Zhen didn't answer Ito's question. His breathing stayed steady, as if the stench was nothing more than a familiar part of the black desert he had long grown used to. His body kept crawling forward with unshaken resolve, cutting through the deepening dark.
But then, the faint hum of human voices began to disturb his ears. It felt like something was watching them.
"There's something close," his voice was barely a whisper.
Ito held his breath and crept closer, clutching at the black cloth that tied them together as though it were his only lifeline. "A monster?" his voice broke.
"Maybe."
He swallowed hard. The darkness devoured everything, leaving only the stench of rot clawing deep into his lungs.
Zhen's black eyes gleamed like freshly sharpened steel. "Crawl faster," he ordered.
As he spoke, his hand had already drawn the blade from his back. "If you want a drink tonight, you'll need to focus your magic and help me."
A chill ran down Ito's spine. His vision faltered, and the buzzing around them grew louder, closing in, circling like predators ready to trap and kill without mercy.
"Use your sight magic. Now!"
Ito's eyes widened. "Here? In this darkness—"
"Damn it!" Zhen's voice cut like iron, leaving no room to argue.
Ito pressed his fingers to his temple and let a trickle of energy flow. His eyes began to glow faintly, pupils spreading until they swallowed all color. The night slowly shifted before him—shadows took shape, the contours of the sand appeared, and something hidden beneath began to reveal itself.
Clear. Detailed.
"Zhen…" Ito's throat tightened.
"I know."
The black sand rippled. Heads began to emerge, one after another. They weren't human heads, not truly—twisted shapes took their place.
"There are so many…" Ito's voice cracked. "I see human heads twisted into snakes and frogs. Black worms crawl out of their mouths and nostrils. Their eyes are empty, tormented. Isn't this… a trap?" His throat was parched, an irony in the middle of their desperate search for water.
They weren't rising at random. The heads emerged in a vast circle, closing off the path to the water. Each gap sealed tighter, weaving a wall of death meant to drive its prey into a cage with no escape.
Zhen kept crawling, but his hand reached for the cloth binding them together and tugged Ito closer.
"Keep crawling. Even if your eyes see hell itself."
"They've sealed every path," Ito muttered, his voice tinged with exhaustion.
The blade before him lifted slightly, its tip brushing against the sand. With a subtle, fluid motion, Zhen traced a faint curved line across the black desert floor.
"We won't force our way through them. We'll make them open the way themselves."
A shiver climbed Ito's spine. His glowing eyes took in the horror of hundreds—no, thousands—of heads grinning in silence, waiting for the signal to lunge at the two hunters searching for water.
And sure enough, the circle drew tighter. Thousands of hollow eyes fixed on them. Thousands of jaws clenched, grinding as if hungry for a single command.
"Z-Zhen, they've surrounded us… every side, there's no gap!"
The Northern Hunter remained silent, and the weight of it made Ito's chest burn with frustration.
"Ito," he finally spoke.
"Focus your sight. You see them. My eyes are buried in this darkness."
"What—you can't even—"
"Quiet. You have only one task: look, and tell me where my blade must dance."
Ito's throat tightened, but the light of his magic flared brighter, reflecting in the endless swarm of heads that shifted like waves across the desert. Zhen's cursed voice bound him, leaving him no escape.
The long blade rose slowly, its black edge like a shadow drawn from the abyss. The desert wind halted, as if the night itself wanted to witness two hunters waging war against death.
"A head—jumping straight at you, Zhen!" Ito shouted.
The sword cut forward at once, slicing clean through. Dozens of heads flew silently into the air, only to vanish as they hit the black sand.
"Your right, now!!" Ito's cry cracked, his eyes straining under the blaze of magic.
Zhen's blade swept right—not like the strike of a man, but like the stretch of a shadow, carving through the air in a savage arc. It devoured dozens of heads at once, merciless as a demon starved for blood.
Every command from Ito was answered with a single deadly stroke of the blade.
"Left—upper left—below you!" he cried in despair.
And Zhen… executed each word with brutal precision.
He couldn't see a thing, yet his body moved as if guided by the instincts of an ancient predator. His sword leapt from one direction to another, slashing, thrusting, cutting without pause.
Ito froze, caught between terror and awe. "Th-that's… not human…" he whispered, his trembling hand clutching the cloth that bound them.
In the pitch-dark, only Zhen's steady breathing remained.
Among the ruins of countless severed heads, the Northern Hunter lowered his blade and spoke, "Look again, Ito. This isn't over. Your sight is the eyes of my sword."
