Threads of Entwined

The clearing exploded into motion.

Both maws flared open—one normal and full of teeth, the other a vertical, red-edged wound that pulled at light and breath. A column of not-light tore past Shin’s shoulder and erased a ribbon of saplings clean out of the world; their falling leaves became ash midair and then not even that.

“Scatter!” Kaori’s voice rang like a struck bell.

Shin dove, shoulder-first, dirt grinding into his palms. The demon’s spined back flared, ridges singing a note that made the morning stutter. Daelric vaulted a tumbling root, greatsword flashing, planting hard to catch a claw in a glancing parry that would have snapped a weaker man in two.

“Guren no kizami—chōtō ni hi o!”

Ember Carve!

Heat sheeted along Daelric’s blade—not a fireball, not a gout, but a denser edge of pressure and burn that forced the claw aside. Scales popped and smoked.

Hikari was there as the weight turned. She ran beneath the lifted arm and slashed the tendon inside the wrist with neat, disciplined economy. “Tempo’s mine,” she snapped, not winded—just angry. “Don’t lose it.”

“Try me,” Shin said, pushing up.

The demon slewed and struck for Kaori, who stood her ground with staff forward, sword at her hip.

“Shugo no kekkai—yuragi o tomare!”

Guardian Ward!

The translucent dome popped up a heartbeat before the tail hit. Impact shattered it into golden dust that smelled faintly of rain. The force still threw Kaori back two steps, but she held her stance, breath steady.

A cloaked figure in a dark mantle lifted her hand as if plucking something from invisible loom-threads. No flash. No theatrics. Just a soft-spoken stitch of sound:

“Hōki no ito—utsuroi o kazarē. Toki, hitofushi—nagare o yowame yo.”

Threads of the spindle—adorn the change. Time, one measure—soften the flow.

The demon’s next step arrived a quarter-beat late. Hikari slipped past, blade kissing the soft seam behind the knee. The monster buckled.

“Left hinge, again,” Shin said, already moving.

Hikari didn’t argue. She baited high; Shin beat aside the killing counter. Their blades crossed in a tight, brutal duet—her light and precise, his efficient and unflinching—opening the same thin fault they’d worried in the last exchange.

The second maw inhaled, light bending toward it like grass to wind.

“Move!” Daelric roared, charging straight into the danger like a man with a grudge against survival. He ripped the greatsword up in a two-handed draw-cut, breath a blade of its own. “Kagutsuchi—yoru o wari, asahi o yobē!”

Dawncleave!

His edge drew a shimmering horizon through the air that met the maw’s pull and held it—not stopping the drag, but making it choose, forcing it to eat the line instead of the team.

“Anchor him!” Kaori called, thrusting her staff into the soil with a sharp crack. “Seinaru tsunagi—karada o tsuyoku!”

Sanctified Bind!

Strength poured into Daelric’s shoulders. His stance lowered. Tendons stood out like cables. He held.

Shin didn’t waste it. The shadow under his feet pooled as if made of ink warmed by breath.

“Kage no Enbu—yami yo, asobe.”

Dance of the Shadows.

Three afterimages ghosted away—half-real silhouettes that drew the demon’s counter strikes to wrong places. Shin slid in the difference, blade scoring the vertical seam along the second maw’s hinge.

The price came fast—buzzing static behind his eyes, names squirreling in and out of reach.

Kaori’s palm brushed between his shoulder blades, light threading his breath smooth. “Yawaragi no uta—kokoro, koko ni.”

Gentle Hymn.

He found himself again. “Thanks.”

“Don’t make me do it twice,” she said, scanning the field while keeping her sword low and ready.

“Name later, cut now!” Daelric barked through clenched teeth. “I’m not married to this line!”

Hikari vaulted onto the forearm, boots finding purchase between spines and charred scale. “Shiden-ryū—Ni-no-Kata: Falling Comet!” She plunged her sword at the soft knot of flesh just above the eye and twisted. The white film burst; black fluid hissed.

