The parking garage reeked of oil, mould, and something older – like the building itself had started to rot from the inside.

Max crouched beside a dusty hybrid SUV, hands already beneath the steering column. The front windshield was cracked in three places, and the tires sagged against the concrete, half-deflated. Good enough.

He didn't hesitate. Wire. Spark. Click.

The dash flickered to life, a soft chime playing through busted speakers like a ghost of normal life.

From the back seat, Ying raised an eyebrow. "That isn't a firefighter trick, is it?"

Max didn't look at her. His face had gone dark.

"Ethan," he muttered.

Ferron turned slightly, confused. Ying waited.

Max closed the panel and sat back in the driver's seat. "Sometimes you had to move parked cars away from a fire. It wasn't legal, but it was practical. Ethan showed me how."

No one said anything after that.

The weight of the name hung in the air like smoke from a burned house.

Ferron stepped into the shaft of daylight near the passenger door, face drawn, eyes tight with unease. "This belonged to someone," he said quietly. "Maybe they're still out there."

Max didn't look up. "If they are, they're not using it. And Liz doesn't have time."

Ferron's mouth opened again, but whatever words he wanted to say burned off before they reached the air. He closed the door behind him without another comment, the silence between them thick as smoke.

Ying was already slouched in the back seat, arms crossed, face pale with exhaustion. Her black jacket clung to her like a second skin, soaked with dried blood and ash. She hadn't voidsliced in hours. She looked like she hadn't slept in days.

"You want to argue about keys while Liz slips away?" Ying's voice cut through the silence like a blade. "We already buried Watanabe. You want to make it two?"

Ferron stiffened, jaw flexing. He didn't answer.

Max threw the SUV into gear. The tires groaned as they rolled across the fractured concrete, and the garage spat them out into the ruins of southern Kyoto.

The city greeted them with wind and dust.

Empty streets stretched ahead, lined with shuttered storefronts and shattered vending machines. Smoke curled from distant rooftops. Glass crunched under the tires. Torn traffic signs fluttered in the wind like warning flags, their kanji faded and burned. A power line hung low over the road like a noose.

They passed a gas station half-collapsed from fire. A laundromat gutted to the bones. A billboard that once advertised honeymoon travel packages now bore scorch marks and yokai claw-scrawls.

No people. No animals.

Just wind.

And whispers.

They drove in silence.

Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen.

Ferron finally spoke, voice low, barely audible over the hum of the road. "This doesn't feel like my country anymore."

Max didn't take his eyes off the road.

"It's not," he said. "It belongs to the yokai now."

And none of them argued.

…………………

Kyoto was still Kyoto.

No eldritch towers. No demonic sky. Just a city battered into silence.

The SUV crawled through narrow streets that should have been bustling with midday foot traffic – tourists with cameras, students on bikes, old men sipping vending machine coffee by shuttered temples. But today, the city was quiet. Not peaceful. Just... emptied.

Storefronts were cracked open like broken teeth. Lanterns still hung over ramen shops with torn noren curtains flapping in the breeze. A sushi bar had its specials written in chalk outside, smudged by rain and dust. The bell over the door swung gently, ringing for no one.

And the trash – that was the worst part. It moved.

Napkins, flyers, souvenir bags, blown across the street like they were fleeing something. Plastic bottles rolled toward gutters. A train schedule, streaked with footprints, lay crumpled against a mailbox.

The silence pressed in.

No laughter. No footsteps. No vendors calling out from market stalls. Just the occasional flicker of a damaged streetlamp and the soft hiss of rubber on asphalt.

Then— A sound.

Far off. Almost too faint to register.

A wail. Maybe a scream. Maybe not human.

Max didn't slow the car. No one suggested they check it out.

They rolled past a clothing store with mannequins toppled in the display window, one of them cracked open at the waist. Across the street, a bus sat idle at a red light that still blinked through its cycle – green, yellow, red, over and over. The driver's seat was empty. The doors hung open.

Then they saw the school.

Two blocks later. Gate ajar. Red charms fluttering from the fence – protection prayers meant for children. Every one of them torn or burned. On the ground: shoes. Small ones. Bright colours dulled by dust. A lunchbox left open beside the steps.

The building itself was intact. Lights still on inside. But no one moved. No voice. No echo.

Ferron leaned forward slightly, staring out the window. "This place was meant to be sacred ground."

Ying didn't look at him. Her eyes were locked on the empty playground as they passed. "Shrines don't protect anyone anymore."

