At that very moment, hundreds of miles away from the Demon Slayer Corps headquarters, a deep and unsettling quiet had fallen over Hiraoka County.
The night was a suffocating blanket of black.
Thick clouds had smothered the moon, stealing its light and plunging the already depressed town into an even deeper gloom.
Hiraoka, once a bustling hub of the textile industry, was now a place of rust and decay, its lifeblood long since drained away.
In forgotten places like this, the darkest corners often belonged to terrifying, lurking figures.
But lately, even that had changed.
While most demons across the land had received some order to lay low, a few unrestrained, low-level stragglers still haunted the night, hunting for humans.
But in Hiraoka, even those stragglers had vanished.
The Slayers assigned to the area had noticed it first.
The demonic traces they had been following for weeks had suddenly gone cold.
The entire county had fallen into a strange, unnerving silence.
It was almost unimaginable, but the Slayers could practically smell it in the air—a palpable fear radiating not from humans, but from the demons themselves.
It was a cold, cruel terror that had seeped into the shadows, an invisible plague that had gripped every last demon hiding in Hiraoka.
…
In a damp, filth-ridden sewer, a demon with a grotesque, pulsating tumor on its back shivered in the muck.
Its scarlet eyes were wide with a terror that went beyond the fear of a Nichirin Blade.
Its sharp teeth chattered uncontrollably.
"We have to go… have to get out of here…" it whispered hoarsely to another demon huddled beside it, this one sporting three terrified, bloodshot eyes.
"That… that aura… it's too much… We're the same kind, but she… she just kills us… kills us all…"
"It's the poison," the three-eyed demon whimpered, its voice trembling.
"I can smell death… Is she… is she punishing us for Muzan-sama?" It shuddered violently.
"The tiger demon… the one by the textile factory… it didn't even have time to scream. It just… it just melted into a puddle of purple water. There was nothing left!"
The tumorous demon shook its deformed head frantically.
"Impossible! We're just low-level fodder! So what if we didn't follow the order to hide? That's not enough for an Upper Rank to come down here and punish us!"
…
The abandoned textile factory loomed on the edge of town, a skeletal behemoth of steel crawling in the darkness.
Weeds taller than a man choked the desolate grounds, and the air was thick with the smell of rust and damp earth.
This was the exact spot where the Kakushi had reported the sighting of the 'suspected Insect Hashira, Shinobu Kocho'.
And deep within the ruins, a slender figure stood motionless atop a derelict weaving machine.
Long, dark purple hair fluttered in the night breeze, held in place by a butterfly-shaped hairpin that was cracked but still recognizable.
The back of her white butterfly-patterned haori was marred by a strange, gaping hole, revealing the purple uniform beneath.
The skin of her arms, visible at her cuffs, was a ghostly, almost translucent white.
But her hands were no longer human.
Her slender fingers ended in sharp, dark purple claws, and sinister, vein-like purple lines snaked from her palms up to her wrists.
In the beautiful, graceful lines of her face, one could still see the gentle outline of Shinobu.
But her eyes were alien.
The warm, violet pools that once held such life had been replaced by a bottomless cold.
Her pupils were no longer round, but had contracted into two ruthless, vertical slits, like those of a reptile.
Her lips, once quick to smile, were pressed into a thin, indifferent line.
She tilted her head slightly, as if listening to something only she could hear.
She raised a hand, her clawed fingertips trailing threads of dark purple energy that squirmed like living things, exuding a sickly-sweet scent of death.
Below her, several demons were bound tightly in those same purple threads, writhing in agony.
The threads began to secrete a highly corrosive liquid, and a horrifying sizzling sound, like meat being fried, filled the air as their bodies dissolved.
In moments, only their screaming heads remained, their bodies having melted into bubbling puddles of violet sludge.
The night wind moaned through the rusted framework of the factory.
The figure ignored the dying screams of the demons.
She slowly lifted her head, her violet, slitted pupils piercing the darkness, gazing into the far-off distance.
There were no human emotions in her eyes—only a chilling indifference to life, and… a flicker of confusion, as if she were being drawn by something she couldn't comprehend.
Hunting her own kind felt like an instinct, one that had been branded into her soul the moment she had reopened her eyes.
She didn't know why she did it; she just knew she had to.
The familiar, gray-clad Upper Rank who had been there when she awoke had not stopped her.
In fact, she had encouraged her to follow this bloody instinct.
And as she hunted, small, fractured images would occasionally flash through her confused mind.
Images of a person who felt so familiar, so close.
Closer, even, than the Upper Rank.
"Shin… ichi…"
A faint, hoarse syllable, rough with long disuse, escaped her tightly pursed lips.
It was an unconscious breath, a ghost of a word that was immediately snatched away by the wind, disappearing without a trace.
'What was a Shin-ichi? '
Why had she said that?
…
A stream of girl light tore through the night and landed silently in a deserted woodland on the outskirts of Hiraoka.
The only sound was the soft crunch of dead leaves under Shinichi's feet.
He forced himself to take a deep, steadying breath, suppressing the chaotic storm of emotions in his heart.
The air here was thick with the smell of rust, a scent of decay that seemed to cling to the entire town.
"Woof!"
A black blur shot out from the trees, circling him excitedly.
The cute Shiba Inu, Maru-ni, barked up at him, his tail wagging furiously.
Shinichi knelt and rubbed Maru-ni furry head with a gentle touch.
"Maru-ni," he murmured, his voice low and thick with emotion.
"Do you remember Shinobu's scent? We're going to bring Shinobu home. Okay?"
Maru-ni let out a happy yip in perfect understanding.
Then, a different light ignited in the dog's dark eyes.
A low growl rumbled in Maru-ni's throat.
The next second, he transformed into a bolt of black lightning, shooting off in one direction with impossible speed.
The hunt had begun.
[Shinichi turn human but Shinobu is a demon now 😥]