The next morning started with a command, not a request.
"Take this to the Field Office guardhouse," Torako ordered, shoving a stack of bento boxes into my arms. "The guards have been on shift for twelve hours. If they faint from hunger, the barrier weakens. Go."
"You got it boss."
I walked through the streets, the summer heat already rising off the pavement. The place was on edge—civilians didn't know what was happening, but they could feel the tension.
I dropped off the food at the guardhouse. The Exorcists on duty looked at me with that familiar mix of fear and suspicion, but they took the food.
"Thanks," one muttered, not making eye contact.
"Uh-huh," I said.
I didn't head back to the Inn immediately. I found a secluded clearing near a dried-up riverbed about a mile away. It was quiet. Private.
I sat down on a flat rock, crossed my legs, and closed my eyes.
Inhale. Compress. Exhale. Expand.
I was trying to reach "Zero." The state Tatsuma had hinted at. He told me it wasn't just a mental state but a unification of heart and flame—a state where the flames no longer destroyed, but simply existed. My soul was a collapsing star, and my human body was the cage holding it. Right now, the cage door was stuck.
I could feel the power—the infinite, reality-bending energy of a Flame God—sitting just behind a wall in my subconscious. I tried to pull it out, to shape it into the physics-defying presence I needed, but my flesh kept pumping the brakes.
My intent is absolute, but my body resists, I thought, gritting my teeth.
"Yo."
My eyes snapped open. The red rings flared.
Renzo Shima stood there, holding a convenience store soda. He wasn't in his combat gear; just a t-shirt and jeans, looking like he'd rather be literally anywhere else.
"What'cha want, Pinky?" I asked, not moving from my position.
"Nothing, nothing," Renzo said, raising his hands in surrender. "Just walking off breakfast. Saw you sitting here looking like you were trying to lay an egg. What's the deal with the intense workout? You barely slept."
"I'm upgrading," I stated, closing my eyes again.
"Upgrading?" Renzo chuckled, sitting on a nearby guardrail. "Why bother? You're already strong enough to scare the crap out of everyone. Plus, you've got the brooding bad-boy look down. The ladies love that. You don't need more muscle to get a date."
Horny bastard.
I opened one eye. "Is that all you think about?"
"It's a valid motivation!" Renzo defended. "Why else do we do anything? Love and peace, man."
"You're too thirsty," I scoffed. "Women like confidence, not a begging dog."
Renzo blinked, then laughed. A genuine, surprised laugh. "Harsh. But... maybe accurate."
He looked at me, his expression sobering up a bit.
"You know," he murmured, sipping his soda. "You're less scary when you're just being a jerk. Staying away from you is actually harder than I thought. You're kinda magnetic, in a terrifying way."
"Aye yo, I ain't into boy love dawg," I muttered, getting back to my meditations.
Later at lunch, the weirdness continued.
I walked into the mess hall, expecting the usual silence. Instead, Renzo waved me over like we were best buddies.
"Hey, Chef!" he chirped, mouth full of rice. "Come sit!"
Bon and Konekomaru looked at him like he had grown a second head. I just shrugged and sat down, grabbing a bowl of miso soup.
"You're chipper," I noted.
"Just taking your advice," Renzo winked. "Confidence, right?"
"RENZO!"
The sliding door slammed open. Two men marched in. One had wild blonde hair and looked like a punk rocker; the other had long dark hair and looked like a monk who listened to death metal.
Kinzou and Juzo Shima, the older brothers.
"There you are, you lazy worm!" Kinzou roared. He marched over and smacked Renzo upside the head with a rolled-up newspaper.
"Ow! Kinzou, quit it!"
"Mom told you to clean the altar room!" Kinzou yelled, grabbing Renzo in a headlock. "Stop flirting with the Tokyo students and do your job!"
"Juzo, help!" Renzo wheezed.
Juzo, the calm one, just sipped his tea. "You deserve it. You skipped practice."
I watched the slapstick violence with mild amusement. It was noisy, but... functional.
"Hey," I spoke up. The table went quiet. Kinzou stopped choking Renzo. They all looked at me.
"You two are high-level Exorcists, right?" I asked the brothers.
"Yeah?" Kinzou challenged, puffing his chest out. "What's it to you, Satan-spawn?"
"Kinzou, relax," Juzo warned. He looked at me. "Yes. We are. Why?"
"How do you focus?" I asked. "When you need to channel a high-level mantra, how do you clear your head?"
Juzo thought for a moment.
"You don't clear your head," Juzo said simply. "That's a rookie mistake. If you try to think of 'nothing,' you're thinking about the effort of thinking about nothing."
That makes sense in a weird way.
"Then what?"
"You fill it," Juzo explained. "You find a tether. And you pour everything you have into that single point until the rest of the world disappears."
I stared at him momentarily. A tether… meaning an anchor.
