It began with a howl.

High and broken, too long to be human – too ancient to be animal. It rose like a blade sliding into the gut of the world, echoing across the trees.

Victor's blood turned cold the moment he heard it.

Then the forest moved.

The yokai poured from the treeline like a landslide. Dozens. Hundreds. Snarling, shrieking, crawling on all fours or bounding through the air. Their masks – pale, cracked porcelain – glinted wet in the moonlight. Some wept black ichor. Some laughed as they ran, mouths opening where faces should not have mouths.

And above them all, standing in the centre like a demonic priest, was the fox.

It was massive – eight feet tall at the shoulder, halo aglow behind its ears like a mockery of divinity. Its tails writhed in the air like tentacles of living flame. Its mask was pristine. Smiling. Unbroken.

It didn't charge. It simply watched.

The rest came screaming.

Victor was already in position – crouched behind a reinforced blast panel, rifle braced tight, sight locked downrange.

Then the guardians moved.

The twin stone samurai stepped from the tori gate like gods descending.

No words. No sound. Just motion.

Katana's first strike split four yokai clean in half – no blood, no drag. The blade didn't slow. It passed through bone and mask as if slicing fog.

Naginata followed, her sweeping arc severing legs, torsos, spines. She moved with a brutal elegance, the edge of her polearm singing as it carved through monster after monster.

Together, they became a storm of precision and weight – ancient, unstoppable. Their eyes glowed with buried emberlight as they stepped deeper into the tide.

Victor felt it in his chest – that old pressure. The one he'd buried under cities and silence.

Combat clarity. The return of dread.

And the memory that came with it.

Aleppo. Summer. A marketplace roof collapsing under rocket fire.

Victor lay belly-flat on a rooftop, sweating under a metal sky. His squad was boxed in – east alley compromised, drone coverage dead. He'd watched a child with an RPG sprint between stalls and vanish before command approved the strike.

The blast caught three marines mid-turn. Limbs. Screams. Silence.

Victor stayed still, one eye on the crater, one hand on the trigger. There'd been a woman crawling through the rubble, missing a leg. A man holding her down – whispering something in her ear, over and over.

Victor shot him first. Then her. Neither had masks. Neither were demons. But they were still threats.

Still part of it.

He hadn't spoken for six hours after extraction. Just cleaned his rifle. Slowly. Silently.

Now, here, the feeling was the same.

He adjusted his grip, exhaled once through clenched teeth, and fired.

CRACK. One mask gone.

CRACK. The next dropped with a hole between the eyes, black ichor hissing into steam.

A third lunged sideways – long limbs spidering out as it shrieked. Victor pivoted, fired mid-leap. The shot punched through its throat and ripped out the back of its skull.

He didn't blink. He didn't think.

There was no room.

Another one – cloaked in wet fur and bone, mask painted like a child's smile – slithered up the outer wall. He fired twice. First shot shattered the mask. Second exploded its spine. The body folded like paper and fell with a crunch.

His magazine clicked dry.

He slammed a fresh one in without breaking aim. Twenty left. Maybe less.

Victor swept the scope left. Another yokai – hunched, skeletal, with three heads – sprinted toward a defender near the barricade.

Too late.

Victor fired anyway.

The bullet went through the middle skull. The yokai dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

He moved again. Adjusted. Scanned.

It was getting worse.

The yokai weren't dumb. They didn't waste numbers against the guardians. They flowed around them now – using speed and angles. Some died doing it. Others got through.

Victor tracked one skittering under the barricade – fired through the planks. A spray of bone and mist hit the wall behind it.

Another one leapt toward him from the side.

Too close.

He spun, jammed the barrel into its mask, and fired point-blank.

The explosion painted the stones black.

He didn't wipe the gore off his face. Didn't flinch. His focus narrowed. No emotion. No distractions. Only the rifle. The angle. The kill.

Another clip. Soulforged. Silver-threaded. Only one left.

"Hold the line," he muttered. Not a command. A prayer. "Fifteen seconds at a time."

More were coming.

The treeline never emptied. Shadows flickered just beyond vision – waiting. Watching.

Victor shifted to cover the far left flank. One of the defenders was down. No scream. Just silence and a spray of red.

He took the open angle.

CRACK.

CRACK.

Then—

He froze.

Something strange.

One of the yokai – a tall one, mask grinning sideways – ran full tilt toward the sanctuary's east building… and stopped.

Abruptly.

