Hito-mane Extermination: Traitor of The Forest

The king. His glory. His followers. The king seeks not to be worshiped, but to simply guide. His apostles. His counsel of nine men. His Guard. He's wary of his favorite. A star. A betrayer. A child of fate. The books lied. She lied. Seek it. Seek the library. Burned. She burned it down. She lied. He's tired. Tired of war. Tired of fear. Tired of lies. Her lies led to the downfall of humanity. His goal. What was it? It's changed. His tears. They fall. She lied.

She lied about the empty throne. She lied about the books. She lied about the ending. A prophet. It was all an idea. He was supposed to save the world. Not him. It's too late. This was planned from the start. He fear. The Truth. He has to push forward. If I erase the concept of truth, will I be able to prolong my end?

“In order for the world to unite, someone has to take the fall. Someone needs to become the villain. And even then it doesn't matter. The cycle will repeat itself.

Unless…” -L.K.

                                   ...

The rattle of the small tin container was the only sound in the dim light of the bathroom washroom. Tatsuchi stood barefoot on cold tile that felt old, the kind of tile that had seen too many footsteps and stopped caring who they belonged to. The mirror in front of her was cracked down the center, splitting her reflection into two slightly misaligned versions of herself.

​She opened the container again, like she had not already committed to what was inside. Three white pills sat there, mocking her with their clinical silence. There was no hesitation. She tipped them into her palm and swallowed them dry. They stuck for half a second in her throat, scratching on the way down like they were trying to remind her they were still there. She did not chase them with water. She just stood there, letting the bitterness bloom and fade like a punishment she had learned to tolerate.

​Her reflection did not move, or maybe she just did not feel like she was the one moving. Outside those walls, people saw a prodigy. A Kuroainaru. A walking guarantee of survival. Someone who was supposed to be above hesitation, above doubt. But the version staring back at her in the mirror did not feel like that person. It felt like a performer wearing a heavy, suffocating costume.

​She leaned closer, studying her own eyes. No spark. No clarity. No proof she was anything more than trained behavior and good timing.

​“Twenty years,” she muttered. The words barely made it out of her mouth, dry and hollow. “Twenty years of being told I was special… and I have never felt the spark.”

​Her fingers drifted to her chest. There it was again, that pressure. It wasn't pain, exactly, and it wasn't illness either. It was something else entirely. It felt as if something had taken up residence and refused to introduce itself, a tenant she hadn’t invited but couldn't evict.

​It had been there ever since Brass. During her coma, she had overheard fragments from the medical staff while she was drifting in the gray. Words like “repelling field” and “non-responsive interference pattern.” Nobody had been able to explain what they saw under her skin; they only knew that something reacted to their touch before they even fully made contact.

​Worse were the flashes of memory. White raven markings. Not ink, not scars, but something that flickered like it was deciding whether or not it wanted to exist in this dimension. No one else had seen them, or at least, no one admitted to it.

​She pressed harder against her chest until it hurt in a normal way. “Fake,” she whispered. It wasn't an insult; it was a diagnosis.

​Then she reached into her kimono. The envelope had been folded too many times, making the edges soft and fibrous. It was white paper with no return address, something Itaka had pulled from Loki’s office like it was just another piece of forgotten paperwork. But nothing about it felt forgotten.

​She opened it again. An invitation to a first birthday party, addressed to Loki and Signa Tomidoru. Her eyes stopped on the second name longer than the first. Signa. The name did not belong in her head, yet now it would not leave. A twin. Ichirou Kuroainaru.

​Her mind tried to reject it before her emotions even caught up. Loki did not have children, at least, not officially. Not in any record she had ever been permitted to see. But the more she turned the thought over, the less it felt like a mistake and the more it felt like a truth hidden in plain sight for two decades.

​A sharp knock broke through the spiral.

​“Tatsuchi? You in there? We need the next move.”

​Zhenyu. Her grip tightened on the envelope for half a second, then it was gone, slipped back into her kimono. She splashed water on her face. It was good enough. When she stepped out, the mask slid on clean.

​“I'm here,” she said flatly. “Listen close. We're not hunting a killer today. We're dissecting the situation.”

​The room downstairs smelled like old wood, dust, and something faintly medicinal that seemed to follow Tatsuchi wherever she stayed too long. She spread the map across the table, the parchment crinkling under her touch. Zhenyu leaned in immediately, his presence heavy and focused. Asumi hovered slightly behind him, half attentive, half distracted by the weight of the room.

