The merchant district of the fishing village burned with paper lanterns as evening descended, their warm glow reflecting off the wet cobblestones like scattered embers. But beneath the beauty lurked ugliness—whispers that slithered between market stalls, rumors that festered in sake houses, fear that multiplied with each retelling.
The witch princess walks among us. Crimson flames in the night. Ruin comes wearing the face of a child.
Hanae heard them all. Every muttered curse. Every sharp intake of breath when she passed, it had begun again. Every parent pulling their children closer, every merchant clutching protective charms. She'd come to buy rice and vegetables with the coins Giru had stolen, her hood pulled low, but anonymity meant nothing when your horns cast shadows that marked you as other.
She hurried through the market, eyes downcast, coins clutched so tightly they cut her palm. The basket on her arm felt impossibly heavy, each item a burden she couldn't quite justify. Do we deserve to eat? Do monsters deserve sustenance?
"That's her." The voice cut through the evening air like a blade drawn from its sheath. Hanae froze mid-step, her heart hammering against her ribs.
A crowd had begun to form. Not quickly—nothing in this village moved quickly, as though the salt air and endless fog had slowed time itself—but inevitably. People with fishing gaffs. Fisher people with kitchen knives. Even children holding stones, their faces twisted with the kind of hate that's learned, not born.
At the crowd's head stood a figure in dark robes marked with religious symbols—a monk, his face gaunt and scarred, eyes burning with zealous certainty. In his hands, he clutched a scroll that looked ancient, its edges yellowed and crumbling.
"The prophecy speaks clearly," the monk's voice rang out, sharp enough to silence even the market's bustle. "When the witch of crimson flame returns to walk among the blessed, ruin shall follow in her footsteps. Cities shall burn. Children shall starve. The very sea itself shall rise up in fury."
He pointed at Hanae with a trembling finger, and the crowd pressed closer.
"This child—this thing—carries the witch's curse in her blood! I have seen the flames myself, brothers and sisters! Flames that burn without fuel, without mercy! She saved the horned kid three nights past, and in doing so, revealed her true nature!"
Hanae's basket slipped from nerveless fingers, vegetables rolling across the cobblestones. Her breath came in short, panicked gasps. The crowd's faces blurred together into a single mass of hatred, and suddenly she was seven years old again, kneeling in her family's mansion while they beat her for a name she didn't choose, for a curse she didn't want, for a prophecy written before she was born.
"I didn't—" she started, but her voice was too small, too broken. "I only wanted to help him. He was dying. I couldn't let him—" "Silence, witch!" someone shouted.
A stone flew. It struck her shoulder, and she stumbled back. Another stone followed. Then another. Pain blossomed across her body like dark flowers, and with it came something else—heat, rising from her core, crawling up her throat, begging to be released.
No, she thought desperately. If I use them, if I show them the flames, I'll prove everything they believe. I'll become the monster they see. But the stones kept coming. And the crowd kept pressing closer. And somewhere in the chaos, she heard a merchant scream: "Kill her before she kills us all!"
The world tilted. Hanae's vision swam with tears and pain and terror. Her hands rose instinctively—not to attack, but to shield herself—and crimson flames erupted from her palms like blood from a wound.
The flames didn't burn the crowd. They spiraled upward into the evening sky, a column of red-gold fire that painted the entire market in shades of apocalypse. For a moment—just one suspended heartbeat—everything stopped. The stones hung in mid-air. The shouts died in throats. Even the ocean seemed to hold its breath.
And then chaos exploded. "THE WITCH ATTACKS!" "KILL HER! KILL HER BEFORE SHE DESTROYS US!" The crowd surged forward like a wave breaking against rocks, and Hanae ran.
She didn't know where her feet were taking her. Through narrow alleys that stank of fish guts and seaweed. Over wooden bridges slick with ocean spray. Past shrines where monks chanted prayers against evil, their voices rising in accusation as she fled past. Her lungs burned. Her legs screamed. Blood ran from a dozen cuts where stones had found their mark.
But still she ran, because stopping meant death, and death meant proving them right—that she was a curse, a blight, something that should never have been born.
The pursuit was relentless. Torches bloomed behind her like fireflies of hate, their light casting her shadow long and monstrous against the walls. Voices shouted her location, coordinating, herding her toward the cliffs at the village's edge where the land dropped away into churning sea.
She burst from an alley onto open ground and realized too late—she was surrounded.
The monk stood at the crowd's center, his scroll raised high. "The witch is cornered! Now, righteous warriors, strike her down! Save your families! Save your children! End the prophecy before it can—"
Steel sang in the darkness. A blade materialized from nowhere, its edge catching torchlight as it slashed across the monk's scroll, severing it in two. The parchment fluttered to the ground like dying leaves, and standing between Hanae and the mob was a figure she'd almost given up hoping for.
Giru Hazuma. The smirking bandit. The broken child with the crooked horn.
But he wasn't smirking now. His face was set in lines of cold fury, his fox mask pushed up to reveal eyes that burned brighter than any torch. In his hands, twin blades gleamed—stolen from a samurai's estate three towns back, razor-sharp and hungry for blood.
"Back away," Giru said, his voice carrying across the crowd with the weight of absolute conviction. "Or I'll paint these cobblestones with your guts." The monk snarled. "Another cursed one! Another abomination! People—strike them both down! The gods demand—"
Giru moved.
What happened next would be spoken of in whispers for years after, when parents warned their children about the demon bandit with the crooked horn who'd defended the witch princess against an entire village.
