[Player: Kazuki Arata]
[Level: 5]
[Waza: Black Hand, Thread Cutter, Aura Sense, Dark Rider, Eviscerate, Adaptive Survival, Sword of Time]
[Kegare: 88%]
[Status: Crippled (Hands)]
---
Yumi had a split lip. Just a little blood but she ignored the sting as she picked her way through the tangle of crude toppled fences and collapsed huts. The fox village really had looked like a fairy tale - from a distance. Now it was garbage. The foxes had run and Yumi stripped away their illusions with every step.
She walked by abandoned laundry - children’s clothes fluttering in the mountain breeze - and spat onto the ground, wiping a thread of blood from her mouth. Kuro's claws had caught her off guard - one frantic scratch across Yumi's lip and cheek. Not a big deal. Her ears were still ringing from the three bullets she had used to put the cat down.
But Yumi was more interested in Kazuki.
The memory of him slumping into that ditch, bullet-holes in his hands, made her stomach twist in a mean thrill. She'd shot him at point-blank range. That had to mean the end for him, right? But she wasn't so certain. Ka-chan had proved entertainingly durable.
"Where are you hiding?" she murmured, stepping over a collapsed wooden gate adorned with chipped fox writing. "You can't have gone far."
Her left arm throbbed from where the cat-girl had slashed it.
A swirl of wind kicked up as Yumi edged deeper into the abandoned huts. Ribbons of morning sun cut through the patchy roof holes, revealing dust dancing in the air.
"You better not bleed out before I find you," Yumi whispered, kicking aside a collapsed tatami mat. In the shadows, she saw dried splatters of blood. Kazuki's, perhaps. Good. She crouched, touched the dark patch with two fingers, rubbed them together. Still tacky. "Not cold yet."
He was somewhere close. She peered through a half-broken doorway. Nothing but emptiness. She exhaled, frustrated.
"So you want to play hide-and-seek, Ka-chan?" she called, stepping back out into the remains of the village's main path. "Fine. I know how to play."
She shrugged off her backpack, letting it thump onto the ground. From its main compartment, she withdrew a plastic container filled with home-brewed ethanol. The pungent odor filled the air as she unscrewed the cap.
Yumi wandered through the deserted huts, splashing the liquid onto the walls, the foundation posts, the shriveled thatch. Everything was about to go up in flames.
She flicked a My Melody cigarette lighter. The small flame danced.
"Yachae," she said, touching the lighter's flame to the ethanol-soaked boards.
A whoosh of fire burst to life, devouring the wood, jumping from plank to plank in the morning breeze. In moments, thick white smoke poured upward, dancing in the sunlight. The old timbers were perfect.
Smirking, Yumi sloshed more ethanol around the base of a half-intact shrine gate. She set that ablaze, too. The ring of fire spread outward.
"You can't hide from me, Ka-chan!" she shouted, voice rising over the growing crackle of flames. "If you're alive, come out! Hope you’re not dead."
Honestly, this was fun. She'd always loved fire. Fire was so honest, so free. It didn’t pretend to be anything; it just was what it was -t hunger. If you wanted to clean a place, you burned it. That was the simplest solution.
"Hey, Ka-chan!" Yumi called louder, stepping back as smoke and sparks rose in a swirl. "I'm sorry about your cat-girl. I bet you liked her, right? I was thinking… you had her, and that princess from the shrine… and me! We could've been a team, right? Together with you, going on adventures!
Like a manga.
That would’ve been so cool.
Oh well.”
She giggled. "It doesn't have to be this difficult, you know. We're both from Earth. We don't belong with these yokai. Come on! We could talk… if you'd just come out."
Her only answer was the roar of the flames.
---
Kazuki lay face-down in the dirt and gravel of a shallow ditch at the far edge of the fox village, half-hidden by a collapsed wooden cart. The blood in his head pulsed, echoing the throbbing pain in both his hands - mangled from Yumi's point-blank gunshots. Blood and black threads of kegare had clotted around the ragged holes, but any attempt to move his fingers sent a white-hot spike of agony up his arms.
