A thousand li away.
Deep amid a range of mountains, tucked into a valley, stood a mansion that appeared on no map.
White walls, black tiles, winding corridors — the courtyard was planted thick with wisteria.
Wisteria was the natural enemy of Demons — the toxin the flowers gave off could, to some degree, suppress a vengeful Demon's regeneration. It couldn't neutralize that ability entirely, but it was enough to trigger an instinctive nausea and dread in any vengeful Demon nearby, making it a natural barrier material.
This mansion was ringed with wisteria, inside and out, so thoroughly that even the most cunning vengeful Demon could not approach within a single step.
There was no doubt about it.
This was the headquarters of the Demon Slayer Corps.
The ancestral home of the Ubuyashiki family.
And within that estate, in the main hall—
the night was still deep.
The wooden shoji doors were shut tight, and only two lamps burned inside.
A young man knelt at the center of the room, on a cushion.
He looked to be about twenty, thin-framed, dressed in a plain white kariginu, his black hair combed neat and tied back.
The features beneath that hair should have been fine and handsome, but the left side of his face, from brow to cheekbone, was marred by a swath of deep purple corrosion.
And—
both of his eyes had clouded to a milky white, swallowed nearly whole by that same purple blight.
He was plainly, completely blind.
This was the curse the Ubuyashiki family had borne for generations.
Exactly as Kobe Hikaru already knew.
The Ubuyashiki bloodline shared its origin with Kibutsuji Muzan—
Five hundred years ago, back in the Heian era, Kibutsuji Muzan had been born into the Ubuyashiki family, before an accident of fate turned him into a mutation among humankind — neither yokai nor spirit, but the progenitor of the Demons. Ever since, the Ubuyashiki family seemed to labor under some terrible curse: generation after generation born sickly and frail, the men worst of all, few of them living past thirty.
Most died young, before they ever reached twenty-five.
And yet, as if some unseen god had struck a bargain in exchange, every generation of the Ubuyashiki family also inherited a kind of near-intuitive foresight — they could not see concrete images, but they could sense the shape and drift of events to come.
This young man, who carried that very gift, was the current head of the Ubuyashiki family: Ubuyashiki Rikiya.
At his right hand sat a jet-black Kasugai crow, perched on its own wooden stand, its golden eyes utterly still.
It had just flown back from a thousand li away.
carrying every word Rengoku Jinjuro had sent.
Rikiya closed his one seeing eye — the right — and stayed silent for a long while.
"Yokai…"
he murmured, half to himself.
His voice was faint, carrying the frailty any invalid would naturally have.
Yet it was calm and steady, crisply resolute — solid as Boulder.
"A yokai capable of cutting down a Demon from several li away, carrying a document penned by Master Totosai's own hand, come seeking out the Demon Slayer Corps of his own will."
"And a hunter… capable of subduing three swordsmen in the span of a breath."
"Kobe Hikaru… Is that the name that's been rising through Musashi Province of late? The one who cut down lightning, exterminated a demon, single-handedly turned back three thousand troops, and cowed the Dragon of Echigo?"
He mused on this a moment, then reached beside him for a thin sheet of paper, took up his brush, and dipped it in ink.
Blind as he was, the characters he set down came out neat and even, written at a swift pace.
When he finished, he rolled the paper up and tied it to the Kasugai crow's leg.
"Go."
Rikiya stroked the crow's back. "Tell Jinjuro — bring them here."
The crow spread its wings, slipped out through a gap in the window, and vanished into the night.
Rikiya listened it go, then turned and spoke toward the empty shoji doors.
"Call the Hashira back."
A woman's voice answered from outside.
Footsteps receded into the distance.
Rikiya closed his clouded, sightless eyes. In the lamplight, the half of his face swallowed by purple corrosion looked far older than his years.
A body of twenty, the bearing of sixty, a lifespan meant for eighty.
He did not have long left to live.
But that he could receive news like this before the end…
"Kibutsuji Muzan's whereabouts…"
He spoke the name without hatred in his voice.
Only weariness.
Five hundred years of weariness.
And—
a longing for release.
Under that same night sky.
Several jet-black Kasugai crows took flight from the direction of the Ubuyashiki Mansion, wings beating as they scattered toward different points of the compass.
They cut through mountain forests, crossed rivers, skimmed over the rooftops of towns and the footpaths between fields.
