THE PARTY

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_Episode 4: "The Party" — 
The morning air in the Guild Hall tasted like cold stone and burnt incense. Assignment boards stretched across the wall in a grid of stamped paper, each one a life-or-death promise scrawled in red ink. Hikaru stood at the foot of it, Mamoru’s katana heavy against his back, and waited.
Four people were already there. Four shrine marks glowed faintly beneath their sleeves, a soft light that pulsed like a heartbeat. Hikaru’s wrist was bare.
The first to step forward was a man with storm in his veins. Lightning danced between his fingers, casting sharp shadows across his face. He didn’t extend a hand. He just studied Hikaru the way a general studies an unknown soldier — measuring, calculating, dismissing.
“So you’re the contractless one,” he said. His voice carried the weight of authority. “I’m Raijin. Head of the Lightning Clan. Head of the Lightning Shrine too.” His gaze dropped to Hikaru’s empty wrist. “No mark. No power. Interesting.”
To Raijin’s left, a younger man leaned against the wall with a smirk that hadn’t been earned yet. Lightning crackled faintly around his boots. “Takeshi,” he said without offering anything else. “Same shrine as him. Try not to slow us down, alright?”
A girl stepped forward next. Quiet. Deliberate. Sigils of blue light orbited her wrist like tiny moons, forming and dissolving in a steady rhythm. “Aya,” she said. “I run defense. Try not to die behind my walls.” There was no warmth in it. Just fact.
The last didn’t look up from the whetstone dragging across his axe. Stone dust coated his forearms, and his shrine mark was a dull, earthen gray. “Gouta,” he muttered. “Earth Shrine. I break things. You better keep up.”
They all stared at him. Four shrines. Four legacies. One void.
Hikaru met their eyes and said the only truth he had. “Hikaru. No shrine.”
_No shrine... yet,_ the Demon King whispered in the back of his skull, voice like smoke curling through a sealed room. _Tell them about me. Let them fear you._
Hikaru ignored it. He always ignored it.
Raijin broke the silence by unrolling a mission scroll. The paper cracked as it opened, revealing a rough sketch of District 7’s layout and a red stamp marked _BREACH_.
“Barrier breach in District 7,” Raijin said. “Low-grade demons. Good warmup.” He glanced at Hikaru again. “We leave in ten.”
Takeshi pushed off the wall with a grin. “Hope you can swing that sword fast enough, contractless.”
Aya’s sigils spun faster, a warning. “If he gets in trouble, I’m not dropping my barrier for him.”
Gouta just grunted. “Hmph.”
Hikaru didn’t argue. He didn’t explain. He just grabbed his gear and settled Mamoru’s katana into place. The blade felt right. The only thing that ever had.
District 7 smelled like decay. The alley was narrow, walls blackened with rot, and the air shimmered where Aya’s barrier had been hastily thrown up. Beyond it, four low-grade demons spilled through the crack — hunched, bone-masked, claws scraping concrete with a sound like nails on a chalkboard.
Raijin’s orders were sharp and immediate. “Aya, barrier. Gouta, front. Takeshi, flank. Hikaru… stay out of the way.”
Aya slammed her palms together. A dome of blue light snapped into existence, sealing the alley with the party and the demons trapped inside. “If he gets in trouble, I’m not dropping this for him,” she repeated, quieter this time.
Gouta didn’t wait. The ground split under his boots as he charged, axe rising and falling in a brutal arc that turned three demons into black smoke and paste. “Hmph,” he said again, like it was both a curse and a compliment.
Takeshi moved like lightning made flesh. One moment he was by the wall, the next he was behind the fourth demon, blade flashing. It collapsed without a sound. He turned back to Hikaru, lightning fading from his ankles. “See that? That’s how it’s done, contractless. Keep up.”
Four more demons clawed their way through the breach. They didn’t go for Raijin, or Gouta, or Takeshi. They went for Hikaru. No shrine mark. No aura. No threat.
Hikaru didn’t call on the Demon King. He couldn’t. Not yet. Not here.
So he moved the way Kurogane had drilled into him for years. _Duck low. Pivot left. Slice the hamstring. Drive the blade through the jaw._ The first demon dropped, its body becoming a shield against the second’s claws. Hikaru used it, drove Mamoru’s katana through the second’s chest, twisted away from the third’s wild swing, snapped its wrist, and slit its throat. The fourth hesitated. That was enough. One clean cut. Done.
Six seconds. Four demons. No glow. No shrine technique. Just steel and timing.
The alley went silent.
Takeshi stopped mid-step, lightning fading from his hands. Aya lowered her barrier slowly, eyes fixed on Hikaru. Gouta paused, axe halfway to the ground. “...Huh.”
Raijin stared. The lightning around his fingers died out completely. For the first time, he wasn’t looking at Hikaru like he was nothing.
_They saw the void where your shrine should be,_ the Demon King murmured, pleased. _Let them doubt. Let them fear._
Hikaru wiped his blade on his sleeve and said nothing.
Raijin rolled the mission scroll back up with a sharp snap. “Mission clear. Back to the guild.”
No one spoke on the way back.
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