The night was pitch-black, yet firelight painted half the sky.
This was a ruin in flames.
The blaze burned hot as a sun, devouring everything in a silent, brutal frenzy. Redwood pillars that had once formed an exquisite courtyard collapsed into the sea of fire with thunderous cracks. Black smoke squatted over the wreckage, bringing with it a violently swelling pressure wave.
It lifted the girl's bangs.
Hozuki Arcana stared without expression as the place where she had grown up was reduced to ash by the torch she had set down.
Her eyes were unnaturally bright in the dark. The irises shimmered an eerie pale blue, and within that blue danced a deeper crimson light, like a torch igniting across a field of snow and ice. At the corners of her eyes, a streak of scarlet extended outward, lush and bloodlike in the fire's glow.
In Arcana's vision, the world decomposed into ruptured points and lines. There were only black and red. Things she could cut, and things she could not.
And those lurking monstrosities were nothing but cracks to her.
She cut them open, killed them, and in the end, buried the fallen with a single fire.
At least they died in silence. To everyone else, they would be remembered as human, not as those man-eating "demons." Among them were her family, the ones who had protected her, the ones she had loved and respected turned into hideous demons tonight, and pierced through the heart by her own hand.
"I really am pitiful…" The girl exhaled softly. "You all get to die so neatly. Where does that leave me? Where am I supposed to go now?"
She let out a quiet sigh.
She had thought it absurd enough that a good, law-abiding twenty-first-century young adult could end up as a helpless little girl in Japan's Taishō era. But something even more absurd had happened. Arcana had lived here for more than a decade, and tonight, the peaceful life she'd built shattered into pieces.
This world truly had demons.
Their legends had been told since the ancient days of Nara creatures that walked in the night, feared sunlight, and lived by eating people.
Arcana had once believed such stories were only meant to scare children. In her previous life, her grandmother had loved to tell ghost stories to frighten her when she was small, using the same tricks and rhythms.
The difference was that Arcana had seen them tonight.
The price was everyone's life.
She breathed out, and a deep exhaustion washed over her.
If she hadn't had these eyes, she would have been one of those monsters tonight.
A sharp rush of air cut through the silence behind her.
"Who's there?"
Arcana snapped her head around, on guard. She couldn't be sure the powerful demon that had destroyed this place wouldn't come back to admire its handiwork.
Those eerie ice-blue eyes beautiful as a poisonous flower locked onto the newcomer.
A swordsman.
He wore a haori like living flames and carried a long blade in a white scabbard. His presence was unbelievable. The red "fractures" on his body were so few she could hardly find them.
Arcana let out a slow breath.
Anyone human was fine.
The swordsman stepped to her side, eyes bright and focused.
"Girl! Tell me what happened here!"
His voice rang out, loud and full of vigor.
"Then you should tell me who you are first."
Leaning against a tree, Arcana slid the blood-stained long blade in her hand back into its redwood sheath.
How interesting. Someone who looked so steady, yet sounded so energetic.
But she was too tired now. She couldn't even be bothered to glance at him. Using those strange eyes drained her the way running two kilometers had in her last life only worse.
With the swordsman's arrival, it was as if her whole body sank into warm water. Her nerves slackened at once.
"I am a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps, here to exterminate demons!"
the swordsman declared, loud and spirited.
He held his posture for a while. When no response came, he frowned and looked down.
"Girl?"
No answer.
She had fallen asleep against the tree.
Ink-black hair spilled loose, framing fairy-tale delicate features. A deep crimson kimono wrapped her slender body, setting off skin as pale and luminous as snow.
The swordsman studied her, and had to admit she was a rare beauty so striking that even in the capital, where beauties were said to be everywhere, she could have lived comfortably on her looks alone.
He turned his gaze to the ruins and the demon corpses.
What an astonishing child.
Alone, she had exterminated demons. Yet he had checked her weapon the blade was valuable and sharp, but it wasn't a Nichirin sword, not a special blade meant to kill demons.
How had she done it?
Curiosity stirred in him.
He removed his haori, stepped forward, and draped it over her shoulders, deciding to wait for her to wake.
A single night passed quickly for a swordsman who had trained for years. For Arcana, it felt like an eternity.
What happened last night kept pounding at her soul.
"Today is Arcana's birthday. We have to dress you up properly. I had this kimono made by a master tailor in Kyoto, you know. Try it on."
"Waaah, is this our Arcana-chan, the great beauty? When you grow up, all sorts of important men will chase you. Be careful, alright? Don't get tricked by sweet talk."
"Arcana! Run, run… No. Arcana… welcome back!"
"Rare blood, rare blood delicious rare blood! I've never seen rare blood this delicious before hahahaha!"
"I'm sorry… Arcana. I want to take one bite of you. Is that okay?"
That was the roar of demons.
That was the sound of a blade slicing through flesh.
And that was the last whisper from that person.
"Arcana… thank you…"
The girl opened her eyes. The flame-patterned haori draped over her slid down slowly. Warm sunlight fell across her face, yet she felt as if she'd awakened in another lifetime.
She stared blankly at the ruins.
After a whole night, the flames had died. All that remained were charred black frames of wood.
Beneath that ash lay the people who had loved her most in this world.
"Girl!"
That familiar voice again the swordsman. With a voice that loud, the entire courtyard could probably hear him.
Arcana came back to herself and only then noticed the haori covering her.
"Thank you."
She handed it back.
"It's nothing."
The swordsman slipped it on again. "My name is Shinjuro Rengoku. I am a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps!"
"The Demon Slayer Corps?"
Arcana had heard the tale. It had always been passed down alongside stories of demons: after the sun went down, demons appeared and ate people. And there were demon hunters who slew them, protecting the living.
She had thought it all nonsense. In the twenty-first century, she believed in sickles and hammers, not ox-demons and snake-spirits. But demons had appeared real as blood and she had personally cut down several.
Including her own family.
The first instant she met their eyes, she understood: once someone became a demon and fed on human flesh, death was the best ending they could still be given.
"Can I join?"
The girl asked quietly.
"Hm?"
Rengoku Shinjuro's eyebrows like swallow tails drew together. "A child like you could live a life a thousand times better than anything the Demon Slayer Corps can offer!"
He meant it. The girl was breathtakingly beautiful. Even with her family gone, she could still find someone willing to love her, shelter her, and let her live as a cherished lady in high society.
The Demon Slayer Corps was not her best choice.
It might even be her worst.
Or perhaps, looking at a girl about the same age as his own children, he simply didn't want someone so young to be forced into cruelty so soon.
"That kind of choice would make me rot, Rengoku-san. I don't think it's hard for you to understand."
Her voice was soft, heavy with exhaustion.
She looked up at him, and those monstrous eyes opened once more.
"I can bring death to those things."
Shinjuro met that gaze. In that cold, snowfield emptiness, he felt the impulse to run.
Impossible.
So it was these eyes.
Was that how she had killed demons?
As a Hashira, he had slain countless demons and witnessed countless tragedies. He knew talent like this was precious beyond measure.
There was no reason to refuse her again.
"The Demon Slayer Corps welcomes you!"
the man answered, his voice like thunder.