Tahōtō.
A five-story wooden spiritual tower, nestled in the deep mountains west of Musashi Province.
The tower was black, like old wood soaked in ink. Every pillar, every tile was carved with dense Sanskrit characters and curse seals.
No walls surrounded the tower. No villages. Even wild animals avoided the place.
For half a mile around, nothing grew. Only cracked yellow earth and jagged rocks.
Living things instinctively feared this place.
Because beneath the tower, something was breathing.
Slow and heavy.
Like a heartbeat buried deep in the earth.
Tsubaki landed before the tower.
The spatial displacement achieved through her curse had consumed most of her spiritual power. Her legs were slightly weak. Her white robes and red hakama were stained with mud and dew.
She didn't care.
She looked up at the black five-story tower.
Moonlight fell on its surface. The ancient techniques and curse seals faintly glowed with a dark gold, the seal was still functioning.
But it was already loosening.
When she had crushed the seal-breaking talisman at Kaede Village, the signal had already been transmitted here.
The first layer of the seal had cracked.
Tsubaki walked forward and pressed her palm to the tower door.
The door was cold.
So cold it didn't feel like wood, but like touching ice.
"Master," she murmured. "I'm sorry."
No true regret. Just a ritual farewell.
She formed a seal.
Her hands crossed, fingers intertwining. The hand seal she had practiced countless times, the Tahōtō's unsealing seal, took shape between her fingers.
Crack.
The sound of the second seal layer breaking came from within the tower.
Then the third.
The fourth.
With each breaking layer, the tower shook, and the golden light of those Sanskrit curse seals dimmed further.
By the fourth layer, the tower door split open on its own.
Not pushed.
Pried open from the inside by something.
A chaotic odor, like a mix of countless foreign essences, surged from the gap.
Turbid energy. Yin energy. Demonic aura.
Also, ghostly energy.
Not the kind of demon caused by disease like Muzan Kibutsuji's spawn, beings whose essence was human, simply resembling evil ghosts.
But true yōkai.
And far stronger than Shinji, a 'new ghost', an old ghost of at least five hundred years, with its demonic aura.
So thick it made one sick.
Tsubaki stepped back. Not in fear. Just waiting.
The final layer of the seal remained.
The core seal, forged with her master's lifetime of spiritual power, even if the first four layers were shattered, this last layer could still hold for some time.
But not for long.
Because what Tsubaki was about to do next would completely shatter it from within.
She took something from her robe.
Not a talisman, not a magical tool.
A porcelain bottle.
Inside was demon blood, still some left, and in considerable quantity.
This time, instead of pouring it out after removing the stopper, she shook the bottle, letting the dark red liquid surge at the mouth, emitting a pungent stench.
Then she brought the bottle to her lips.
Drank.
One gulp, two gulps.
Until it all disappeared down her throat.
The moment the demon blood entered her, her body began to convulse violently.
A tortured distortion appeared on her beautiful face. The upward tilt of her eyes stretched wider. Her normally brown pupils began shifting toward dark red.
Veins, like snakes, bulged beneath her skin, spreading from her neck to her cheeks.
The demon blood rampaged inside her, trying to transform her, a living human, into a demon.
Under normal circumstances, such a transformation required the blood of the Demon Progenitor, Muzan Kibutsuji, to succeed.
Ordinary demon blood, at insufficient concentration, would only poison a person to death.
But Tsubaki was no ordinary person.
She was a shrine maiden. She had spiritual power.
She was also highly skilled in black magic aimed at humans.
And she had already imprinted techniques within her own body, using them as a medium to forcibly guide, suppress, and absorb that distorted power.
Not full demonization.
But half-demonization.
Retaining human consciousness and a shrine maiden's spiritual power, while gaining a demon's regenerative ability and physical strength.
The cost was that her spiritual power would be constantly eroded by the demon blood, eventually consumed entirely.
But that was for later.
Now what she needed was power.
Enough power to open the final layer of the seal. Enough power to 'speak' with the evil demon beneath the tower.
Even enough power to.... 'devour' it!
Tsubaki knelt before the tower gate, hands braced on the ground.
The demon blood's transformation continued.
Her fingernails began to lengthen, extending from rounded shapes into sharp claws. Her teeth made faint grinding sounds behind her lips, her canines elongating.