His first strike took three peoples weapons before they could even register movement—fishing gaff, club, and knife all severed at the shaft, their wielders stumbling back in shock. His second strike painted a red line across the monk's gut, shallow enough to wound but deep enough to send the message: This is your only warning.
The crowd hesitated. That was when Giru attacked in earnest.
He moved like water, like smoke, like something that existed between one breath and the next. His blades became extensions of his fury—not wild, not reckless, but precise and devastating. Every strike found flesh. Every slash opened skin. Blood sprayed across cobblestones, across walls, across the faces of those who'd come hunting a child and found a monster instead.
But Giru wasn't killing. Not yet. Each wound was measured—painful enough to stop, shallow enough to survive. Arms cut so they couldn't hold weapons. Legs slashed so they couldn't chase. Faces marked so they'd never forget the price of mob justice.
"She saved my friend!" Giru roared, his voice breaking with rage and pain. "While you sat in your warm houses counting your coins, she burned her own hands keeping him alive! And this—THIS—is how you repay her? By hunting her like an animal?"
His blades moved faster, a crimson blur in the torchlight. More blood. More screams. The crowd began to break, terror finally overwhelming hate.
"You want a monster?" Giru's laugh was sharp enough to cut. "I'll show you a real monster!"
He leaped into the thickest part of the mob, and chaos erupted.
Bodies flew. Blood painted walls. Steel sang its terrible song. Giru's movements were slick and horrifying in equal measure—a dance choreographed by rage, performed on a stage of violence. His crooked horn caught light with each spin, his fox mask slipped down over one eye, and through it all he laughed, that high, manic laugh that had once hidden pain but now channeled it into something sharp and deadly.
A figure with a fishing gaff rushed him from behind. Giru ducked without looking, his blade slashing upward to open the persons arm from wrist to elbow. Another attacker came from the left. Giru pivoted, his second blade catching torchlight as it carved a shallow arc across the persons shoulder. She dropped her knife with a scream.
The violence was surgical, calculated, devastating. Each movement wasted nothing. Each strike served a purpose. This wasn't the clumsy desperation of a child fighting for survival—this was the refined brutality of someone who'd learned that mercy meant death and hesitation meant loss.
Hanae watched in horror and awe, her hands still flickering with suppressed flames. "Giru, stop! You're going to—" "Going to what?" he snarled over his shoulder, his blades never stopping their deadly work. "Save you? Protect you? Do what Isshun should have done but didn't? Yeah, Hanae. That's exactly what I'm going to do."
His voice broke on Isshun's name, and for just a moment, his strikes faltered. That was when the monk struck.
He'd circled around during the chaos, his own blade drawn—a ceremonial weapon meant for exorcisms, its edge blessed and burning with pale fire. He swung for Giru's back, aiming for the spine, intending to end this in one blow.
Crimson flames erupted like a wall.
Hanae's power exploded outward, no longer controlled, no longer restrained. The flames didn't burn the monk—they consumed him, wrapping around his body like living serpents. He screamed, dropping his blade, falling to his knees as the fire scorched without killing, tormented without destroying.
"ENOUGH!" Hanae's voice shattered the night. Her horns blazed with inner light, her eyes reflecting the flames that poured from her hands. For the first time since Cherry Hills, she wasn't hiding. Wasn't shrinking. Wasn't apologizing for existing.
"You want to see the witch?" Her voice carried across the market, strong and terrible and devastating. "Then look! LOOK AT ME!"
The flames rose higher, painting the entire village in shades of crimson and gold. They danced across buildings without burning them, spiraled into the sky without consuming it, blazed with a fiery light that transcended mere destruction.
"This is what I am!" Hanae screamed, tears streaming down her face, mixing with the light of her own fire. "I am curse and blessing both! I am the witch's heir and a child who just wanted friends! I am monster and victim and survivor! And I will NOT apologize for saving the people I love!"
The flames pulsed once, twice, then vanished as suddenly as they'd appeared. Hanae collapsed to her knees, steam rising from her trembling hands. The market fell into stunned silence.
The monk lay gasping, his robes scorched but his skin untouched. The mob stood frozen, weapons lowered, eyes wide with something between terror and understanding. And Giru—Giru stood over Hanae, his blades still drawn, blood dripping from their edges, his body positioned to defend her even if it cost him everything.
"Anyone else?" he asked quietly, his voice hoarse. "Anyone else want to test the 'cursed ones'? Because I promise—I PROMISE—the next person who touches her dies. Not wounded. Not scared. Dead."
No one moved. Slowly, painfully, Giru reached down and pulled Hanae to her feet. His hands were gentle despite the blood coating them, his grip steady despite the rage still burning in his eyes.
"Come on," he whispered. "Rūpu's probably awake by now. And we need to leave this place before they grow braver or stupider."
They walked through the parted crowd, two broken children covered in blood and flame, carrying each other through a village that would never forget the night the witch princess revealed herself and the demon bandit defended her with steel and fury.
Behind them, the market slowly came back to life—quieter now, haunted, forever marked by the memory of crimson flames that burned without consuming and blades that cut without killing.
And in the distance, watching from the shadows of a distant roof, a figure smiled. Akagane no Oni. The Crimson Oni with the long horns and scarred eyes.
"The witch awakens her power," he murmured, his voice carrying notes of satisfaction. "The bandit learns to channel his rage. And the loop-cursed kid lies broken, waiting. Yes... yes, this will do nicely."
He turned and vanished into the night, leaving only the echo of his presence—and the certainty that the true storm was only just beginning. A new threat rises. And quite soon.
TO BE CONTINUED...