Chapter 17:
Hito-mane Extermination: Diving Bell
Hollow Dawn
It got lighter sometimes.
But it never really stopped.
Asumi dragged her shoes through the wet sand beside the road, trying not to think about how long she had been walking. Her umbrella had talismans hanging from the tips, they were the only thing keeping her from being fully soaked. The cobblestone sidewalk beside her was cracked in places, old enough that weeds pushed through the gaps. Rainwater collected between the stones and reflected the dull grey sky overhead.The road itself was empty, but that wasn't the weird part. Bus stops sat every few hundred feet with faded schedules nailed into rusted frames. There were traffic signs. Crosswalks. Even old gas stations further down the road. But no cars, no buses, no travelers. She had seen people driving around Kokohama since arriving, but now that she thought about it, she could not remember seeing anybody actually coming into town from outside.
No delivery trucks.No transport lines.
At least, not any of them leaving. The thought sat wrong in her stomach. Asumi adjusted the strap of her sword against the obi belt on her waist and kept walking through the desert heat. Even with the rain, Harpyra was still hot. The wet sand dragged her shoes down and made every step feel heavier than it should have. “This place sucks,” she muttered. Up ahead, the Sins Weapons Plant finally came into view. The building was massive. Most of it looked industrial, all dark stone and smokestacks, but parts of it looked older than the rest. Like somebody kept rebuilding over something that should have been demolished years ago. Asumi slowed slightly when she noticed runoff pouring out from the back of the facility. Dark water streamed through a drainage pipe and into the nearby lake. The water around it looked discolored. She stared at it for a second. “…Is that what’s making the frogs gay?” She asked herself.The rain kept falling.
After another few minutes of walking, she finally reached the main gate. Two guards stood outside underneath a large steel awning. Both were armed with bolt action rifles and short blades strapped to their waists. They straightened slightly when they saw her approaching. Asumi pulled her ID from her pocket and held it up. “Gate Guard business.” One of the guards took the card and looked it over. “The 13th Gate Guard,” he said. The second guard looked at her again, eyes squinting slightly. "You’re Asumi Yamikumei?”“That depends,” she replied. “Are you annoyed?” The guard snorted a little before handing the card back. "I didn't realize you had dyed your hair pink." Asumi stared daggers at the man, she could tell they were looking at the eye patch. The guards straightened up and addressed her accordingly. “Second Seat of the 13th Gate Guard,” he said respectfully. The gates slowly opened. Asumi sighed as she started walking inside. Then she heard one of them mutter behind her. “Still don’t get how she’s the second seat when there ain’t a first or third.” The other guard tried not to laugh. "Yuta's kid must have others in mind. I mean, when you come from a clan like that, I'm sure you'd have higher expectations." Asumi raised one hand without turning around and flipped him off behind her back. She stayed quiet.
The inside of the facility was worse than the outside climate. Heat slammed into her immediately. The entire place smelled like burning metal, chemicals, oil, and sweat. Huge furnaces lit the building orange from the inside while workers moved between stations carrying glowing weapons with heavy gloves and masks over their faces. The sound was nonstop. Hammering, grinding, steam hissing from pipes overhead. She pushed through the crowds until somebody eventually directed her toward the administrative wing. A woman in formal clothing led her down a quieter hallway before stopping at a pair of large steel looking doors. “Lord Kisshō is inside.”Asumi pushed the doors open without knocking.The office was huge. Dark wood, red banners bearing the Sin clan sigil, shelves full of weapons and books mounted along the walls. A man sat behind the desk reading paperwork. Kisshō Sin looked younger than she expected. Probably late thirties, dark skin, long black hair tied back neatly with gold jewelry around both wrists. His eyes immediately narrowed when she barged in. “Well,” he said calmly. “You certainly know how to make an entrance.” Asumi shrugged. “You’re welcome.” she said sarcastically. Kisshō leaned back slightly. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a Gate Guard second seat storming into my office during the third afternoon on a rainy day?” Asumi walked closer to the desk. “I need records of a weapon.”
