The night deepened slowly.
Akuru sat in the clearing, Huginn settled near his shoulder, the world quieting around them as if preparing for some unseen performance. A breeze, as slight as a whisper, ran through the grass, gliding across the land.
Then, finally, out came the moon.
It emerged from behind a distant ridge like a torch. At first, it glowed pale gold, softened by the remaining haze along the horizon. Its edges shimmered faintly, trembling through the thin veil of atmosphere. Akuru watched it with the same bittersweet feeling he always had when he watched the moon rise. He knew the moon would always gaze back in its frozen divine stare, never stepping into the conflict of man. But Akuru had wished many times the moon acted like the sun, and didn't just silently judge.
The sky around it changed as it climbed, the deep violet of twilight becoming indigo, then slipping into a velvety black. Stars flickered one by one, scattered like delicate grains of pale sand around the moon's growing glow. For a few long minutes, everything felt perfectly familiar. Perfectly right.
Akuru was ready to start his mission.
But then, the light started to fade.
It was subtle, at first. Akuru didn't even notice until Huginn lifted his head, feathers twitching as though sensing something strange. Akuru looked again, brows furrowed. The moon's bright rim seemed smudged.
Not clouded, not blurred, more like something dark was touching it.
The moon continued to rise, but its upper-left edge grew murky as if a shadow were crawling across it. Not from a cloud drifting by. Not from fog. This shadow clung to its shape, bending with the curve of its surface, moving steadily, deliberately.
Akuru cocked his head. He had never seen something like this in his short life.
The shadow thickened, slowly, steadily, unnaturally. The pale moonlight dulled, its crisp glow softening into something dusky. The air grew strangely still. Even the crickets seemed to hesitate in their rhythm, as if bewildered by the sky's shifting colours.
But little by little, the shadow gnawed deeper into the moon.
First, a thin bite.
Then a deep crescent.
Then it swallowed almost a third of its face.
He had never seen anything like it. His breathing slowed despite himself. The moon, the ever-existing eye in the sky watching over the world, almost looked wounded.
Huginn shifted closer to him, feathers puffed, and gaze upturned.
As the moon inched farther in the sky, the shadow continued to darken, engulfing half of the glowing disk. The bright, silver light, usually strong enough to cast crisp shadows upon the ground, dimmed into something weaker, diffused. The clearing around him darkened.
The grasses dulled to a sombre olive, the stones lost their sharp shapes, and even the trees lying across the fields so far away sank into a strange muddy twilight. The world seemed to enter a time where there was neither night nor dawn.
Akuru stroked his thumb along the hilt of his sword.
"This is… strange," he whispered, "Very strange."
Minutes stretched. The shadow crept further. The moon dimmed until its once radiant face was no brighter than a pale ghostly coin hanging in a well of night. The whole clearing seemed to be suspended. Mute and waiting.
And then, just when the darkness looked complete, something else happened.
Color.
Not in the world. But infecting the always radiant surface of the moon.
At first, it was faint, like someone had brushed a hint of red ink across the moon's lower curve. A blush, barely noticeable. But it deepened steadily as the minutes passed. The pale silver faded into a muted copper. Then deeper. Richer. Warmer.
The moon wasn't pale anymore, wasn't soft. It was turning red.
A deep, haunting, impossible red, as if someone had dipped it into molten ember and held it to the sky. Akuru stood slowly, unable to stay seated any longer. His breath caught softly in his throat. Huginn hopped from the ground to his shoulder again, letting out a low, uneasy croak.
The moon glowed like a smouldering coal.
Not bright. Not radiant. But alive.
Akuru's heart quickened. It was as if the air itself was heavier, the world having inhaled something potent and holding it in its lungs, waiting to exhale.
It kept deepening, reaching shades of rust, ember, and blood that mixed across its face in slow, hypnotic shifts. Akuru had no words for what lay before him. He knew of red moons featured in stories, omens, warnings, symbols in poems, but nothing in the stories had ever captured the weight of seeing it with his own eyes.
