The shoji screens disintegrated as the tide of flesh poured in.
The villagers did not walk; they scuttled, their spines snapping backwards with a wet, splintering crack as secondary, chitinous limbs tore through their clothing like emerging insects.
"What the hell is going on here?" Yorimitsu's eyes bulged as he leapt backwards, his feet barely clearing the reaching talons.
The demon in the corner didn't move. It watched him with a cruel, golden curiosity. "Can you do it, little boy? Can you kill people?"
In that moment of hesitation, a piercing strike from a spider-woman hit his left arm. He hissed as black ash began to spread through the wound, numbing the muscle instantly.
Shit... poison. A barrage of attacks flew toward him, razor-sharp legs and gnashing teeth. He took a deep, agonising breath and centred his weight. They are already gone, he thought, his eyes hardening. If I don't purify them now, they will become a disaster that consumes the valley.
Yorimitsu's ironwood blade hummed, a sharp, crystalline whistle as he cut through the cacophony of clicking joints. He swung, and the blade carved a path of blinding white light through the suffocating dark.
As the first creature, the thing that had once been the old man fell in two clean pieces, Yorimitsu's head dipped low.
"May the root find the soil," he sang, the words of the transition sutra flowing from his lips like a rhythmic river. He didn't stop moving. He bowed to the falling torso even as his blade pivoted in a seamless arc to meet the next.
The demon in the corner recoiled, its golden eyes darting in a frantic, avian rhythm. "This... this is not Ibaraki-sama," it hissed, its voice cracking like dry wood. "What is this? Why does he carry the mark of the Commander but pray like a monk?"
Yorimitsu vanished.
A blink of displaced air was all that remained where he had stood. A heartbeat later, he was upside down, his sandals suctioned to the blackened, rot-slick rafters by a sudden pulse of Reiryoku. He fell like a drop of heavy, predatory ink, his blade spinning in a lethal circle.
Slash.
Bow.
Chant.
He moved with a hypnotic, rhythmic grace, carving through the spider-men as if he were performing a sacred temple dance. But his chest began to heave. The white light on his blade flickered and paled. Sweat stung his eyes, and the sheer weight of the endless horde began to press him toward the blood-soaked floor.
The spiral, he thought, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Let it go.
He dropped his guard, standing defenceless as the spider-demons shrieked, closing the distance. Yorimitsu squeezed his eyes shut and commanded the mark to unfold.
DOOM!
The very air in the house grew heavy, a physical weight that made the demonic villagers pull back instinctively. The ink raced down his throat and along his arms in a liquid surge, forming jagged, glowing tattoos that wrapped around his hands like iron gauntlets. His fingers blurred into a sequence of hand-seals so fast they became a shimmering haze.
"Sun Gate. Moon Gate. Dissolve!"
A dome of ink-black energy, laced with silver lightning, exploded from his palms.
Prrrzzzzz! The lightning sounded like a thousand birds chirping at once.
Thud. The sound was followed by a thousand collective sighs as the demonic shells crumbled into fine, white ash, leaving only the skeletal remains of the villagers to rest in peace. The house fell into a terrifying silence.
In the centre of the charnel house, the horned beast was gone. Yama-uba stood there, her indigo robes hanging off a frame that looked like brittle twigs. Her one human eye was wide, wet, and trembling.
"Help me... Yorimitsu..." she whimpered, her voice a fragile reed in the wind. "It's so cold... help me up."
Yorimitsu's ironwood blade clattered to the floor. The warrior was gone; the boy was back. He lunged forward, his arms reaching out to catch her. "I'm here, Obaasan! I've got you! We're going home—"
As his chest met her shoulder, the air froze.
The frail crone vanished. In a blur of obsidian skin, a clawed hand lunged forward, burying itself deep in Yorimitsu's chest. He didn't scream; the air had been stolen. He looked down, watching as the demon-talons gripped his own glowing, spiritual heart, dragging it partially out of his ribcage to pulse in the cold, dead air.
"I don't know how you stole the mark of the Commander," the creature hissed, the golden eye burning inches from his face. "But if you die, He will finally reincarnate without this 'human' anchor. Shuten-sama... your humble servant has come back to serve you once more!"
It roared, the voice filled with an absolute, terrifying joy. But then, the demon's hand jerked. Its fingers cramped, pulling back from his heart with a violent spasm.
"NO!" A scream erupted from the creature's left side. Yama-uba's human eye flared with a final, blinding light. She seized her own demonic wrist, her knuckles white, her bones snapping under the strain of holding her own monster back.
"Now, Yorimitsu! While I hold the gate!"
Yorimitsu, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth, did not pull away. He reached out and grabbed the ivory horn on her head, his glowing ink tattoos seeping into her demonic skin. He began the final release.
"I hope..." she gasped, tears carving tracks through her bloodied hands, "that in the next life... You have a better life. One with the sun. Only the sun."
A blinding spectacle of violet and white light erupted between them. It wasn't an explosion; it was a blooming flower of pure energy that erased the shadows. As the light hit the floor, it solidified, growing into a bright white tree of Reiryoku that pierced the roof.
As the radiance faded, the house was a ruin of silent dust. Both Yorimitsu and the old woman fell to the floor, their bodies overlapping in the debris.
Above them, two small, shimmering whisps of blue light rose from their chests. They circled each other once, like two birds caught in a draft, before drifting upward through the shattered roof and into the vast, indifferent sky.