Da-da... da-da-dum.
A deep, rhythmic resonance vibrated through the earth.
Inside the shattering crystal shell, Shion's heart thundered violently against her ribs. As the crimson rain dripped onto the melting ice. Somehow, the wounds she had sustained were completely knit back together. Even the black, bulging veins from her Reiryoku poisoning had entirely subsided. Her Reiryoku hadn't just recovered; it had evolved, breaking through its previous ceiling to a new level of power.
Her eyes snapped wide open.
Sliding out of the fracturing ice almost entirely by instinct, she flared her renewed energy outward. A flawless, translucent barrier of Reiryoku spread around her form, instantly deflecting the falling droplets of blood and sending them splashing harmlessly onto the stone.
'Tch... my head hurts. What on earth is going on here...?' Shion thought, her vision clearing as she took in the absolute madness of the courtyard.
Her gaze swept across the screaming Yokai and the clashing vanguards, instantly locking onto Watanabe's limp, battered form still lying out in the open. Strangely, the torrential downpour of blood seemed to actively avoid his silhouette, pooling and channelling to the sides. The Sakura petal on his hand pulsed as it deemed.
"Ehhh… Watanabe?!"
Shion rushed forward.
…
"Ha... is that Princess Hattori...?"
The shadowy man stopped dead in his tracks beneath the tilted tiled roof. His eyes narrowed in sheer disbelief as he watched Shion effortlessly lift Watanabe's unconscious body onto her shoulder. Even in his limp state, Watanabe's hair remained stark, ghostly white, completely refusing to revert to its original colour.
The moment her feet touched the wet stone, Shion's silhouette distorted, and she seamlessly melted into the dark shadows of the courtyard, vanishing from the battlefield without leaving a single trace of her presence.
'That art... there is absolutely no mistaking it. It is her,' the shadowy man thought, a sinister, ecstatic thrill running down his spine. 'So this is where she has been hiding all this time...'
The man also sank fluidly into the darkness, melting into the shadows in a manner mirroring Shion's execution.
'My, my... today is truly proving to be full of magnificent surprises. The patriarch will be absolutely ecstatic when he receives my report. If we manage to capture her alive... we can finally proceed with the unification of all the clans of Iga.'
He pursued her trail through the darkness, but he wasn't the only one moving. The Naikki shinobi, who had supposedly been following Mai's orders, broke off from the fight. He vanished into thin air, a few paces away.
"Mmmm, seems I was correct... You are originally from Iga as well," a voice hissed smoothly from the darkness. The Naikki shinobi materialised directly behind the shadowy man, a cold, mocking smirk playing on his lips. "You can't hide that scent from me."
"Ahhhh, man... and here I really thought that I had managed to mask my presence properly this time," the man sighed, slowly turning around to face his pursuer.
"But as a trained shinobi... didn't your master ever teach you the number one rule of the trade?"
The man's voice didn't come from the figure standing in front of the Naikki boy. Instead, it echoed from directly behind his blind spot. A freezing, razor-sharp steel kunai pressed hard against the boy's throat.
SPLAT!
With a swift, ruthless jerk of his wrist, the man sliced the Nikki boy's neck cleanly from ear to ear. A heavy geyser of crimson splattered across the wet leaves. The boy's breath instantly turned ragged and hollow as desperate, choking bursts of air whistled uselessly through his severed windpipe before he collapsed into the mud.
"Hrrrrrrt...HRrrrrt"
The first figure standing in front of the corpse slowly rippled, walking forward to meet the executioner. The two identical forms seamlessly melted into one another.
"Tch... the brat has just completely ruined my pacing," the man muttered to himself, looking down at the unmoving corpse. "Since I was forced to eliminate him, I am certain that Mai will notice his absence and start hunting for him. I can't afford to linger on this island any longer."
He turned his back on the battlefield and began walking forward into the deep brush of the forest.
'Well... it doesn't truly matter anyway,' a smile spread across his hidden features as his thoughts settled. 'With the information that I have gathered so far... I have more than enough to satisfy the patriarch.'
Reaching up, his fingers caught the edges of the academy armour and the kimono he had been wearing as a disguise. With a single fluid motion, he tore the garments off, dropping the uniform into the dirt.
"Well... that isn't very polite of you. Attempting to leave the tavern right after consuming a massive meal... without even bothering to settle the bill?"
"Ha?!"
The shadowy man's instincts screamed. He violently vaulted backwards into the air, narrowly dodging a blindingly fast leg sweep that tore through the underbrush beneath him. He skidded across the wet earth, his mind racing in sheer disbelief as his gaze locked onto the attacker.
'How on earth is he still alive...?! No! I saw him drop to the group he is unmistakably dead! So how is his shell moving?!'
The Naikki boy's head was dangling grotesquely from side to side, his neck clearly shattered from the previous execution. Yet, his limbs jerked and twitched with terrifying rigidity.
"Tch... Mai truly is terribly sloppy. To think he allowed a spy to run around right under his nose..."
Miyazaki no Mifune's smooth, detached voice vibrated directly out of the corpse's throat, the sound wet and warped by the severed windpipe.
"Ha... an Onmyōdō puppetry spell...?" the shadowy man murmured, tightening his posture.
"That is correct," the corpse responded, its broken neck snapping upward with a sickening crack as its uncanny eyes locked onto the spy. "This is my technique... the Kiss of Death. With it, I can control anyone who bears my spiritual seal, the exact moment their heartbeat ceases. And what's more... this curse allows me to forcefully draw out the absolute maximum latent potential their vessels would have naturally achieved had they lived a full, uninterrupted life."
The moment those hollow words left the dead lips, a massive, suffocatingly dense purple aura violently exuded from the corpse's pores, shattering the ground beneath its feet as its spiritual pressure flew.
'Tch... I completely fell for it,' the shadowy man's thoughts turned frantic as a cold sweat broke out across his neck. 'I foolishly stood still and allowed him to explain the mechanics of his technique to me. I'm certain that speech was a binding requirement of the curse!'
Dropping low into a desperate battle stance, the spy's heart hammered against his ribs as he stared down the artificially evolved monster.
'I have to break away from and get off this island immediately!'