As the darkness claimed Arata's vision, the pain in his chest didn't fade; it transformed. The cold floorboards of the mountain estate dissolved, and his mind was flooded with images of a world he had never seen.
He saw towering buildings of glass and steel. He saw himself as a man named Makhihara Ayato. In that life, he was a genius, a renowned celebrity at the pinnacle of the medical world who had saved countless lives. The memory ended in a flash of blinding headlights—a green light, the roar of a truck, and a crushing impact. Makhihara Ayato had died in an instant.
Arata's eyes snapped open. He surged upward, his lungs burning.
The memories of the doctor were now part of him—the medical knowledge and the structural understanding of the human body. But there was no relief. His heart ached with a single, looping question.
He looked down at his chest. He remembered his flesh being torn open, but the wound was gone. His skin was smooth, healed as if the attack had never happened. He realized he was in a modest house he didn't recognize.
The door slid open. A young man with a sharp, disciplined gaze stepped inside.
Arata looked at him, his mind reeling.
Jigoro sighed, looking at the boy with a mix of pity and caution.
Arata gripped the blankets, his hands shaking.
The medical mind of Ayato inside him struggled to find a biological explanation for such a feat.
Arata looked at his healed skin, the words "what you are now" echoing in his head. He didn't understand what he had become, but he knew the world had just become a much more dangerous place.
******
Back in the present, the forest was silent as the first hint of grey began to bleed into the eastern horizon. Arata—the nameless phantom of the woods—knew he had to move. He turned away from the temple orphanage where Himejima Gyomei stood among the ruins, disappearing into the thicket with a speed that left only a whisper of wind behind.
He moved through a dense patch of wisteria trees, the purple petals brushing against his heavy cloak. To any other creature with his father's blood, this forest would be a suffocating death trap. The potent poison of the flowers acted as a barrier that even the strongest demons feared. But Arata breathed it in without a flinch.
He was an anomaly—a half-demon. While his sisters and brother had been born purely human and met their ends as such, Arata was the rare result of a bloodline that held a slight, dormant chance of transformation. He lacked the tell-tale scent of a demon that the Slayers used to track their prey, and the wisteria that repelled his father's kind did nothing to his heart.
Yet, he was not invincible. As he reached the mouth of his hidden cave, he felt the familiar, searing itch beneath his skin. He was still vulnerable to the sun. The light of the morning would burn him just as surely as it would any monster.
He stepped into the cool, damp darkness of his hideout, a place filled with the smell of cold iron and the rare metal he used for his forge. He pulled back his hood, his pale features set in a mask of cold determination. The memories of the doctor Ayato and the boy Arata had finally merged into a single, sharp purpose.
He reached out and touched the hilt of the black katana he had forged himself. The dark metal seemed to drink the remaining shadows of the cave.
He watched from the safety of the dark as the sun finally broke over the horizon, painting the world in a light he could no longer touch, but a light he would use to burn his father to ash.
******
The atmosphere in the Ubuyashiki estate was heavy with the scent of wisteria and ancient secrets. Rengoku Shinjuro sat before the current leader of the Ubuyashiki clan, whose presence was calm despite the weight of their dark history.
Shinjuro recounted everything he had found: the slaughtered cult, the missing serpent demon, and the reports of the hooded figure who moved like a phantom and wielded the elemental breaths of the Corps.
The clan leader listened in profound silence. For centuries, the Ubuyashiki family had been cursed. Because their bloodline had produced the first demon, Kibutsuji Muzan, the men of the family were born with frail, sickly bodies. None survived past their thirtieth year, their skin slowly rotting as a divine punishment for the monster their ancestors had birthed.
Yet, a strange phenomenon had occurred in the past. Shinjuro recalled how the progress of the curse on the family heads had mysteriously slowed to a near-halt many years ago, leaving their bodies stronger than those of their ancestors.
A high-ranking priest, who had been consulting the family's ancient scrolls, stepped forward from the shadows to explain the anomaly.
The clan leader and Shinjuro exchanged a look of bewilderment. They didn't fully understand what an "antithesis" meant, nor did they connect it to the mysterious swordsman Shinjuro had been tracking in the present. To them, the antithesis was a figure of prophecy from the past, while the hooded ghost was a current, dangerous variable.