The moon seemed farther away and yet closer than ever. Familiar and yet entirely foreign. Its soft glow painted the clearing around him in a dusky, eerie light. The grasses shimmered like dark bronze. Huginn's feathers gleamed red-black. Akuru's own hands looked dipped in the colour of dried blood.
He felt some strange pull in his chest.
Not fear.
Well, not exactly.
But awe.
Something that made his ribs hurt and the breath in his lungs feel thin.
The blood-red glow hung low on the world, heavy as a veil, refusing to bow out so the night could fall into what it should be.
Akuru swallowed slowly.
Akuru finally remembered what he had been forgetting. The woman's warning, her calm voice, her fingers strumming the shamisen that rested on her lap, her eyes slowly gazing to the sky as though it spoke stories only for her.
'They say the moon will become red this month. Blood red.'
At the time, he had brushed it off; his mind had come to terms with the fact that she must have spoke of some metaphorical moon. She had spoken in riddles; her entire being exuded a heavy sense of mysteriousness.
But now?
Now the moon above him, like an enormous burning metal under a blacksmiths hammer heated to a deep red. Its glow painting every leaf, every stone, every breath.
Now her words felt like lead.
Heavy.
The raven on his shoulders turned his head, and for an instant, red moonlight glinted off his eyes like twin embers. He clicked his beak softly, as though acknowledging the tension that had thickened the air.
Akuru was grateful that at least Huginn accompanied him while this was all happening.
Akuru sighed.
"Three different rumours over two days," Akuru whispered.
Akuru continued to stare up at the moon in silent fixation.
"The moon turning red. Something moving in the grass lands. And the odd feeling from the river."
His eyes dropped, oozing thoughtfulness.
He exhaled.
"The first rumour came true," he snorted, "And it had to be the one I thought would be the least likely."
The subtle warnings weren't just coincidences.
Huginn let out a low, uneasy croak, feathers puffing slightly as if trying to make himself appear bigger against the oppressive red glow.
Akuru couldn't help a small smile, stroking the raven's head.
"I know. You feel it too."
The blood moon towered above them, immobile, unchanging, deepening the shadows around them until the trees at the forest edge looked like ink strokes on a crimson canvas. The more Akuru stared, the more he felt a quiet pressure build up.
Something was coming.
Something was near.
Akuru's soft eyes became slightly hardened.
"Huginn," he whispered, his voice low and even, "We need to get ready for tonight."
The raven answered with a quiet, resolute click.
Under the never-fading blood moon, Akuru finally accepted it.
She hadn't been wrong at all.
The grasslands before Akuru looked as it was a darkened sea, the tall blades unstirred, and the whole plain stood still. The blood moon continued to cast its malign radiance without pause. Painting every shadow in the grass a violent hue that made the world seem both sharper and more distorted. Even the silence felt stained.
He felt the stir in the earth, the pressure in the air that always preceded demons. He could feel it tonight, the same feeling that he hadn't felt since the Final Selection. They wouldn't slink in ones and twos. The demons would come in droves.
Akuru now thought about the worry he had while he had walked to the jinja. Would the demons be stronger under the deep red moon? It seems now would be the time he would find out.
Akuru stepped forward. His foot sank softly into the grass, and the instant he shifted his weight onto it, a low tremor rippled outward from somewhere ahead. Not a quake. A movement.
A warning.
First, it was just a rustling, so faint he thought it was the grass brushing against itself. But the grass wasn't moving. The rustling grew clearer, multiplied, layered, then deepened into a chorus of wet scraping and snarling breaths.
Akuru straightened. Huginn's wings opened halfway, ready to fly as soon as Akuru moved.
"They're here."
A dark shape scuttled out from the tall grass, then stopped at the edge of the clearing. It looked like a malformed boar at first, but its limbs jutted wrong, bending backwards, and its flesh quivered as if worms writhed beneath it. Its jaw opened too far, revealing rows of overlapping teeth dripping with black saliva.
