Blood continued to drip from The Viper's torn body, as if his very soul was unraveling bit by bit. He gasped on the ground, dragging his useless legs, his body trembling as though it were on the verge of total collapse.
Then, footsteps echoed through the chaos.
"What a disappointment," said a deep, calm voice, sharp as a death sentence.
Narikami, clad in his ceremonial uniform dyed in shadows, looked down on him like little more than a wounded insect. The Viper lifted his head with effort. His face, twisted by his own Hizumi, barely looked human anymore.
"I thought you'd wreak more havoc, Hebimura," Narikami said, devoid of anger. Only dry, almost sorrowful disappointment. "But not only did you fail… you let your Hizumi consume you. You became the very thing you swore to master."
The Viper spat blood. He smiled with a broken fang.
"What else did you expect...? That damn Reiji… and the others… they must die."
"You have a choice," Narikami approached. "Would you rather die here like a dog… or move forward one last time… bearing the weight of every life you destroyed?"
The Viper stared as if he wanted to snap Narikami's neck… but then his gaze fell. There was no strength in his arms. No pride. Only a thirst for revenge greater than his broken body.
"…I want to kill them. All of them."
Narikami sighed.
"Then I have no choice."
He produced a small capsule wrapped in black paper inscribed with runes: a Soul Pill. A forbidden substance capable of forcing will and soul to keep fighting for a few hours, at the cost of certain and irreversible death afterward.
The Viper took the capsule without hesitation, swallowing it with a twisted smile.
His body creaked.
His Shinkon flared again. Blood writhed inside him, his bones tensed as if hell itself was claiming him for one final act.
"You have only two hours left," Narikami said without looking back. "Make them count."
Hebimura rose. His eyes no longer human. No longer vengeance on his face… but a beast in its final form, knowing there will be no dawn for him.
And so, he advanced toward the battlefield where Seimei and Bokusatsu waited, unaware…
---
The rumble of thunder shook not only the sky but the hearts of those still breathing inside the coliseum.
Shirota lifted his gaze from his makeshift seat—a small wooden box adorned with ancient inscriptions. He sipped lukewarm tea as his erotic novel dangled, still open, between the fingers of his other hand. His glasses reflected the majestic figure that had just appeared.
"Heh… what a divine entrance…" he whispered, smiling sideways as he watched Narikami, whose mere presence froze the soul and thundered like an ancient war drum.
The general's ceremonial uniform gleamed with golden dragons entwined with military symbols; a cape billowed as if the wind itself revered it. His sword, its edge blessed by the Celestial Kingdom, seemed to sing before it could cut.
Shirota stood, stretching, snapped his book shut with a sharp thud, and slipped it into his robe with the calm of one who has just finished lunch. He looked at the five broken opponents before him—some wept, others bit their lips with contained fury, and one muttered the name of a brother lost in battle—and smiled as if he were in the middle of an opera rehearsal.
"What a touching tragedy, really…" he said, placing a hand over his chest as if crying. "But the audience demands blood, not tears."
He stepped forward, his shadow stretching long and twisted under the torchlight.
"And since we're here… make this your first and last act." He smiled with malice. "Let all that pent-up frustration out! Come on! Imagine you're in a play where the script is written by hatred… and the only review you'll get… is whether you manage to die well."
One of the five tried to speak, halfway through a sob.
"N-no… I don't want to…"
"Perfect!" Shirota interrupted with slow applause. "That's the spirit! Refusing to perform is, after all… still a performance."
Then, with a mocking tone, tilting his head slightly as if concluding a show, he said:
"Lights, blood… and action."
Behind him, true hell began.
Yodaku's five henchmen lay collapsed—not from physical wounds, but from the mental war Shirota had masterfully orchestrated. Each struggled still within their own minds, trapped in deliriums of betrayal, insecurity, or self-destruction.
Shirota cast one last glance at them, as if they were broken puppets on a decaying stage. Then he extended his arm like a director signaling the cast's grand final entrance.