Each one carried the same order—
Hashira meeting.
A conclave of the Hashira.
…
Somewhere in the mountains north of Kanto.
A campfire crackled.
A bald, burly man sat cross-legged beside the flames, stripped to the waist, his shoulders and chest crossed with old scars running every which way.
At his hip lay a blade of unusual thickness and weight, its sheath a deep gray, its hilt wound with coarse hemp cord.
There was no mistaking it — a Sun Blade.
Three vengeful Demon heads lay spread out before him.
They had already begun to rot black and crumble to ash, the firelight picking out grayish-green lines of decay across them.
"Three."
He reached out, lifted one by the hair, studied it for a couple of seconds, and tossed it into the fire.
"Good haul today."
Behind him stood six young Demon Slayer Corps swordsmen, all in matching black uniforms, faces drawn with exhaustion but still lit with excitement.
Two of them bore wounds; one had his left arm hastily bound in cloth strips, dark red blood seeping through.
"My lord, one of them got away—"
"Let it run. There's nowhere to hide out this way, and dawn's coming soon — it'll die on its own."
The bald man tipped a mouthful of water down his throat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Glug.
A crow landed in front of him.
Its golden eyes fixed on him, a low, urgent croak rattling from its throat.
The bald man glanced at the paper tied to the crow's leg, untied it, and read it through twice.
"Huh."
He rose to his feet and brushed the ash from his skin.
He threw the last of the three vengeful Demon heads into the fire, and the flames leapt up a notch higher.
"We're moving."
"Where to?"
"Headquarters. The Master's called us in."
…
Beneath some castle town.
A hidden chamber.
No windows, only a single oil lamp.
A woman — or rather, a girl — knelt in the corner, an unsheathed Sun Blade laid before her, its blade tinted pale pink.
She was cleaning it.
Her motions were slow, the cloth gliding along the edge from tip to hilt, over and over.
She wore the black uniform of the Demon Slayer Corps beneath a deep purple haori, her long hair braided down her back.
Her expression was placid, her eyes calm and still.
A crow flew in through a ventilation gap and landed beside her knee.
She did not stop cleaning the blade.
She only glanced sideways at the paper it carried.
Then she sheathed the sword.
She rose, pushed open the chamber's stone door, and stepped out into the moonlight beyond.
…
And even as those crows took flight—
the very first jet-black crow had already crossed a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers, arriving once more above the ruined ground where Kobe Hikaru and the others stood.
It had taken it half the night.
Flying at breakneck speed… just as the sky began to lighten toward dawn.
Rengoku Jinjuro raised his arm, and the crow settled steadily onto his forearm.
He untied the paper and unrolled it.
He looked up,
at Kobe Hikaru, standing among the broken walls, and then at Tsugikuni Yoriichi, crouched beside his wife.
"A reply from our Lord."
He held the paper out. "He grants me leave to bring the two of you — to headquarters."
Kobe Hikaru took the paper and looked it over.
The handwriting was neat, the message brief and to the point, ending with what looked like a family crest.
He handed it back.
Then he turned to Yoriichi.
"Bring your wife. Come with us."
Yoriichi did not answer at once.
He looked down at his wife, Uta, resting against his chest. Her breathing had steadied, though her body still trembled faintly. Now and then the child in her belly gave a kick, and a flicker of tenderness broke through the fear on her face.
"Uta isn't fit to travel right now,"
Yoriichi said.
"The Demon Slayer Corps headquarters is safer than here."
Kobe Hikaru said it plainly, in a tone Yoriichi could neither deny nor refuse. "At the very least, they've got a wisteria barrier there, hands to help, a midwife—"
"And besides — your wife's constitution seems unusual, clearly the kind that draws vengeful Demons more easily. That Demon went so far as to lay a trap just to get at her. Who knows when the next one might come?"
Yoriichi fell silent for a moment.
In the end, he nodded.
He bent down and gathered Uta securely into his arms, his movements slow and gentle, as though he were carrying the most precious porcelain in the world.
Rengoku Jinjuro watched the scene beside them, then glanced again at the last line Ubuyashiki Rikiya had written on the paper in his hand—
"Win them over with everything you have. Show no negligence."
Both of them.
He tucked the paper away and bowed to Kobe Hikaru and Yoriichi in turn.
"Then please, follow me."
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