Akuru set his stance.
"One of the weaker ones."
He raised his blade. Akuru didn't need a technique for this demon; it would be more hurtful to him than helpful.
It let out a noise. The ugliest gargling hiss, it sprang forward.
Akuru sidestepped and slashed down. The blade split its neck clean. Black blood sprayed and steamed, sizzling when it hit the earth. The body thudded and twitched violently before going still.
Akuru barely had time to process it before he heard more rustling.
A second hiss rose. Then a third. Then dozens.
Shapes broke through the grassland veil. Lean, crooked things dragging twisted limbs, some crawling low like starved wolves, others loping upright with arms too long to belong to anything born of this world. Their eyes shimmered faintly, catching the red glow of the blood moon as if reflecting its malice. And none paused.
"Stay high," said Akuru.
Huginn flew further up into the air.
The first wave surged forward as one, tearing the grass flat beneath their rush. Claws scraped, jaws clacked. The screeching chorus mounted.
Akuru breathed in.
Akuru exhaled.
His stance narrowed.
Sky Breathing Third Form: Raging Lightning
A straight-line thunderbolt born of flesh.
A breath that split the world into a single path.
A technique of commitment, once he chose a direction, he became its prisoner until the strike was done. But within that constraint, he was unstoppable, a blade carried by the lightning's fury.
His foot hit the ground.
The world snapped.
Akuru disappeared forward in a line that left the eye reeling, cutting the first demon's neck before its snarl had finished leaving its throat. Momentum carried him on through the next, his blade carving a luminous arc that lagged behind him like the afterimage of a thunder. He skidded to a halt only for an instant, no longer than a blink, before choosing a new vector and exploding into another straight-line burst.
Every dash was a streak of lightning across the blood-lit plain. A flash of blue arising from his silver-white blade, all under the red sky.
Each kill a thunderclap without sound.
Demons disappeared to ash behind him.
Every time one body hit the ground, two more leapt to replace it. Snarling, snapping, and clawing at empty air as he tore past them. They weren't overwhelming, but they were relentless, swarming with a hunger sharpened by the moon's cursed light.
A tall, sinewy creature lunged from the side, joints flexing at impossible angles as it swung a whip-like arm at his head.
Akuru dropped under the strike, the rush of air making his skin tingle as claws grazed just above his skull.
He slid along the ground, drew his breath in again.
The world narrowed to a razor's line.
Sky Breathing First Form: Horizon Slash
A cut born from the world's own edge, it moved as straight and serene as the horizon itself; Akuru's breath widened, his stance softened, and for an instant, he seemed to stand within the horizon itself before he swept his blade outward in a single, flawless arc. A level stroke as smooth as sunrise, quiet as drifting clouds, yet sharp enough to divide whatever stood before him as cleanly as dawn parts the night.
The strike passed through the demon as easily as a knife through butter. It didn't stop there either. It continued onwards, striking down multiple demons that rushed behind the demon. A single blade, one swing, multiple demons dead.
Akuru sighed.
The lightning faded. The blue horizon faded. Yet, the grasslands continued to move under the deep hue of red.
Huginn dived suddenly, uttering a shrill caw.
"Above!"
Akuru twisted just in time as a winged demon dropped toward him from the moonlit sky. Its membrane-thin wings were tattered but functional, its emaciated body stretched and wiry. It opened its mouth, revealing a red glow deep in its throat.
Akuru held the blade loosely as he brought his other hand to the handle.
Sky Breathing Seventh Form: Void of Night
A stillness deeper than shadow, Akuru's stance loosened into emptiness itself, the demon's jaw drew inward as if the darkness welcomed it. Until, within the breath between moments, his blade flashed from that void like a hidden star, a silent, sudden thrust born from nowhere and returning to nothing, leaving in its wake but an echo of night.
