The sand whispered beneath Tahazu's boots, dry like ground bone sifted through time. Each step sent a soft crunch into the stillness, like a whisper trespassing over graves that remembered their names. Wind slid low across the mounds, dragging heat behind it like the breath of a god too old to care anymore.
"No birds," Tahazu muttered, eyes flicking upward beneath a darkening sky. "No vermin and bugs. Place reeks like a tomb waitin' on its last sigh, so it does." His voice was thick as turf smoke, steeped in hills that remembered too many wars and too much whiskey. "Even the ghosts look knackered. Not a moan among 'em. As if death's tired of itself."
Ninim didn't answer right away. She stood several paces ahead, motionless as a temple bell before it tolled. Her lavender eyes narrowed, not looking but sensing—reading the current between realms.
"It's not silence," she whispered. Her Japanese lilt curled through her words like silk over steel. "It is... the breath held before the blade is drawn. Kami mo sonna fū ni shite iru." Even the gods are holding their breath.
Tahazu flexed his grip around his twin axes, one slung low, the other strapped tight across his back. Sigils beneath his skin stirred—Celtic knots and battle blessings inked in blood magic. "You sayin' the whole of this dead land waitin' for us, lass?"
"Eie," she replied. Her voice sharpened like a drawn edge. "It's expecting blood."
The horizon stretched wide and flat, the Burial Mounds rising from the desert like the spines of forgotten giants. These were not just graves. This had once been a city of the dead, where the Dilmunites buried their honored and their cursed, their priests and their monsters. Stone circles marked entrances long collapsed. Ancient glyphs half-erased by sand still pulsed with faint magic. The sun hung above them, but its light dimmed with every step, not from clouds, but from memory.
"They believed," Ninim said suddenly, "that the dead traveled west to a sacred land of immortality. Across the waters. This place was their gate."
"Aye," Tahazu said, voice dropping like a blade into the earth. "I remember now. Took a sword t'a death-priest once, I did — right here." He tapped his chest, just above the heart. "Bastard tried bindin' me soul into a salt statue. Thought he'd pickle me like a fish for the gods to gawk at."
She glanced back. "You let him live?"
"Only his arse." Tahazu shrugged like it barely mattered. "The rest I sent back to the netherworld. Parcel by bloody parcel, so I did." He smirked, wolfish. "With postage." A breeze stirred the dust. It wasn't the wind of any world meant for the living.
Ninim raised her hand. "Yamete," she whispered. Stop.
Tahazu stopped mid-step. The weight shifted on his shoulders. Instinct, honed by wars across dimensions, clenched his gut.
Then the thought touched his mind. From her. A whisper, not speech: "Do you feel it?"
Aye. He did. Cold. Still. Not peace. No warning. Anticipation. Something in the land was watching. Waiting. And it wasn't Midir.
"Oi. That bastard's nearby, isn't he?" Tahazu murmured it low like the question didn't need an answer.
"Hai," Ninim replied, voice cool. "Left of the third mound. Hidden well. Not alone."
"Little fanged coward," Tahazu muttered. "Can I gut him now?"
"Not yet," she said, stepping forward. Her sleeves whispered like crow wings. "I want to know what he's hunting."
She moved her fingers through the air, and purple light bloomed along her nails. Kanji flowed into sigils, then into runes. Hybrid magic has not been seen since the early days of yokai warfare.
Her hand dropped.
The earth screamed.
The blast of psychic force tore through the terrain, shattering glamour like cracked glass. The air shimmered and tore open. And for a second, a figure in white stood outlined in nothing. Midir. Then gone again. Like breath swallowed by the sand.
"He watches," Ninim murmured, eyes flaring. "But will not act."
"Cowards rarely do," Tahazu grunted. "That's Suseri's doing, I bet."
A second pulse slammed Ninim's senses. Deeper. Not illusion. Real. Something called from beneath the mound. Ancient. Wrong.
They moved.