“That narrows it down tremendously.” He said with heavy sarcasm. “I’m looking into a weapon.” Asumi said again. Kisshō sighed. “We manufacture hundreds, if not, thousands every year. I’ll need more than that.” Asumi thought about what the blade was called “A naginata,” she said.That got his attention slightly. Asumi continued. “Draxis grade or higher.” There are ten grades of weapons in the world, Draxis being about seven on the scale. Kolmos being the lowest, and the highest being Ultima.
The entire room changed. Kisshō’s relaxed expression disappeared instantly. His eyes darkened. “…That’s specific.” That got Asumi's attention. “So you know something?” He stayed quiet for a few seconds before finally speaking again. “Only one clan ever used weapons like that.” Asumi folded her arms. “And?” Kisshō glanced toward the office doors before lowering his voice slightly.
“I probably shouldn’t even be telling you this. The World Government doesn’t like people digging around old history.” That immediately caught her attention even more. If even mentioning this could get him in trouble, then whatever he knew had to matter. Kisshō sighed quietly. “The clan was from Makagiri. Hunters. Warriors. Real monsters when they wanted to be.” His eyes met hers.“The Mori Clan.”
Asumi blinked. “…Mori?” The name hit harder than she expected. Zhenyu Mori. Kyosuke Mori. She suddenly thought back to Zhenyu’s skin tone too. Makagiri was far south. Most people from there had darker skin. A lot of families migrated after the Slave Wars 83 years ago, mainly to places like Avethryn and the land of the angels, Cleyleora. And now that she really looked at Kisshō, he had the same complexion. Because the Sin Clan not only came from Makagiri, they ruled the country. Asumi frowned. “What do you mean ‘used to’?” Kisshō immediately looked irritated. “I’ve already said too much.” Asumi's eyes widened. “You said only one clan used those weapons. Past tense.” No response. Asumi had an idea, then she stepped closer.“Kyosuke Mori.”
That name visibly bothered him. Kisshō stood slowly from his chair. “You need to leave.” “What? Why?” Kisshō’s expression changed dramatically. “Because I enjoy not being executed.” Asumi stared at him. “So the World Government really buried something.”“Leave.” The office doors suddenly opened as several guards rushed inside. Asumi sighed loudly. “Oh come on.” One of the guards reached for her shoulder. In one smooth motion, she swung the scabbard of her sword backward and slammed it into his stomach hard enough to drop him instantly. The others froze. Asumi rested the sheath against her shoulder. “I can walk myself out.” Nobody moved to stop her this time. As she stepped out into the hallway, she heard one of the guards nervously ask:
“Lord Kisshō… do you think the lead and copper runoff behind the plant is actually making the frogs gay?”
A long silence followed.
“Get the hell out of my office, all of you.”Asumi almost laughed while walking away. The deeper she moved through the plant, the more the entire place started feeling wrong. Not dangerous exactly, just a little off. The building looked rushed together in some sections. Like an old asylum somebody converted into a weapons factory overnight. Pipes lined the ceilings. Steam leaked from vents constantly. The heat from the forge swallowed almost the entire structure. The smell nearly made her gag. “Triethylamine,” she muttered. “Disgusting.” Workers flooded the hallways carrying crates and weapon parts between stations. It took effort just to push through them. Then she noticed an opening. An old, narrow looking hallway, split off from the main path.
No workers.
No cameras.No lights.
Asumi grinned a bit. “Perfect.” She glanced around once to make sure nobody was watching. Once she got far enough down the dark hallway, she activated her technique. Her shadow spread quietly across the floor beneath her feet.Zyn Technique: Umbrakinesis.
