The wolf does not ask the deer for its blessing. It simply hungers. So too does the darkness come, not with malice, but with an emptiness that consumes all warmth.
Kaito woke to silence.
It was a deeper silence than the usual mountain quiet, a void where even the creak of the house settling and the whisper of wind against the eaves had been swallowed whole. He lay on his futon, heart thudding a slow, heavy rhythm against his ribs. The room was dark, the embers in the central hearth having died to cold ash.
He listened. Nothing. Not Rokuro's snoring from the next room, not the soft rustle of his mother turning in her sleep.
Then he smelled it. Iron. Thick, wet, and overwhelming.
It was blood.
His body moved before his mind could catch up. He threw off his blanket, his feet hitting the cold floor. The silence shattered as a scream tore through the house—a high, thin sound that ended with a sickening gurgle. His mother. His father.
"Father?!" Kaito's voice was a raw crack in the darkness.
He stumbled into the main room, his hand finding the door frame. The embers in the main hearth gave off no light, but the moon, hanging fat and white through a gap in the storm clouds, offered a sliver of silver illumination through the paper screens. It was enough. More than enough.
He saw his father first. Hajime Mori lay sprawled across the threshold of the kitchen, his body twisted at an angle that was not natural. His eyes were open, staring at nothing, and the front of his sleeping yukata was a glistening, darker black against the grey. Kaito's mind refused to process it. It was a shadow. A trick of the light. Father had just fallen.
Then he saw his mother.
Aoi was propped against the central support pillar. Her hand was outstretched, as if reaching for the children's room. Her mouth was open in a final, unheard plea. The iron smell was coming from her, from the deep, savage wounds that had torn through her.
Kaito's legs gave way. He fell to his knees, a sound escaping his throat that was not a word, not a scream, but something more primal. A denial given voice.
"No. No, no, no."
He crawled toward her, his hands slipping in the warmth spreading across the floorboards. He reached for her hand, his fingers finding hers, cold and still.
"Mother…"
A wet, tearing sound came from the shadows near the back of the house. A sound like meat being pulled from the bone. Kaito's head snapped toward it, his grief solidifying into a cold, sharp terror.
From the darkness of the children's room, a figure emerged.
It was not human.
It stood on two legs, but its proportions were wrong—arms too long, its back bowed, its fingers ending in jagged claws slick with blood. Its skin was a pale, mottled grey, like a corpse pulled from a river. Its face was the worst. It had once been a man, perhaps a wandering trader who had passed through the village a week ago, his eyes too hungry, his smile too thin. Now that face was stretched, the mouth split wide to accommodate rows of needle-like teeth. Its eyes were wild, mad things, filled with a ravenous intelligence.
It was chewing. Its jaw worked slowly, and Kaito saw a tiny hand, impossibly small, protruding from its monstrous mouth.
Hanako. Shigeru. Takeo. Rokuro.
The names were silent screams in his mind. The creature had been in the children's room. All of them. All of them were…
The thing swallowed, a convulsive motion that shuddered through its elongated body. Its wild eyes fixed on Kaito. A sound came from it, a low, wet chuckle.
"More," it rasped, its voice a grating whisper that seemed to come from a throat filled with splinters. "The little ones were… sweet. But you are bigger. The Master will be pleased."
Kaito's grief, his terror, fused into a single, blinding need. He did not think. He surged to his feet, grabbing the metal poker from beside the cold hearth. It was a poor weapon, short and blunt, but it was heavy.
"What are you?!" he screamed, charging.
The thing moved. Not with the speed of a man, but with a fluid, horrifying grace that made no sense. It twisted aside, the poker whistling through empty air. A clawed hand shot out, catching Kaito across the chest. He felt the searing burn of flesh parting, four deep gashes opening from his shoulder to his ribs. The force of the blow threw him backward. He crashed into the pillar, the breath driven from his lungs, and slid to the floor.
The creature loomed over him, its head tilting at an unnatural angle. "A brave heart. The Master enjoys breaking those."
Kaito clutched his chest, blood hot and slick between his fingers. He tried to rise, but his limbs were lead. The world was fading at the edges. He could only watch as the creature raised a clawed hand for the final blow.
A sound stopped it.
A low, guttural growl, not of anger, but of pure, defensive fury. It came from the children's room.
The creature paused, its mad eyes flicking toward the sound. Kaito, his vision blurring, saw a small figure emerge from the darkness of the doorway.
It was Yuki.
But it wasn't.
Her face was pale, as pale as the creature's, and her eyes, once the color of new oak leaves, were now a blazing, feral crimson. Veins of black, like cracks in porcelain, spread from her eyes across her cheeks. Her hair, unbound, writhed as if in a wind he could not feel. And from her mouth, where her small, human teeth had been, were the beginnings of fangs.
She was changing. She was becoming one of them.
A vine, black and thorned, burst from her small hand, slashing across the creature's face. It shrieked, a sound of surprise more than pain, stumbling back. The vine lashed again, forcing it away from Kaito.
"Y-Yuki…" Kaito breathed.
She did not look at him. Her crimson gaze was locked on the larger Hollowed. Her small body was trembling, but she stood between it and her brother, a wall of defiant rage.
The creature's surprise gave way to a sneer. "A newborn? Still clinging to her humanity? Pathetic. The Master's blood will soon correct that. You will feast with me."
It lunged. Yuki's vines met it, a tangle of black thorns wrapping around its arms. The creature tore through them, but Yuki was already moving, her small form unnaturally fast. She tackled it, driving it away from Kaito and through the shattered back wall of the house with a crash of splintering wood.
Kaito tried to rise. He could hear the sounds of their struggle outside—the shriek of the creature, the wet slap of flesh, the relentless cracking of Yuki's vines. His strength was gone. He collapsed onto his side, his cheek pressing into the cold, blood-soaked floorboards. His mother's hand was still outstretched. He reached for it, his fingers brushing against hers.
The world swam in and out of focus. The sounds of the battle were growing fainter, replaced by a high-pitched ringing in his ears.
The last thing he saw, before consciousness fled, was the shattered back wall, the moon illuminating a dark, struggling shape, and a single, small hand, wreathed in black thorns, reaching out to protect him.