The mound's entrance was no longer sealed. Stone shattered not by time, but by intrusion. The Dilmun script had been burned through as if someone defiled every prayer with mockery. Inside, the chamber stank of disturbed spirits and scorched offerings.
The relics were wrong. Bones shoved aside. Runes smeared. At the center lay a bow. A ceremonial weapon unlike any modern make—Atlantean fused with Egyptian, but… off.
"This isn't hers," Ninim confirmed.
"Looks like it bloody well could be," Tahazu said, eyeing the thing hard. "But the weight's off. The balance…" He tilted his head slightly. "Aye. Too clean."
"Not real," she hissed. She crouched. Her fingers hovered. Then touched. Fire ripped up her arm.
She recoiled, fangs bared, skin branded with searing sigils that vanished as quick as they came.
"Trap," she spat. "This was made to lure us."
A growl rose in Tahazu's chest. "Dara and Gir got fed the same rot. We're bein' played."
Then came the sound. Not footsteps. Not wind. But breathing.
The darkness moved.
From the shadows between the burial niches, forms slithered out. Gray-skinned, eyeless, with mouths stitched shut by spells. Slag flesh melted into runes. Yomotsu-shikome, demon hags from Yomi, summoned by dark priestesses like Suseri.
With them came black mist. Celtic Sluagh. Spirits of unclean dead, banned from every underworld, drawn to blood and vengeance.
Tahazu's eyes narrowed. "Well now," he said, voice like gravel under boot. "That's a bit cheeky, isn't it."
Ninim turned, fire already coiling down her arm. "They think we fear shadows?"
A Shikome lunged.
She caught it mid-air and impaled it in one clean motion. The blade sprang from her forearm sheath with a whisper-like torn silk wrapped in thunder. Dark metal, nearly black, etched with silver-streaked kanji that shimmered violet when they caught the light, curled down its spine like storm script. Its edge didn't slice—it parted the Shikome's bone like it had never been solid. The creature convulsed, then dissolved into fine ash that spun upward in a spiral, drawn to the blade as if in reverence. Not a sound escaped it.
Three more rushed to replace it.
Ninim didn't move. "Ready?" she asked flatly.
A slow grin peeled across Tahazu's face.
"Thought you'd never ask, lass."
The twin axes, Gorehowl and Bane, his most prized weapons, were forged from bog-iron and Ashwood, steeped in battlefield blood, vanished from his hands in a blink of a sickly green light, pulled back into the void that housed his rage. Didn't need them.
With a howl born of old wars and older betrayals, he lunged into the swarm barehanded. His fists were hammered, coated in glowing knotwork. Each strike crushed spirit bone, shattered ethereal sinew. His roar echoed through the chambers, guttural and rough, tinged in that Highland rasp.
"Come on then, ya rotten shadow-born bastards! Let's have a proper go!"
Ninim moved with the storm, not against it. Her body was the wind. Blade flicks fast as sighs. A twist, a cut, a blur. She danced between the spirits, slicing necks and hearts that weren't supposed to exist. Then she closed her eyes, summoned the wind from her lungs, and screamed.
Not a human scream. Not even divine.
It was the scream of something older than storm, older than wrath. A voice not meant for mortal ears, forged in the lungs of a goddess wronged by the heavens. The ceiling cracked. Shadows fled. Even the air convulsed like the world flinched at remembering who she was.
Tahazu felt the echo rattle his spine and grinned.
"Ah, damn. That sound makes me miss Vawn." He spat to the side. "Pity he's off with Kaziel and Zavid, chasin' some other madness our lad instructed."
They moved back-to-back, perfectly in sync.
She cut what he caught. He shattered what she stunned.
The air reeked of scorched shadow and singed spell-work. Some of the blood was real. Some illusion. None of it slowed them down.
Then—silence.
Ash settled across the stone like snow. The mounds stopped whispering.
The sigil burned again on the far wall. A pulse. A warning.
Ninim lowered her arm blade, smoke trailing from the tip.
Tahazu wiped black blood from his knuckles. "You alright, lass?"
