A cry cut through the trees—a thin, ragged sound that carried the kind of pain you couldn't fake. We moved toward it, boots muffled by the detritus of the forest. The mist coiled around our ankles like curious fingers, and the moonlight made the spider silk along the branches glitter as if the woods themselves were hung with ice.
Albedo arrived before we reached the clearing, wings folded but eyes sharp as a blade. Her presence always rearranged the air; she brought a kind of immaculate severity with her, as if the world should be grateful for her attention. Tanjiro instinctively went into a defensive stance the moment he noticed her—sword leveled, breath measured.
"Stand down," I said lightly. He blinked at me but obeyed. He'd learned to listen to me a little since we'd met; I suspected it was because he had already seen how I moved when something broke. The kid wasn't stupid. He was stubborn and noble; those traits were both burdens and weapons.
"Tanjiro Kamado," I introduced, nodding at him. "Albedo," I added when the high-ranking guardian inclined her head. Albedo's gaze flicked over Tanjiro once, with a little amused disdain, then to me with the polite attention of someone cataloguing a new decorative piece.
Albedo's voice was cool. "I have found Rui, my lord."
Tanjiro stepped forward, eyes lit with a righteous fire. "Who is Rui?" he asked—I could hear the way the question doubled as a demand.
"One of the Lower Moons," I replied. The words were casual, but Tanjiro stiffened at the label. A true member of the Twelve Kizuki on Mount Natagumo—his presence here meant higher concentrations of Muzan's blood in the area. That fact alone explained the escalating ferocity of the local demons.
Tanjiro's expression changed. His concern intensified, not just for the living caught in the spider's web, but for something else—analyzing, always analyzing. "If there is a Kizuki here … there will be more blood. If we extract it, there might be a way to help Nezuko," he murmured, voice low, full of the boy's stubborn hope.
We followed Albedo's lead down a small knoll. The daughter demon lay on the ground, pale as a sheet and bleeding through rents in her kimono—thin, quiet, face torn by the webbing Rui had wielded as if it were a second hand. Her breaths came in shallow spasms, and the blood on the earth shimmered darkly in the moonlight.
Rui stood a short distance away, hands stained, the long threads of his web still twined between his fingers. He looked up at us with a calm, cruel smile, as if our arrival had been an expected interruption to a private thing. "So—you watch," he said, his voice like something sliding over glass. "Do you think this is a show?"
Albedo's expression didn't change; she and Yuri looked like statues brought to life for the purpose of scaring less disciplined creatures. Yuri's face was the same flat mask of function, but her eyes were bright, recording details. Rui's casual malice, however, made Tanjiro stiffen. He stepped forward, the old, righteous fire in his posture flaring.
"Are you allies?" Tanjiro asked, voice small but steady—the sort of question that could have been a plea.
Rui laughed, and the sound was like teeth against a bowl. "Allies? We are closer than that. Family." He gestured toward the wounded girl with a thread-thin hand. "This is mine. We share a bond of our own. You interfere and I will carve you up."
Tanjiro's eyes sharpened. "No. Bonds are not excuses for cruelty. Bonds are not chains that make others suffer. If you love her, prove it by letting her go from this life." The conviction in his words kept sliding between desperate hope and blunt command. He was young and painfully sincere in his belief that words might still matter to monsters.
Albedo's tone was dry, sharp as polished obsidian. "Why is this boy talking to prey instead of cutting his head clean?" Her voice carried the weight of someone who found sentiment an indulgence she never afforded. She always preferred solutions to speeches. In her world, things were either efficient or they were not.
I smiled at Albedo, indulgent. Tanjiro's kindness irritated her, I could see, because it was messy and illogical. It irritated me, too, in its own way—but I liked it. But I need to give her an answer.
"Because," I answered softly, and there was a faint glint at the edge of my amusement, "sometimes the entertainment is worth the delay. And sometimes, letting a dog bark at a bone shows you its true edges."
~~~