She raised both hands in tandem, the withered fingers holding the carved flute bringing it to meet the decaying bone of her left arm.
As they touched, her flesh squirmed. The wooden instrument fused directly into the exposed skeletal structure of the wrist, melding together into a single, horrific union. The dark wood faded, bleached instantaneously into the stark, dry white of sun-baked bone.
Before she could raise the skeletal flute to her lips, a thick shroud of pitch-black darkness erupted behind her back. The shadows twisted and coalesced, sprouting a secondary pair of rotting, elongated arms from her shoulders.
Pruhh...! Parrah...! Puh... Puh...
She raised the bleached flute to her lips and began to play. Short, jarring bursts of discordant notes pierced the suffocating silence, vibrating directly through the air and settling into the marrow of Watanabe's bones.
She lowered the flute, a wide, sickly grin splitting her decaying jaw.
"You seem so kind-hearted..." she rasped, her hollow eye sockets staring straight through him. "I wonder how you will fare..."
As her mouth widened into a chuckle, three black, rotten teeth slipped from her gums, dropping onto the wet grass with soft, sickening thuds.
"Secret Art: Domain of the Puppetmaster..." her raspy voice whispered.
CRACK! GLASS SHATTERING!
A sound like fracturing crystal echoed through the dead air. The silent, bell-strung illusion shattered in an instant, dissolving like mist.
Sensory reality slammed back into Watanabe with brutal force. The freezing rain pelted his face, and the howling winds rushed through the trees, blowing far harder and faster than before.
"Ha... A gravesite...?" he murmured, taking in his new surroundings.
Spread out across the muddy hillside in every direction were dozens of cracked, moss-covered tombstones. In areas where no markers stood, rotting wooden stakes and sunken earthen mounds lined the ground. He had unknowingly stepped directly into the overgrown burial grounds of the village.
Before his thoughts could settle, the mud beneath the graves began to churn.
Squelch... Crunch...
Decaying, soil-caked hands clawed their way up through the mud. Within seconds, hundreds of rotting corpses pulled themselves from their shallow graves, standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the opposite side of the field, their hollow eyes staring blankly at Watanabe.
Pruhh... Parrah...
The four-armed corpse lowered her bleached bone flute, taking a ragged breath before speaking again.
"Tell me, young warrior... did you know there was once a great fire in this village...?"
"...Huh?" Watanabe's brow furrowed, his fingers tightening around the hilt of his katana as the undead army took their first collective step forward.
"Oh... yes, it's true," the four-armed corpse continued, her raspy voice weaving through the sound of the howling wind. "It happened on a night much like this one. One of the central homes was struck by lightning, and the flames spread rapidly across the wooden roofs. Hundreds perished in those fires... and thousands more starved in the aftermath because their neighbouring villages refused to offer aid. And you know, when so many souls die choked on such intense resentment... when they are summoned back, they—"
SHRING!
Before she could finish her sentence, a massive shadow loomed over Watanabe's left flank.
His instincts flared. Reacting in a fraction of a second, he snapped his katana upward to form an improvised guard just as a colossal, skeletal fist smashed down into his position.
CLANG!
Sparks flew into the rain-drenched gloom as steel met hardened bone. Even though Watanabe successfully parried the bulk of the blow, the sheer kinetic weight behind the strike surged down his arms, forcing his boots to skid back several inches across the slick, muddy grass.
Watanabe gritted his teeth, his arms trembling under the heavy pressure as he looked up into the looming shadow of the reanimated giant.
Tsk... that strike came out of nowhere! What on earth is going on here?' Watanabe thought, his eyes narrowing through the storm. 'Enough talking... I need to take her down now!'
Watanabe exploded forward in a blur of motion. Moving in perfect sync with the falling rain, his movement speed was incredible, closing the distance toward the corpse in a single heartbeat.
Positioning himself at her flank, he swept his steel horizontally toward her neck.
"Plum Blossom Art: Sword of Clemence..." he whispered, turning his blade.
CLANG!
To his shock, his sword never reached her flesh. A dense, interlocking wall of skeletal remains burst upward from the mud, trapping Watanabe's katana directly within its bony structure and absorbing the full weight of the strike.
"Kukukuku..."
The raspy laugh echoed from behind the barrier.
"How impatient..." the corpse mocked softly. "As I was trying to tell you... when brought back, these souls still feel the exact agony in which they perished."
Before Watanabe could pull his katana free, the surface of the bone wall shifted. Rotting faces melted out from the structure, the charred, blistered faces of young children. Instantly, the fresh smell of the rain was replaced by the suffocating stench of singed hair and burnt flesh.
"Please... help me..." a small, charred girl sobbed from the wall, her blackened hand reaching outward to grip Watanabe's shoulder. "It hurts so much... it burns..."
THUD!
Watanabe's heart skipped a violent beat. A wave of suffocating grief hit his chest, throwing off his breathing. Reacting purely on instinct, he released his weapon and leapt backwards, landing hard in the mud as he clutched his chest.
"Huff... huff..."
He took two ragged breaths, shaking off the phantom pain, before his eyes steeled into cold focus.
Behind the wall, the bone structure held onto his trapped sword until the silver blade dissolved into a swirling flurry of razor-sharp plum blossom petals. The floral stream zoomed across the battlefield, reforming instantly into the sleek katana back within Watanabe's waiting grip.
"It's just as I thought... You have a very kind heart, don't you?" the creature rasped as the bone wall sank slowly back into the mud.
Her hollow eyes locked onto Watanabe's trembling chest.
"And because of that gentle heart, you will be the first to die here. If you truly wish to survive in a world like this... you must become entirely heartless."
With a sickening squelch, the four-armed corpse plunged two of her clawed hands into her own open chest cavity. She yanked out her own rotting, blackened heart and crushed it within her fist!
CRACK-SPLOSH!
Dark, corrupted blood erupted over the rain-slicked earth. The mud churned violently, and three towering skeletal figures rose from the deep soil. Unlike the mindless corpses before them, these three wore rusted, ancient samurai armour, their bony hands gripping well-crafted weapons: one held a longbow drawn back with an ethereal arrow, another carried a massive tower shield, and the third held a jagged nodachi.
"Come forth, Three Generals of the Past... and do my bidding!" the creature commanded, her voice overlapping with the four-armed silhouette behind her.
Simultaneously, the chorus of a hundred buried corpses wailed in a jarring, unnatural harmony.
"It burns... I'm so hungry... Please, kill me... Have mercy..."
The wails merged seamlessly into the low, erratic melody of the bleached bone flute. The sound waves battered Watanabe's senses. His vision blurred, his head felt heavy as mud, and his chest heaved as the acoustic spell crushed down on him.
He planted his feet in the rain, holding his katana high through the fog of his fading mind.