The demon’s ridges sang—higher, meaner. The air staggered.

“Down!” Kaori shouted.

The pressure-front hit like a rolling wall. Shin threw up a veil on instinct.

“Kurayami no tate—waga kokoro o mamore.”

Shield of Darkness.

The shadow-thin barrier cracked like spun glass but shaved the edge off the blast. He still skidded, boots carving ruts. Daelric’s horizon-line faltered and snapped; the maw’s pull seized a curtain of leaves and devoured them to nothing. Hikari tumbled, rolled, and came up blade-first, blood at her lip and murder in her eyes.

The cloaked woman—her hood still shadowing most of her face—pinched a thread between two fingers and whispered, almost tender:

“Hajime to owari—ito o kaeshite.”

Return the stitch.

The crack Shin had scored in the maw’s hinge refused to widen. Not healed. Arrested. Trapped in an in-between the demon couldn’t easily cheat.

“Right flank!” Daelric bellowed, already pivoting. “Heat on my lead—Enjin, myaku o moyase!”

Heart flame Pulse!

Pressure heat pulsed from his guard to his edge. He slammed it into the thick tendon where shoulder met chest. The beast snarled and reeled. Hikari stole a heartbeat from that stagger and went for the back knee again, blade sawing the same line she’d carved twice now. It gave another fraction. Fractions win fights.

“Keep it turning!” Shin said.

“Talk less, swing more,” Hikari shot back without looking, lips quirked despite the adrenaline. “Nice timing. Guess you’re not just brooding after all.”

“Focus,” Shin replied—flat, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him.

“You two can flirt later!” Daelric whooped.

“Seriously?!” Kaori snapped, but she was grinning as she slid in, sword flashing to deflect a shard of bone that would have taken Hikari’s ear. She spun her staff into her off-hand and spoke crisp and clear: “Kōmyō no hashira—aku o hanete!”

Luminous Pillar!

Light jutted from the ground like a spear, catching the next claw and ricocheting it wide. Kaori flowed with it, blade low and defensive, healer first, swordswoman second—but a very capable second at that.

The second maw gaped, wet and eager. The pull built.

Shin tasted iron and made an ugly choice. He lifted his left hand. The whisper rose with it, pleased to be invited.

“Kuroi honō… sono manazashi o watashi ni ataete… subete o nomikome.”

Black flame… lend me your gaze… devour all.

No visible fire—but color thinned around the maw, edges darkening as if someone sketched charcoal into reality’s outlines. For a heartbeat, the maw ate its own gravity and choked.

The cost bit deeper. Shin’s name slipped on his tongue like a loose tooth. A laugh not his brushed his ear.

“Stay,” Kaori murmured, a hand on him and a prayer braided into breath. “Kokoro, kaerinasai—Return to yourself.”

He stayed. The world steadied. The fight sharpened.

“Again,” he said.

The response was a roar. The demon slammed both forearms down; the ground heaved. Hikari sprang clear, Daelric cut a diagonal step and rode the tilt, Kaori vaulted a snapping root that tried to catch her ankle.

The cloaked woman’s voice threaded the chaos:

“Ito yo, kasanare. Shunkan o musubi, shunkan o sasu—”

Threads, overlap. Bind the instant, point the instant—

Time miscounted politely for the beast. Its paw arrived a blink late to crush Shin; his blade had already moved, tracing another bitter line along the hinge. Hikari jammed her sword into the same failing seam and hauled with a shout. The maw jerked, half-seizing, then wrenched free.

“You’re prying a god’s jaw,” Daelric laughed, feral delight singing in his chest as he hacked the ridge-line nearest its neck. “Let’s see it swallow pride!”

“Don’t let those ridges sing.” Kaori’s voice was taut. “If they chorus again, it’ll hurl us.”

