The late afternoon light slanted through the wooden shutters, cutting the room into bands of gold and shadow. The safehouse creaked occasionally – not in warning, but with the weight of age. It was the kind of quiet you could feel in your bones. Outside, a wind chime rattled once, then fell still.

Victor cracked open the pantry near the old prayer kitchen.

"What are you doing?" Chloe asked from the hallway.

"Pilgrimage," he said. "Searching for something sacred."

A pause. Then a soft clink of glass on wood.

Victor emerged a moment later with two bottles of Asahi Super Dry, worn labels curling at the edges. He tossed one underhand.

Chloe caught it awkwardly. "Isn't it, like, the literal apocalypse out there?"

"Exactly why we drink," Victor said, collapsing onto the tatami mat beside the low table. He popped his cap with the hilt of a knife, took a long swig, and sighed. "Tastes like nostalgia and regret."

She sat across from him. Turned the bottle over in her hand, didn't open it.

Victor watched her. "You know, we've almost died together, what – three times? And I still don't even know your last name."

"Blackthorn."

He raised an eyebrow. "Dramatic."

"I'm the second twin," she added. "Alyssa came first. Five minutes. She'll never let me forget it."

"Twins," Victor said. "Explains the matching hair and synchronized snark."

Chloe smiled faintly. "We used to be... normal. I went to private school in Sydney. My parents are diplomats. Well-off, always moving. Beijing, Saigon, Paris. Never here, though. This is my first time in Japan."

Victor took another sip. "Hell of a time to visit."

"No passport, either," she said. "Didn't think I'd need one. Turns out I was right."

They sat in silence a moment. Liz's stasis pod flickered faintly behind them, casting red light across the floor like an ember that refused to go out.

"What did you want to do?" Victor asked.

Chloe hesitated. "It's stupid."

"Try me."

"I wanted to be a diplomat. Like my dad. I can speak six languages. Alyssa can do seven, but she cheats."

Victor smiled. "Doesn't sound stupid."

"It is if you hate politics," she said. "I realized pretty quick that you can't change anything if you can't stand the game. So, I switched. I wanted to be a vet."

His eyebrows rose. "A vet?"

"I love dogs."

Victor lifted his bottle. "A noble calling. I know some fantastic veterinarians."

She tilted her head. "You would. You're more animal than human."

"Hey now," he said. "I'm a specialist. Big cats. Conservation biology. I was tracking the Malayan tiger before this all went sideways."

"Those are endangered, right?"

"Less than a hundred left," he said. "If they're still out there."

She went quiet.

"I hope they survive," she said finally. "This... everything."

He nodded. "Me too."

She glanced at him sideways. "What about you? Anyone... special?"

Victor was quiet for a beat. Then, "I was married."

"Oh."

"Not like Max. I'm not a widower. Just... a divorcee. We grew apart. I got back from the Middle East, dove into fieldwork, never really surfaced. She stayed behind. Had a life plan. I had a backpack and claw marks."

He gave a dry laugh. "It didn't end well. We're not friends. She's also the reason I am Dr. Victor Drake of no-fixed-address."

Chloe blinked. "You're homeless?"

"I prefer... academically nomadic."

"Sounds lonely."

He shrugged. "Sometimes."

She looked down at her bottle. Turned it once more. Still didn't open it.

"I never told Alyssa," she said. "But I had a crush on Jack."

Victor didn't respond right away.

"He only ever looked at Liz," Chloe continued. "I don't blame him. She was... is... kind. Soft. Bright in a way the rest of us weren't."

Victor nodded. "He seemed like a good kid."

"He was."

A beat.

"No boyfriend now?"

She shook her head. "Too busy surviving."

They shared the silence again. This one different. Closer. Not awkward – just honest.

Victor leaned back, exhaling.

"I like this place," he said. "Not the world. The quiet. The stillness."

Chloe looked around the old walls, the dust-laced paper, the flickering pod.

"It's the first time I've felt safe since Liz fell."

Victor's smile faded. He looked at the pod, the girl asleep inside it. "We'll bring her back."

"You really believe that?"

"I do."

She didn't answer. But she stayed.

And behind them, the guardians stood watch – stone still, unmoving.

For now.

