Thousands of li away from Musashi Province in the eastern reaches of the island, where the demon-slaying village stood.
Somewhere deep within a prosperous city, a residence lay hidden, tucked behind its bustling streets.
The morning sun had just risen, but the high compound walls cut off every ray of light. Dense locust trees crowded inside, wrapping the entire building in a cold, sunless gloom.
And at the very heart of that compound, deep within the innermost room.
The paper doors were shut tight. No lantern burned inside. Only dappled light filtered through the heavy canopy of leaves, scattering pale, faint patches across the tatami.
A man sat in the shadows, untouched by sunlight.
He wore a plain, understated kimono. His features were beautiful, his skin so white it looked as though it had never once known the sun.
His eyes were red.
Vertical pupils — unmistakably, inhuman.
He was drinking tea.
But in the next instant, his hand stilled. The surface of the tea in his cup rippled.
Dead?
He set the cup down. The corners of his mouth dipped, ever so slightly, as he registered it — the extinction of one of the demons he, as the Progenitor of all demons, had personally created.
As a demon born from his own hand, that one had been no weakling. At least among his current subordinates, it ranked near the top — one of the primary hunters in the search for what he sought.
Its power had been virtually on par with the high-ranking yōkai of this era. And in the absence of any knowledge of its weakness, its undying nature was the kind of thing that even those high-ranking yōkai would find headache-inducing — something they would rather not tangle with.
It was equivalent to what later ages would call one of the Twelve Kizuki.
And yet now.
It was dead.
A being that should have been unkillable — dead.
Interesting.
Kibutsuji Muzan — a name scarcely known among humans, yet an absolute taboo in the world of the aberrant demons who stood apart from all yōkai — let a flicker of amusement cross his face.
This era still has no shortage of powerful beings.
He wasn't surprised. Not in the slightest.
The Warring States. Warlords dividing the land. Not just humans tearing at each other — yōkai, demons, sorcerers, onmyōji — every manner of force entangled, more chaotic than almost any age before it.
To say nothing of the great yōkai lords, each entrenched in their own domain.
Gone were the days of centuries past, when great demon nations had stood openly upon the earth and even the Kyoto shogunate at its height could do nothing against them. Gone too was the Heian era, when the gods themselves would regularly manifest miracles.
But this age was no pushover either. Not in the least.
Muzan held genuine wariness toward those beings.
Not purely because he couldn't defeat them.
Though that was true — he was no match for the peak combatants of this era: the great sorcerers, the great onmyōji, or the great yōkai lords. Their strength was simply overwhelming, far beyond anything he could confront head-on.
But Muzan could not die.
So long as he avoided sunlight, he was immortal. Those great yōkai could wound him, yes — but they couldn't kill him.
Similarly, though, he couldn't do much to those old monsters who had completed their own transformation.
More to the point — Kibutsuji Muzan, for all his immortality, had a weakness.
Sunlight.
He rarely exposed himself in public, and he was confident that no one — no being in existence — could forcibly drag him into the light. If he truly wished to flee, even those great yōkai couldn't pin him down without a shred of intelligence on his movements.
Still, he was wary. Fearful, even.
And that was precisely what consumed him.
If only I could solve the problem of sunlight…
Muzan's eyes narrowed.
This had been his goal for centuries — to overcome his fear of the sun, to achieve true immortality.
When that day came — great yōkai lords, sorcerers, shrine maidens — none of it would matter in the slightest.
Just wait a little longer.
He lifted his teacup and resumed drinking.
As for the demon that had just been killed?
No matter.
Dead was dead. He could always make more.
Still —
Whatever killed it… was it the Demon Slayer Corps?
In this era, few knew of his existence. Fewer still knew a demon's weakness.
Only that one organization — the one that had always targeted him, born from the same bloodline as his own — was most likely the culprit. For reasons of their own, after all, the group known as the Demon Slayer Corps had always been reluctant to reveal Kibutsuji Muzan's existence to any other faction.
Muzan's gaze drifted toward the window. The sunlit green outside entered his view as he reached his conclusion — and yet he had absolutely no intention of investigating further.
No need.
It was just one demon. A relatively strong one, but he had plenty to spare.
Whatever the case, Muzan had no desire to expose his whereabouts. Not now, at least.
Once I overcome sunlight… when that time comes, this whole land——
He'd been hearing things lately. That the legendary Shikon Jewel had apparently reappeared.
He thought that thing might be worth looking into… looking into.
"What's the matter?"
A voice sounded suddenly at Kibutsuji Muzan's ear.
Muzan's expression did not change at all. The interruption was abrupt, and yet he seemed entirely accustomed to it. He simply raised his eyes, looked at the aged figure that had appeared before him, and put on a smile — servile, almost fawning.
"Nothing at all, Lord Kibōmaru."
———
The rear mountain behind the demon-slaying village.
The horizon was brightening — the first pale grey of dawn.
In the first rays of sunlight, the demon's body crumbled into ash.
A few wisps of black smoke curled up from what remained.
Kōbe Hikaru glanced at it briefly.
"Exactly as expected. Straight out of Demon Slayer."
He got to his feet and dusted off his hands.
The bone armor, the demon-qi armor, and the demon mask — all of it dissolved away.
The white-haired, sharp-featured ghost warrior stood in the morning breeze, his grey robes rippling.
