The gorge was no longer earth and stone.It was a battlefield of the damned.
The lantern girl's gate yawned wider, vomiting forth rivers of pale fire and a storm of wailing phantoms. Thousands of translucent figures drifted into the sky, their hollow mouths screaming sorrows, their bodies tethered to Jigoku by endless chains. They swirled above the onryō, blotting out the stars, closing every path of escape.
Her hair lashed in every direction, binding and cleaving, strangling skeletal warriors until their bones splintered. But for each she felled, three more took their place. Giant yokai skeletons crashed down with bone-crushing fists, forcing her to dart between them, her miasma shielding her from blows that split the ground open.
For the first time since her rebirth, the onryō faltered.
Her breath came ragged, her body dimming as the lantern girl poured everything into her hell gate. Blue flames clung to her miasma, burning away strands of her hair with every clash. She hissed, pulling herself back, shadows wrapping tighter, her form growing gaunt and desperate.
"Damn you…" she whispered, blood and smoke spilling from her lips. "Damn you all…"
She turned, her instincts screaming to flee. But the sky was thick with ghosts—an ocean of them, chained and swirling, pressing down with the weight of countless regrets. The air itself was a prison, suffocating her. There was no escape.
A skeletal fist struck her side, snapping ribs. She screamed as she was hurled across the gorge, crashing against jagged stone. Her miasma flickered, dimming to a shadow of what it had been.
Her hands clawed at the dirt, trembling. For the first time, she felt it—fear. True fear. The tide was too much. The gate would consume her, and the girl's laughter rang cruelly in her ears.
And then—
The ghosts above shuddered.
A presence swept through them, cold and commanding. The blue fire wavered as if cowed, and the endless chorus of screams twisted into silence.
From the treeline beyond the gorge, a figure strode forth.
Ranmaru.
His body was half-shrouded in phantasmal haze, his outline flickering like a ghost himself. His wounds were gone, his steps steady, his gaze cold. In his hands he carried the sutra-sword, its divine light warped black by the yokai katana lashed to it, the two weapons fused in a storm of Qi.
The ghosts parted before him, streams of their essence siphoning into his body. Each breath he drew pulled their regrets into him, each step grounding that power into his veins.
The onryō's eyes widened. Relief sparked in her chest—he came back for her.
But that relief died when she saw his face.
There was no desperation. No fear. Only resolve.
"Ranmaru…" she whispered, her voice trembling, "help me—!"
But he did not come to save her.
The sutra-sword rose, blazing black, runes and curses mingling in its steel. His Qi surged like a storm, swelling higher and higher as he dragged in the essence of every ghost in the sky. Soil split. Trees withered. Lantern light bled into his aura. Even the hellfire itself bent toward him, folding into his breath.
He wove them together.
The mortal world and Jigoku aligned within him, forming a vast diagram that stretched across the battlefield itself. Mountains, rivers, and forests shimmered in ghostly light, opposite a mirror realm of chains, fire, and endless shadows. The two halves overlapped and turned. The battlefield was his map, and with it, his dominion.
"I, Kuro, call for the heavens, hell, and all between," he whispered. "Today, I sacrifice all in my path—enemies and allies alike—to build my foundation on screams and hell's soldiers."
The diagram flared. His presence expanded until it smothered the gorge. The ghosts shrieked as their essence was stripped away, funneled into him. Chains broke. Flames twisted into rivers of black light. The skeletons themselves buckled under his will.
One titanic skull turned. Its sockets, once blue, blazed with his shadowed fire. The giant yokai skeleton roared—not for Jigoku, not for the lantern girl—but for him.
The onryō's lips parted, her body trembling as she realized. He wasn't binding her. He was binding everything else.
The earth, the ghosts, the fire, the very battlefield itself—woven into his foundation.
The diagram seared across the sky, a vision of the mortal world and hell interlaced. And at its center stood Ranmaru, holding dominion over both.
The overlapping realms trembled. The mountains and rivers of the mortal world bled into the searing flames of Jigoku, and the vast diagram shifted, folding upon itself like painted silk being gathered by an unseen hand. The battlefield quaked as the overlapping landscapes rose upward, twisting into beams and pillars, tiles and ridges.
What had been mountains became lacquered columns. What had been rivers became carved jade balustrades. The chains of Jigoku stretched and snapped into iron beams, supporting eaves of shadowed tiles. Fire coiled into lanterns of blood-red glass, and forests bent into latticed screens etched with ghostly branches.
The map became a structure.The structure, a tower.
Before Kuro, suspended in his grasp, was a Chinese pavilion tower—small at first, no larger than his palm, yet radiating the oppressive weight of both realms. Its ridges glowed with the light of the mortal world, its doors dripped with the shadows of hell. The foundation diagram had become a vessel.
Kuro raised the tower, his single eye burning crimson.
The battlefield howled.
The pavilion inhaled. Ghosts shrieked as the pull of its gates seized them—soldiers, lantern-born corpses, broken specters, and stray ghouls alike. Their bodies twisted into streams of shadow and flame, dragged screaming into the tower's endless halls. The lantern girl thrashed as her army unraveled, her pale light shredded into ribbons and sucked through the carved windows. Even her final wail vanished into silence, swallowed whole.
The gorge emptied. The battlefield fell still.
But then the ground shook.
The colossal skeleton—Jigoku's last soldier, its ivory frame towering above the battlefield—roared, its jaw gaping wide. Its hand, larger than a house, swung downward, the force enough to crush the earth itself.
Kuro did not flinch.
The tower in his grasp pulsed. Its lacquered eaves split the air, and in an instant it expanded, shooting skyward, vast enough to match the giant. The pavilion's foundation crashed into the soil, stabilizing with a thunderclap. Its walls unfurled like banners, its tiers stretching upward until the skeleton's palm met its roof.
The strike rang like thunder on bronze bells. Sparks and shadows cascaded as the skeletal arm shuddered against the pavilion's strength. Cracks ran through its bones, splintering with each grinding push. The tower held firm, its foundation unshakable.
The skeleton roared again, but its voice faltered. Its body quivered, fractures racing through its ribs, its spine, until at last it collapsed in a landslide of bone, shattering into dust at the pavilion's base.
Kuro's breathing slowed. His one hand tightened around the miniature form of the tower as it shrank again, obediently fitting into his grasp.
It pulsed once—an immortal treasure, born of mortal and hellish domains alike.
The diagram was no longer a projection. It was real, solid, his first true anchor on the path ahead.
His Foundation Establishment Treasure.
The battlefield lay silent. No priest, no lantern, no skeleton—only Kuro, standing with a tower of two worlds in his hand, his path carved in screams and shadow.