Asumi could move through shadows like they were real space. While inside them, her body became almost impossible to track. Perfect for spying. She could also split all five of her senses throughout the shadow. But, the more spread out or the more shadow she has dispatched, the less efficient it becomes. Her shadow slipped ahead through the dark hallway while Asumi stayed still with her eyes shut, splitting her senses between three of her shadows. The deeper the shadow went, the older the building looked. The walls changed from reinforced steel to cracked stone and dust seemed to cover everything. The shadow moved carefully past several staff workers before eventually finding a large reinforced door. The large sign read: Records vault.Asumi grinned slightly. “Bingo.” Inside, files and papers covered almost every shelf in the room. Some were organized, most were not. She slipped inside through her shadow and started searching. For thirty minutes, she found basically nothing useful.
Weapon inventories.Shipping records.
Government approvals.Boring garbage. Then her shadow noticed something weird. Part of the floor sounded hollow. Asumi narrowed her eyes. Her shadow slowly slipped through the crack beneath the fake flooring and found another room underneath. The second room looked horrifying. Old, dried blood covered the floor in massive stains. Some of it looked shaped almost like people had died there and never moved afterward. Candles sat melted against the walls. It looked less like a hidden archive and more like a cult room. “What the hell…” Papers were scattered everywhere. Asumi had placed a seal on the floor with her shadow and teleported inside of the cult looking room. Most were written in codes she could not understand. One old paper caught her attention though. The initials “E.K.” were written on the front. The thing looked ancient. It nearly crumbled when her shadow touched it. Asumi carefully pushed a little Zyn energy into the paper to stabilize it. “Please... don’t disintegrate.” Then she found something. A manila folder labeled: MORI.
Izanami.
That had to be Zhenyu’s late mother. It suddenly clicked together in her head almost instantly. “...No way, that would mean Zhenyu came directly from the original ruling clan of Makagiri. Which also meant he had probably been hiding it this entire time.” She thought to herself. “Or maybe he didn't even know? But, wait, wouldn't that mean that Kyosuke is-” She was cut off by the sound of a loud noise upstairs and suddenly snapped out of her thoughts. Footsteps. Somebody was coming.Asumi reacted immediately. She took out her phone and took photos of the room and made sure she had the folder on the Mori clan and the E.K. paper. She placed a seal outside near the gate of the factory earlier for emergencies. She activated it. Her body instantly dropped into darkness and reappeared outside the weapons plant and fell butt first into the wet sand. The teleport nearly drained half her reserves immediately. Asumi stumbled against the wall breathing hard. “Okay. That sucks.” Alarms suddenly started blaring throughout the building. The guards that had one patrolled the gate had all ran inside.
LOCKDOWN ACTIVE.LOCKDOWN ACTIVE.
She quickly checked the old E.K. paper. Luckily it was still intact. Barely. “I can probably keep it this way for a few more days,” she muttered. “Maybe a week at most.” Then she froze. Somebody was watching her. Asumi slowly looked upward. A tall figure stood balanced casually on top of a lamppost in the rain. He had brown hair, a dark cape flowing behind him, only one arm. And in that hand, he held a black dagger. The man hopped down lightly onto the wet ground. Before she could even ask who he was, he spoke first.“My name’s Ryuzuki Mochimaru.”
Asumi instantly reached for her blade. "You're… the killer.” His eyes widened “Technically.” he said “That’s not an answer.” Asumi said stiffly. Ryuzuki sighed. “I’m already running from your friends right now. Tatsuchi and Zhenyu are probably halfway through Kokohama chasing one of my water clones.” Asumi narrowed her eye. “What?” Ryuzuki ignored her. “I need you to listen to me,” he said. “Something’s wrong with this town.”
“You murdered thirteen people.”“I… didn’t say I was innocent.”
Rain poured harder around them. Ryuzuki looked exhausted more than anything else. “There’s something living in Kokohama,” he continued quietly. “And if you people keep charging in blind, it’s going to kill us all.” Asumi’s grip tightened around her sword. Harpyra was her home. This man was ruining it. People were dead because of him. She was not about to hear him out. Asumi drew her blade the moment Ryuzuki finished speaking. There was no hesitation in her movement. No warning breath. Just steel leaving its sheath and cutting through rain like it had been waiting for this exact moment. Ryuzuki didn’t rush her. He shifted his weight instead, letting his body settle into something looser, almost unstable. Like standing still wasn’t really an option for him. His eyes tracked her wrist first, then her shoulder, then her feet. He was reading timing, not intent.There was a difference.
