The first word the thing inside him spoke was not a roar.
It was a sigh.
Riku's knees hit the snow. Frost raced up both arms beneath the skin, tracing white light along his veins. The elder's chant rose higher. So did the village's. The square, the lanterns, the prayer-beads clenched in terrified hands, it all blurred under a swelling pressure inside his chest.
He tried to hold on to himself.
He thought of fluorescent classroom lights. Chalk dust. The bite of canned coffee in winter. His mother's annoyance whenever he pretended not to hear her calling him to dinner. Small things. Human things. Not because they were grand, but because they were his.
The pressure devoured them anyway.
"You called," said a voice from his mouth.
Gasps tore through the square.
Riku heard the words from far away, as if he had been pushed to the back of his own skull and left there to watch. His eyes burned. Pale light poured through his vision, outlining every villager in frost and heat and fear. He could feel their terror like warmth against exposed skin.
"You kneel," the voice continued, "but not deeply enough."
Panic shattered the square.
Some villagers bowed so hard their foreheads struck ice. Others tried to run. Jagged frost erupted from the ground around them and locked their ankles in place. Children screamed. Someone fainted. A lantern toppled and rolled.
Kagen laughed.
Shino did not. She shifted the unconscious girl more securely over her shoulder and took one measured step back.
At the edge of the square, Akari seized a spear from where it had been propped against a shrine post. White paper charms snapped from its shaft. She spun it once, planting her feet in the snow.
"You are not a god," she shouted.
The Winter Demon turned Riku's head toward her. He felt the motion the way a drowned man might feel moonlight filtering through the surface.
"This vessel is nothing," the thing said through him.
"Then I'll drag you out of him with my own hands."
She lunged.
The spear thrust toward Riku's throat with clean, practiced precision. The demon lifted one hand almost lazily and a wall of ice burst into being between them. Metal screamed against frost. The impact sent a crack through the frozen barrier, and pain through Riku's shoulder.
Pain.
Human pain.
For a heartbeat the demon's hold slipped.
Riku felt his own voice surge upward from somewhere below. "Stop—"
The demon crushed it. A wave of freezing wind exploded outward from his body, splintering a stall and flinging loose boards across the square. Villagers dove for cover. Snow swirled high enough to blot out half the lanterns.
Akari did not retreat. She ducked under flying timber, rolled through powder, and came up already driving the spear forward again. This time the blade bit his shoulder. Frost shattered at the point of contact, spraying white shards across the snow.
"There's still a person in there!" she shouted.
The words struck harder than the spear.
Riku could not answer. The demon answered for him with a laugh like breaking glass.
Then the village moved.
A blacksmith roared and charged with a loop of iron chain covered in tiny hammered charms. Two farmers came from either side with wood axes. A woman old enough to be someone's grandmother threw a kitchen knife with shaking hands and missed by half a body-length. It should have looked ridiculous.
Instead it looked desperate enough to matter.
The demon answered with fury. Spikes of ice ripped from the ground, forcing them back. One man's axe shattered on contact with a frozen plate forming over Riku's forearm; splinters cut his face and sent him crashing down. Frost climbed Riku's legs, plating bone and tendon in white armor. The demon rose to its full height inside him and the air itself seemed to recoil.
Then the blacksmith's chain snapped around his shins.
The charms flashed orange.
Agony tore through Riku so violently that even the demon staggered. His knees slammed back into the snow.
"Now!" someone screamed.
Villagers swarmed.
Hands grabbed his arms, his shoulders, his hair. Their courage lasted only as long as their fear made them stupid, but for one crucial moment it was enough. Akari darted through them, planted the butt of her spear, and drove the point to the hollow of his throat.
The demon smiled with Riku's mouth.
"You dare?"
Akari leaned in, face pale with cold and fury. "Give him back."
The demon gathered itself to break free.
And tears slid from Riku's eyes.
They froze before they reached his jaw, crystal lines catching the lantern light.
Silence fell.
Akari stared at him. "You're in there," she whispered.
The demon hissed, not aloud, but inside. Its presence recoiled like a tide dragged back by invisible chains. The white blaze in Riku's vision flickered. The pressure in his chest withdrew, not gone, only waiting.
Pain rushed in to fill the space it left.
His lips cracked as he forced them to move. "I—"
Darkness came before the second word.
The last thing Riku saw was Akari's face above him, no longer fearless, but frightened in a way that had nothing to do with the prophecy.