Max said nothing.

The car turned again, angling toward the narrowing streets near the outer rim of the shrine district. The buildings closed in tighter now – old wooden storefronts with broken shoji screens, ancient teahouses sagging under the weight of rot and time.

And then the rooftops shifted.

Ying was the first to see them. She sat up straighter. Her eyes flicked toward the skyline.

Max followed her gaze.

They were there – dozens of yokai, crouched in perfect stillness.

Not hiding.

Watching.

Every rooftop had two, maybe three. Thin-limbed shapes with elongated spines, their faces obscured by animal masks: boars, cranes, cats. The masks didn't fit quite right. Some were shattered at the edges, others stretched too wide, like they had grown into the bone beneath.

None of them moved.

Max kept driving.

Ferron's hand slid instinctively to his kusarigama. His fingers curled around the grip, knuckles white with pressure. "Why aren't they moving?"

Ying's voice was flat. Cold. "Because they want us deeper in."

The SUV rolled on for another twenty meters before Max slowed. Just a little. Enough for the silence to catch up.

"We should stop," Ying said quietly. "You feel that, don't you? This is a trap."

Max didn't answer right away. His jaw was clenched. Eyes locked on the road ahead. The torii gates weren't visible yet, but he felt them pulling – like a hook in the chest.

"They're letting us through," Ying pressed. "That means they don't care if we live."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Ferron shifted in his seat. "There's something waiting at the shrine. Something that knows we're coming."

"I know," Max said.

Ying leaned forward. "Then why the hell aren't we turning around?"

Max didn't look at her. "Because Liz is running out of time."

A beat. Then he stepped on the gas.

The engine growled, and the city opened up in front of them – cracked and rotting, patient and watching.

Waiting.

…………………

The SUV screeched to a halt just before the barricades.

Blinding white floodlights snapped on overhead, washing the road in sterile glare. Camouflage netting hung low across the overpass, flapping in the wind like torn flags. Razor wire glinted beneath it, stretched between twisted traffic poles and upturned vending machines. Concrete blocks sealed the station approach, reinforced with steel shutters and sandbags packed shoulder-high.

Rifles rose. Safety catches clicked off.

"手を上げろ！動くな！" "Hands up! Don't move!"

Max didn't hesitate. He pushed the door open and stepped out slowly, palms raised to the light.

"We're not infected," he called out in Japanese. "I'm Ferron of the Hoshigami clan. Shrine-bound. Line of the Eastern Flame."

Ferron stepped out beside him and drew the leather strip from beneath his shirt – a hand-carved wooden tag etched with his family crest. The lines were worn, but unmistakable.

Ying remained in the back seat. She didn't move.

Just stared out the window, bloodshot eyes half-lidded. Her breathing shallow. Her skin pale with strain. She looked dead, or close enough that the soldiers started shouting again.

"She's not a monster!" Max snapped. "She's just exhausted – pushed herself too hard saving civilians."

"Then tell her to get out of the car!" a soldier barked.

Ying's door opened with a slow groan. She stepped out barefoot, boots clutched in one hand. No weapons. No words.

Just presence.

The JSDF squad didn't lower their weapons. Then a voice barked from behind them. Older. Rough with cigarette grit.

"Let them through."

A man in an officer's coat stepped forward from the sandbag line – grey streaks in his buzzcut, one eye covered with gauze, the other locked on Ferron.

"I know that sigil," the officer said. "Your grandfather trained with my father. You're one of the shrine-guard."

Ferron bowed low. "Ferron of the Hoshigami line. My blood still carries the rites."

The officer gave a tired nod. "Then you came to the right hellhole. Let 'em pass."

The tension broke like a bone cracking under pressure.

Guns lowered. Orders barked. The outer checkpoint shifted to let the SUV crawl through.

They stepped into another world.

Fushimi-Inari Station had been gutted and reborn as a fortress. Thick steel panels reinforced the sliding glass doors. Concrete dividers and overturned kiosks had been stacked into cover points. Triangular mortar tubes rested beside crates of dwindling ammunition. A tarp-covered command tent buzzed with radio static, flanked by dead tablet screens and maps scratched over with ink and dried blood.

Medics worked in the open – no privacy, no room. Field dressings soaked red. IV bags hung from snapped umbrella poles. A woman screamed behind a vinyl curtain. Someone else stopped breathing. A medic didn't notice.

Max caught a flash of movement beside a mobile generator – a young soldier crouched and shaking, hands fidgeting with his rifle's strap. When he saw Max, he stood too fast and shoved a can of green tea into his hand like an apology.

