The village bells tolled at sundown.
The fools gathered in the square, clinging to their torches and lanterns like they could somehow fend off the inevitable.
Old men hunched over canes. Mothers whispering prayers with trembling lips. Boys pretending at courage, clutching kitchen knives and pitchforks like they meant anything.
A sea of terrified faces.
It was almost poetic.
Almost.
I crouched atop a crumbling water tower, Aika at my side, both of us draped in shadow. The last glow of twilight was dying behind the hills. Good. Sunlight was death, and I wasn't in the mood to be burned to ash just yet.
Aika twitched beside me, her long black hair tangled and wild, her crimson eyes glinting hungrily in the gloom.
She was… beautiful, in her way.
Silent. Deadly. My perfect creation.
Hours ago, I'd fed her another heavy dose of my blood. It had burned away the last shreds of her mindlessness, leaving something new behind — something terrifyingly sharp.
She wasn't just a beast anymore.
She was a blade.
And she waited now, perfectly still, for my signal.
I smiled lazily, savoring the fear that rolled off the villagers like smoke.
"Pick the strongest," I murmured, voice low and warm like a lover's whisper. "I'll turn them. Kill the rest."
Aika nodded, a slow, almost reverent movement. Her nails scraped lightly against the rusted metal beneath us, a soft skrrrk lost beneath the tolling of the bells.
The last light slipped below the horizon.
And we fell upon them.
I dropped from the tower like a specter, landing soundlessly in the dirt.
The first to spot me was a teenage girl, her eyes wide, her mouth forming a scream she never got to finish.
I carved through her neck with a lazy swipe, the blade of my hand sharper than any sword.
Hot blood sprayed, coating my face in a warm mist.
The villagers turned as one at the sound — a wet gurgle, a thud — and then the screaming started.
Aika was among them in an instant, a blur of flashing steel and slicing paper.
Her quirk — once a benign party trick — had been twisted by my blood into a weapon of pure butchery.
Razor-thin sheets of paper spun through the crowd, slashing throats, severing limbs, peeling faces from skulls in a grotesque rain of blood and flesh.
I strolled through the carnage like a man browsing a market, idly selecting goods.
Weak.
Weak.
Sobbing.
Pissing
Pathetic.
A farmer charged me, a pitchfork raised high with trembling hands.
I stepped into him, caught the wooden shaft easily, and jammed it through his mouth, impaling his skull cleanly.
He twitched once, then sagged.
I let him fall.
All around me, the ground was slick with blood. Entrails coiled like obscene ribbons across the dirt. Severed limbs twitched in dying spasms.
Children screamed.
Mothers begged.
Men died with curses on their tongues.
It was glorious.
Aika moved like a wraith, spinning in a deadly dance.
One man tried to flee — she lashed a single sheet of paper at his legs.
He crumpled mid-step, his calves severed.
He crawled, sobbing, until Aika's blade found his spine and ended the noise.
I spotted a group of young men near the well — sturdier than the others.
Good muscle. Good potential.
I stalked toward them, blood dripping from my fingertips, and smiled wide enough to show the sharpened points of my teeth.
"Serve me," I said. "Or die"
Their leader — a tall boy with fire in his eyes — spat at me.
"Fuck you, demon."
Adorable.
They charged together, clumsy, desperate.
I met them head-on.
The leader swung a rusted hatchet at my face — I caught his wrist mid-arc, bones crunching under my grip.
He screamed.
I tore his arm free at the elbow with a wet pop, spraying blood across the well stones.
Before he could fall, I raked my claw across my own palm and forced my blood into his slack, open mouth.
The transformation was instant.
He convulsed, body seizing violently, veins blackening like rot spreading under the skin.
When he rose, his eyes glowed crimson.
And he smiled.
I turned two more the same way, picking those who showed spirit and strength.
The rest were left to Aika.
She didn't disappoint.
By the time the sun threatened the horizon, the village was a ruin.
The streets ran red with blood.
Entrails hung from the eaves like grim banners.
Bodies slumped against walls, some half-eaten, some torn so viciously they were unrecognizable as human.
