The courtyard reeked of blood, cordite, and something far worse – the stink of yokai meat.

Piles of bodies formed makeshift barricades where sandbags had failed. Twisted limbs, shattered masks, carcasses stacked ten-deep in places. Some still twitched. Others steamed, their insides refusing to die even without a head. There were too many to burn, too many to bury. So the soldiers had stopped trying.

They called it a wall. Max saw it for what it was – a grave.

They had weathered the storm. Barely.

And the lull that followed wasn't quiet. It just pretended to be.

Behind the barricades, JSDF troops moved in slow, automatic motions – checking rifles, tying charms to barrels, whispering to gods who hadn't answered in days. The floodlights bathed everything in clinical white. One man lit incense and whispered a prayer to Amaterasu. Another cried behind a vending machine, face in his hands, trying to make no sound at all.

Max walked through the ranks.

Some looked at him like a guardian spirit. Others like he was the next disaster waiting to happen. His Soulfire had saved lives, but the way it burned – the colour, the sound – it didn't feel holy. It felt final.

He studied each face.

Weariness. Resignation. Defiance. Strength. And beneath all of it – grief.

He didn't speak. He watched.

A soldier in his thirties leaned against a crate, muttering to himself in tight, rhythmic bursts. His rifle had no magazine.

One kid sat rocking in place beside a ration box, helmet off, hands shaking. Someone had scrawled a date on his arm in permanent marker. A deadline. Or maybe a birthday. Max didn't ask.

Then he saw the boy with the pen.

Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Sitting cross-legged on a folded tarp, helmet in his lap. The inside brim was already crowded with names – written carefully, reverently. His handwriting shook, but not from fear. Just fatigue. The kind that didn't go away with sleep.

Max crouched beside him. "First deployment?"

The boy nodded. "Yeah."

His voice cracked, but he didn't stop writing.

"My sister said I'd get home by spring. She's still in Osaka. If they reach there…"

He trailed off.

Max didn't answer. Just watched as the pen traced a final name.

The boy glanced at him sideways. "You're not JSDF."

"No."

"But you burn like one of them."

Max's eyes didn't move. "One of who?"

"The masked ones. The monsters."

A beat passed. Wind stirred ash along the platform.

"I saw you torch one. It screamed like it knew you."

Max met his eyes. Steady. Tired.

"I'm not one of them," he said. "I'm on your side."

The boy hesitated – then nodded. That was enough.

Ferron knelt a few meters away, helping a medic bind a soldier's forearm. The skin was turning black, cursed by yokai touch. Ferron didn't flinch. He pulled a thin strand of prayer cloth from his belt pouch – woven with golden kanji and bone-thread – and whispered something in a dialect the medic didn't recognize.

The cloth glowed faintly. The rot stopped spreading.

"Keep pressure here," Ferron said, voice clipped but calm. "If it crawls again, cut above the elbow."

The medic blinked, then nodded. Grateful. Awed.

Ying sat against a cracked supply bin, reassembling her sidearm with mechanical precision. Her hands trembled – not much, but just enough for her to notice. It pissed her off. She flexed her fingers, reloaded without looking, and stood.

A corporal passed too close. Young. Green.

"If you see anything that smiles before it speaks," Ying said flatly in perfect Japanese, "shoot."

He looked at her, confused. She didn't repeat herself.

Then the radio crackled.

"Movement on the north ridge. Confirmed shapes— thirty plus."

Static.

"West ridge. We've got eyes—"

More static. A burst of signal distortion.

Then one final word, sharp and flat and certain:

"Incoming."

And whatever peace had lingered died in the dirt.

…………………

The first scream didn't come from the front.

It came from above.

A yokai dropped from the trees, landed on a lookout tower, and ripped the gunner in half before anyone could blink. The pieces hit the concrete with a wet thud.

Then the forest moved. The second wave hit like a tide.

Hundreds of yokai surged down the slope – more coordinated, more deliberate. They ran in packs now, some sprinting upright, others crawling like insects. Climbers scaled barricades. Divers slipped through drainage ditches. Every shriek echoed like it had a mouth behind it and ten more in reserve.

The first wave died fast – cut down by gunfire, mortars, flame.

But this one was different.

They learned.

One yokai crawled low along the courtyard's edge. Its mask was shattered across its face, revealing a gaping mouth that whispered nonstop. Not words – sounds. Broken syllables and clicks. Over and over.

It weaved through cover, fast, hunched.

A young soldier caught sight too late. He turned to shout—

The yokai leapt.

It hit the barricade shoulder-first, wood and sand exploding outward. Then it was on him – claws through flak, dragging him into the shadows screaming, the sound swallowed by wet tearing and laughter.

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Max surged forward.