He hadn't passed out… but he wanted to. It hurt so much. He'd lost track of how long he'd been lying there, adrenaline keeping him marginally conscious. Smoke wafted overhead, stinging his eyes. The flickering light told him that a new wave of fire was racing through the village.
He lifted his head, gasping. The dryness in his mouth, the swirl of cinders overhead, the stabbing ache in his palms - his entire body wanted to give in, to let the next bullet or the next wave of flame finish him. But somehow he couldn’t let that happen. It was a kind of primal restlessness. Something in him insisted that the game wasn’t over yet and he couldn’t stop playing.
*If I stay here, I'll burn. If I move, I might bleed out.*
He coughed once, tasting iron. The ground was shaking, or maybe he was. He felt something deep inside him thrum, a dark, coiling power. His kegare. A friend.
Numbly, Kazuki summoned the game UI in his mind's eye. He closed his swollen eyes.
Pause Game.
At once, everything froze. The crackle of flames cut off. The searing pain in his hands receded to a memory. Even the smoke's swirl was motionless. He was in that timeless, intangible interface again, a faintly glowing pane of notifications and data hovering in front of him:.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
[Player: Kazuki Arata]
[Level: 5]
[Waza: Black Hand, Thread Cutter, Aura Sense, Dark Rider, Eviscerate, Adaptive Survival, Sword of Time]
[Kegare: 88%]
[Status: Crippled (Hands)]
[ HP: 6/20
He swallowed. His HP was critical, and his options were limited. If he did nothing, he'd die or burn or both.
This was it: His special “magic” of corruption. But when he’d tried to use Eviscerate on Yumi it had failed, and the fox illusions hadn’t worked on her either. She was a void. Kegare and reishin alike just slid off her.
It didn’t matter. Life or death; everything he had was right here.
Wait...
He couldn’t use his powers on her... but...
Unpause.
---
Flames marched through the village and up the mountainside, forcing any survivors to scatter. She circled around the smoldering huts, searching for signs of life. She took pistol shots at running foxes but that was just for fun. Mostly she was looking for a certain wounded boy.
"Ka-chan," she called out in a high, sing-song voice. "I'm sorry about Kuro. Really. Are you mad? I'm sure she made a lovely kitty. But shou ga nai, ne?" She paused to splash the last drops of ethanol on the charred remains of a half-burned tree, flicking the lighter once more.
Yumi hadn’t had breakfast. Hunger rumbled in her stomach, but the fun overshadowed it. She was so close…. If only he'd show himself.
A sudden wave of heat hit Yumi, far beyond the flames she'd set. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. She spun around, stepping back from a towering pyre of logs that had been the central huts. Through the swirling smoke, she saw something move. In the fire.
What?
Something ablaze.
Kazuki lunged out from within the core of the fire, his black shape wreathed in dancing flames. Yumi couldn't comprehend what she was seeing. His entire body was blackened with glowing crimson cracks, lines of molten light pulsing beneath charred skin. The ground beneath his feet hissed as ash and cinder scattered. He looked like a demon or a wrathful god, wreathed in fire and heat and shimmering aura that made the very air warp.
What the hell?
Kazuki e hurled himself at Yumi, bringing the searing heat of his entire body to bear. His arms were black rods of burning volcanic rock and as his body struck hers, Kazuki wrapped them around Yumi. She screamed as Kazuki’s scorching inhuman flesh seared through her clothes to her soft flesh in the blink of an eye.
She fired her pistol blindly, but it was too late: her own body ignited, clothes catching. She shrieked and tried to shove him away. She managed to put a fraction of space between them, but Kazuki didn’t release her, he pressed her tighter to himself, an unstoppable brand of living flame.
Her flesh sizzled. The stink of burning hair, scorched cloth, raw flesh assaulted them both. Yumi howled. He felt bullet impacts somewhere in that burning haze, but the molten shell of Adaptive Survival dulled them. Pain was overshadowed by savage purpose.