He raised no voice. Used no power. Only words.
And yet, the five began to rise, their eyes vacant, faces twisted by panic or tears. One screamed his mother's name before attacking the one beside him. Another, laughing madly, pierced his companion's chest with a spectral spear formed from his own warped Shinkon.
Screams. Rending. An opera of madness.
Shirota turned toward the coliseum, the echo of his macabre theater fading behind him.
"War is art. And I… am the artist."
---
The kingdom's council chamber remained wrapped in an eerie silence, broken only by the slow crunch of golden cutlery tapping against porcelain plates. The King, clad in a scarlet robe embroidered with silver threads, savored exotic meat drenched in spices that cost more than an entire village. His lips curved faintly, as if others' suffering was the perfect accompaniment to his feast.
"Delicious," he whispered, as a drop of venison blood trickled down his chin. "Tragedy always whets the appetite."
Across from him, Kyomu hadn't uttered a single word or breathed. His black and red armor, etched with ancient chained dragons, looked more like a prison than a defense. His eyes followed the scene, yes... but no emotion could be read on his face. Only duty.
Several nobles slept shamelessly, exhausted from the screams, tension, and spectacle that had long ceased to be entertaining. Others feigned interest, though their hearts were elsewhere. Some, more sensible, quietly withdrew from the chamber, unwilling to look back.
The air was heavy. Not from heat. Not from blood. But from a different presence. The King noticed it. Narikami hadn't come to watch. Nor to play the game. He had come to end it.
But the King, with a low chuckle, simply kept eating. He filled his crystal glass and raised it without toasting anyone.
"The problem with heroes... is that they always arrive late or want to make too much noise before they die," he murmured to himself.
Then Kenshiro Gai, who until then had remained silent in the shadow of a column, stepped forward with firm strides.
"Your Majesty... do you think it was wise to send Yodaku? Is he not veering off from the plan?"
The King didn't look at him. He simply set the glass on the table, elegantly wiped his lips, and replied in a soft but icy voice:
"Don't ask me if it was wise. Just watch, Kenshiro. The most dangerous thing about chaos... is that sometimes it reveals who truly deserves to live."
The room sank back into silence. Kyomu didn't move. But something in his aura began to vibrate, as if preparing... in case the throne had to be stained with blood once more.
---
While the battle at the edges of the coliseum grew increasingly chaotic and bloody, not all fights were fought under the spectacle of lights or the nobles' screams. In one of the side corridors, Donyoku and Chisiki exchanged a glance lasting barely a second. That was enough to understand what they both felt. It wasn't fear of a gigantic creature, nor panic at an ancient demon. It was something much worse.
"We're not facing a monster..." Chisiki whispered, voice broken. "We're facing a human... shattered inside."
Donyoku nodded. That's what made it more terrifying. Because someone without a soul has nothing to lose. And that... that was more dangerous than any millennial beast.
Nakigoe took her first step, and the echo was like an omen. She didn't immediately wield a weapon. She only cried. A cry that wasn't empty, but a scream of pure emotion, as if her soul bled through sound.
The mere act of hearing her caused a sharp pain in the ears. Donyoku surrounded himself with his aura to soften the impact. Chisiki activated a spatial distortion that isolated the sound around them, forming a bubble of silence.
"If this keeps going, she'll tear us to pieces," Donyoku growled, his knuckles already igniting with rage. "I can't let Aika, Reiji... everyone... fall because of this."
Chisiki teleported a shockwave generated by one of Donyoku's strikes. He redirected it with surgical precision. The impact grazed Nakigoe, barely altering her rhythm... but enough for her to speak to them.
"They're strong... strategic..." she said, with a hint of sadness in her voice. "But they don't fight with soul. Only with false hopes."
Donyoku clenched his teeth. No, she was wrong. Everything he had lived through in that hell called the tournament hadn't broken him. It had tempered him. His Shinkon knew it, his soul screamed it. He was stronger. More real.