Asumi stepped forward and struck. The blade came in low at first, a testing cut aimed at forcing movement. Ryuzuki twisted his torso just enough for the blade to pass close enough to feel the wind of it, but not touch flesh. He answered immediately with a short strike toward her forearm. Asumi didn’t block it head-on. She rotated her wrist mid-swing and let the blade turn into a flat deflection instead. Steel met bone, then slid off angle. Her other hand came up with the scabbard and clipped his elbow before his strike could complete.Asumi’s grip tightened around Tsuchigumo. Rain slid down the edge of the blade as she drew it fully from its sheath. The sound of steel cutting free barely carried through the storm, but the pressure around her shifted immediately. Ryuzuki noticed it too. His posture lowered slightly, one foot sliding back through the wet sand while his remaining hand tightened around the black dagger at his side. Asumi moved first. “Style of the Dancing Spider: Neun Seidenfäden.”
Zyn surged down the length of her blade. Thin silk-like threads exploded outward from the edge and spread through the rain in overlapping patterns, weaving together into a massive spider web that swallowed the space between them. The threads snapped toward Ryuzuki from every angle at once. He tried to move but failed. The web wrapped around his torso, arm, and legs before tightening violently. The force yanked him backward across the soaked ground as glowing strands dug into his body and pinned him in place.Asumi inhaled slowly. Then her fingers folded into the fire mudra. “Agni Surya!” Ryuzuki's eyes widened. Reijutsu!? He thought.
An ancient spiritual combat art that existed long before most modern Zyn techniques. Instead of inherited abilities, it relied on mudras, breathing control, and precise Zyn flow to temporarily align the soul with certain concepts like earth, fire, wind, and water. Most people consider it a dying art now. They say it's too difficult, or too inefficient compared to innate techniques. But the few who still mastered it were feared for one reason.
Versatility.
Too easy. She thought.
The flames slowly died down. Nothing remained. No body, no ash. Just a puddle of water sitting in the middle of the burning marks left behind by the attack. Asumi’s eye narrowed. “…What?” Rain hit the puddle softly. Then instinct screamed at her. She stepped back immediately, blade raising again as her eye scanned the road for movement. Nothing. No footsteps. No shift in Zyn flow. Just rainwater collecting around her already soaked shoes. Then her heel touched another puddle.Asumi froze. She looked down, and Ryuzuki’s reflection stared back at her from the water instead of her own. The puddle exploded upward instantly. A hand shot out from the water and wrapped around her ankle before she could react. Ryuzuki launched himself out of the puddle in the same motion, water reforming into flesh as he drove a punch straight into her ribs hard enough to send her skidding across the wet road. Asumi caught herself before falling completely and slid backward through the rain. Her breathing tightened for a second as pain flared through her side, but she forced herself steady and stabbed Tsuchigumo into the ground to stop her momentum. Then she rushed him.
She's fast! Ryuzuki thought.
Her fist came forward first instead of the blade. The moment it connected, another fist smashed into hers at the exact same time. Asumi’s eye widened slightly. Standing in front of her was another Asumi.
Same stance.
Same expression.
Same punch.The impact cracked through the rain like a gunshot as both fists collided perfectly in the center. Then the clone dissolved. Its body collapsed into water instantly, splashing apart across the road while Ryuzuki reappeared several feet away near the edge of the plant grounds, rain pouring off his shoulders while his breathing stayed calm and controlled. Now the fight had actually started.
