Sakura's warning hung over them like a cold fog as the group moved north. They abandoned the idea of following the Tokaido directly and cut deeper into the woods, moving in a wide arc. Sakura walked just behind Hayato and Kei, her head constantly turning, her eyes distant, listening to a world only she could perceive.
"The loud stone place… it's not just ahead," she murmured after an hour of walking. Her voice was small, strained. "The noise… it's spreading out from it. Like ripples in a pond."
"How many?" Ren asked, his grip tightening on his spear.
Sakura closed her eyes, her face pinched in concentration. "Many, many hungry thoughts. A thick knot in the middle. And threads… strings of hunger… stretching down the roads." She pointed with a shaky finger. "That way. And that way. They're… patrolling?"
"They're following the roads because that's where the living run," Hayato said, the realization grim. "They're not just wandering. They're hunting."
This was worse than mindless hunger. This was a spreading, intelligent pattern. A predator's logic.
They moved with extreme caution, Hayato scouting ahead, returning to guide them around clearings or overgrown paths where ambush was possible. The forest was eerily devoid of life. No squirrels chattered. No birds took flight. It was a green tomb.
By late afternoon, the trees began to thin. Ahead, through the trunks, they could see the grey silhouette of a large, walled compound built on a rise, the way-station. It was a fortress-like inn where travelers could rest under the Shogun's protection. Smoke no longer rose from its chimneys. The only movement was a dark, shuffling mass milling about outside its main gate.
Hayato motioned the group to crouch in a thicket of bamboo. They peered out.
The way-station was overrun. Dozens of Gaki pressed against its wooden walls or wandered the cleared ground around it. Some wore the remnants of traveler's clothes, others the uniforms of the station's guards. The gate was broken, hanging from one hinge.
"No one's alive in there," Ren whispered, his voice thick with despair. "It's a deathtrap."
"But it has supplies," the young man, whose name was Kenta, argued. "Walls we could fix. Weapons in the armory. Food in the stores. If we could clear it…"
"Clear it with what?" Hana hissed, clutching her sleeping son closer. "With sticks and prayers?"
"We have a swordsman," Kenta said, nodding toward Hayato.
"One man against fifty?" Ren shook his head. "Madness."
Hayato ignored the debate. He was studying the patterns. The Gaki weren't organized, but they were concentrated. A large group was clustered at the main gate. Smaller groups and individuals were scattered around the perimeter. His eyes tracked to the rear of the compound, where the stable yard would be. Fewer shapes moved there. The back wall also looked lower.
"Sakura," he said softly. "The ones at the back. Are they… alert?"
The girl focused. "They are… dull. Mumbling. The loudest noise is at the front, where the smell is strongest."
"The smell?"
"Old blood. Lots of it."
The front gate was where the last stand had happened. The Gaki there were fixated on the scene of the feast. The ones at the back were less stimulated.
An idea, dangerous and sharp, formed in Hayato's mind. He turned to the group. "We need those supplies. We cannot reach Edo without them." He looked at Ren. "You said safety in numbers. Here is how we use them. We create a distraction at the front gate. Something loud, bright. We draw the main crowd away. A small group slips over the back wall, gets inside, grabs what we can carry from the storerooms, and gets out."
"A distraction with what?" Ren asked. "Fire?"
"Fire and noise," Hayato confirmed. "We have tinder, flint. We find a spot upwind, start a grass fire, make it crackle and pop. They will go toward the heat and movement."
"And who draws this short straw for the distraction?" Kenta asked, suspicion in his eyes.
"I will," Hayato said.
A stunned silence met him.
"You'll be trapped between a fire and a horde of those things!" Kei protested, her professional calm breaking.
"I am the fastest. I know how to move. And," he met her eyes, "if I am bitten again, it may not matter." It was the closest he'd come to acknowledging his secret in front of the whole group.
Ren studied him, then nodded slowly. "You have stones in your belly, ronin. I'll go with you. Two can make more noise, and I know fire."
"The rest of you," Hayato pointed to Kei, Sakura, Hana, Koji, and the two other elderly peasants, "you hide here. Kenta, you're strong. You come with me and Ren over the back wall. You'll be the pack mule."
Kenta puffed up slightly, nodding. The danger of the infiltration was better, in his mind, than the distraction.