​Tatsuchi tapped the paper once. “If we chase a suspect now, we are being reactive. That is how people die fast.” She traced the layout of the town, a maze disguised as a settlement. Streets folded into themselves like they were trying to confuse memory rather than travelers. “This was not random. The precision says intent.”

​Her finger stopped on the location of the murder. “Zhenyu. Body analysis. I want a full reconstruction. Timeline, entry point, first strike. Was it a planned execution or messaging?”

​Zhenyu nodded slowly. “You think the method is the message.”

​“I do not think,” Tatsuchi corrected.

​Asumi tilted her head slightly. “And me?”

​Tatsuchi’s eyes shifted, cold and calculating. “You do not miss what people do not say. Watch their bodies, not their mouths. If a town sees a murder and keeps eating like nothing happened, the people themselves are the crime scene.”

​Zhenyu exhaled quietly. “Cold way to put it.”

​“It is an old way,” she replied. “Old ways survive because they work.”

​That shut the room down for a moment. Tatsuchi rolled the map closed, the finality of the sound punctuating her orders. “Once we have both sets of data, we compare. Controlled murder with a fearful town suggests an internal actor. Chaotic murder with a calm town suggests outsider pressure. We do not ask who until we know why.”

​It was simple, clean, and traditionally sound logic. It was the kind of thinking clans built entire generations on, and it provided a temporary shield against the chaos of her own mind.

​Outside, the town was already shifting. Not in a literal sense, but it felt like it. The streets curved too naturally, as if something organic had decided architecture was just another form of instinct. One second they were walking past quiet, sun-bleached homes; the next they were swallowed by a marketplace that felt like it had always existed.

​Heat shimmered off the stone. The air was thick with spice, smoke, and roasted meat, the heavy scent of lamb, the bite of cinnamon, and something like a memory trying too hard to be comforting.

​Asumi slowed down. Tatsuchi noticed immediately. So did Zhenyu.

​“Do not,” he said automatically.

​“I wasn't going to,” Asumi started, but her stomach betrayed her with a loud, echoing growl.

​Silence followed. Zhenyu sighed, the sound of a man who had lost a battle he hadn't even wanted to fight. Tatsuchi didn't even look back.

​“One skewer. Then we move.”

​Asumi lit up like she had been granted permission. Zhenyu groaned. “We are literally on a case.”

​“And starving people make worse decisions,” Tatsuchi said. It wasn't kindness; it was logistics.

​They stopped for exactly thirty seconds, long enough for Asumi to grab something greasy and fragrant, and short enough that Zhenyu looked personally offended by the concept of rest. As they walked, Tatsuchi wasn't looking at the food or the vibrant colors of the stalls. She was thinking about names.

​Kyosuke Mori. The Hades Vault record had been incomplete, not missing, but carefully stripped, like someone had removed pieces of history. The Mori clan had ties to Makagiri, the land of the demons. They were an old bloodline, the kind of people didn't talk about unless they wanted consequences.

​Zhenyu’s mother carried that name. Which meant Zhenyu did, too. She glanced at him. Same posture, same movement, but there was always that undercurrent in him, something restrained too tightly, like a spring wound past its limit.

​“Hey,” she started to say, her voice low.

​Then it happened.

​The world did not go silent; it curdled. Noise did not stop, it just stopped meaning anything. The crowd became background noise to something else entirely. A pressure shift hit them, like gravity had briefly remembered it could be selective.

​He walked through the market like it did not belong to anyone else.

​He was a massive frame of bone-white skin that did not reflect light so much as refuse it. Silver hair fell over his shoulders like something ceremonial. And then there was his face, a scar that split him.

​Then he looked at her.

​Everything tightened. It wasn't fear, but a recognition of danger at a level deeper than the conscious mind. His eyes were not hostile; that was the problem. They were calm, too calm. They were the eyes of a man who had already decided how the story ended.

​A naginata rested in his grip like an extension of his body. The blade was serrated, old, and stained with layers of memory no cleaning could remove. A red ribbon hung from it, heavy, still, and fundamentally wrong. It didn't flutter in the breeze; it dragged like a dead weight.

​As he passed, he smiled. It was a small, genuine, and terrifyingly familiar smile.

​“Hello,” he mouthed.

​Tatsuchi could not breathe. Something inside her reacted violently, like a locked instinct had just been touched by a master key. Run. It wasn't advice; it was a law of nature. The energy around him wasn't just killing intent.

​Zhenyu felt it too; his hand twitched toward his weapon. Asumi went pale, her skewer forgotten.