Not wounded. Not blocked.

It just… turned.

Veered away. Not toward the pod's chamber, but around it.

The others did the same.

Victor's brows furrowed.

They weren't attacking the pod building.

They were circling it.

And suddenly, that howl from earlier sounded less like a declaration…

…and more like a command.

…………………

Tensō whispered in Chloe's hand – not with sound, but with weight. The blade shimmered with a faint blue glow, its edge feather-light against her wrist, its soul quiet for now. Watching. Like her.

She crouched behind the wooden crossbeam of the inner corridor, eyes narrowed, one foot braced against the wall.

The battle outside raged on – shrieks, gunfire, the echo of stone splitting yokai in half. Victor's rifle cracked like a war drum. The stone guardians were relentless, brutal elegance in motion. But something felt… off.

Chloe exhaled slowly, then closed her eyes and slipped sideways.

Her body flickered – a ripple of silk through air – and then she was halfway through the corridor wall, her right shoulder and face invisible, phasing through wood and stone like breath through cloth.

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From this angle, she had a clean sightline across the courtyard.

And that's when she saw it.

The pattern.

They were swarming the barricades. Climbing, crawling, flanking. Masked horrors with insect limbs, bone knives, split mouths. They hurled themselves against the defences again and again, drawn to the defenders like moths to flame.

But one building…

They didn't go near it.

Not even close.

Chloe blinked, muscles tightening.

It was subtle at first – easy to miss in the chaos. But she'd spent too long watching patterns. Too long reading the movement of demons, cultists, traitors. Her mind worked like a lockpick.

The yokai swerved.

The east chamber – the structure with the pod. With Liz. With Max and Hana.

Not a single yokai touched the threshold. None tried to force the door. No bodies piled near the entrance. No claw marks. No blood trails. Just a perfect void in the chaos, a building-shaped silence.

They were avoiding it.

Why?

She started to whisper it aloud – but a flash of motion snapped her head left.

Alyssa.

Her twin was pacing near the second floor balcony. Restless. Jaw clenched. Her gauntlets clicked faintly as her fingers flexed. She was watching the blue fire rising faintly from the eastern room's broken skylight – watching it with the kind of panic that didn't come from strategy.

Chloe phased fully back into the corridor.

"Alyssa—" she started.

"She's in there," Alyssa snapped, not looking away. "Liz. Max. That thing is spreading and he's not— Dan should be there, but he's not, and I—"

Chloe stepped close and grabbed her wrist.

"Not now," she said, low. Calm, but firm. "We hold the line. That's what Liz needs us to do."

Alyssa met her eyes – raw and furious – but said nothing.

Chloe turned back toward the window. Her voice dropped.

"They're not going for her," she murmured. "The yokai. They're circling the pod room, but they don't go near it. Like they're afraid of something."

A beat passed.

Or not afraid.

Avoiding it.

Intentionally.

Her stomach twisted. It felt like Jack all over again – the same gut-tightening sense that something important was slipping out of reach. That she was reading the map too late. That by the time she saw the shape of the trap, it would already be bleeding.

"What if it's not Liz they want?" she whispered. "What if this whole wave… is just to keep us away?"

A hairline fracture split through her mental map of the fight. They weren't here to win. They were here to stall.

She looked back at the battlefield.

The guardians were still cutting through bodies.

Victor hadn't moved.

But the fox hadn't either.

Its halo shimmered. Watching the sanctuary. Waiting.

Chloe's grip on Tensō tightened.

The fox demon still hadn't moved. But its gaze had shifted – no longer scanning the battlefield. It was staring at the pod building.

Not at Liz.

At something deeper.

Something was wrong. And they were already too late to stop it.

…………………

The blue fire burst through the rooftop like a spear from heaven.

It punched through tiles and concrete in a perfect vertical line – no smoke, no heat distortion. Just raw, unnatural light, screaming upward into the blood-dark sky. Not orange. Not red. Not even Hellfire.

Something colder.

Older.

Alyssa's heart dropped.

"Liz."

The name tumbled out before she realised she'd moved. One foot off the ground. One gauntlet already flexing. Her breath hitched as instinct yanked her toward the source – toward the room where her sister lay in that pod.

She didn't see the yokai anymore.

Didn't hear the fox demon's chant or the thunder of the guardians' blades.

Just that blue.

Something was wrong.

She took another step – and a hand caught her wrist.

"Alyssa." Chloe's voice, firm. "No."