He didn't meet Max's eyes.

"They keep coming," the soldier muttered, voice hollow. "We shoot. They bleed... but they smile."

Max stared at the tea.

It was warm. And shaking.

So was the kid's hand.

…………………

The ground outside the shrine trembled with distant footfalls.

Max stepped over a collapsed banner frame and followed Ferron up the temple path. The air changed the moment they crossed the final barricade. It was thicker. Staler. Charged.

The entrance to Fushimi Inari Shrine loomed ahead – its famous red torii gates rising like ribs into the mist-drenched slope. Hundreds of gates stood, packed tightly, crawling up the forested path like a blood-red spine disappearing into the mountainside.

Smoke drifted low across the moss-covered stones. Spent shell casings littered the stairwell. Incense mixed with cordite. Someone had tried to bless this place. It hadn't worked.

A JSDF officer in a flak vest stood beside a sandbag nest, binoculars pressed to his face. His sleeves were torn and bloodstained. Half his face was crusted with dried mud. He didn't turn as they approached – just kept scanning the forest line.

"You're the shrine-guard's kin?" the officer asked, voice like gravel dragged over glass.

Ferron gave a small nod. "Yes."

The officer finally lowered the binoculars. His eyes were sunken. Weeks without sleep.

"Thousands came down from Mount Inari two nights ago," he said, pointing toward the dark ridgeline. "Not stragglers. A wave. Like something flushed the mountain. We've held for forty-eight hours. Lost two platoons. We're out of artillery. Out of reinforcements. This line doesn't last past morning."

Max stepped forward. "Has anyone made it to the summit? The inner shrine – the peak?"

The officer's mouth twitched. Not a smile.

"No one has made it past the first fifty gates," he said. "You die, or come back…"

His eyes flicked to a soldier nearby – one standing too still, too quiet, his helmet cast aside. His smile was faint, permanent.

"…changed."

Ying turned her head toward the trees. "Something's moving."

Then the radio on the officer's belt crackled violently – static, panicked voices.

"Movement on the west ridge! Multiple signatures— repeat, multiple—"

The radio hissed, then cut.

Sirens blared.

Red lights bathed the shrine entrance in hellish pulses. Spotlights snapped upward, cutting through the canopy. Flares popped over the ridgeline – three, then five – each one painting the forest in eerie daylight.

And then they came.

Yokai.

Hundreds at first. Then more. Descending from the tree line in erratic, twitching waves. Some moved like beasts – on all fours, snarling and bounding. Others walked like people in broken skin – limbs too long, heads cocked at unnatural angles. Their masks gleamed through the smoke – foxes, wolves, birds, twisted into mockery.

Some still wore priest robes. Others bore rusted blades. One dragged a chain of children's shoes.

The forest howled with them.

The officer shouted into his radio, but no one was listening anymore.

"Open fire!" someone screamed.

Rifles cracked. LMGs roared. Shells burst against tree trunks and yokai flesh alike. Muzzle flashes lit the underbrush like strobe lights in a nightmare.

Max didn't flinch. Soulfire crawled up his arms, gold and pulsing. The SUV engine behind them still ticked – abandoned, forgotten.

Ferron stepped to his side, kusarigama spinning once in his grip like a promise.

Ying remained still.

Someone grabbed Max's arm. A lieutenant. "Back lines! You're not cleared for front—"

Max shoved the man away.

"No."

The JSDF tried to herd them backward. Ferron didn't budge.

Ying looked toward the Senbon Torii path – gates still untouched, rising into the dark like a beckoning throat.

"We're not here to hold the line," she said.

And the three of them stepped forward.

Max glanced back once – just for a moment – at the line of JSDF conscripts behind the barricades. They looked like kids. One of them had a cracked visor and lips chewed raw. Another was clutching his rifle like a crutch, not a weapon. Max saw Liz's face in all of them. Just scared children hoping someone older, stronger, would tell them what to do.

"I'll protect them," he muttered. "Whatever comes down that hill… it's not getting through me."

And then he set himself ablaze.

…………………

The first torii gate loomed above them – crimson wood slick with rain and soot, its base cracked from old tremors and recent blood. Beyond it, hundreds more stretched up the slope like vertebrae of a buried god. The Senbon Torii path.

But the battle was here. At the base. In the courtyard just below the stairs.

It started with a scream.