“On it.” Hikari darted, blade whittling a ridge down to bone. “Shiden-ryū—San-no-Kata: Crescent Lash!”

The demon learned. It twisted mid-lunge, spine channels yawning like gills—and then the song came back, twice as discordant, shoving at everything with invisible hands.

“Brace!” Kaori’s barrier flared—then craze-lined and burst. She coughed hard, eyes watering. “I’m fine,” she lied through grit.

The ring of force hit. Daelric took it on a lowered shoulder and skidded, boots churning turf. Hikari slammed into a trunk, rolled, came up fast. Shin threw up Kurayami no Tate; it shattered; he planted anyway, teeth bared. The cloaked woman caught two handfuls of threads and refused to be thrown; she hung in the air a fraction against the blast, landed, knees flexed, eyes flat and distant, like something old was looking out from them.

The demon surged after the ring, both maws flexing to eat the mess its body had made.

Shin stepped forward into the hurting part of himself.

“Abyss no fuchi—me o hirake. Watashi no na o nomi, sono kawari ni—subete no kage, osaemure.”

Abyssal pit—open your eyes. Devour my name, and in return—hold every shadow.

Shadows froze. Not just his—the demon’s, Daelric’s, the lancing pillar-fragments, the torn leaves—the darkness under everything pinned tight as if nailed to the earth. The demon’s own joints seized where shadow touched socket.

Shin’s breath ripped ragged. For a second he couldn’t have said his own name if you asked.

“Enough,” Kaori whispered fiercely, pressing light into his back. “Breathe.”

He did. He stood.

“Now!” the cloaked woman snapped. It wasn’t loud, but it cut through the fight like a needle through cloth.

Daelric moved first, because of course he did. “Rekka—shō!”

Blazing Break!

His greatsword slammed into the frozen hinge with a shriek of tortured metal and beast. The crack spidered.

Hikari’s answer was a clean, murderous three-count—tap, tap, tear—driven exactly on the same fissure. “Shiden-ryū—Shihō: Hundredfold Line!”

The maw convulsed, stuck between closed and open—neither one useful.

The ridges tried to swell again. The cloaked woman lifted two fingers, voice a hush: “Wasurezu—kizuguchi, ima wa tozare.”

Forget not—but close for now.

The ridges’ song choked on its own breath. Their flare stuttered instead of detonating.

“Push!” Daelric bellowed, eyes alight. “End it!”

“On your right!” Kaori’s blade flashed, parrying an elbow-spine that would have opened Daelric’s throat. She pivoted, staff snapping down. “Mitsu no ito—hone o tsunaide!”

Sinew Mend! (Her light folded into his abused shoulder without even touching skin—she was that practiced.)

“Ha! I could kiss you,” he laughed.

“Try it and I’ll break your other shoulder,” she said, cheeks flushed, eyes fierce.

Shin didn’t laugh. He took the opening the others bought and reached a little too far down, just for a heartbeat, because there wasn’t another way.

“Kuroi honō—mubō o tasuke, tada shihai seyo. Kage no oku, shizume.”

Black flame—aid my recklessness, rule only. In the depths of shadow, be still.

The maw’s warping pull inverted, not toward them but toward itself, a private collapse. The demon howled—the sound a furnace dragged over stone.

Hikari sprinted the length of its forelimb and jumped, both hands on the hilt, driving her sword where breastbone parted around that impossible mouth. The steel sank to the guard.

“Release!” Shin ordered, because she had to be alive to take the win.

She let go, pushed off, landed in a shoulder-roll as the maw bit down on the metal and snapped the blade off at half-length.

“Are you kidding me,” she panted, furious and grinning. “You owe me a sword.”

“Survive, and I’ll buy you a better one,” Daelric said, hauling his own blade high. “Dōran—gōka o tsuranuke!”

Vulcan Line!

He carved an incandescent seam from collar to jaw, and for once the demon moved into it—the shadows still pinning its timing—and paid in flesh.