The plan was set. They spent the next hour preparing. Ren and Hayato gathered dry grass and brittle branches, constructing a pyre in a small ditch about a hundred yards from the way-station's front, carefully upwind. They soaked one end of a long vine in resin they scraped from a pine tree, a slow fuse.
As the sun dipped toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of blood and bruise, they were ready.
Hayato handed his katana to Kei. "You may need this."
She took the long sword, her hands unsteady on the hilt. "I don't know how to use it."
"The sharp end goes into the monster," he said simply. He kept the shorter wakizashi for himself, better for close work in tight spaces.
He turned to Sakura. "You are our ears. If you hear the hungry thoughts coming toward the back wall, you tell Kenta. Get out. Don't wait for us."
Sakura nodded, her luminous eyes huge with fear. "They are… restless. The sun going down makes them louder."
Perfect, Hayato thought grimly. More likely to follow a distraction.
He and Ren moved to the ditch. Kenta, carrying two empty grain sacks, crept with painstaking slowness through the undergrowth toward the rear of the compound.
Hayato struck the flint. A spark caught on the dry tinder. A tiny flame blossomed, hungry and yellow. He touched it to the resin-soaked end of the vine fuse. It caught with a hiss and began to smolder, crawling slowly toward the prepared pyre.
"Time to go," Ren whispered.
They didn't run. They walked calmly, openly, toward the side of the way-station, just within view of the main horde at the gate.
One of the Gaki, a former guard missing an arm, turned its head. A low groan bubbled from its throat. Others turned. Milky eyes fixed on the two living men.
"Now," Hayato said.
Ren threw back his head and let out a tremendous, wordless roar. He beat his spear against his leather chest-plate. CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
Hayato drew his wakizashi and slammed the flat of the blade against a rock, creating a sharp, metallic CLASH!
The reaction was instant. The groan became a chorus. The entire, shambling mass at the gate convulsed and then surged toward the noise. They moved like a single, ragged organism, driven by a base imperative: Find. Consume.
Hayato and Ren stood their ground for a count of three, making sure the horde was committed, then turned and sprinted along the side of the wall, leading the mob away from the back.
WHOOSH.
Behind them, the slow fuse reached the pyre. The dry grass and branches erupted in a pillar of flame and a chorus of loud, snapping pops. The firelight painted the charging Gaki in hellish shadows, making them seem like a wave of demons.
"To the trees!" Hayato yelled.
They veered away from the station, sprinting for the thick forest. The Gaki followed, but the fire now held the attention of many, confusing their senses. The horde began to split, some chasing the men, others stumbling toward the bright, crackling heat.
Hayato risked a glance back. Kenta was a dark speck at the base of the rear wall. He was throwing a rope with a hook, likely scavenged from the farm, over the parapet. Good.
Then he saw something else. Movement in a second-story window of the way-station. A pale face, there and then gone. Not a Gaki's blank stare. A human face, filled with terror.
Someone was still alive in there.
He had no time to process it. A Gaki in merchant's silks, its belly torn open, lunged at him from behind a tree. Hayato sidestepped and brought the wakizashi down in a clean arc, severing its spine at the neck. It collapsed.
Ren was fighting two more, using his spear to keep them at bay, jabbing at their legs. "Go! I'll lead them on a chase! Get back to the others!"
Hayato didn't argue. He broke into a full run, ducking under branches, leaping over logs, leaving the sounds of Ren's struggle and the hungry groans behind. He circled wide, coming back toward the bamboo thicket from a different angle.
He arrived to find Kei and the others in a state of panic. Sakura was pointing frantically at the way-station.
"Kenta is inside! But the thoughts… they are coming back! The fire… it's confusing them, they're turning around!"
Hayato looked. She was right. The initial pull of the fire was fading. The Gaki were dispersing again, some wandering back toward the station, others into the woods. And Ren was nowhere to be seen.
"We have to get Kenta out," Hana whispered. "Now!"
Just then, the rear gate of the way-station, a small, narrow door, creaked open. Kenta stumbled out, the two grain sacks bulging on his back. He waved frantically.
"He made it!" Kei breathed.
But Sakura gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. "No… from the side! Fast thoughts!"