Her white shrine maiden's top was stretched taut by the swelling flesh at her shoulders and back. Beneath the fabric, her body was being reshaped by the demon blood, not the inhuman mutation of demonization, but a distortion of human bloodlines.
But her eyes remained clear.
Within her dark red pupils, reason remained.
Even the spiritual power that had been sealed by Kikyō, in that moment of expansion, it broke free!
"What do you want?" A voice came from within the tower.
Low, hoarse, with the dryness of centuries of slumber.
Like stone grinding against stone.
Tsubaki looked up at the cracked tower door. In the dark gap she saw two dim red lights flicker.
Eyes.
"I want your power," Tsubaki said, her voice hoarse from the demon blood's erosion. "In exchange, I'll set you free."
The two red lights were silent for a moment.
Then, they laughed.
That laugh, emerging from the tower, shook the rubble on the ground.
"A shrine maiden making a deal with a demon."
"Interesting."
"Do you know what you're doing?"
"Yes." Tsubaki stood. The demon blood's transformation had stabilized.
Her face was still that beautiful one, but her pupils had turned dark red, her canines slightly protruding past her lips, her fingernails sharp as claws.
Her white-and-red shrine maiden robes wrapped around a half-human, half-demon body.
Contradictory.
Twisted.
But possessing a strangely eerie kind of allure.
Tsubaki's voice grew cold. "I want your power."
"Your abilities, your demonic aura, the centuries of demon power you've accumulated, all of it, fused into my body."
"And your consciousness will be suppressed, sealed, and destroyed by my spiritual power."
"In other words...."
She raised her hand, that hand now a claw, pointing toward the depths of the tower gate. "I am going to eat you."
The red light within the tower flickered.
The laughter stopped.
After a moment of silence, that voice spoke again: "You think you can suppress me?"
"Let's find out, then."
Tsubaki pressed her hand to the tower gate.
The final layer of the seal.
Her spiritual power, twisted by the demon blood, chaotic, but still strong, poured into the seal's core.
Not merely unlocking it, but more thoroughly, crushing it.
Using the dual impact of demon power and shrine maiden spiritual power, she struck the seal from both inside and out simultaneously.
Boom—!
The tower shattered.
Black wood exploded in all directions. The golden light of the Sanskrit curse seals flickered one last time in the air, then went out completely.
Darkness surged from the tower's base.
Following it, the evil demon sealed for centuries rose from the ruins.
…
When Momiji and Botan arrived, this was what they saw.
The Tahōtō had collapsed.
The place where they had grown up, the spiritual tower their master had guarded her entire life, was now nothing but broken wood and rubble.
And at the center of the ruins stood Tsubaki.
Around her, black demonic energy and white spiritual power twisted together, like two serpents biting each other.
Her body was absorbing that evil demon's power.
The demon's form was gradually disintegrating before her, turning into a dark red mist that she swallowed, mouthful by mouthful.
Her beautiful face twisted. Dark red light flickered across it.
"Sen… Senior Sister…" Botan's voice broke.
Momiji said nothing.
She just stood there, watching the fallen tower.
Watching her master's life's work reduced to nothing.
Her eyes reddened, but no tears fell. Only anger.
"Momiji, Botan." Kikyō's voice came from behind.
The white-and-red shrine maiden, longbow in hand, stood behind the two young shrine maidens. Her dark, clear eyes looked ahead at that twisted mass of light and darkness.
"Stand back."
No room for discussion. A simple statement. An order.
Momiji and Botan stepped back half a step.
Because of Kikyō's pressure.
And because they knew that the coming battle was beyond their level.
Shinji landed beside Kikyō.
The remnants of lightning still coiled around him, purple arcs jumping between his sleeves.
He looked ahead at Tsubaki, who was devouring the demon.
The cat demon's paw in his robe vibrated violently.
[Cat Demon's Paw: Affection +8]
[Current Affection: 80 (Symbiosis)]
[It is excited. It smells an extremely dense aura of death. The evil demon, having consumed an entire town's population centuries ago, has accumulated such thick death energy, it drives it mad.]
Shinji pressed down on the paw in his robe.
"Not yet," he murmured. "It's not your turn yet."