Alyssa turned, half snarling. "She's in there."

"I know."

Her grip tightened – stronger than it looked. Chloe's eyes were wide, but steady. Her voice was calm. Too calm.

"Max is in there."

"So? He's just— just a Contractor," Alyssa snapped. "Just the guy who got her possessed in the first place. The one who burned half of Japan trying to fix it."

She wanted to run. She wanted to trust her fists more than a man who'd failed so many times already.

Chloe cut her off. "So is the bear."

Alyssa blinked.

Behind her, the fire from the pod building flared again – not spreading, but pulsing. Breathing.

"They're not letting anything through," Chloe said, quieter now. "You know they won't. Not while she's still breathing."

Alyssa hesitated.

Her eyes flicked toward the battlefield. Toward Dan, who was nowhere in sight. Her gut twisted. She'd seen him go back inside minutes ago, and hadn't heard anything since.

And that fire— it wasn't right.

"I don't trust it," she muttered. "I don't trust that it's even him anymore."

Chloe's gaze didn't waver. "Then trust her."

A beat passed.

The words hit harder than she expected.

Alyssa swallowed. Her breathing slowed.

Then she looked down at the gauntlets – soul-carved iron and crimson veins, her father's design pulsing with latent charge. Fighting was easier. Always had been. A straight line through the fear.

She raised both arms – and slammed the gauntlets together.

A shockwave cracked outward, fizzing ozone and grit. Her limbs tensed, the glow building in her shoulders like a fuse lit deep beneath skin.

"Fine," she said. "But the second they get close—"

"They won't," Chloe said.

Alyssa grinned, bitter and raw. "Still gonna kill a few to make sure."

She turned and ran toward the west barricade, where Victor's rifle spat fire and Ying was already shouting warnings. Her boots cracked stone. Her gauntlets lit the air.

Clarity.

Kill something. Keep moving. Don't think.

It was the only way she knew how to protect anyone.

Even if she couldn't be there when it mattered.

Not this time.

…………………

Chloe ran like smoke behind Alyssa's shadow – silent, fast, flickering. Tensō hummed low in her hand, soul-steel edge vibrating with a hunger that wasn't hers. The yokai were surging again – a second wave, nastier than the first. More limbs. More eyes. Teeth where teeth didn't belong.

Alyssa hit them head-on. No hesitation. No subtlety.

Just fury.

She smashed into the first frog-headed demonspawn like a warhammer, one gauntlet slamming down with a crack that echoed across the courtyard. Its ribcage collapsed inward, spraying black ichor across the stone.

Chloe was already inside the next one – phasing through its curved blade, her body flickering like a glitch. She slid under its guard, twisted, and drove Tensō upward through the space between its mask and jaw. Not a clean kill.

But she didn't need clean. She needed final.

Behind her, Alyssa bellowed – "For Minori! Die you bastards!"

She was glowing now – not just with sweat or rage, but with power. Alyssa's blue halo blazed behind her head, jagged and sharp like a fractured crown. It shimmered with density – compressed light, folding in on itself. With each strike, the air cracked around her. Her fists didn't just hit – they arrived with the weight of a collapsing star.

Every movement left aftershocks.

A yokai lunged – frog-jawed, spined – and she met it with a spinning elbow. Her gauntlet hit with a thunderclap, caving in its face, hurling the corpse backwards in a trail of blood and teeth. The blue light flared harder. Hotter. It bent the air around her like gravity had turned mean.

Chloe moved in her wake – silent, smoke-flicker soft. Her own halo pulsed faintly behind her – grey, uncertain, like mist wrapped in moonlight. It didn't shine. It shifted. Twitching between solid and intangible. A ghost's shadow caught in a reflection. It trailed behind her head like a second soul trying to keep up.

She felt it flicker as she phased through a spear. Her ribs chilled. Her skin tingled. But she didn't stop.

She caught Alyssa's rhythm – timing the blue pulse, the weight of each blow. Chloe's grey halo shimmered in contrast – half there, half memory. It made her feel like a story that hadn't ended properly. But now, fighting beside her sister, it steadied.

Just a little.

Alyssa roared. Chloe slipped. A twin dance of pressure and absence.

They weren't in step. They were in sync.

Alyssa punched high, Chloe slashed low. Chloe phased through an arm, Alyssa broke the rest of the body. The gap between them never lasted more than a breath.

Chloe's mind split – as it always did in combat.