Kaori lifted her staff and sword together, voice steady despite the blood running down her temple where a splinter had kissed her. “Kōsei no hibiki—kizu, yameru!”

Harm-Stay!

The next burst of shrapnel kissed flesh and drew nothing. Her knees almost buckled from the backlash, but she forced herself upright. “Keep… going.”

The cloaked woman watched the world with the patience of a clock and then spoke with the softness of a cut string:

“Toki no ha—itoshiki ichibu, hitoiki dake. Yuzuri, tomare.”

Leaf of time—beloved fragment, for one breath. Yield, and be still.

For one breath, the demon’s head didn’t move where it meant to. Hikari was already there when the breath ended, scooping a fallen short-sword from broken roots and treating it like a six-ryō masterblade.

“Shiden-ryū—Ichi-no-Kata: Needle Drop!”

She stabbed under the cheek, point slipping through a seam of cartilage and hate. Black blood jetted. The demon reeled.

“Finish it!” Daelric shouted.

“Together,” Kaori said, and her voice made the word an oath.

Shin nodded once. The cold laugh in his skull sounded hungry and satisfied in a way he didn’t want to examine. He lifted his left hand and his right blade in the same motion.

“Abyss no fuchi—me o hirake. Kage no tsumugi—kono toki o musube.”

Abyssal pit—open your eyes. Loom of shadows—bind this moment.

Shadows drew into lines as thin as hair and as strong as iron, webbing the maw, the forelimbs, the knee. Not forever. For now.

“Kaori!” he called.

Her answer was already moving: “Seinaru kusari—aku o kakare!”

Sanctified Chains!

Light linked Shin’s shadow-lines in bright, humming rungs. The black and the gold sang together, discord and harmony making a single rope.

“Daelric!”

“Ha!” He needed no words—but gave them anyway out of joy. “Kagutsuchi—Saishū no hi!”

Final Dawn!

The greatsword blazed along its core rather than out, a white-hot cut that wanted to be horizon and end.

“Hikari!”

She sprinted the web as if she trusted it (and somehow she did), feet tapping the bright rungs, short-sword tucked to her side. “Shiden-ryū—Ketsu-no-Kata: Thread-Cutter!”

“Luneth!” Daelric said.

Shin’s gaze locked on the cloaked woman. He didn’t know her, yet something about her presence clawed at the edge of his memory, like a name struggling to surface. His lips almost moved on their own, but no sound came. (Her hood didn’t flicker, but something in her posture acknowledged the weight of his stare.)

Her voice was almost a secret. “Hajime to owari—ito o kaeshite. Kizuna, ima wa, hodokezu.”

Beginning and end—return the stitch. Bonds, for now, do not undo.

The crack in the maw’s hinge refused to close or widen—stuck in perfect, ruinous stasis.

“On my mark,” Kaori breathed, every syllable a held note. “Three.”

The demon thrashed. The ridges tried to sing. Shadow and light pulled tight, humming at the verge of failure.

“Two.”

Shin felt something… slip. A syllable of himself tore free and fell into the pit he’d opened. He let it go, because the alternative was all of them dying, and the Abyss respects only prices willingly paid.

“One.”

They moved.

Daelric’s cut fell like a falling sun. The maw, webbed by black and gold, could not twist. Hikari struck the exact same hinge they’d ruined all battle, at the exact instant Daelric’s line crossed it. Her short-sword didn’t have the weight—so she gave it leverage, both hands, whole body, a shout torn from the belly.

The hinge split.

Shin slammed his blade to the crack where the second maw’s edges met flesh, drew it like a seam ripper.

“Kuroi honō—sono manazashi o, owari made.”

Black flame—let your gaze hold to the end.

The maw tried to pull. It pulled itself. The demon howled a sound that tasted like soot.

Kaori thrust her staff down and up, voice breaking with the strain: “Kōmyō no hashira—aku o hanete!”