From the shadow of the stable, three Gaki emerged. They moved with purpose, cutting off Kenta's path to the woods. These were different, they wore matching, dark clothing. Ninja. Or bandits. They moved with a predatory coordination the others lacked.
Kenta froze, eyes wide. He fumbled for the knife at his belt.
Hayato was already moving. He burst from the bamboo, not toward Kenta, but on an intercept path with the three fast Gaki. He had no sword, only the short wakizashi.
The lead Gaki, a man with a missing nose, saw him and changed course. It sprinted, low to the ground, its hands like claws. Hayato met its charge. He dropped into a slide under its grasping arms, coming up behind it. Before it could turn, he drove the wakizashi up through the base of its skull. It dropped.
The second was on him instantly. Hayato parried a raking swipe with his forearm, the thing's nails tearing his skin. He headbutted it, smashed its knee with a kick, and finished it with a stab to the eye.
The third stopped. It looked from Hayato to Kenta, who was now running for the trees. Its white eyes narrowed. It didn't groan. It made a clicking sound in its throat. Then it turned and sprinted—not after Kenta, but back into the way-station, vanishing into the dark interior.
It's learning. It's communicating.
Hayato didn't have time to dwell on it. The general moaning was getting closer; the dispersed horde was reforming. He grabbed Kenta's arm as the young man reached the tree line. "Run!"
They crashed back into the bamboo thicket. "Go, go, go!" Hayato urged the group. They fled deeper into the forest, not caring about noise now, only distance.
They ran until their lungs burned and the light was nearly gone. Finally, in a small hollow by a creek, they collapsed.
Kenta dropped the heavy sacks. "Rice… dried fish… salt… a little sake… and this." He pulled out a wrapped bundle. Inside were three perfectly balanced, sharp throwing knives, and a small, loaded hand-cannon, a tanegashima pistol. "From the guard post."
It was a treasure trove. But Hayato's mind was elsewhere. "Ren?"
No one had seen him. The old farmer had sacrificed himself as the distraction.
A heavy silence fell, broken only by their panting and the babble of the creek. They had food, weapons, a chance. But they had lost a man. And Hayato had seen two things that chilled him more than any horde: a face in the window, and a Gaki that thought, assessed, and retreated.
Kei was examining the shallow claw marks on his forearm. "These are superficial. But we should clean them." Her hands were steady, but her eyes kept flicking to his face.
"The girl was right," Kenta said, gulping water from the creek. "The storeroom was full, but the main hall… gods. It was a charnel house. No one could be alive in there."
"Someone is," Hayato said quietly.
Everyone stared at him.
"I saw a face. In an upper window. Just as the fire started."
Sakura, who had been listening to the distant noise, spoke up. "He is right. There is… a little quiet thought. In the stone place. High up. Very faint. Very scared."
"We have to go back," Hana said immediately, her maternal instincts overriding her fear. "We can't leave someone!"
"We have no plan, no strength, and we've lost Ren," Kenta argued. "It's a suicide mission."
Hayato looked at the supplies, then at the exhausted, frightened faces around him. They were not soldiers. They were refugees. And he was their reluctant shield.
"We rest tonight," he said, his voice leaving no room for debate. "We eat. We regain our strength. At first light, we move north again. We put distance between us and that place."
"But the person—" Hana began.
"If they have survived this long in a nest of Gaki," Hayato interrupted, his tone grim, "they are either incredibly resourceful, incredibly lucky, or they are not what they seem. We are not an army. We cannot save everyone. Our mission is to get to Edo."
He saw the protest in Kei's eyes, the guilt in Hana's. But he also saw the grim acceptance in Kenta's, and the utter exhaustion in the others'. They knew he was right, even if it tasted like cowardice.
As Kei cleaned and bound his arm, Hayato looked back south, toward the way-station lost in the gathering dark. He thought of the pale face. He thought of the intelligent, retreating Gaki. The world wasn't just falling apart. It was becoming something new, something smarter and more cruel. And they were stumbling through it, armed with rice, a pistol, and a girl who heard ghosts.
The night closed in, cold and watchful. Somewhere, a lonely soul was waiting in a tower of the dead. And Hayato, the ronin who carried a silence that burned, had chosen to walk away. The weight of that choice was the heaviest thing he had ever carried.