their yearning to be seen. The snow became a canvas of blood and footprints, each step dragging them closer to exhaustion.
Finally, with a cry that tore from the deepest part of his heart, Rūpu drove Isshun back, his sword pressing against the dagger until it slipped from Isshun's grip and skittered into the snow.
The courtyard fell silent. Both kids stood panting, their breath fogging in the cold. Rūpu's sword hovered at Isshun's throat, trembling not from weakness, but from the weight of choice.
Isshun closed his eyes. "Do it," he whispered. "Prove you're not just pitying me. End it."
Rūpu's hands shook. His father's voice echoed in his memory, not in words, but in the warmth they had once shared. Slowly, painfully, he lowered his sword.
"No," he said, his voice breaking. "I won't kill the only other soul who knows what it means to be cursed."
Isshun's eyes snapped open, burning with something raw and unspoken. He staggered back, clutching his gut, hatred and confusion warring in his face. Without another word, he turned and fled into the night, leaving only footprints and blood in the snow.
Rūpu fell to his knees, his sword slipping from his hand. The snow fell around him, soft and unfeeling. For the first time since his father's death, he wept—not for himself, but for the kid who had run, carrying wounds too deep for any blade to cut away.
The fight had ended, but the sorrow had only deepened. Two children, bound by pain, destined to cross blades again.
The Loop Slasher's tale spiraled onward, into grief, into destiny, into the endless loop of time.
TO BE COTNINUED...