One part tracked motion: distance, threat, angles.

Another felt the beat of Max's fire still pulsing from the pod building behind them – slower now. Quieter.

The third watched the battle's pattern.

Something wasn't right.

They weren't attacking the centre. Still avoiding that building. But she couldn't think about that now.

A spider-limbed yokai lunged at Alyssa's flank – Chloe stepped in, blade slicing through its upper joints. She caught a glimpse of its soul – half-formed, furious – and yanked. It shrieked once before vanishing, mask dropping like a shed husk.

Alyssa grunted in thanks. Didn't stop moving.

Their backs touched, then parted again.

Another strike. Another kill.

The ground was littered with bodies now – steaming, twitching, twitchless. Yokai blood hissed against the runestones at their feet.

Alyssa's hair was wild, sweat soaked into the collar of her armour. Chloe's shoulders ached, but she moved like water – no resistance, no mass. Tensō flashed in and out of her grip like a phantom's tooth.

They weren't perfect. But they were alive. And that was more than most.

Chloe's lungs burned. Her sword arm stung. Her vision blurred for half a second – then cleared.

Alyssa screamed again. Dove into the next cluster. Chloe followed.

A pair of twins – blood-drenched, breathless – dancing in the middle of a storm.

This was how they survived. For a moment – just one – Chloe believed they would.

…………………

Victor braced the rifle against his shoulder and exhaled through his teeth – long, steady, controlled. A spent casing clicked to the floor beside him. Another target already lined up.

CRACK!

A mask-child's porcelain skull shattered mid-sprint, just metres from Ying's line. The body folded in on itself, limbs twitching once before going still. Victor didn't flinch.

Victor reloaded without blinking, but a coil had begun to tighten behind his ribs – not fear, not even urgency. Just that edge. The one that came when the rhythm of a battle didn't make sense anymore.

Uneasy, he tracked the flow again.

Clusters of yokai surged through the trees in irregular waves – no horns, no howling, no strategy. Just pressure. Like water testing a dam. The fox demon still stood near the rear flank – unmoving, its halo smouldering, eyes never leaving the sanctuary.

That was fine. He could handle pressure. He adjusted his scope. Trained it east.

Chloe was a ghost in the fray – flickering in and out between monsters, blade moving with surgical rhythm. Her halo glinted grey like fog lit by a dying moon.

Alyssa was the opposite – all weight and fury. Her fists left craters. Bones cracked like fireworks. Every time she moved, the air warped around her – the blue flare of her halo carving her silhouette in sharp, angular light.

Victor watched them fight back-to-back – mismatched, but seamless.

Efficient.

He didn't waste time admiring it. Just noted the benefit. Their line was holding now. The Stone Guardians moved through the horde like gods cut from mountain – katana and naginata cleaving yokai by the dozen. Bodies piled. And still, the enemy came.

Victor swapped magazines.

His fingers moved automatically – muscle memory so old it had outlived belief. There was no thrill in this. No fear. Just that deep, low pulse of awareness in his chest. The feeling that always came before something broke.

He swept the perimeter again.

North. South. Movement patterns. Breach points.

He narrowed his eyes.

Then again.

He slowed his breath. Tracked the ebb and flow.

The yokai surged everywhere – except the central structure. The one with the pod.

Victor frowned. That wasn't normal. That wasn't war.

He zoomed in. The building was untouched. No claw marks. No scorch trails. No bodies near the threshold. A radius of clear space ringed it – five, six metres wide. Unbroken. Undisturbed.

He switched scopes.

Infrared: nothing. No contact. No heat signatures close. Spiritual: static. Interference. As if the air around it bent just enough to obscure truth.

He gritted his teeth.

Then he saw it – through a splintered crack in the back wall. A flicker of unnatural light. Blue fire, bleeding from the pod building's roof like a slow, silent scream.

Not normal fire. Not Soulfire. Was it Hellfire?

It bent the space around it.

Victor blinked once. Then again.

His jaw set.

"They're not here for Liz," he muttered, voice barely audible over the crackle of the comm and distant fighting. "They're avoiding her."

He leaned closer to the scope, watching how they peeled off – the way the lines bent around the building like water around a rock.

"So what's inside that they do want?"

The puzzle locked.

He breathed in.

Spoke just above a whisper.

"Max."

The scope reflected something in his eye – not just clarity. Recognition.

And somewhere behind the chaos, the war shifted. Just slightly. Enough for one man to notice.

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