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PAGE 1
5:30 AM.
Dawn was a myth.
The world was a study in grey water and darker shadows.
Yokushi awoke not to light, but to a deep, bone-aching cold that had seeped through the old white blanket.
She stretched her arms.
The fire in the hearth was dead ash.
Shivering, she pushed herself up.
Eyes heavy.
A fatigue that wrapped her entire body in dizziness.
The wooden floor creaked beneath her as she stepped onto it.
She brushed off her hair — then stopped.
Looked at her arm.
Then down at herself.
Something horrifying.
Her clothes had been changed.
A high-collared burgundy blouse buttoned tightly to her chin. Black lace ruffles running down the chest, pinned at the throat by a silver brooch with an emerald stone. The sleeves plain and tight, wrapping down to her wrists. At her waist, a thick black leather belt with a silver buckle cinched a long, charcoal-grey A-line skirt.
"My god....." She muttered, caught between shock and confusion.
Her eyes were drawn to the window — slamming repeatedly against the wall in the draft.
She walked toward it.
A fierce current snaked through the ill-fitting frame as she came near.
She peered out into the weeping dawn.
Someone was already there.
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PAGE 2
Hanzuri stood in the small, muddy clearing in front of the house, shirtless in the biting cold.
The air was a damp, grey veil of mist. The ground a sodden quilt from the night's storm.
He was not simply enduring the chill. He was using it.
His body moved through a complex, vicious kata. Every punch, kick, and pivot precise. Controlled. Powerful. His breath plumed in the frigid air in steady, rhythmic clouds — a quiet counterpoint to the morning's silence.
A thin sheen of exertion glossed his skin, highlighting the stark topography of muscle and old, silvery scars.
This was not exercise. It was ritual. A honing. A reminder to flesh and bone of their purpose.
Yokushi watched, a strange tightness settling in her chest.
Beneath it coiled a deeper unease.
Then she noticed it.
As he pivoted, the grim dawn light caught the side of his temple. There — where the bullet had struck. The same luminescence from the forest flickered once beneath his skin. A sickly pulse, like a drowned star.
Visible for only a heartbeat. Then the movement and the grey light swallowed it whole.
It never healed, she realized. It's just... hidden.
She closed the window softly. As if the sound might break his focus. Or stir the unnatural light she was now certain lived permanently beneath his skin.
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PAGE 3
The door creaked open.
Yokushi stepped out into the hallway.
It swung closed behind her on its own.
She looked left.
Then right.
Then slowly upward.
It was gone.
The canopy of grey silk — the nest she had stumbled through the night before — had been torn down and cleared away entirely. Not a thread remained.
She didn't dwell on it.
She moved on down the hallway.
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PAGE 4
Descending the stairs was a careful negotiation with pain. Each step sent a dull throb up her leg.
She glanced around as she descended. Old furniture hidden under white cloth. Flies buzzing lazily in the dim air. Everything the same as the night before — except for one thing she hadn't noticed then.
Hanging on the wall directly in front of her was an old wooden photo frame.
She stopped.
Inside it, a group of people — men and a woman at the front — stood shoulder to shoulder in a tight constellation of youth. The soft, dark vignette blurred the edges of the photograph, but the closeness between them needed no explanation. A quiet intimacy that required no words.
Beside the woman stood a man being towered over by her. A monocle fixed over one eye. Expression serious, looking directly into the camera while the rest wore neutral faces with a subtle, hidden smirk underneath.
She recognized him instantly.
Hanzuri Kamado.
She stared at it for a brief moment.
Then continued toward the front door beside her.
She pushed it open.
Cold mist drifted inside, swallowing her sight immediately.
Without hesitating, she walked into it. The mist settled onto her skin — cold and wet and immediate. Her boots sank into the wet, muddy dirt with each step. She coughed twice.
The mist thinned. The haze cleared.
And there he was — spinning into a kick that sent a spray of mud and loose gravel arcing through the air. He froze mid-motion. Then straightened. His head turned back, gaze sharp as a blade.