…………………

The stasis chamber had once been a meditation hall – stone-backed, lantern-lit, shielded on three sides by thick earth and layered seals that pulsed faintly with soul-threaded light. Liz's pod lay at its centre, resting in a low impression in the stone. The pulse of her stasis beacon painted the walls a slow, rhythmic red.

Victor finished checking the wards again and straightened with a grunt. "Alright. Here's the deal. We guard her together. No solo missions. No stepping out without backup."

Chloe nodded. "Agreed."

"I'll walk the perimeter top of every hour," he added. "Check for cracks in the seals, weird soulfield shifts, or anything crawling out of the woods."

She raised an eyebrow. "And you're bringing the fancy new rifles for that?"

Victor grinned and patted the soulforged weapon slung across his back. "Hell yeah. You don't find this kind of firepower in your average demon apocalypse. It'd be rude not to use it."

Chloe walked to the armoury crate tucked behind a folding screen. She opened it, stared at the small array of weapons, then pulled out a sleek Institute pistol. She turned it over, awkward in her grip.

"I'll take one too."

Victor blinked. "You sure?"

"I'm not going to shoot it," she said. "I've never fired one. Not even in practice. But… if something gets in while you're out, I can fire once. You'll hear it. Come running."

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Victor nodded slowly. "Smart. Just don't aim it at your face."

"I was thinking more... ceiling," she said, then tucked it into her satchel.

The chamber settled into silence again. The low hum of Liz's pod was the only sound.

Chloe sat beside the pod and looked up at him. "What do you think those things in the forest were? The ones in the fog?"

Victor leaned back against the wall, arms folded. "Tracks were messy. Animalistic. Some quadrupeds. A few humanoid. But most weren't clear. Chaotic patterns, back-and-forth loops like they were chasing each other in circles."

He frowned. "Some looked like stampede formations. Like prey running from something worse. But others were still. Watching."

Chloe was quiet.

Victor's voice dropped lower. "My best guess? Demon shenanigans. Soulfield warping, like what we saw near Chengdu. Some of it could've been those yokai Ferron keeps talking about, some Hell-born, some neither. But whatever they are – they're not natural. And they're getting closer."

He looked at her. "So yeah. You and me both need to be ready to fight."

Chloe smirked. "I am."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I've been training," she said. "I can phase longer now – stay intangible, pass through walls, even jump through a surface and strike mid-air. Like a ghost with a grudge."

Victor gave a low whistle. "Elegant reaper, then."

She smiled. "Now you're getting it."

He gave a theatrical shiver. "I hate ghosts."

She laughed. "You are a ghost. Chimera, shapeshifter, semi-feral..."

"Half-lion. Entirely charming."

They grinned at each other.

Then Victor's voice turned sincere. "You're ready. More than ready. I'd take you on any squad I served with."

Chloe's smile softened. It wasn't sarcasm. It wasn't teasing.

"Thanks," she said.

Victor bumped his fist against her shoulder.

"For Liz," he said.

Chloe nodded. "For Liz."

And the pod pulsed behind them, soft and steady – a heartbeat buried in stone.

…………………

The night deepened, pressing in around the safehouse like a hand testing the edges of glass.

Chloe stood by the open corridor facing the inner courtyard. A paper lantern swung gently overhead, casting long shadows over the gravel and moss. The temple compound was unnervingly quiet. Not peaceful – just… withholding.

Liz's pod gave a low, mechanical pulse behind her. The red light blinked slower than before. But tonight, it wasn't the pod that had her attention.

It was the silence.

She took a step closer to the railing. Somewhere just beyond the garden's edge, the bamboo rustled once. Then stopped.

Her hand closed around Tensō's hilt.

"Movement?" Victor asked, voice calm as he joined her. His rifle was already in his hands. He didn't look surprised – just alert, like a man who had been expecting this moment for hours.

Chloe nodded. "East side. Something's watching. It's not the wind."

Victor didn't speak. He took position beside her, crouching slightly, peering out past the guardian statues that stood like monuments at either side of the gate.

Then – it appeared.

A shape moved at the far edge of the courtyard. Not with confidence, but with hunger. It limped forward on two legs, dragging one behind it like a sack of wet bones. Thin arms. No face. Its head was wrapped in a stretched fox mask – not worn, but embedded, bulging under the skin as if its skull had grown around it.

Victor didn't raise the rifle.