They broke apart by a single step. Rain filled the gap between them. Ryuzuki exhaled once and moved again, faster this time. He closed the distance instead of avoiding it. His footwork changed, tighter now, cutting angles instead of backing away. A low kick aimed at Asumi’s knee forced her weight to shift. She turned her leg out to absorb it and immediately drove an elbow down toward his shoulder. He caught it. Not fully, not cleanly, but enough to control the impact. His grip tightened for half a second, trying to pull her balance forward into his knee strike.Asumi let him think it worked. Then she twisted her torso and turned the entire exchange into a shoulder impact instead, slamming into his chest and breaking his posture. Ryuzuki stumbled half a step back. That was the first real opening. Asumi didn’t waste it. She followed with a straight punch aimed at his jaw. He tilted just enough to let it pass, but she had already adjusted. Her second strike came immediately after, a short palm aimed at his ribs. It landed.
Ryuzuki’s breathing shifted slightly. Not pain. Disruption? He backed off again, resetting his stance. For a moment, neither moved. Just rain and distance that seemed to keep expanding. Then Ryuzuki changed rhythm completely. He stopped reacting first and started redirecting. Every strike Asumi threw after that began to land slightly off target. A hand brushing her wrist at the exact moment her attack committed. A foot nudging her balance just before impact. A shoulder turning her line away from his center.
Her strikes were still landing close. But nothing was clean anymore. Asumi clicked her tongue once. She adjusted her stance. Footwork widened slightly. Her heel dragged through wet sand, changing traction on purpose. Ryuzuki noticed. Of course he did. He immediately moved to her blind side. But Asumi was already turning. She knew her eye patch was her biggest weakness, and so did he. Their bodies collided again. Shoulder to chest. Then elbow to guard. Then knee meeting knee. A short exchange exploded between them, each hit tighter than the last. No wasted motion. No dramatic swings, just efficiency. Ryuzuki pushed her backward toward a broken stretch of stone near the edge of the plant grounds. Rainwater pooled unevenly beneath their feet, making every step unstable.That instability became part of the fight.Asumi used it first. She shifted her weight and forced Ryuzuki into a half-step slip. His guard dipped for a fraction of a second. She followed with a shoulder check that knocked him off line, then immediately dropped low for a sweep. He barely lifted his foot in time.
The sweep missed. But it forced him to adjust upward. That adjustment gave her another opening. She drove a punch toward his face. Ryuzuki blocked it with his forearm and countered instantly with a short elbow aimed at her spine. Asumi didn’t dodge, she accepted it. The hit landed, but not clean enough to stop her movement. She used the impact to rotate into another strike, this time aiming for his collarbone. Ryuzuki leaned back just enough to avoid it. Their faces were close now. Too close. Neither blinked. For a moment, it looked like they were both waiting for the other to overcommit.
Then Asumi changed everything. Her blade came up again, but this time she didn’t swing. She tested instead. A controlled slash aimed at his shoulder. Ryuzuki reacted differently. He didn’t fully dodge.He let the blade come in. Water formed along his skin at the point of contact, and the blade passed through resistance that wasn’t flesh. Asumi’s eyes narrowed immediately. She was beginning to understand. Asumi stepped in and swung her blade through the rain, aiming straight for Ryuzuki’s shoulder. He didn’t dodge or shift his stance. Instead, he lifted his hand and let the blade pass straight through it as if his body wasn’t fully solid in that moment. For a brief second, it looked like the strike had connected cleanly. Then his arm turned to water. The moment the blade cleared his palm, the liquid snapped back together on the other side of her swing, reforming his hand in perfect alignment behind her attack.There was no delay between breakdown and reconstruction, just a smooth continuation of motion that ignored timing entirely.
Before Asumi could pull out her blade, Ryuzuki stepped in close. His palm struck her face flat, breaking her balance and driving her into the wet sand. Rain scattered across the surface as she hit and slid slightly, leaving a shallow trail behind her. She pushed herself up almost immediately, rising back into stance in a single motion. Then she stepped in harder.Even closer range now.
Elbows replaced wide cuts, while short punches replaced full swings. She started forcing contact instead of avoiding it. Ryuzuki adapted. His body flickered between solid and liquid states at impact points. Every strike she landed either slowed or dissolved on contact, depending on timing. The rhythm of the fight tightened.Faster.
Closer.