From every side, the rotting heads rose once more. The stench of decay clawed into Ito's bones, twisting his stomach.
He forced his magic to keep burning even as his eyes threatened to tear apart. His pupils quivered, swallowing the grotesque sight of a thousand grinning, rotten faces.
"Lower right! Three of them slipping in!"
The sword struck without hesitation, whipping up from beneath his body. It moved like a serpent striking—fast, almost unseen. The heads fell, severed in a single clean line.
"Upper left! Now!"
Zhen twisted his wrist, the blade spinning in a small arc like a crescent moon rising over sand. The strike wasn't high, but it was enough to slice through six heads at once, their black blood spraying before sinking instantly into the desert.
Even while crawling, Zhen's movements seemed impossible for any man. His body stayed low, yet every stroke of his blade was beautiful in its precision, as though he had already measured the empty spaces between grains of sand.
"Ito. Focus." His voice was sharp.
"A-ahead! A half-circle formation—they're closing the path!"
Zhen crawled forward, his blade brushing the sand. In one breath, he dragged the sword ahead in a repeating arc, carving half-circles into the black desert.
The heads in their path crumbled together, cut apart as though swallowed by a single line of death.
Ito trembled. "How can you… still crawl and yet—"
Zhen's sword moved again, this time in broken rhythms, flowing to the beat of Ito's breath. He saw nothing, but listened to every command, felt every vibration through the grains of sand, weaving them into a dance of death.
"Behind you, Zhen! One's leaping!"
Without looking, he flipped the sword backward and drove it into the dark with a single ruthless thrust. The head exploded just before its rotten teeth could tear through the cloth that bound them.
The night pressed heavier, carrying with it the stench of spilled blood. Ito could barely endure it any longer. His body trembled, drained and parched, yet he forced his voice to rise.
"Three on the right! Four ahead! Ten from the lower left!"
And still Zhen crawled, translating every word into execution. His blade swept long arcs, spun, stabbed, and carved in crossing lines, etching strange patterns into the sand—an art of death only the night itself could understand.
Then silence fell, sudden and absolute, as the last of the heads perished.
Zhen finally stopped, his sword dripping thick, black fluid.
"This is how a hunter swallows a thousand faces."
Ito stared at him, half indifferent, half spellbound.
"You… you're a monster more terrifying than they are."
The desert wind seemed to slow, weary as though it too had witnessed the massacre wrought by the blind hunter and the sorcerer's sight.
Above them, the sky cracked faintly with lines of orange. The long night, at last, surrendered to dawn.
Ito kept crawling, his eyes vacant, still haunted by the vision of thousands of heads rising from the sand, the stench of rot twisting his stomach, and… the Northern Hunter's blade.
The silence was finally broken by Zhen's flat voice.
"You've gone quiet."
Ito flinched slightly.
"Count," Zhen ordered.
"What?"
"Count how many heads we passed in a single kilometer. Use your memory. You were the one who saw them all with your magic."
Ito stared at him, caught between confusion and dread. "Why should I—"
"Train your mind," Zhen cut him off coldly. "A hunter's mind is not only for survival. It is for measuring death."
The words struck Ito harder than the stench of corpses the night before. Reluctantly, he replayed what he had seen. One by one, the heads—hundreds, thousands—encircling, closing in, before shattering in the dance of the blade.
"So many…" he whispered, his throat dry.
Zhen's voice remained emotionless. "Now count the time. How many seconds did it take me to execute each one?"
Ito swallowed hard. He tried to calculate—one, two, three—his voice nearly failing.
"I don't know… count them yourself."
Zhen gave no reply. He kept crawling, his shadow stretching long beneath the rising sun.
But to Ito, the very act of calculation trapped him in disbelief. It wasn't human. It couldn't be.
Cold sweat slid down his temple as he crawled on. In silence, he realized: no sunrise, no matter how beautiful, could erase the truth. He was moving alongside something far more terrifying than the night itself.
They crawled until the orange light of morning grew brighter, splitting apart the heavy sky of the desert. The air, too, began to shift—not only the lingering scent of corpses, but a faint dampness, a sign that water was near.
Exhausted though he was, Ito felt a small lift in his chest. "We… we're close, aren't we?" His voice was hoarse.
Zhen didn't answer. He only lifted his chin forward.
And there Ito saw it.
Beyond the mound of black sand lay a deep hollow shimmering with a blue gleam. Real water. Its surface glimmered, catching the light.
Ito almost burst into a cry of relief, but the sound froze in his throat. He realized at once. The hollow was far too silent—no insects, no birds, not even the wind dared touch it…