His blows were no longer attacks; they were cataclysms. With a single fist, he broke walls. Each impact made the ground tremble.
Chisiki also stepped up her game. She created traps in space, reversed the direction of invisible blades, stunned with false reflections, and cut trajectory lines to force mistakes.
But Nakigoe... she wasn't a common enemy.
She was a real assassin. One with history. With death. With scars unseen.
"Poor children..." she said, voice trembling. "They still believe the soul can save them."
And she cried. A tear fell to the ground, making it slippery, as if everything turned to soap. A second tear created a torrent that filled the corridor like a miniature sea.
Her Shinkon fed on her sadness. It grew stronger. Sadder... and deadlier.
"How... how can so much pain make her stronger?" Chisiki whimpered, face bleeding after a fall.
Donyoku didn't answer. He had a knife buried in his leg and three bleeding cuts on his torso. Nakigoe's blades seemed to cry as well... and were guided by the pity she felt.
"Even if they defeat me..." she murmured. "I'm only the fifth strongest among Yodaku's followers. What will they do when they face Kyomei? Him?"
Despair began to seep in. Nakigoe wept... and the rain falling wasn't from the sky.
It came from her broken soul.
And Donyoku and Chisiki were being dragged by that bottomless tide.
---
Nakigoe already had the two subdued.
Donyoku struggled to breathe, his body riddled with wounds and deep cuts. Chisiki, though not bleeding as much, staggered from exhaustion, his Shinkon on the verge of collapse from so much calculation and spatial manipulation.
And yet… neither of them gave up.
Nakigoe watched, confused. Something in those two boys stirred a corner she had sworn to bury.
It wasn't sadness.
It was something older. More painful.
It was nostalgia.
Her gaze drifted into the void…
And then the past engulfed her.
---
Before the crying, there had been laughter.
Before the tears, there were songs on the plain.
And before her soul shattered… Nakigoe had a home.
A wooden cabin on the kingdom's outskirts, where the wind smelled of smoke and fertile earth.
She lived with her two brothers: Daiki, the eldest, impulsive and protective. And Itsuki, the youngest, cheerful and curious, always with hands stained with ink or soil.
"Sis, look! I caught a rabbit!"
"Don't touch it like that, you fool!" Nakigoe yelled, laughing. "You'll scare it away."
"Then catch it yourself," Daiki replied with a mischievous grin, tossing a twig in the air. "Let's see if you can without using your 'magic tears.'"
At night, they dined together around a pot of watery rice and vegetables. Daiki told made-up stories about samurai who defeated demons with words, while Itsuki wrote in his notebook:
"The world will only change when someone loves it more than they hate it," he read aloud.
"Did you write that, Itsuki?"
"Yes. I thought if I wrote it down… maybe it would come true."
Nakigoe closed her eyes.
Sometimes love felt real.
Sometimes life seemed fair.
Until that morning.
---
The sky thundered with war drums.
The village shattered in screams. Smoke rose before the sun.
"Daiki, what's happening?" Nakigoe screamed.
"Run! Take Itsuki and run, Nakigoe!"
But Itsuki didn't want to leave his notebooks.
The soldiers didn't let him finish his poem.
A spear pierced his chest like paper.
"ITSUKI!" Nakigoe screamed, tearing her throat raw.
Daiki fought with a rusty machete. He took down two soldiers.
A third, too.
But the fourth… had gunpowder.
And fire.
Daiki's last words, as his body burned:
"Run, Nakigoe… live… live for us…"
And she ran.
She ran with lungs bleeding.
She ran until the skin peeled off her feet.
She ran not to save herself, but because she wasn't ready to die yet.
---
Days later, crawling through a field of corpses, she was captured.
A slave hunter kicked her until she lost consciousness.
And when she woke… she no longer had a name.
Only a number on her neck and a price in the market.