A yokai burst from the treeline – part-wolf, part-bone, its mask cracked in half, teeth bared like splinters. The JSDF gunner at the sandbag nest fired late. Too slow.

Max caught it first.

His hand erupted in golden-blue flame – Soulfire twisting around his wrist like a chain made of breath and fury. He drove it forward in a straight line, the heat so sharp it cut. The yokai caught fire mid-lunge, howled once, then disintegrated in midair – ash and bone scattering into the smoke.

That was the signal.

The hillside exploded with movement.

Dozens of yokai poured from the trees – leaping, crawling, sprinting on all fours. Some wore robes, tattered and soaked in rot. Others had no skin at all. But they all shared one thing: the hunger. For something warm. Alive.

For souls.

Max didn't wait.

He charged the bottleneck, flame boiling in both palms now, casting wild light across the shrine walls. He slammed his hands down into the earth and sent a pulse of Soulfire forward – blue-streaked gold fire that tore through yokai in a rising arc. Four burst apart instantly. Two more tried to leap clear, only to be struck midair by the sweep of Max's second strike – his fist wreathed in burning bone.

But the fire didn't stop them. It called more.

They shrieked as they came – yokai drawn to him like carrion to light. He was power. He was fuel.

And they wanted to feed.

Max planted his boots and held the line.

Behind him, Ferron moved like a cyclone.

The chain of his kusarigama sang through the air, blade glinting wet with yokai blood. He carved in wide, controlled arcs – his stance tight, precise. One yokai came for a downed soldier – Ferron threw the weighted end of the chain, wrapping its throat, then yanked it backward into the blade. The thing dropped, gurgling, its body twitching on the gravel.

A scream from the side – two medics pinned beneath a shattered canopy.

Three yokai closed in.

Ferron didn't hesitate. He was already moving.

He slid between them, low and fast, chain snapping around one leg, the blade carving upward into a second throat. The third tried to bite him. Ferron's elbow crushed its jaw before it could close.

One medic gaped. Ferron didn't look at him.

"Hold your pressure bandages tighter," he growled. "Bleeding won't stop itself."

Then he turned, just in time to see a leaping yokai closing in – fangs open wide, claws raised—

And then Ying opened fire.

She didn't voidslice. Couldn't. Her legs were trembling, her eyes bloodshot, her aura barely visible.

But she could still shoot.

The machinegun barked from her hip – short bursts, controlled recoil. The yokai took the first round in the throat, twisted midair, then exploded backward into gravel and broken bones.

She shifted her aim without pause – firing into the mob coming down the hillside. Muzzles flashed. Brass casings hit the stone. Her voice never rose. Her stance never wavered.

Ying was quiet fury. Deliberate death.

Ten more fell.

Then fifteen.

She ran dry.

Dropped the weapon without ceremony.

Scooped up a discarded sniper rifle and racked the bolt.

The next yokai – a child-sized one in a school uniform and mask – fell before it left the treeline. Ying didn't blink. She pivoted, fired again. And again. Dozens more poured down the hill. She kept shooting.

And then—

The ground shook.

The shrine itself groaned.

From the depths of the torii gates, something emerged.

It ducked beneath the archway – twelve feet tall, stitched together from prayer scrolls and shattered stone lion guardians. Its chest was bound in layers of sacred rope, now rotting. Its legs cracked as it stepped, each joint echoing with ancient weight. Its mask was a lion's face carved from temple wood, burned black and nailed to its skull.

When it spoke, its voice was metal grinding inside bone.

"Trespassers. Her gate is closed."

The soldiers hesitated. Even the yokai paused.

Max's eyes narrowed. "That's not one of theirs."

Ferron stepped beside him. "It's a spiritual sentinel. A ward. Like the stone guardians protecting Liz."

"But it's corrupted," Max muttered. "Twisted."

The creature raised one massive arm, its hand formed from bundled paper charms and severed torii beams. It slammed it into the ground – sending out a pulse that shattered the rear archway behind them.

Stone and wood crashed down. Dust exploded.

Their path out – gone.

Ferron turned, eyes wide. "It's sealing us in!"

"It wants to force us forward," Ying said, her rifle barrel smoking. "Into the path. Into the gates."

Max stared up at the giant.

Its eyes – deep hollows behind the lion mask – glowed faintly red. He stepped forward, fists igniting again.

"Fine."

His voice was low. Steady.

"First, we kill all these monsters."

The Soulfire blazed, brighter than ever, coiling up his arms like divine wrath given form.

"Then we go forward."

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