Demon Slayer HQ – Evening
The forge rumbled quietly as the Doom Slayer tightened the bolts on his arm-mounted shield. Steam hissed, metal clanked, and the crimson light from the core bathed the walls in flickering warmth.
The silence broke.
"They left."
He turned.
It was Mitsuri who spoke, voice hesitant.
"Sanemi. Gyomei. Kokushibo. Akaza. They said you were… busy. They didn't wait."
The Slayer stared, visor expressionless. For a long moment, there was only silence.
Then he stood.
"They will die," he muttered, his voice low, mechanical—barely human.
He turned to his locker, slamming it open.Pulled out his Super Shotgun, clicked it open, and loaded shells with fluid rage.His Shield Saw attached into place on his gauntlet.The Crucible Hilt hummed ominously on his back.And the visor clamped down, sealing the fury inside.
The HQ trembled as he stomped out of the forge.Slayers and Hashira alike turned to watch as the Slayer walked through them like a storm.
Unstoppable. Unforgiving.
It was chaos.
Ash filled the sky. Craters lined the earth.Demons lay in scattered pieces, dissolved or crushed.
Sanemi knelt, panting, slashed down his back.Akaza's left arm twitched as it regenerated.Gyomei bled from a deep gash across his chest.
And Kokushibo, his body now transformed—six arms extending with six blazing katanas, eyes gleaming with a demonic inferno—stood in front of the wounded Death Knight, still breathing, still resisting.
"Stone Breathing: Fifth Form – Stone Avalanche Collapse!"Gyomei charged, swinging his spiked flail with all his might.
CRACK!!
The mace crushed into the knight's helmet—shattering the metal, revealing a twisted skull-like face underneath.
It reeled. Finally dazed.
"Now!" Kokushibo shouted.
His six blades struck in unison—a storm of Moon Breathing Forms, blending into a deadly, bladed ballet.
"Moon Breathing: Fifteenth Form – Devouring Lunar Edge!"
The blades spiraled and stabbed—through chest, arms, and skull.Akaza rushed in with Destructive Death: Leg Type, kicking the knight into the ground.
The colossus staggered… then fell.
The battlefield went eerily quiet.Their breaths heavy.The wind picking up again.For a moment—it was over.
But It Wasn't
Sanemi turned to speak—
But the ground behind them glowed.
A rune-etched altar, beneath the corpse of the knight, began to pulse.Strange symbols ignited in a circle.
"No…" Kokushibo said, eyes narrowing. "This… is not over."
The runes hissed, cracked open like splitting bone—And from within, a deep choral chanting began.Voices not of this world.
"He was a gatekeeper," Gyomei whispered.
The runes flared red, then black.A towering abyssal rift tore open above the altar.
Something was coming.
Something worse.
They stumbled back. Even Akaza's expression hardened.
"This energy…" he said. "It's not demonic. It's… hell-forged."
Back on the Path –
The Doom Slayer ran now. Not with panic—But with violence. With purpose.
Each step smashed earth beneath.The Super Shotgun clicked in his hands.
The skies above shimmered with hellfire as the tear in the rift grew.He could feel it from afar.
"Too late," he muttered.
"But not too late."