They tumbled together, a writhing mass of flame and limbs, rolling through the brush. Fire lapped at the dry grasses, feeding the inferno. Yumi's screams rose in pitch, half-choked by smoke, until suddenly she was silent.
System notifications flared behind Kazuki's eyes:
[Kegare Depleting: 60%... 50%... 40%...]
[Warning: Fire at lethal threshold.]
He didn't stop. He pinned Yumi against the ground as they slid near the edge of the ridge. The entire slope gave way under their combined weight, sending them both sliding downwards, battered by loose stones, tangles of burning brush.
They crashed onto a narrow ledge, the flames still clinging to Yumi's body, devouring the last scraps of her clothing. She kicked and thrashed, wild from pain. Kazuki tried to hold on, but the momentum carried them toward the cliff's edge.
In a final desperate flail, Yumi locked eyes with him. Her blackened lips tried to form words - maybe a curse, maybe a cry for help - but no sound emerged over the roar of the blaze.
Then she fell, dropping away into the ravine below, her body still burning. Kazuki, clinging to a tangle of roots, managed to snag his arm around a protruding trunk. The wave of searing heat rushed past him, the wind howling in his ears.
He hung there, heart hammering, every nerve screaming.
Yumi's flaming form vanished silently into the ravine.
---
Kazuki stayed there for a long moment, half-lodged in the underbrush of the cliff face, the swirling flames above threatening to devour more of the slope. The scorching transformation still crackled across his skin.
He forced himself to let it go. The black-and-lava shell peeled back, receding from his flesh. The pain that replaced it was incredible. Smoke rose from every inch of his body. But he was alive.
[Adaptive Survival – Disengaged]
[Kegare: 10%]
He let out a guttural noise of relief, stumbling up from the ledge. The bullet holes in his hands had partially sealed, replaced by horrifying burns that at least didn't bleed. New agony laced his entire body, but it wasn't the unstoppable meltdown from a moment ago.
Somehow, he climbed back up the slope, away from the scorching brush, using the last reserves of adrenaline to pull himself higher. He coughed violently, half-blinded by swirling ash.
When at last he reached more stable ground, he collapsed onto his knees, panting. The forest behind him was an inferno, the remains of the fox village devoured by the unstoppable blaze.
She's gone.
A wave of dizziness almost overcame him. He managed to stay upright.
Kuro!
Kazuki forced himself into a stumbling walk, weaving through the few outlying huts that the fire had not yet reached. The overhead smoke was thick, but gusts of wind parted it enough for him to pick a path.
She was near the ditch...
He found the remains of that shallow ditch. The ground was churned with footprints and the spent shell casings of the bullets that had gone into his hands and Kuro’s body.. Kazuki saw a shape in the half-light.
Kuro lay on her side, half-buried in debris, her black hair matted with blood. One of her arms was twisted at a gruesome angle. Her chest rose and fell in shallow increments.
"Kuro!"
He dropped to his knees beside her. Up close, the injuries were worse. Bullet holes across her shoulder and side. She was conscious enough to stir at his voice, blinking once, a slow, painful movement.
Her eyes focused on him with difficulty. He could see the gold of her feline irises, dulled by shock. Then she let out a weak laugh that turned into a groan. "Kazuki... you look... bad."
He managed a trembling smile. "Yeah. You too."
She closed her eyes, voice barely audible over the crackle of flames. "So you... you beat her?"
"I... I think so," he said quietly. "She's gone."
A soft, pained exhalation from Kuro. "I’m so sorry…."
Kazuki stared. "What?"
Her eyes opened again, glistening with tears. "I... I helped bring her here. To this world. From... from yours." Each word seemed like a boulder. "The Master... the same one who commanded the Inugami... told me. Find... a vessel... from Earth..."
Tears leaked from her golden eyes. "I'm sorry... Kazuki-sama... So sorry... Thought I could... control situation... I didn’t want to hurt you... was wrong..." She coughed again, a harsher, wetter sound. "I failed... Bad kitty..."
"Just... let me die," Kuro whispered."
---
[Achievement Unlocked: Burn With Me]
[Next Chapter: The Eye of Izanam]
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