"What called you here." His voice was flat and low. "Towards me?"
She blinked, momentarily stunned by the raw physicality radiating off him. Then narrowed her eyes.
"Answer honestly." She pointed at herself. "Did you do this?"
Silence.
"Do what?"
She pointed at her outfit. "What did you do. To me?"
Another silence.
He didn't reply. He simply walked toward her — slow and steady — closing the gap between them until both their gazes were locked and neither moved.
"Remember what happened." A pause. "Last. Night."
Her eyes widened. Then dropped to the ground. She closed them, forcing herself back through the hours — pushing hard against the blankness.
Nothing came.
"What is it....."
"The covenant."
Her nerves fired. Her eyes snapped open. She looked back at him.
And something flashed — dragging her under, pulling her back to the previous night.
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PAGE 5
She was sitting on a brown wooden chair in the shroud of silence, sniffing low.
Behind her stood Hanzuri, his head bandaged with thin, worn cloth. He moved a grey-dark cloth slowly up and down her back, cleaning the wounds left by the stones she had been dragged across.
He wrung the cloth out into a small iron bucket beside him with a low gurgle.
The marks were deep. Printed into her skin by the ground itself.
Hanzuri carefully threaded the lace through the small grommets of the corset in a sequence of double X. When he reached the last, he pulled the lace back firmly and tied it into a tight, secure knot.
"Feel better?" he asked.
Yokushi didn't speak. She nodded slowly.
He walked to the chair on the far side of the table, the floor creaking beneath each step.
Scree.
He scraped the chair back and sat. His gaze settled on her tilted face. A drop of her tears landed on the table.
Hanzuri drew a long, slow breath.
"Look. It feels hurtful." A pause. "But.... it's gone now. Just accept it."
"I cannot!" She raised her hand.
Bam.
The glasses, plates, and the candle jerked as her fist came down hard against the table.
She raised her head. Held his gaze.
"She wasn't just a horse. She was my everything. The only one I thought of as family. My father's pride. Those stone-hearted, faithless monsters ended her." Her fist closed. "All of them. Will burn."
Hanzuri studied everything. Her body language. Her tone. The wrath sitting just beneath the surface.
He reached over to the fallen candle lying on the table. Righted it. Pressed the base down into a drop of hot molten wax to hold it steady.
"By the way, Hanzuri." Her voice dropped to a murmur. "Just what are you....?"
"Why bother so?"
She exhaled slowly.
"You should've died up there. By the bullets in your temple." She continued. "But you.... came back."
Hanzuri took a long silence before answering.
"You see. The residue of a broken covenant."
"What's.... that?"
"The coffin wasn't a prison. It was a verdict. Cast by an angel to seal my inner demon." He continued. "You shattered the chains. It was released the moment the candle extinguished in that room — it latched onto your flame. Should your light go out.... my time runs out." He pointed directly at her. "We are bound — not by choice, but by consequence. Our time starts now."
Yokushi froze. The words passed through her like an invisible force she couldn't name and couldn't resist.
"Who is.... it?" Her voice was low. Frightened.
The room temperature plummeted without warning.
The flame on the candle began to flicker violently. A heavy, suffocating presence radiated across the room. Behind Hanzuri, a silhouette emerged slowly from the darkness.
Yokushi sat stunned, unable to form a single conclusion.
"H-Hanzuri." She stammered, pointing past him. "Behind you.... Monster."
The silhouette revealed two deeply disturbing red eyes.
Her vision blurred. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Her breathing came fast and wrong.
The monster snickered — a deep, maniacal sound — while Hanzuri didn't flinch a single inch.
Thud.
Her body collapsed hard against the wooden floor, taking the chair down with her.
"Don't ever do that again."
He snapped his fingers.
The room returned to normal in an instant. Temperature stabilized. The flame steadied.
The silhouette dissolved back into the dark.
Hanzuri stepped over and stood above her, looking down at where she had fallen.
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PAGE 6
Yokushi's body lay still on the woven red dusty rug, unconscious.
Hanzuri stood beside her, a stack of folded clothes held in both hands.