There was less space between actions. Then Asumi deliberately changed her style. The rain around her felt heavier for a second. Not physically, but like it was pulling toward her instead of falling past her. Ryuzuki felt it immediately. His foot shifted. Then stopped. Something was wrong with the ground under him. Asumi exhaled. And spoke.“Umbrakinesis: Yeägergeist.”
The moment the word left her mouth, the shadow beneath her broke away from her body. It didn’t spread like normal darkness. It slid across the ground in every direction at once, creeping under puddles, stone cracks, broken concrete, swallowing space instead of covering it. The air around them changed instantly. Ryuzuki stepped back. Then paused. His foot had already crossed into it. And immediately, his body resisted him. His next step felt slightly heavier than intended. His shoulder rotated half a beat late. His breathing lost its natural rhythm.His timing started to fracture. Ryuzuki looked down. Understanding came fast. He couldn't even see where her area of effect ended. The first of the three moons, Nyx, was already out. If they continued for longer, it'll only get darker, and Asumi would get harder to defend against.Asumi moved forward. Every step she took made the field tighten. Ryuzuki tried to adjust and realized adjustment itself was being punished. Then Asumi added pressure. The space between them compressed. Ryuzuki’s instincts sharpened. But his body couldn’t follow them anymore. That was when Asumi shifted her grip on Tsuchigumo. The shadow reacted immediately. Silk treads formed across the terrain. Invisible at first, then implied through pressure shifts in the air. Like tension lines stretching between every surface inside the field.
Ryuzuki’s eyes narrowed. He understood what was coming. But before he could act, Asumi moved again. Then, a memory popped back into her head.The battlefield had disappeared in her mind. Snow covered everything. Asumi wasn’t standing in the middle of the desert anymore. She was in Brass’s Zyn scroll. She remembers it clearly: A bullet had just gone through Itaka’s side. Blood was on the snow, spreading too fast to ignore. Zhenyu used Nero Zyn and tried to stabilize it.
But something inside the wound rejected healing completely. Asumi remembered the feeling of that moment clearly. Even basic recovery techniques broke apart on contact with it. Then Tatsuchi stepped forward. She didn’t hesitate. She cut her own hand open. Blood hit the snow. And formed the mudra for blood and fire.“Apana Vayu.”
Back in the present, Asumi’s eye had sharpened. Ryuzuki moved first. Too late. The entire Yeägergeist field reacted. Threads snapped inward. Every possible movement path compressed toward Asumi’s blade. Ryuzuki felt it immediately. Just then, a delayed explosion kicked off near the spot where Asumi’s sword had been buried in the sand earlier. The timing hit clean. The blade launched forward through the rain like it had been fired from a cannon, cutting a straight line across the battlefield. It ripped through the space Ryuzuki had been in and went straight through his head. For a split second, it looked like it landed. Then his body turned to water at the exact moment of impact. Just instant loss of form as the strike passed through nothing solid. The blade was caught by Asumi before it flew too far away in the dark.
More rain filled the space he had been standing in a moment before. Withdrawal? She thought. Because he had removed himself from the path of prediction entirely. The puddle rippled once. Then collapsed inward. Ryuzuki was gone. Only rain remained. Asumi stood still for a moment, blade lowered slightly. She tried to track his Zyn energy but found nothing. The shadow slowly receded back into her body. Then, out of nowhere, Asumi’s eye tracked upward immediately. Ryuzuki had already reappeared on top of a nearby lamppost, still in the rain. His cape moved with the wind, hanging off his shoulders like it was something caught in the weather. He didn’t stand like he was trying to look down on anything. He just ended up there.He let out a slow sigh. “I’m tired more than anything else.” He said. Then his hand lifted. He formed the Jala mudra with his only hand. The water around him responded instantly. His body started to break apart again, but this time there was no resistance at all. His form loosened at the edges first, then collapsed into streams that ran down his arm, across his torso, and off the lamppost in thin sheets. Water dripped off the light in steady lines, falling into the street below and disappearing into the rain already on the ground. And just like that, Ryuzuki was gone.