Soulfire erupted from his arms, gold rimmed with deepening blue, flickering darker than before. The flame no longer hummed – it howled. He thrust both hands toward the oncoming mass and unleashed a torrent, a sweeping wave that turned yokai into silhouettes – then into ash.

They didn't stop.

They turned.

Every yokai within range snapped toward him – dozens at once – eyes locked on the source of blazing soul aura. They shrieked as one. A murder-choir.

They charged.

Ferron sliced a climber off the barricade, blood and mask cracking apart in one sweep.

Then he saw the turn. The full horde veering toward Max.

He spun, shouting over the gunfire. "You're drawing them – all of them!"

Max didn't hesitate. "Then stand clear."

Another pulse of Soulfire roared from his hands, the air warping around it like glass under pressure. Five yokai disintegrated mid-air. Three more were blown back, screaming.

But ten more came.

Fifteen.

The line wavered.

Soldiers began to panic – one dropped his weapon, sprinting for the rear. Another fumbled his reload, hands slick with sweat.

A yokai launched after the runner – fast, low to the ground.

It never made it.

Ying raised her pistol without blinking and fired one round – clean through its neck. The yokai's body hit the stone and skidded.

She moved without urgency, selecting targets, reloading between shots like she was folding laundry. Her eyes were flat. Her stance, immovable.

Cold. Surgical.

The JSDF fought harder, but the cracks were forming.

A corporal near the eastern barricade fired blindly into the trees, shouting for his squad to hold. He never saw the yokai that climbed up behind him – small, fast, wearing a cracked rabbit mask. It lunged onto his back, sank its claws into his neck, and tore sideways. The scream that followed was brief. Wet. Final.

Another soldier – a radio tech with a bandaged leg – tried to crawl to a better position behind a supply crate. He never made it. A yokai with centipede limbs and a bird's mask hurled a jagged stone from the treeline. It struck the man in the temple. His body jerked once, then slumped forward, fingers twitching in the dirt before going still.

The barricade held. But the people behind it were dying, one by one.

Max stood in the middle of the chaos, his flames devouring the air. The courtyard shook underfoot. His fire scorched everything ahead but he was burning too hot.

And the yokai didn't care.

They kept coming.

More.

Always more.

…………………

The southern flank was slipping.

Too many breaches. Too many bodies. The smell of gunpowder and scorched yokai filled the air, thick as fog. Visibility was low. Ammunition was lower.

Max could hear them cracking.

Soldiers shouting conflicting orders. Someone screaming for more light. Another trying to reload with shaking hands. The line hadn't collapsed yet but it would.

Then the screaming changed. Not fear. Not pain.

Transformation.

A single monster made it through – a child-sized thing, small and pale, wearing a pristine fox mask that didn't look carved so much as grown – a mask-child. It weaved through the chaos untouched, silent as snowfall, until it reached a soldier crouched behind a collapsed barricade. The man didn't see it. Didn't hear it.

He just looked up – and it was there.

The mask-child didn't attack. It reached out and gently placed something on his face.

A mask. Fleshy, wooden, pulsing like it had veins.

The man gasped. Clutched at it.

Too late.

He convulsed. Spine arching unnaturally. Hands clawing at his own skin. Bones cracked like dry twigs. His voice broke into a garbled scream as his limbs twisted – growing longer, thinner. His face stretched beneath the mask, merging with it. Skin peeled away in sheets.

His comrades froze. Weapons raised but unmoving.

"What the fuck—" one of them choked out. Another dropped his rifle.

Ferron moved.

He leapt the crate and landed beside the soldier mid-transformation. For a heartbeat, he hesitated – just long enough to see the man's eyes behind the mask.

Still human. Still aware.

Then the mouth opened, and it wasn't the man's voice that came out.

Ferron struck.

One clean cut. Across the throat.

The body fell backward, twitching, gurgling. The mask split down the centre like wet bark. Blood soaked the ground in a fan.

One of the nearby soldiers stumbled back, dropped to his knees, and vomited. Another – a private with a trembling grip – raised his rifle and aimed it at Ferron.

"You—he wasn't—"

Max stepped between them. No warning.

He raised one hand and unleashed a blast of Soulfire straight into the corpse. The flames turned it to ash in seconds. The mask sizzled, popped, and disintegrated.

"He was already gone," Max said.

The private lowered the rifle. Slowly.

But the damage was done.

Around them, others stared at the blackened ground. Some whispered. One sat down, hands over his ears, refusing to look.

"Did you see his face?"

"Why didn't he fight it off?"

"They don't just kill now…"

Voices cracking. Faith bleeding.

A sergeant growled, trying to regain control but it was like throwing sand into a tidal wave. After so many days of fighting, so many dead, it was finally hitting them—

They weren't winning.

And some of them weren't going to die as heroes.

Some were going to die wearing masks.

…………………

Max was fire.