The air was thick with the copper stink of death and the sweet, sticky perfume of blood.
I stood at the heart of the carnage, my new thralls kneeling before me — twenty strong.
Their bodies twisted, mutated, more powerful, more vicious.
Perfect.
Aika stood at my right hand, her skin slick with blood, her long hair clinging to her face.
She gazed at me with calm, burning devotion.
My first.
I looked over my ruined kingdom and breathed deep the scent of conquest.
"Gather the bodies," I said, voice low and rich with satisfaction. "Pile them high."
The newly turned rose without hesitation, dragging the corpses into a grotesque mountain of flesh and bone at the center of the square.
I watched, smiling lazily, until the first sliver of sunlight bled over the hills.
I pulled back into the shadow of a crumbling building, motioning sharply.
Aika followed without hesitation, and the others — smarter than they looked — scrambled for cover as well.
The sunlight was poison.
A lesson they'd all learn soon enough.
From the safety of the shadows, I gazed upon the smoldering wreckage of Aokusa Town.
A beginning.
A kingdom of monsters, birthed in blood and fire.
And it was mine.
"This," I murmured to Aika, who watched me with silent reverence, "is only the first."
She nodded, eyes gleaming.
I looked at my thralls — their bodies still trembling with the aftershocks of their rebirth — and smiled.
"I will teach them," I said. "We will sharpen them. Mold them. Build an army that will sweep across this rotten world like a plague."
My voice dropped, cold and heavy with promise.
"They will kneel. Or they will die."
The shadows embraced us.
And somewhere, far beyond the hills, the world slept peacefully, blissfully unaware of the storm that was coming.
Not for long.
——————————-
Hours later~
Nightfall returned.
The last embers of sunlight died behind the hills, and the night crept back, cloaking the ruined village in darkness.
I stepped from the ruins where we had sheltered during the day, feeling the chill of night seep into my bones. The sunlight hadn't touched me, but it had come close. Too close. I could still feel the lingering ache across my skin, a phantom burn.
Good reminder.
Even gods had their limits.
The pile of bodies at the center of town had begun to rot. Flies swarmed in black clouds above it, and the smell had thickened into something almost solid — a wall of stench and decay.
My new creations waited in the square, restless, twitching.
Some drooled openly.
Some twitched violently, struggling to control their new strength.
Others simply stared at me with a raw, mindless hunger, like feral dogs waiting for a command.
Pitiful.
They needed discipline.
They needed pain.
"Form a line," I said, voice sharp, cutting through the thick night air.
They scrambled to obey, tripping over each other, shoving, snarling.
One — a boy with a mangled jaw — shoved another too hard, sending him sprawling in the dirt.
I moved.
In an instant, I was before him.
Before he could even flinch, I drove my hand through his chest, fingers slicing between his ribs, crushing his heart in a single brutal squeeze.
He convulsed once.
Then slumped.
I pulled my hand free with a wet sound, blood dripping from my fingers, and let the corpse fall at the feet of the others.
Silence.
Only the buzzing of flies and the distant caw of crows.
"Weakness," I said, low and steady, "will not be tolerated."
Their eyes widened.
Their breathing quickened.
But they obeyed.
They formed a rough, crooked line, trembling with the effort of containing themselves.
Good.
Fear was a start.
Aika stood silently at my side, her face blank, unreadable. Blood still stained her hands and arms, but she made no move to clean it.
She understood.
There was no cleansing yourself of this.
Only embracing it.
"You are demons now," I said, stepping slowly along the line, my voice rich with cold amusement. "You are stronger than you have ever been. Faster. Hungrier."
I stopped before a young woman — no older than seventeen — whose hands trembled violently at her sides.
"But strength without control is nothing."
I reached out and, almost gently, brushed my bloodied knuckles against her cheek.
She flinched.
"You will learn," I said, turning away, from her "or you will die like the weaklings you once were."
I paced before them, speaking louder now, letting my voice carry across the ruined village.
"You will fight. You will kill. You will feed. And when I command it, you will crush this world beneath your heels."
Aika's crimson eyes gleamed in the dark.
"Tonight," I said, smiling thinly, my empire is born