…A few hours, and around 10 miles of walking later, night had fully settled over Kokohama, and all three moons hung high above the town in uneven layers of pale light that barely cut through the lingering rain. The inn sat quiet beneath them, wood creaking softly as water ran down the roof in steady streams. The rain was beginning to pass. Inside, the hallway was dim, lit only by weak lantern light that flickered whenever wind slipped through the cracks in the building. The room door slammed open hard enough to shake the frame.
Tatsuchi and Zhenyu both turned at once. Asumi stood in the doorway for a moment, completely soaked from head to toe. She had lost her umbrella, her wet hair was hanging loose around her face, and her sleeves ran heavy with rainwater. Dark circles sat under her eye, and her posture looked like it was held together purely by habit. She didn’t speak at first, just stepped inside and let the door swing shut behind her.
Tatsuchi leaned back slightly, watching her carefully. “Well, look who finally decided to come back.” Asumi didn’t answer right away. She walked deeper into the room in silence, then stopped beside the bed and exhaled through her nose. Then, Zhenyu's voice came out with a spark of annoyance. “Where is your camaraderie, my dear friend.” Without even looking in his direction, she lifted her hand and flipped him off, then immediately collapsed face first onto the bed. The mattress sank under her weight as she went completely still, falling asleep almost instantly.
Tatsuchi stared for a second before speaking again. “Don’t worry, I'll dry her off and put her in a change of clothes later.” she sighed. Zhenyu didn’t respond at first. His attention had already dropped to something that had slipped out from Asumi’s cloths when she fell. A single folded paper lay half exposed on the floor, and a manila folder with various papers jutting out from the edges. The word written across it was clear enough to change the air in the room.
MORI.Zhenyu’s expression shifted immediately, and his hand began to move toward it.Just then, a knock came at the door before he could reach it. Tatsuchi reacted instantly, her body moving before her thoughts fully formed. She stepped between Zhenyu and the entrance, drew her blade just enough to be ready, then approached the door with controlled caution. After a brief pause, she opened it slowly. The old innkeeper, Mr. Hitomaki, stood there holding a wet mop, water dripping quietly from the fibers onto the floorboards. Tatsuchi eased slightly, though her hand stayed close to her weapon. “It’s just you.” The man gave a polite smile that didn’t quite match the timing of the night. “Sorry for disturbing you so late.” Tatsuchi gave a small nod out of habit. “Why are you still awake at this hour?” The innkeeper leaned lightly on the mop handle, looking at her without urgency.
“Well then, good night.” He turned and walked away down the hallway. His footsteps were unhurried, almost casual, fading slowly into the dim corridor light. Tatsuchi closed the door quickly. That was when the sound of wood creaking began behind him.
One door opened. Then another. Then several more, each one slow and deliberate, as if whatever was inside had decided to let itself be seen. Inside the rooms, bodies were scattered across floors in broken pieces, their limbs torn apart with deep, uneven bites that looked far too large to belong to any human weapon. Their faces were still intact enough to recognize, but their expressions were frozen in pure terror, as if they had died without understanding exactly what was happening to them. In the shadows behind them, shapes shifted.Too tall.
Too still.
Only fragments were visible, a furry shoulder disappearing behind a wall, a silhouette bending how no human body could bend, a slow movement that suggested weight without structure. Then the eyes appeared. Large silhouettes shifted in the darkness behind the doors. White static eyes blinking slowly. White and blank, reflecting nothing, watching everything.Skinwalkers.
The innkeeper continued walking. At the far end, he stopped in front of a small puddle forming on the wooden floor. There was no leak above it, no source, nothing that explained why water had gathered there at all. He lowered his mop into it. The reflection showed him clearly. He studied it for a moment, then sighed softly. The creepy old innkeeper calmly mopped up a puddle. As he looked down into the puddle, he sighed quietly. “I can’t keep having you spying on us, can I now?”Then he mopped it away completely while softly whistling an eerie old tune.
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