There was no breath between the blasts now. No control. Just reflex. Rage. Survival. And agony. He stood in the centre of the courtyard like a living bonfire – Soulfire lashing from his arms in erratic waves, blue at first, then deeper, darker.

Each pulse turned yokai into shadows. Each strike melted flesh from bone.

But the colour wasn't right anymore.

The flame was gold-streaked… but it bled dark blue now.

Hellfire.

Max didn't feel the difference. Not until it was too late.

A young JSDF soldier, no older than twenty, sprinted from cover to drag a wounded friend behind a barricade. He passed too close – just one step too far into the radius of Max's next blast.

The edge of the flame caught him.

He dropped instantly, screaming. The side of his face blistered in seconds. His uniform caught. The Soulfire didn't consume him – it clung to him. Eating, not burning.

Max froze.

"Shit—"

He ran to the soldier and smothered the fire with both hands, forcing the flames inward, away, swallowing them back into his own skin. The boy writhed, choking on pain, but he lived.

Max knelt there, breathing hard, staring at the skin on his own arms. It pulsed. Shifted. The fire wasn't humming anymore. It whispered. A low, corrupted hiss in the back of his mind.

He looked at his hands.

Not Soulfire. Not pure.

Not his.

Behind him, something groaned.

The spiritual sentinel at the torii gates – still as stone since their arrival – tilted its head. Just slightly.

Its voice was deep. Not loud. But every soldier heard it.

"Too much light. The path must remain balanced."

The courtyard went still for a breath.

Ying's voice shattered it. "Max— stop!"

He clenched his fists, forcing the fire down. The light inside his chest flickered, then dulled. Smoke poured from his sleeves as the heat retreated. He stumbled.

Then collapsed to one knee.

Ferron was already there, grabbing him by the collar, dragging him upright.

"You can't hold this line," Ferron said, eyes locked to Max's. "Not without destroying what's left of it."

Max tried to speak. Couldn't.

Ying sprinted to them, sweat plastering her bangs to her face. She was pale, trembling, rifle slung across her back. Her voice was ragged.

"They're not going to stop, Max. Not until every soldier here is dead—"

She glanced toward the broken barricades, where yokai still swarmed.

"Or until they take you."

Max's eyes met hers.

Behind them, another section of the line collapsed. The screams started again.

And the sentinel watched. Silent. Unmoving. Judging.

…………………

The final layer of defence was crumbling.

The last sandbag wall, patched with plywood and prayer slips, buckled beneath the weight of bodies and blood. Shell casings blanketed the floor. The air was thick with ash and sweat. Gunfire was down to single bursts now. Controlled. Desperate.

A commanding officer screamed from behind a shattered comms post.

"Fall back to the underpass! Everyone, fall back!"

But they didn't retreat.

They ran.

Order broke in half.

Medics abandoned triage zones, dragging the wounded toward the service tunnel exits. Radios buzzed with conflicting calls. A private with a bleeding arm cried for his mother while trying to reload. Another lay flat on the stone, doing CPR with shaking hands – pressing down on a chest that had already stopped rising.

Max stood in the middle of it all, ash swirling around him like snow.

Children with rifles. Teenagers in flak too big for them. Grown men broken and screaming. His fire was still inside him, but it begged to be loosed again.

He turned to Ferron and Ying.

"If we stay, we die," Max said. "If we leave… so do they."

Ferron didn't hesitate.

"Then we leave them a chance."

Ying pulled a laser pointer from her tactical rig and marked three targets – clusters of yokai pushing through the left flank. Her breath was shallow. Her hands barely steady.

"Mortars still work," she muttered.

The radio officer caught the signal. Seconds later, three dull thuds echoed across the field – and the impact followed like thunder. Concrete shattered. Bodies flung backward in wet arcs. Screams and smoke swallowed the gap.

"Now," Ying said.

Max raised his arms.

The fire that came wasn't clean. It wasn't delicate. It didn't whisper.

It roared.

He unleashed everything left inside him in a single horizontal arc – a napalm inferno that rolled across the battlefield like a living tide. Yokai disintegrated mid-sprint. Others burst into flame mid-leap. The fire clung to masks and bones and shrieking limbs.

It didn't stop them. But it slowed them.

It bought time.

The last surviving squads surged toward the underpass. Not in formation. Not in ranks.

Just running.

Max, Ferron, and Ying turned as one toward the torii gate.

The sentinel stood motionless beside it. Watching. Judging.

They ran.

They crossed beneath the first gate. And the sentinel moved.

A lone yokai chased after them – fast, tall, its limbs stretched like rope.

The sentinel's massive arm snapped out and crushed it against the stone without a sound.

Then it stilled again.

Behind them, the last barricade exploded – ignited by the residual flame, by some final push of heat or purpose or fate.

Flames bloomed skyward, devouring the courtyard.

And Max didn't look back.

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