Kikyō walked over. The hem of her red hakama was wet with dew. Her expression was calm, but those jet-black eyes held the faint depth of someone lost in thought.
Tsubaki followed half a step behind, her face openly surprised.
Though he had concealed the truth of his nature as a transmigrator, Kōbe Hikaru had still explained the existence of these "demons" to them.
Hearing it, both Kikyō and Tsubaki were genuinely taken aback.
At the end of the day, though the demon Progenitor Kibutsuji Muzan had been creating demons ever since his own birth, he had been deliberately keeping them hidden — and so the total number of demons in existence was not large. Across the lands of the island nation, the actual probability of encountering one was quite low.
Compared to the endless wars, the frequent natural disasters, and the yōkai that ran rampant in every corner of the land — the casualties that demons had inflicted on humans were, frankly, negligible.
Even by Kōbe Hikaru's reckoning, the current Kibutsuji Muzan was still in a dormant phase, and he likely hadn't yet become as cowardly and cautious as he would be in later days. He also had probably not yet encountered Tsugikuni Yoriichi — the Breath of the Sun swordsman who wielded a power like sunlight itself.
But Muzan's dormancy had always been there from the start. The only difference was how completely he hid himself in the shadows.
So this was their first time encountering such a being.
The first time they had ever heard of such a thing.
Not a yōkai, not a spirit — merely a demon formed when a human was infected and transformed.
That much was understandable.
"How do you know all of this?"
The shrine maiden Tsubaki turned to look at Kōbe Hikaru and asked the question.
"I guessed."
Kōbe Hikaru said it casually.
"Who are you trying to fool?"
Tsubaki frowned.
"When you called out that name just now, the reaction on that thing's face was nothing like what you'd see if the answer had been a guess."
Kōbe Hikaru didn't answer.
He only said: "Some things, you don't need to know too clearly."
"All you need to know is — this kind of creature dies in sunlight."
Tsubaki wanted to press further, but Kikyō's voice cut her off.
"Enough."
The shrine maiden in white and red stood a short distance away, her long bow put away, her black hair drifting gently in the morning breeze.
She glanced at Tsubaki, then at Kōbe Hikaru.
"We'll speak of this another time."
Tsubaki bit her lip, but said nothing.
The three of them stood in silence on the wreckage of the battlefield for a long moment.
And then —
"I don't want the Shikon Jewel anymore."
Tsubaki spoke without warning.
Kikyō's brow shifted, just barely.
Kōbe Hikaru turned to look at this shrine maiden whose attitude had apparently just made a complete reversal.
Tsubaki's expression was serious.
That beautiful, striking face no longer held any of its former arrogance or resentment. In their place was something harder to name…
Eagerness?
"What did you just say?"
Kikyō asked.
"I said — I don't want the Shikon Jewel anymore."
Tsubaki repeated herself, and then her gaze turned to Kōbe Hikaru.
"I can give up the contest between us. Give up fighting you for the Shikon Jewel."
"But —"
She drew a slow, deep breath.
"Give me your shikigami."
"…"
Kōbe Hikaru said nothing.
Kikyō said nothing either.
The air seemed to freeze.
But Tsubaki only grew more animated the more she spoke.
"I saw everything from that fight just now!"
She pointed straight at Kōbe Hikaru.
"Those bone spikes, that armor, and that bone-chain dance — it was like a god of war descended straight from the underworld!"
"I have never seen a fighting style like that!"
"Never seen an existence like that!"
Her eyes were shining with a frightening intensity.
"Kikyō, you have the Shikon Jewel, a village to protect, and countless people looking up to you."
"You already have everything."
"This shikigami — give it to me. I am a shrine maiden trained in the Tahōtō tradition; when it comes to shikigami, I am better suited than you…"
She had seen it all, far too clearly just a moment ago.
White bones blooming like flowers across his body, crimson armor catching the moonlight, blade and bone weaving together into the most brutal and beautiful of dances.
In that moment, her heart had been beating faster than it ever had.
Faster than the first time she had gone out alone to slay a demon.
Faster than when her master had praised her exceptional talent.
Faster even than when she had watched Kikyō put a single arrow through a crowd of yōkai.
She had been jealous of Kikyō.
Jealous that Kikyō was stronger than her. Jealous that Kikyō had been given the Shikon Jewel. Jealous that Kikyō was always, eternally, so composed.
But now, in an instant, that jealousy was gone.
She only wanted to steal that bone-spike-covered monster and make it hers.
Even Tsubaki herself was startled by the thought.
She had never felt this way about anyone before.
But she couldn't help it.
Words like these, coming out of nowhere, were genuinely hard for Kōbe Hikaru or Kikyō not to find… silencing.
In that silence.
Tsubaki simply assumed that Kikyō had agreed.
After all — compared to the Shikon Jewel, one shikigami was nothing.
She felt she was the one getting the raw end of the deal here.
"So… do we have a deal?"
She ventured, probing.
And then she saw it —
Kikyō's face. Expressionless.
Completely expressionless.
But having no expression — was, in itself, an expression.
The air sat quiet for three seconds.
Kikyō, without a word, turned and walked ten paces, then stopped.
Drew her bow.
Nocked an arrow.
And aimed it at Tsubaki.
"Let us begin, Tsubaki. The duel."
Tsubaki: "???"
Did this woman not hear a single word she just said!?
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