She was sold as a sex slave.
Her first owners were bored nobles.
They dressed her in rags and locked her up during the day.
At night…
…they used her.
She learned not to cry, because sometimes tears only excited them more.
Other times, they beat her just for looking at them.
She slept in a damp cell.
Ate scraps when she could… and if not, scavenged through trash like an animal.
"Do you think you're special?" a noble told her one night, throwing a bone at her.
"You're just a bitch with sad eyes. That's what makes you expensive, nothing more."
She passed from owner to owner.
Every time a noble grew tired of her crying, she was sold like an old chair.
And every night, Nakigoe begged the void:
"Why didn't I die with them...?
Why didn't you let me die… Daiki… Itsuki?"
Until one day, the tears stopped flowing.
Not because the pain ceased.
But because…
they began to destroy.
That's how her Shinkon awakened.
Not to protect.
But to cry.
To make tears a weapon.
And pain a reason to stay alive.
---
Suddenly, the vision shattered like glass.
A blow.
Donyoku, without losing his moment, rose and channeled all the fury of his soul.
His fist connected straight into Nakigoe's stomach.
He sent her flying several meters backward, spitting blood. He felt the internal crack of fractured ribs.
She barely had time to scream, when Chisiki, with surgical precision, distorted the space around her left hand.
Flesh and bone warped. She screamed. Not just from pain. But from memory.
But then…
She cried.
She cried like she hadn't since burying her brothers.
She cried with her soul.
And for the first time… it wasn't a weapon.
It was a tribute.
"They… they were like you," she whispered, her body trembling. "They believed they could change this rotten world… And I… I… only learned to survive."
She looked them in the eyes.
And in their pupils she saw no enemies.
She saw reflections of her own blood.
She saw the hope she had lost.
She saw the love that once made her smile.
"I can't kill you.
I mustn't.
My soul… won't allow it."
---
Nakigoe gasped. Her breath faltered, ribs fractured by Donyoku's impact, her hand twisted by Chisiki's distortion. And yet… she felt no anger.
She looked up at them from the ground, knees sunk in the puddle of tears she herself had created.
There was no pain in her eyes. Only a quiet sadness, like the one that accompanies an inevitable farewell.
"You two…" she whispered, voice trembling but unwavering. "Are the exact representation… of two people I once knew. No… loved. My brothers."
Donyoku lowered his fists, his aura still humming.
Chisiki said nothing, but his slow breath betrayed inner tension.
Nakigoe clenched her teeth, tried to rise, but her body refused.
"I should kill you," she said honestly. "I know that's what they ordered me. I know I have to… but…"
She brought a hand to her chest.
"My body won't respond.
It's not weakness.
It's my soul.
It stands in the way."
For a moment, the corridor fell silent. Only the slow dripping of her Shinkon could be heard, as if even her power wept with her.
Donyoku stepped forward.
"You don't have to force yourself to obey. Not anymore."
"We didn't come here to kill you," added Chisiki calmly. "Nor to hate you. Not even to judge you."
Nakigoe's eyes widened slightly. She expected compassion, maybe pity. But not that.
"We'll show you," said Donyoku, with a strength born not of fury but of a new will, "that we're going to change this world."
"And even if we fall into the abyss a thousand times," Chisiki continued, "we'll get up a thousand times.
And if we bleed a thousand times… we'll do it with a smile."
Nakigoe lowered her gaze. Something inside her chest cracked, but it didn't hurt.
It was… light.
For the first time in years, her soul didn't want to fight. Not with rage. Not with despair.
But with hope.
"You can go," she murmured, staring at the ground. "My tears won't reach you anymore.
Maybe… the world really does have a small chance."
Donyoku and Chisiki nodded. Not arrogantly. Not with pity.
But with a mutual, silent respect.
And then, they ran.
The echo of their footsteps faded down the coliseum halls.