Luminous Pillar!

The pillar punched into the beast’s throat from below, snapping its head back, forcing the maw gaping, a perfect, awful target.

“Now!” Luneth—yes, Luneth—breathed, and the world obliged their timing, a breath yielded, a slip given.

Daelric rammed the greatsword into the maw, both hands, shoulders screaming, incantation a roar and a prayer: “Dawn—take it!”

Hikari, already moving, leapt and drove her blade into the visible heart, a white knot of muscle behind the maw’s shadow. “Thread—cut!”

Shin dragged the last length of shadow-wire tight, felt something precious tear inside him, and did not let go.

The demon convulsed. Both maws spasmed. Then the singing ridges gave one last discordant scream—and collapsed like shutters.

For a second, no one breathed.

Then the monster’s weight shifted wrong and it went down hard enough to shake the roots. The second maw folded in on itself and sealed—not with healing, but with the ugly sound of something broken refusing to open again.

Silence fell in chunks. Leaves drifted. Wind remembered how to move.

Shin’s knees finally decided to be honest. He went down to one, sword tip carving a small trench. Kaori caught his shoulder without asking permission and leaned her forehead to his for a beat, eyes closed, pulse in her temple fast but steady.

“Seijō no shizuku—kokoro ni yasuragi.”

Sacred Drop.

Cool light threaded through the buzzing in his skull, not erasing it—anchoring him around it. The laugh receded to a far room. His name stitched itself back into his mouth—crooked, tender, present.

“Thanks,” he said, because gratitude was a thing the Abyss could not eat.

“Don’t make it a habit,” she said, fierceness softened by relief. “Also—stop letting things devour your name. That’s not a normal day at work.”

“Noted.”

Daelric tipped backward and sat heavily, greatsword planted like a banner, grinning up at the canopy with split lip and scorched knuckles. “That,” he declared, “was indecently fun.”

“You’re not allowed to define fun,” Kaori told him, already moving to close the worst of his burns. “Hold still.”

“Kaori, if you fuss I might—ow—yes that’s better—fine, fuss.”

Hikari stood with her hands on her knees, gulping air, then straightened and wiped her mouth with the inside of her wrist. The short-sword in her hand dripped black, ruined from the hilt down. She kicked the demon’s fallen jaw once, almost politely.

“By the way,” she said to Shin without ceremony, “it’s Hikari. The other name’s for jobs I don’t want following me home.”

Shin nodded. “Hikari.” The syllables felt true. “You fight clean.”

“You fight like you’ve made some bad bargains,” she said, eyes searching his for a second longer than was comfortable, then letting him off the hook. “But you keep them. I respect that.”

“Flirting later,” Daelric sang, then winced as Kaori thumbed a deep bruise just to prove a point.

The cloaked woman—Luneth now that the name had been said aloud—stood a little apart, hands lowered, fingers still, attention not on the body but on the air above it, as if listening for an echo that might return. The mantle stirred around her like the breeze owed her a favor.

Shin looked at her. “You moved time.”

She tilted her head, the hint of a smile shadowing her mouth. “I encouraged it to be polite.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied simply, and the simplicity made it easier to carry.

Kaori finished binding Daelric’s shoulder and turned, tapping Hikari’s sliced forearm with two fingers. “Your turn.”

“It’ll scar,” Hikari said, not resisting but not asking for softness either.

“Only if you want it to.” Kaori’s palm glowed. “Megumi no hikari—kokoro o tsunaide, inochi o tazusae.”

Healer’s Oath.

The edge of the cut cooled and knitted, not perfectly—Hikari left a thin line, deliberate. She flexed her fingers, nodded, and let Kaori’s mouth twitch into a small, pleased smile.

Birds remembered their courage by degrees. The forest’s hum resumed. The clearing smelled of wet iron and scorched bark.

For a long breath no one spoke. They had bled in the same rhythm; silence felt like part of the work.