He thought for a brief moment.
Then tossed them toward her with a low, measured force.
Shhhhhwip.
His shadow shot forward — thick, long, elastic — swallowing the clothes mid-air. It landed across her lower body and expanded rapidly, forming tiny tendrils that followed through every fold and crease. Everything from her neck down was consumed by it. The shadow wiggled along her body with a quiet squelch. Then stopped.
The shadow receded — sliding off her skin like ink, rushing back to pool silently at his feet.
Yokushi's torn and filthy clothes had been replaced entirely. A well-fitted, high-standard outfit. Neat and complete.
Hanzuri crouched down. He placed one hand beneath her back and neck, the other beneath her knees, and lifted her carefully. He crossed to the bed slowly and laid her down with the same precision, adjusting her posture and pillow before drawing a white wool blanket over her body.
He pressed his palm lightly against her cold forehead.
"Rest well, girlie."
He turned. Pulled the door slowly closed behind him with a long, low creak.
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PAGE 7
The memory dissolved.
Hanzuri tapped her temple gently.
She surfaced.
"So.... where are my clothes?"
He turned and pointed without looking at her.
"Over there."
Far ahead, a clothesline stretched between two thick logs of black oak. Over the thin blue rope, her clothes hung cold and wet, held in place by iron clothespins.
"I washed your clothes so you wouldn't have to." He continued. "But the weather didn't let them dry."
Yokushi's cheeks turned tomato red. Heat climbed up her neck. The embarrassment sat heavy and immediate.
Hmph.
She turned away.
"I-I forgive you." She glanced back slightly. "For now...."
His eyes weren't on her. His hands were moving.
Before she could say anything further, he interlocked his fingers, folded his palms together, and pressed his lips against the knuckles of his thumbs.
Chirp-Chirp.
The whistle carried through the forest. Deep, low, resonant — a sound that made Yokushi go briefly still. Not alarm. Something older than that.
Their ritual.
A dark silhouette broke from the haze, flying toward them. As it drew near, it revealed itself.
A raven.
It landed on Hanzuri's forearm as he extended it.
He closed his eyes.
"From the place we have travelled to here," he said quietly, "where are the people who have been living there for years."
The raven responded in its own language, flaying its wings briefly before lifting off and vanishing back into the mist.
"What the....." Yokushi muttered.
"There is a small city located to the east. Not far from here. A few people live there." He paused. "We depart for it today."
"Wait...." She stared at him. "You can communicate with" — a pause — "animals....?"
"The ability of my ancestors."
Without another word, he turned and walked toward the clothesline, boots pressing into the cold wet ground with a quiet squish at every step.
He reached it. Pulled down a dull-white collared shirt and a pair of suspenders from the hanger. He slid his arms through, buttoned the shirt from bottom to top, and snapped the suspenders against his black trousers. Then he turned back toward her.
The forest went silent.
Too silent.
The wind stopped entirely.
Then —
Hanzuri flickered.
The displacement was instantaneous. A red blur closing the final distance before Yokushi could even process the movement.
He appeared directly beside her.
Her breath caught.
He walked straight past her without a word or a glance.
She turned.
Hanzuri reached down and picked up a fine leather striped cowboy hat resting on a tree stump. He set it on his head. It fit perfectly.
He turned back to face her.
"So.... Yokushi." A pause. "Does it suit me?"
"Damn, he looks good.... without that monocle," she muttered under her breath.
She shook her head, a reluctant honesty surfacing. "It suits you. Frighteningly well."
Hanzuri approached her.
"Then." He extended his arm, forming a fist. "Shall we move?"
Yokushi smirked faintly.
"Sure, Kamado."
She drove her fist forward, meeting his in a sharp, resonant crack. The impact vibrated up her arm — a sudden, solid jolt of reality after his dizzying, supernatural speed.
"Let's fulfill our responsibilities."
Both of them spoke it at the same time.
The sun rose from the east, marking the beginning of a new era in their journey — toward everything they had left unfinished, and everything that still waited ahead.
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— To be continue —