Nakigoe stayed there, between shadows and puddles, smiling with her eyes closed, as one last tear—neither destructive nor lethal—fell softly to the ground.
"Daiki… Itsuki… maybe this story will have a different ending after all."
---
The wind had changed. The air smelled of contained fury.
Reiji emerged from one of the dark corridors of the coliseum, his body covered in wounds, his breath ragged… but his gaze steady. He had trapped his previous enemy inside an illusion as dark as fear itself, and now, his sole goal stood before him: Yodaku.
The executioner noticed immediately.
"What's that?" he sneered, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I thought you ran off with your tail between your legs, Mikazuki?"
Reiji's expression didn't change. His voice, however, was an icy blade:
"I didn't come for redemption.
I came to end a global threat."
Yodaku let out a hollow laugh, as if the idea amused him.
"Then show me how 'redeeming' you can be, fallen hero."
With a lazy gesture, Yodaku extended his hand, and Chi no Ude—the warrior of living blood—leapt from the shadows, his liquid arm bubbling with thirst. Reiji tried to dodge and advance toward Yodaku… but a metallic crash interrupted his charge.
Haganezumi.
His steel armor now darker, heavy with resentment. The man did not forgive having survived that mental hell, and he wanted to take it all out with his brutal sword.
Both subordinates lunged at Reiji like starving beasts, and he barely managed to block them with illusory tricks and flickers of his Shinkon. His body creaked, his mind fought to stay lucid.
And just as the coliseum seemed to turn into a merciless hunt…
The sky roared.
A thunderclap, dry and precise, thundered with the force of a god.
Everyone—spectators, nobles, slaves, and executioners—froze.
From the stands, descending like divine punishment, Narikami advanced. His silhouette sparkled intermittently, wrapped in static sparks, and his gaze… was not one of fury.
It was disappointment.
"Is this what my city has become?" he asked, his calm so sharp it hurt. "A beast arena, where honor is a spectacle and blood, currency?"
Narikami straightened, surrounded by vibrant lightning that coursed through his arms like living veins. Then he raised his voice, not to his enemies… but to the highest seats of the coliseum.
"Is this what you approve of, King of Hokori?," his voice boomed like an ancient judgment. "Executioners instead of judges? Bloody circuses instead of justice? Yodaku didn't come here on your orders…?"
A brief silence followed, broken only by the crackling sky responding to the general's aura.
"You have turned Kinzoku no Hana into a theater of miseries, an arena applauding torture and selling dignity as entertainment. If you thought sending me was part of your game, listen well…"
War is not a show.
In the kingdom's meeting hall,
The nobles swallowed hard. Even Kyomu, always motionless, looked down for a moment.
"I came here," Narikami continued firmly, "not to follow your rules, but to end this madness. If Yodaku is your sword, then consider me the lightning that splits the throne in two."
After his words, a new lightning bolt descended with divine fury, shaking the arena beneath everyone present.
---
Yodaku smiled, his teeth barely visible.
"You and I aren't so different, Narikami," he answered shamelessly. "We both kill. We both torture. And don't tell me you don't enjoy it.
You helped build this. If you were truly innocent, something like The Night of a Thousand Gazes would never have been born in a city like this."
For a second, silence was absolute.
Narikami didn't respond with words.
He responded with power.
He raised his hand, and chains of lightning fell from the sky like celestial whips.
Chi no Ude, Haganezumi, and Kyomei were caught instantly, their bodies convulsing under the overwhelming discharge.
Only Reiji and Yodaku managed to dodge the attack.
The coliseum erupted into chaos.
There were no sides.
No order.
Only a full-scale war remained.
And perhaps, in the end, the victor won't be the one who survives,
but the one who doesn't lose themselves in this hell.
---
There are no heroes or villains anymore, only broken souls seeking redemption amid a hell they helped build themselves.
Thank you for reading this chapter of Chi no Yakusoku.
If you liked it, don't forget to follow for the next step in this dark blood oath.