Frost crunched beneath their boots. The predawn air stung Tanjiro's lungs with each breath as they climbed the mountain path. Mission reports crinkled in his pack.
He adjusted his sword. Muscle memory made the movement automatic.
"Three separate sightings in the past week," he said, scanning the trail ahead. Pine branches created a tunnel of shadows. "All within a day's travel of each other."
"Interesting pattern." Akira's voice carried easily despite their steady climb. No sign of exertion. "Do you think they're coordinating?"
Tanjiro paused. He remembered how Muzan's demons had moved with terrifying unity.
"Demons don't usually work together unless something bigger is compelling them."
"Or someone." Akira's amber eyes caught the first rays of sunlight. "Perhaps they're simply drawn to the same resources."
"What kind of resources?"
"Safety. Territory. The same things any creature seeks when threatened."
The casualness struck him wrong. Most Corps members spoke about demons with underlying tension. The wariness that came from knowing these creatures existed solely to kill humans.
Akira discussed them like a scholar analyzing animal behavior.
They walked in silence for another hour. Their footsteps found steady rhythm on the worn trail. Tanjiro's enhanced senses cataloged familiar forest scents—pine sap, damp earth, the lingering musk of nocturnal animals.
But underneath these expected smells, something else caught his attention.
His steps slowed. An unfamiliar scent reached him—Akira's natural human warmth, but underneath it something metallic and cold. Like steel left in winter air.
"You smell that?" he asked.
"Demon activity ahead. Recent." Akira's scent immediately sharpened to that metallic edge. The change was subtle. He might have missed it if he hadn't been paying attention. "Within the last few hours, I'd say."
"That's not what I meant." Tanjiro watched her profile. Her amber eyes seemed to shift between warm brown and something cooler. "Your scent just... changed."
"Changed how?" Her tone remained casual. Tension crept into her shoulders—a tightness that hadn't been there moments before.
"Like metal touching ice. Just for a moment."
"Probably the mountain air." Akira smiled. The expression didn't reach her eyes. "Cold does strange things to perception."
Tanjiro nodded. He filed the explanation away with his growing collection of small inconsistencies. Everything about her seemed reasonable when examined individually.
Together they created a pattern his instincts recognized as wrong.
The trail opened into a clearing ahead, and with it, the first test of everything he thought he knew about demons—and about the woman walking beside him. Broken tree branches littered the ground where they emerged from the pine tunnel. Deep claw marks scored the bark of surrounding trees.
Tanjiro knelt to examine the gouges. Akira surveyed the canopy above, her head tilted in a listening pose.
"These are fresh," he said, running his fingers along the splintered bark. The wood was still damp with sap. "Maybe an hour old."
"It's still here." Akira didn't look down from the trees. "Watching us."
"How can you tell?"
"The forest is too quiet. When predators hunt, everything else goes silent."
Tanjiro strained his enhanced hearing. He caught only the whisper of wind through branches. No bird calls. No small creature movements.
The unnatural stillness that meant something dangerous had claimed this territory.
"But demons don't usually hunt during daylight," he said.
"Unless they're not hunting for food." Akira stepped toward the dense grove where shadows moved between trunks. "Unless they're hunting for something else entirely."
"Like what?"
"Information. Territory. Revenge." Her hand didn't move toward her sword. It remained relaxed at her side. "Or answers."
A chill touched Tanjiro's spine. It had nothing to do with mountain air.
"Answers to what?"
Branches rustled. A demon emerged from the grove. Its red eyes flickered between rage and confusion as they focused on Akira.
When it spoke, its voice carried recognition rather than hunger.
"You," the demon said, tilting its head with unsettling intelligence. "You came back."
Tanjiro's blade cleared its sheath. Conscious thought hadn't directed the movement.
"It knows you?"
"Stay your sword, Kamado-san." Akira raised her hand calmly. She positioned herself between him and the creature. "Violence isn't always the answer."
"It just spoke to you like it knows you!"
"Demons retain memories from their human lives." Akira never took her eyes off the creature. "Perhaps it recognizes something familiar."
The demon studied Akira with intensity that made Tanjiro's scar tingle.
"You promised answers."
"And I keep my promises," Akira replied gently. "Are you ready to listen?"
Tanjiro's grip tightened on his sword hilt. Every instinct screamed that this conversation was wrong. Demons didn't engage in philosophical discussions. They attacked. They consumed. They killed.
Yet this one waited with something approaching patience.
Akira's breathing shifted. The deep, hypnotic rhythms he'd witnessed in the demonstration hall. The sound seemed to resonate through the forest clearing. It created an almost musical quality that drew attention despite its softness.
"What... what are you doing to me?" the demon asked. Its aggressive stance melted into confusion like ice under summer sun.
"Showing you peace." Akira continued the rhythmic breathing. Each word was precisely timed between inhales and exhales. "The rage doesn't have to control you."
"This is impossible," Tanjiro whispered. He watched the creature's red eyes fade to amber that matched Akira's own. "Demons don't just stop being demons."
"Why not?" Akira asked between breaths. Her voice maintained that hypnotic cadence. "If the transformation from human to demon is possible, why not the reverse?"
"Because that's not how it works!"
"According to whom?" The demon now sat docilely. Its claws retracted as the wrongness that had filled the clearing dissipated like morning mist. "Your teachers? Your experience? Or your assumptions?"
Tanjiro stared at the transformed creature. His worldview fractured like glass under pressure.
"My experience with hundreds of demons who tried to kill me."
"And how many did you try to save?"
The question hit harder than any physical blow. He thought of Nezuko. Of the exceptions that had already complicated his understanding of demon nature.
But this felt different. Not the preservation of humanity within a demon, but the removal of demonic nature itself.