"Thanks," I said, standing up to leave. "That helps, a lot."
Shura found me two hours later in the back training grounds, near a small waterfall.
I was sitting in the lotus position on a flat stone. I was sweating profusely, my veins bulging, but I wasn't moving.
"You look constipated," Shura noted, leaning against a tree. "Give it up, Rin. You've been at this since breakfast. We have sword drills to run."
"I'm hitting a wall," I grunted, opening my eyes. The ruby rings were dull. "My mind knows what to do. My body knows what to do. But my flesh keeps rejecting the soul."
"Maybe you're overthinking it," Shura suggested, checking her nails. "You keep trying to logic your way through it. Maybe you need to stop acting like a human and start being a demon."
I looked at the Kurikara lying in its sheath next to me. Then I remembered Juzo's words.
"The sword," I realized aloud.
"What?" she questioned.
"The sword holds my heart," I said, grabbing the sheath. "It holds the demon side. The source. I've been trying to pull power from my body, but the engine isn't just inside me. It's in the blade too."
Or at least it did hold my heart, I corrected myself mentally. My demon heart was transported back into my body when I transmigrated here. But the sword remembers. It held that essence for years. It's still a bridge.
"You want to draw it here?" Shura asked, tense. "You'll alert the whole sect."
"No," I shook my head. "I don't need to draw it. I need to connect to it."
I laid the sheathed Kurikara across my lap. I rested my hands on the hilt and the scabbard, feeling the cold steel and the rough wood. I closed my eyes.
Don't pull,sync.
I reached out with my Soul Sight, and looked for the echo of my own existence inside the seal.
THUMP.
I felt something. It was like a heartbeat.
The connection snapped into place. The static in my head vanished.
Suddenly, I wasn't in Kyoto anymore.
I was floating in a dark, endless expanse of neon blue. Gehenna. The air was heavy, hot, and smelled of brimstone.
And standing there, amidst the blue flames, was an old man. Shiro Fujimoto.
He wasn't saying anything. He was just standing there, smoking a cigarette, smiling that goofy, confident smile.
The regret hit me like a truck.
I could have stopped it, I thought. I had the knowledge of how to sever a possession through the powers of Banshōman. But I froze. Not because I didn't know how, but because I was scared. Scared to give up the routine I became accustomed to. Scared to fully become the monster I needed to be to save him.
The vision of Shiro didn't judge. He just pointed at my chest. Then he pointed at the flames.
You didn't freeze, it seemed to say. You hesitated because you cared. You are Rin Okumura. Stop fighting the fire. Be the fire.
The barrier in my mind—the wall between my original human self and the Divine Vessel I now inhabited—shattered. I wasn't a pilot driving a suit anymore. I was something beyond, something absolute.
SNAP.
My eyes flew open.
"Holy shit!" Shura exclaimed.
I looked down.
I wasn't sitting on the rock anymore. I was floating three feet in the air.
My legs were still crossed. There was no wind, no blast of fire pushing me up. I was simply Denying Gravity. I had commanded the space beneath me to hold my weight, and reality obeyed.
The aura surrounding me wasn't wild, nor was it an explosion. It was a Mantle of the Sun—a thin, humming layer of neon-blue, absolute heat coating my skin like a second layer of flesh.
But the heat... it was unbearable.
Normally the heat from my flames wouldn't even effect me, but this heat was different. It wasn't just hot, It was tiers above the typical flames I was born with.
It feels like I'm being cooked from the inside out.
"Rin!" Shura stepped forward, shielding her face. "You're smoking!"
I took a breath. The air entering my lungs hissed as it turned to steam. My skin was turning a deep, angry red. My clothes were starting to singe at the edges, smoke curling off my shoulders.
"Shura," I said. My voice sounded distorted. Like it was coming through a synthesizer. "I think the pot... is finally boiling."
Shura stared at me in awe. She had seen high-level Exorcists. She had seen Demon Kings. But she was looking at me like she was witnessing the birth of a new, terrifying god.
"You..." Shura swallowed, her hand drifting to her sword hilt instinctively. "What the hell are you?!"
The strain hit a critical point.
My body could not regenerate fast enough to heal the damage from the new sensation and started to rejected the heat. The Mantle around me sputtered and collapsed.
I dropped three feet, hitting the rock hard.
"Ahhh!"
I doubled over, coughing violently. Smoke—literal black smoke—poured out of my mouth with every cough. My skin was blistering, radiating heat so intense the grass around me curled and died instantly. It felt like I had just run a marathon inside a blast furnace.
"Rin!" Shura rushed over, but stopped inches away, the heat rolling off me too intense to touch.
I looked up, blood streaming from my nose, my vision blurry, my body feeling like it was made of molten lead. But I grinned. A painful, cracked grin.
"I told you," I rasped, steam rising from my teeth. "I'm different."