Finally Daelric heaved himself upright, braced the greatsword across his shoulders, and looked at the dead thing like he was measuring a story to tell later. “So,” he said. “We all friends now, or is that too optimistic before breakfast?”

Hikari snorted. “I don’t do friends. I do people who pull their weight.”

“That’s a friend in my dialect,” he said cheerfully.

Shin sheathed his sword. The click sounded very loud. “I don’t do promises.” He glanced at the ruin, then at the faces around him. “But I’ll fight like I gave one.”

Kaori’s eyes softened. “Good enough for me.”

Luneth’s gaze slid from the corpse to the tangle of threads only she seemed to see. For a heartbeat the morning tilted—no, not tilted; aligned—and every path in the clearing seemed to point toward the five of them standing in a loose, breathless ring.

“Threads entwine,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Whether or not they meant to.”

Hikari retrieved the broken half of her sword and weighed it in her palm, unimpressed. “I’m still collecting on that new blade.”

Daelric slapped his breastplate over his heart as if swearing. “Name the forge and I’ll carry the ingots.”

Kaori rolled her eyes. “No, you won’t. You’ll flirt with the smith and get us a discount.”

“Also a strategy,” he said, unrepentant.

Shin looked at his hands. The tremor had gone, mostly. A few syllables of his name hummed strange at the edges, but the center held. He opened and closed his fist. The shadow at his boots lay like any other shadow.

“Shin,” Kaori said quietly, reading more than he wanted to show. “You still here?”

“For now,” he answered.

“Good.” Her smile was brief and very human. “Stay.”

He didn’t answer that. He didn’t know how.

A breeze moved. Luneth’s mantle breathed with it. “We should go,” she said gently. “Noise like that draws attention.”

“More demons?” Hikari asked, already tilting her chin toward the trees.

“Or worse,” Daelric said, amused, which either meant he was brave or incapable of learning.

“Worse is a category?” Kaori asked dryly.

“It is if you can imagine it,” he said.

Shin stepped toward the treeline, then paused. The corpse’s ridges—those awful singing spines—lay slack and quiet. He reached out with a thin line of shadow-sense. Nothing answered from the body.

But something far above the canopy hummed, too deep for sound, like a chord the sky hadn’t finished playing.

He looked up. The sun made bright patches through leaves. A bird wheeled once and vanished.

“Do you hear that?” he asked.

Luneth’s head tilted, the smallest acknowledgment. “An echo,” she said. “Not from this.” She nodded at the dead demon. “From where it was told to come.”

“Orders,” Daelric said, spit-slicking his teeth. “Hate orders.”

Kaori slipped her staff to her back and sheathed her sword. “Then let’s move before the next messenger arrives.”

Hikari tucked the broken blade through her sash like a promise and grinned at Shin, not friendly, exactly—approving. “Try to keep up, brooding.”

He almost said something cutting. Instead he let the corner of his mouth lift. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Too late,” she said, and jogged out first, light on her feet like the fight had taught her something and she planned to use it.

Daelric fell in behind, greatsword over one shoulder, humming a tune that sounded suspiciously like victory. Kaori walked beside him to check his gait even though he insisted he was fine. Luneth drifted at the rear, where threads are easier to watch.

Shin stood for a beat longer, listening to the hush left in the demon’s wake and the almost-sound above the trees. The Abyss stirred, disappointed not to be fed again. He told it—without words, because words are promises—that it would eat when he decided, not when it wanted.

The Abyss did not like that. It respected it anyway.

He turned and followed the others into the green light.

They didn’t speak of teams or futures. They didn’t swear by anything. They simply moved together, five shapes slipping between trunks and shadow, the rhythm of their breaths settling into something that wasn’t friendship and wasn’t nothing either.

Behind them, the clearing held its silence, and the corpse cooled, and a far-off echo rolled the way thunder does when a storm is still beyond the hills.

For now, the threads held.

And that was enough.