​And then, just as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.

​The crowd returned. Sound snapped back into place like nothing had happened. But Tatsuchi’s chest did not follow. Something inside her felt cracked open, the pressure under her pulsing in time with her frantic heart.

​“We keep moving,” she said. Her voice was not steady, but it was functional. “That's not optional anymore. We move, or we die.”

​The morgue sat at the edge of the town like it did not want to be included in the concept of living space. It was a cold stone building with no decoration and no softness. Inside, the air was wrong in a different way, a controlled, artificial cold.

​The Head Nōkanshi (morgue manager) greeted them without surprise, as if people arriving to look at death was just another weather pattern he had to endure.

​“The body is in the back,” he said. “We do not have a coroner. The desert provides many deaths, but few who wish to understand them.” His eyes landed on Tatsuchi with a heavy, unblinking gaze. “You're Gate Captain. You are qualified.”

​Tatsuchi did not hesitate. “I'll do it.”

​Old logic again. Simple, useful, and necessary. The man nodded once.

​“Your pay is 91,965 Yorin weekly. 2,300 hourly.”

​Zhenyu blinked, pulled momentarily out of his trance. “That is actually decent.”

​Tatsuchi already had her gloves on, the latex snapping against her skin. “I did not ask.”

​The body was worse than they remember. There were burns in circular patterns, as if something had branded the victim repeatedly without leaving a consistent message. Internal organs were missing, and the fingernails had been torn from their roots with brutal efficiency.

​But there was no smell. That was the first wrong thing. No decay, no rot, just a sterile absence.

​Tatsuchi leaned closer, her shadow falling over the mangled remains. “Something is wrong.”

​She lifted an eyelid. Black. Entirely black. There was no distinction between iris, pupil, or sclera. It was just a void looking back at her. She forced the mouth open. Extra rows of teeth lined the gums, needle-like and numerous. It was not human biology.

​“Yeah,” she muttered. “That confirms it.”

​Zhenyu stepped closer despite himself. “That is not a natural mutation.”

​Tatsuchi did not respond immediately because the hand moved. A twitch. Then a pulse. Black bile rose from the throat, thick and alive-looking. It hit the metal table and sizzled like it had opinions about its own existence.

​Five seconds of movement. Then nothing. The body went still again, as if it had just checked to see if anyone was still watching.

​Tatsuchi stepped back, her breath hitching. “What kind of hell have we walked into?”

                                 ...

​Night did not fall over the desert; it settled. It was heavy and intentional, like a curtain drawn by a stagehand who knew the ending already.

​In the inn, sleep came unevenly. Zhenyu did not fully sleep, his hand never leaving his blade. Asumi did not stop shifting in her blankets. Tatsuchi did not sleep at all. She sat by the window, her notebook open, writing things that looked like strategy but felt more like damage control for a soul.

​Across town, something moved.

​It was ten feet tall and lanky, with wrong proportions, as if someone had learned anatomy from observation alone and still misunderstood the basics. Its face was triangular, its eyes flickering like a corrupted signal on an old screen. It dragged something behind it, the innkeeper, Hitomaki.

​He was already dead, torn in ways that did not need explanation. The creature dropped the body like waste.

​Then, a whistle cut the air.

​A dagger buried itself in the creature's spine. It jerked and turned, but it was too slow. A man stepped forward from the shadows. He had messy brown hair and was missing an arm. A large bite mark was carved into his shoulder like a memory that refused to heal.

​In his hand, a blade crackled. Firework energy flickered across its edge, spitting sparks into the dark. He moved once, clean, efficient, and final. The creature split down the center before it even finished reacting.

​The man walked to the corpse of the innkeeper. He kneeled and placed a hand over the man's chest. He whispered something, a plea or a prayer, and a light flared. It was bright and pure for a fleeting second, then it failed. The glow died like it had been rejected.

​“Failed again,” he muttered. His voice was rough, tired, and heavy with the weight of repeated defeat.

​Low growls answered him from the rooftops. Eight more shapes stepped into the moonlight, same design, same wrongness, same hunger.

​He looked up. His eyes were glowing a pale, toxic green now. It wasn't fear he showed; it was annoyance.

​“Eight?” he said quietly. A faint, jagged smirk touched his lips. “Good. That means I don't have to go looking for the rest of you once I'm finished here. Try not to scream too loud...”

​He cracked his neck, the sound echoing in the empty street. The sparks on his dagger intensified until they were a blinding hiss of light and sparks.

​“My head is killing me.”