He didn't need to.

The left guardian moved.

Stone groaned like thunder as the massive samurai construct stepped forward. Its naginata swung low and slow – not rushing, not uncertain. Just precise. The blade caught moonlight for a half-second.

Then it passed through the yokai's neck like wind.

The creature's body collapsed. Its head hit the ground with a hollow crack. Black ichor sprayed in a slow arc before soaking into the earth.

The guardian stepped back into place without ceremony. Its blade hummed once. Then stilled.

Chloe let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "That thing… it crossed the line."

Victor nodded, jaw tight. "One step too far."

They walked down into the courtyard. Victor nudged the corpse with his boot, then glanced at the mask fused to its skull.

It was smiling.

Always smiling.

"Do we burn it?" Chloe asked.

Victor looked to the fire pit Ferron had prepared earlier. "Yeah. And then we check the perimeter. I don't like that it came alone."

He paused. His voice dropped an octave, half to himself.

"Scouts always come alone."

And in the trees, unseen – something shifted.

Waiting. Watching.

And counting.

…………………

The body burned quickly.

Victor watched the yokai's remains hiss and blacken in Ferron's old fire pit, a hand lightly resting on his rifle. The mask crumbled last – not like wood, but like bone — cracking inward as the heat found something it didn't like. The smile vanished only at the end.

Chloe stood a few paces back, watching in silence. The red light from Liz's pod pulsed in the background, steady again. At least for now.

Victor exhaled through his nose. "You alright?"

Chloe nodded, though her jaw was tight. "First one I've seen up close. It didn't look like a demon."

"It wasn't," Victor said. "Or not exactly."

She glanced at him. "Then what the hell are we fighting?"

Victor stepped away from the flames, the smoke curling behind him like a ghost's shadow. "I don't know yet. But I plan to find out."

He crossed the courtyard and began unpacking a small Institute surveillance kit from his field bag – camouflaged motion cams, wide-angle mics, perimeter glyph sensors. Most were soulfield-compatible. A few were old-school analogue, modified to avoid demonic interference.

"You think more are coming," Chloe said quietly.

Victor didn't look up. "Always more."

She hesitated, then: "Do the guardians detect them before we do?"

"They sense intent, Ferron said," he replied, fixing a camera mount to a crumbling stone pillar. "But they don't warn. They just kill."

Chloe didn't respond for a long moment. Then, softly: "So we build our own eyes."

Victor gave a satisfied click as the first device activated, a faint green light blinking once.

"I'll run feeds through the internal grid," he said. "We'll cover the treeline, the outer buildings, the southern slope. If anything's dumb enough to cross into the courtyard again, we'll see it coming before it reaches the gate."

He turned toward her. "But if I'm not around – if something hits while I'm out – you use this."

He handed her a compact pistol. Chloe took it, weighing it awkwardly.

"I told you before, I've never shot one before," she said.

"You don't have to," Victor said. "Best case, you shoot something from a distance. Worse case, it's for calling me. One round, straight up. I hear the bang, I come running – remember?"

Chloe looked at him. "You promise you'll hear it?"

"I always hear the important things."

She slipped the pistol into her belt, the gesture more solemn than casual.

After a long moment, Chloe spoke again. "Those things last night – in the fog. What do you think they were?"

Victor hesitated.

Then his tone shifted – thoughtful, focused. The scientist.

"They weren't animals," he said. "Or not entirely. I found tracks after the wave passed. Footprints. Some bare. Some clawed. Some that looked like hooves — but with toes. Patterns were erratic. Like a stampede, but not panicked."

He stared into the dark beyond the outer gate.

"It was… coordinated. But not military. Not demonic, either. Demons conquer. They hunt. These things didn't. They moved like they were looking for something."

"Or someone," Chloe said.

Victor didn't answer right away.

"They were searching," he finally said. "Maybe for Max. Maybe for Liz. Maybe just for something warm to break open."

Chloe rubbed her arms. "That's comforting."

Victor checked the last camera, then gave a small nod. "We need to be ready to fight again. You up for that?"

Chloe's voice didn't waver. "Yeah. I've been practicing. I can phase longer now. Move faster. Through walls, even. I'm like a killer ghost."

Victor shuddered, only half-joking. "I hate ghosts."

She grinned. "Good."