The blade sank through its neck before it could release whatever foul energy it had been gathering. The creature spasmed on the steel, screeching until the sound broke into choking gasps.
Akuru let his blade phase through the ash from the demons' remnants and turned toward the grasslands once more.
Still more came.
Yet he stood firm.
He continued to fight each demon.
With every swing, every breath, he felt the familiar rhythm of combat settle over him, controlled, and doused with a razor-sharp calm. Never letting a single demon pass him, he knew how close he truly was to the town he had visited this morning. Even as the night roared with shrieks and tearing flesh, the town behind him stayed untouched, silent, unaware.
The ground became spattered with bodies, just as they quickly fell, they turned to ash. Huginn circled overhead, calling sharply whenever another demon burst from the grass.
Akuru welcomed the rhythm.
Until.
A sudden lull. Silence, an uneasy thinning of the noise.
The demons ceased to appear.
Akuru had killed every demon that had resided in the grass hillside before he had realised. His mission from the headquarters had been completed permanently. Akuru had lost himself to the battle. His breathing slowed. He placed his blade back into its wooden sheath. Huginn descended, perching again on his shoulder with feathers puffed in agitation.
He looked down at the battlefield. The long grass empty. An extreme contrast to the the waves on waves of demons that had arose under the red moon. Their strength, their reckless aggression, was unlike any of the common demons that fed on the fringes of human settlements. They looked like the demons he normally slayed, but clearly took more effort.
These belonged to something deeper.
The second rumour had came to fruition. Akuru had laid it to rest.
His mind flicked back to the river.
Now, only the third rumour remained.
The demon must be lurking deep in the river. It must have been the same thing that troubled the townsfolk for over a month. A demon that not even the demon slayer corps had realised existed yet.
A low vibration coursed through the earth. Not from beneath him, farther away, toward the direction of the river.
Akuru tensed up.
Huginn clicked his beak.
"You feel it too?"
The tremor came again. Stronger, pulsing like a heartbeat. And then faintly, carried across the open plain, the wind brought the sound of water shifting violently.
Akuru sighed.
"This demon is probably stronger than the ones I just faced."
Akuru could only grumble. If it's gotten stronger under the red moon, it genuinely might take some effort to get rid of it.
Akurus's head suddenly whipped sharply toward the riverbank, far beyond the edges of his sight. He finally sensed the feeling of a demon, pulsing like a wound tearing open under the blood-tinted sky.
He took one step.
Then another.
This town might not be able to sleep gently if he didn't rush and end this demon once and for all.
He did not run through the town. He circled wide, kept to the outskirts, moving swiftly across the open plain where the moonlight fell in heavy sheets of red. Every blade of grass seemed sharpened, cast against the landscape in a strange contrast. The air felt heavier, redolent with the metallic tang of demonic ash that had been dissolved by his strikes.
The tremors became more frequent. Violent splashes echoed beyond the next rise in the land. Then a low bellow, one which vibrated across Akuru's ribs.
The demon of the river had not only just woken up.
It was rising.
Akuru doubted the townsfolk hadn't woken up by now. If they had somehow slept through the moon itself changing colours and this, it would be a surprise.
Akuru's pace lengthened to a sprint, his geta thudding against the hardened, moon-washed riverbank, his blade hung low by his hip. The smell of water reached him even before he saw the river.
He crested the hill.
Below, the river churned wildly, its once-calm surface broken by waves that surged outward as if something massive was disturbing its depths. A huge shadow coiled under the surface away from the water that neighbored the trees, and then for a moment, the entire middle of the river bulged upward like a swollen blister about to burst.
Huginn shrieked and took to the air, refusing to stay near the ground.
Akuru narrowed his eyes.
"This ends tonight," he muttered.
He plunged down the slope, racing for the riverbank, his grip on his sword tight enough that the hilt creaked beneath his fingers. Behind him, the blood moon burned overhead. Ahead, the water exploded.
Akuru steeled himself for what was going to be a tough fight.