She nodded once. "Barely worth the effort."
His laugh boomed across the chamber. "Ah, yer a cruel woman."
"I learn from the best," she replied.
His grin softened. But it didn't last long. The tremor returned. Not from the earth. From beneath it. They both turned toward the sigil. Something ancient was stirring. And it wasn't finished.
"They think this slows us," Ninim said.
Tahazu looked at her. Saw the brand on her arm that was healing fast.
A whisper of motion stirred the dust to the east. Not a demon surge. Not yokai flicker. Something colder.
Human-shaped, but not human.
Ninim's spine straightened, head tipping slightly as her senses flared outward. Not an attack. A breach. Intentional. Clean. Not Mavromino magic, but something threaded with familiar arrogance. One breath later, the heat shifted.
Two figures stepped through the ruined archway, silhouettes against the haze of scorched magic.
The first moved with a shinobi's economy. Grace leashed by discipline. No wasted movement, no posturing. His black coat bore old Japanese brushstroke sigils etched into modern armor. Sword still sheathed, but wrong in the way it waited. Not passive. Patient.
The second moved like glass sliding across silk. Not fragile. Just silent. Controlled. Her long braid swung behind her like a drawn line, black against her lean frame. She stood barely taller than a blade's length, all narrow limbs and measured presence, but the air around her shimmered with a stillness that made even spirits pause.
Ninim's eyes narrowed. Recognition flickered. Not friends. But not strangers.
"Dark-Hunters," she murmured, voice sharp with venom. "Dogs of War."
Tahazu turned, one hand already flexing, fingertips trailing sparks.
"Great," he muttered. "Boyo's babysitters came to watch over us instead."
Raden's boots whispered across the dust-blown stone, each step measured. He scanned the defiled runes, the scent of scorched ritual magic still heavy in the air. But it wasn't the battlefield that drew his full attention.
It was her. Ninim.
Power threaded the space around her like a coiled storm. Not illusion. Not glamour. Something old and sovereign. His instincts barked before his mind caught up.
She wasn't just a presence. She was a force. And on her back, half-shadowed by the torn edges of her cloak, hung the blade he had only heard about in fractured tales.
Raijinken.
Forged from the broken remnants of the Heaven blade, and bound with wind sorcery only the elder yokai could wield. They said it could split lightning. That its edge had once cut through the breath of death itself. And here it was, slung across the shoulders of a woman who radiated fury wrapped in precision.
Recognition locked his spine upright. This wasn't just a yokai. This was Ama No Zaku, in the flesh.
His posture shifted, enough to acknowledge what she was without losing his bearing.
"We came to extract intel," he said with deliberate control. "And assist, if necessary."
"You came uninvited," Ninim countered. "Into a territory under Šarra control."
Chi stopped a pace behind Raden, her eyes locked on the broken altar, the shattered bones, the ruined runes.
Tahazu's laugh cracked through the mounds like a war drum pounding through the fog. "The Atlantean's hunches aren't our godsdamned concern, boyo."
Raden's jaw ticked. "Our orders—"
"Our suzerain gave explicit orders to stand down," Ninim snapped, eyes narrowing. "Yet here you are, stomping through the cursed ground like you know better. One step inside this threshold, and you made yourselves a liability."
The Chinese hunter's head tilted just slightly, eyes flicking to the ground, the ruins, the tattered remains of what had once been protection wards. She read the scene like a ritual. Her expression never shifted. But her right hand hovered just a breath's width from the runed knife strapped beneath her ribcage.
"Shikome and Sluagh," she said calmly. "High aggression but a disjointed response. Layered summoning, not cohesive control. The convergence pattern suggests placed guardians, not free roamers." Her voice never rose. It sliced clean through the weight around them.
Tahazu scowled. Not at her words. At the way, she moved—like a wraith with steel bones. "Aye. You know your monsters."
Chi Hu didn't smile. "I studied them for over three centuries. These weren't natural formations. They were sentinels."
