The transition was a violent surge of adrenaline. Edward Hyde did not possess the refined patience of the doctor; he possessed a singular, concentrated malice. As the demons lunged, Hyde moved with a speed that defied the laws of biology. He didn't just strike; he dismantled.
"Meat, is it?" Hyde's voice was a jagged rasp, dripping with mockery. "Then let's see how much of it you can spare!"
He didn't use a blade—not yet. He used his bare hands, fueled by a strength that felt as though it were pulled from the very void of an eclipse. One demon reached for his throat, only for Hyde to catch the arm and twist. The sound of snapping bone echoed through the silent village like a dry branch breaking. Before the creature could regenerate, Hyde drove a heel into its knee, shattering the joint into a useless pulp.
The demons were horrified. They were used to the terrified screams of villagers, not this whirlwind of calculated brutality. They tried to retreat, but Hyde was everywhere—a blur of indigo silk and dark, amber-rimmed fury. He didn't kill them; he made them handicapped. He tore through their tendons, crushed their windpipes, and pinned them to the earth with heavy stones or broken timber.
Every time a demon tried to heal, Hyde was there to break them again, laughing a low, harrowing laugh that made the monsters realize they were the ones being toyed with.
As the hours of the night bled away, the first grey sliver of dawn began to crest over the eastern peaks. The demons, paralyzed and broken on the ground, began to shriek in a new kind of terror.
"The sun!" one hissed, its eyes bulging. "Help us!"
Hyde stood over them, his arms crossed, his face a mask of cruel amusement. He watched as the first rays of gold touched their grey skin. The demons began to smoke, their flesh sizzling and turning to black ash.
"What's this?" Hyde mocked, leaning down to look a dying demon in its fading eyes. "I thought you were the masters of the harvest? The 'betters' of humanity? And yet, you're so weak you can't even stand a bit of morning light? Pathetic. Truly, you are the bottom of the scrap heap."
He watched with a cold, predatory satisfaction until the last of them had dissolved into nothing but soot on the wind.
The adrenaline began to ebb, and the familiar, agonizing ache of the reversal took hold. Hyde reached into the leather pouch at his waist, his trembling fingers pulling out a small glass vial of the refined serum. He uncorked it with his teeth and drained the bitter liquid in one gulp.
The transformation was swifter this time. The jagged muscles receded, the feral light in the eyes dimmed, and the stature of the man returned to its youthful, fifteen-year-old grace.
Henry Jekyll slumped against the stone well, gasping for air. His mind rushed back into his body, bringing with it the memories of the night's carnage. Usually, he felt nothing but Revulsion for Hyde's actions, but as he looked at the empty spaces where the monsters had stood—monsters that had turned his friends into carrion—he felt a foreign sensation.
For the first time in his two lives, Henry found a deed of Edward Hyde's to be... admirable.
He stood up, brushing the dust from his perfectly tailored kimono. He looked at the piles of grey ash scattered across the dirt of the village. The horror of the slaughterhouse remained, but the scums who had caused it were gone.
"Serves you right," Henry whispered, his voice steady and cold. "Serves you right."
The physician began to move through the wreckage, looking for survivors. The test was no longer a mystery. He knew now that in this world, medicine could save the living, but only the monster within could settle the score with the dead.
******
The morning sun was fully risen now, but it brought no warmth to the hollow shells of the houses Henry had once visited as a friend. He stood in the center of the village square, his medical bag clutched so tightly in his hand that his knuckles were white.
Henry Jekyll was a man of science, a man of logic, and a gentleman of deep, refined empathy. For six months, these people had been his world. He had stitched their wounds, laughed at their festivals, and shared their tea. To see them reduced to this—to mere meat and broken bone—tore at the very fabric of his soul. He moved from one fallen figure to another, his fingers trembling as he checked for pulses he knew he would not find.
"There must have been a way," he whispered to the silent air, his voice thick with a scholar's frustration and a human's grief. "If I had been faster... if the serum had been stronger... if I had only known."
The sound of heavy, deliberate footsteps broke his lament. Henry did not turn; he was too buried in the sight of a child's discarded toy lying in a pool of drying blood.
The air around him suddenly felt heavy, as if the gravity of the mountain itself had shifted. A towering figure emerged from the morning mist. It was a man of immense stature, wearing a green happi over a dark uniform, with a thick set of prayer beads draped around his neck. His eyes were sightless, clouded white, and tears tracked steadily down his weathered cheeks.
It was Gyomei Himejima, the Stone Hashira.
Gyomei stopped short, his "sight" through the vibrations of the earth and the sound of the wind painting a horrific picture. The brutality was absolute. Even for a veteran of the Demon Slayer Corps, the sheer senselessness of the slaughter was a weight upon his heart.
"Namu Amida Butsu..." Gyomei murmured, his large hands coming together in a prayer. "What a pitiful, soul-crushing sight. To be taken so cruelly from the light of the living."
Then, his heightened senses focused on the lone survivor standing in the wreckage. He saw a youth who was clearly not of this land—a British boy with pale skin and sharp features—yet dressed in a perfectly tailored Japanese kimono.
Gyomei felt a strange, jarring dissonance emanating from the boy. He could sense a profound light—a spirit of healing, of order, and of a gentleman's kindness. But beneath that light, like a deep trench under a calm sea, there was a jagged, hulking shadow. It was a scent of violence so cold it rivaled the demons that had just perished.
The Stone Hashira stepped forward, his voice a deep, rumbling bass that carried a strange gentleness.
"Young one," Gyomei spoke, his head tilting slightly as he 'listened' to Henry's heartbeat. "Are you unharmed in body, if not in spirit?"
Henry turned slowly, his expression solemn and etched with a grief that made him look far older than fifteen. He looked up at the giant of a man, noting the uniform and the sheer presence he commanded.
"I am... physically well," Henry replied, his Japanese fluent and respectful, though his voice was hollow. "But I fear I arrived too late to be of any use as a physician. They are all gone. Every single one."
Gyomei sensed the sincerity in the boy's grief. He felt the "light" of the doctor's compassion mourning the dead. Yet, the "shadow" he had sensed earlier remained, a lingering echo of the night's retribution.
"It is a tragedy that defies words," Gyomei said, his tears falling faster. "Tell me, child... the demons that did this. I smell their ash on the wind, but I do not see the work of a Nichirin blade. How is it that you remain, while the monsters have returned to the dust?"
Henry looked at the piles of grey ash, then back at the sightless Hashira. He knew he was being scrutinized by someone far beyond a common soldier.