He laughed. Then gave her a nod. "You'll do, Blackthorn. You'll do."

Chloe beamed, not with smugness, but quiet pride.

Then, softer: "Jack would've laughed. Said I was finally the scary one." Her voice didn't crack. But it came close.

Behind them, the fire died out.

And far out in the trees, something clicked – not mechanical, not natural.

A signal.

…………………

The courtyard settled into its unnatural stillness again – the kind that felt more like a breath held than peace earned. Somewhere, faintly, a soft click echoed off the stones. Victor glanced up but the sound didn't repeat.

The guardians stood motionless, eyes dark beneath their stone kabuto. The fire pit hissed once, then faded to embers.

Victor wiped his hands on his vest and adjusted the last camera feed on his wrist display. All green. All clear.

Chloe stood at the far edge of the courtyard, near the broken lantern where she'd first felt the strange pressure earlier. Liz's pod pulsed steadily in the shrine's inner sanctum behind her, its crimson glow faint through the rice paper walls.

Victor stretched, cracked his neck. "Cameras are live. If anything twitches within a hundred feet, we'll know."

Chloe nodded, distracted. Her fingers traced the old paper seals on the courtyard's archway. "You feel that?"

Victor paused. "What?"

Chloe turned slowly toward the forest. "The air just… changed."

A low clicking sound drifted across the trees. Not loud. Not sharp. Just faint, rhythmic – like someone tapping bone on stone in a forgotten rhythm.

Victor stepped beside her, the chimera in his blood already rising, his eyes narrowing.

Then: motion.

The edge of the forest trembled. Not from wind – from footsteps. Dozens. Too light to be soldiers. Too erratic to be animals.

A wave of smell hit next – wet earth, copper, and something sweet and sour, like rotting fruit. Chloe gagged slightly. The scent clung to the air like memory, ancient and wrong.

Victor pulled up the wrist display. All four forest perimeter feeds blinked red. Movement in every direction. Southeast. Northwest. Near the road they'd come in by.

"They're here," he muttered.

Chloe stepped back toward the temple wall, hand on her blade. "How many?"

Victor didn't answer. His eyes stayed on the screen. His hand reached instinctively toward his rifle.

Shapes emerged from the treeline. Slowly. Crawling. Standing. Hunched. They weren't charging.

They were watching.

Yokai – twisted, half-human, some animal, some impossible. A gaunt woman with centipede legs where her arms should've been. A fox-headed brute dragging a spine like a leash. A monk with no face, his prayer beads clicking without hands.

One creature stood apart. Human-shaped but too tall, limbs jointed wrong. It wore a schoolgirl uniform in tatters – white blouse, red tie, blue skirt – like something dredged from memory and rot. Its mask was a cracked rabbit's face, one eye missing. But its hands… they were human. Small. Familiar. Chloe's breath caught. They looked like her own.

And between them – masked children.

Dozens of them.

Each perched silently in the trees, crouched like vultures, fox masks gleaming faintly in the dying light. They didn't move. Didn't leap.

They waited.

Victor and Chloe stood frozen as the first yokai stepped forward across the shrine's outer threshold.

It took one step. Then another.

Then— A sound like thunder split the courtyard.

The left guardian moved.

No signal. No warning.

Its katana swung in a downward arc – impossibly fast for something made of stone – and severed the yokai at the neck. The body collapsed. The mask rolled once.

Silence.

The fox-children in the trees hissed in unison – sharp and almost insectile.

Then they vanished.

Into branches. Into fog. Into absence. Gone.

The remaining yokai stepped back, circling. Testing the edge of the threshold.

Chloe's breath came slow. "They're probing."

Victor's voice was flat. "They want to know if it was luck. Or law."

The guardian didn't return to stillness. It raised its blade again. Slowly. Like it dared the rest to try.

The second guardian held still but its naginata tilted. Just slightly. As if weighing the odds. As if it wasn't sure how many it could stop.

Then – footsteps.

Dozens more.

A ripple of forms from the woods. Pale limbs. Masked faces. Howls that didn't come from mouths. A tide of yokai began to gather beyond the outer shrine.

Victor flicked a switch on his rifle. "This is it."

Chloe stepped up beside him. "What do we do?"

"We hold the line."

And just beyond the gate, in perfect silence— The yokai charged.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.