"You were not meant to encounter them," Ninim said, her voice colder now. "That trap was meant for us."
Chi Hu didn't flinch under the accusation. Her eyes swept the blood-stained circle, then the distorted glyphs carved through the altar stone.
"You're right," she said simply. "We weren't the targets. We were the accelerants."
She stepped aside just enough to give Raden room, and it was only then that Tahazu noticed the weapons strapped along her back—not just the bone staff, but the twin knives hidden in plain sight, warded and silent. Each carried a different set of wards, carefully balanced for demon-type variance. A scholar's death kit.
"You showed up," Ninim snapped, "and the ground changed."
"We were sent to confirm a presence," Chi answered, tone unflinching. "We confirmed it."
"You confirmed a lie," Ninim bit out. "What you walked into wasn't surveillance. It was staging."
Chi's eyes sharpened, but she didn't counter. "And now we know."
Tahazu's hand dropped to his hip. Not to draw a weapon. To remove the leather tie from his axe handle. A flick and the knot unraveled, magic crawling along the steel's surface like awakening venom.
"You think we needed your help clearing minor spirits?"
"I think you needed time," Raden said coolly. "And we bought it."
The tension coiled tight between them. No one moved. But energy sparked in the air like flint kissing steel.
Then it came.
A flicker. Not of movement, but thought. Hard and clean.
"Evacuate. Now. Trap confirmed. Not our Ašû-Šarru. Not even a simulacrum. It's Kingu. He's stirring. Dara and I were initiating a counter seal. All Šarras regroup. I repeat—regroup."
Raijinken vibrated at Ninim's back, in sync with the thought. Her head jerked toward Tahazu. They both froze, locked in that silent, knowing only warriors shared.
The ancient creature's name rippled through her mind like oil across the water, smothering everything in dread. Her fingers curled. Not from fear. From preparation. She didn't shake. She didn't flinch. But her lungs pulled tighter, adjusting for the shift.
Chi Hu inhaled once. "Kingu." Her fingers moved instinctively to the ward against her throat.
"I've only read theory," she added. "We aren't equipped for that."
Raden drew his Katana without flourishing. A single sound, metal leaving sheath. Not to fight. To honor what stood under them. Or what might rise?
"This is your battlefield," he said, voice lower. "We weren't briefed on Kingu."
"No one was," Ninim replied.
Tahazu didn't move, but his grip flexed, sensing the truth through the hafts. At his side, Gorehowl twitched first, its edge flaring with sickly green fire like swamplight catching wind. Bane followed, vibrating with a low, resonant snarl that reverberated through the fractured chamber floor. The axes weren't responding to the Hunters. They had locked onto something deeper. Older. Buried beneath the mound and beginning to stir. The moment Kingu's name passed through their wielder's mind, they answered in kind—rage recognizing rage. One pulsed with thirst. The other with judgment.
"This fight ain't yours," he addressed Raden.
Chi's shoulders relaxed just a fraction. "We know when we're outmatched."
"You're not just outmatched," Ninim said. "You're expendable if you stay."
That landed harder than it should've.
Chi nodded once. "Understood."
Raden hesitated. Not because of pride. Because his instincts, trained over lifetimes of conflict, screamed at him to hold the ground. But the ground didn't belong to him. And neither did this war.
He flicked his blade sideways in a silent salute, not to Tahazu, but to the enemy beneath them.
"If it stirs, I'll feel it. Even from far."
"Then get far," Tahazu grunted. "Now."
Chi turned without flair, stepping back toward the breach they came through. Raden followed, his presence vanishing like a severed thread.
Their departure peeled a layer of pressure off the battlefield. But it didn't ease anything.
The air thickened as Ninim turned to Tahazu. "We're out of time."
"No more false scents. No more distractions."
Energy bled off their skin. The Burial Mounds roared underfoot. They moved. Not a flash. Not a leap. A storm passes through the earth itself. Stone cracked in their wake. And whatever emerges, they're more than ready to annihilate.