The dusty basement offered little comfort. The cold seeped from the concrete floor into Yuki's bones, a chill that felt deeper than the unnatural cold he carried. The image of his crimson-eyed reflection burned behind his eyelids, a brand on his psyche. He drifted into a fitful sleep, plagued by nightmares – the fire, the screaming faces, the Spider's smile, the exorcist's judgment, and always, always, those burning crimson eyes staring back at him from every reflective surface.
He woke hours later to the grey light of dawn filtering weakly through the grimy basement window. His body ached, the burns on his arms throbbing with a deep, insistent heat. He pushed himself up, wincing.
He needed to assess the damage. He carefully peeled back the makeshift bandages Aoi had applied. The sight was worse than he remembered. The burns weren't healing. They looked… infected. The skin around the edges was an angry, inflamed red, weeping a clear, yellowish fluid. But it wasn't just infection.
Tracing outwards from the burns, spreading like dark tendrils, were his veins. They weren't blue anymore. They weren't even the dark grey they'd been before. They were black. Deep, obsidian black, standing out starkly against his pale skin. And they seemed to be… moving. Not pulsing with blood, but with a slow, deliberate flow, like oil spreading through water. They extended further up his arms now, disappearing under the sleeves of his shirt, towards his shoulders.
Yuki stared, horrified. He pressed a finger against one of the black veins. It felt cold. Unnaturally cold. And slightly… yielding. As if it weren't quite solid.
The corruption deepens, Kage's voice observed, a cold, clinical rasp. The fire consumes the vessel. The mortal flesh makes way for the eternal. These are not veins, little vessel. They are conduits. Channels for my power. For the darkness.
Yuki snatched his hand back as if burned. Conduits. Channels. His own body was being rewired, transformed into a conduit for demonic power. The black veins weren't just a symptom; they were infrastructure.
He pulled his sleeve down, hiding the horrifying sight. But he could feel them. A network of cold darkness spreading beneath his skin, a physical manifestation of the corruption eating him from the inside out. The crimson eyes in the mirror were just the outward sign. The black veins were the foundation.
He needed to understand what was happening to him. He needed answers. And he needed them before the black veins reached his heart. Before there was nothing left of Yuki Tanaka but a hollow shell for Kage.
The exorcist. It knew things. It had spoken of the "architect," of the veil weakening. It understood the forces at play. Following it was suicidal, but it was the only lead he had.
He focused again, reaching out with his senses. He searched for the faint, distinctive signature of the exorcist's pure, scouring energy. It took longer this time. The signature was fainter, masked somehow. But he found it. Distant. Moving away from the city center. Towards the mountains on the northern edge of the metropolis.
He left the basement, moving through the quiet morning streets. The city felt different in the daylight. Less threatening, perhaps, but also less forgiving. Every glance felt like an accusation. He kept his head down, his hood pulled low.
The journey took hours. He walked when he could, hitched a ride on the back of a delivery truck when the opportunity arose, sticking to the shadows. The landscape gradually changed from urban sprawl to suburban outskirts, then to wooded foothills. The air grew cleaner, colder.
He found the exorcist in a small, isolated shrine nestled in a forest clearing. It was old, weathered, the wooden structure grey and sagging. The air around it hummed with the same pure energy as the rod, a barrier that made Yuki's scars throb with cold pain.
The exorcist knelt before the shrine's altar, not in prayer, but in concentration. The etched rod lay before it. Symbols were carved into the wooden floor around it, glowing with a soft, steady light. It was performing a ritual.
Yuki watched from the cover of the trees, hidden by the deepening twilight. He felt the exorcist's focus, the intensity of its will. It wasn't just resting. It was scrying. Seeking information.
The architect, Kage whispered. It seeks the source. The one who pulls the strings.
Yuki held his breath, straining to hear, to understand. The exorcist chanted, the words low, resonant, in a language Yuki didn't recognize but felt deep in his bones. The symbols on the floor flared brighter. A shimmering image formed in the air above the altar.
It was a map. Not of the city, but of the surrounding region, focusing on the mountainous area north of the shrine. Points of light pulsed at specific locations – the undercity junction, the abandoned warehouse district, the shrine itself. And at the heart of the mountains, a larger, darker point pulsed with malevolent energy.
The exorcist studied the map, its flinty eyes narrowed. "There," it murmured, its voice carrying clearly in the stillness. "The heart of the blight. The source of the incursions. The architect's sanctum."
It reached out, touching the dark point in the mountains. The image rippled. For a fleeting moment, another image superimposed itself over the map – a glimpse of a towering, obsidian structure carved into the mountainside, pulsing with dark energy. Symbols glowed on its surface, symbols that made Yuki's scars burn in recognition.
The exorcist's hand jerked back as if burned. The image vanished. The symbols on the floor dimmed. The exorcist remained kneeling, breathing heavily, its face etched with a mixture of determination and dread.
Yuki backed away silently, his mind reeling. The architect's sanctum. In the mountains. That was the source. The heart of the darkness corrupting the city, the thing pulling the strings, the entity responsible for Hana's death.
He had a location. A target.
But as he turned to slip back into the forest, his foot snapped a twig.
The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet clearing.
The exorcist spun around, its eyes blazing, the etched rod leaping into its hand. The symbols on the floor flared back to life, bathing the clearing in pure, blinding light.
Yuki was exposed.
"Reveal yourself, abomination!" the exorcist's voice thundered, echoing through the trees. "Your hunt ends now!"
Yuki didn't hesitate. He turned and ran, crashing through the undergrowth, the exorcist's light blazing behind him like a vengeful star. He had the location. He had the target. But the hunter was right behind him. And the black veins on his arms pulsed with cold fire, a constant reminder that time was running out. The corruption was spreading. The darkness was rising. And the final confrontation was drawing near.