"Watch out behind you!" Cold Cry shouted, but the warning came too late.
Every Contestant's attention had been locked on the injured Three-Headed Demon. By the time anyone refocused, the Spider Demon and the Jumping Demon were already on top of them.
One Contestant's chest caved in under the Jumping Demon's feet, leaving only his head to roll across the ground. He never even understood what killed him.
Another died when the Spider Demon snapped his neck the same way it always did.
The team that had just found its footing slid back toward collapse. Before Kimura and the others could react, the crowd surged toward Cold Cry all at once.
The exact thing he'd been afraid of was happening.
The rushing Contestants collided head-on with the attacking demons, and the whole clearing dissolved into chaos.
Whatever order the fight had had was gone. Contestants started dropping to the demons' wild attacks, and with the Spider Demon and Jumping Demon slipping in for kills whenever they saw an opening, the advantage the team had clawed back began slipping away fast.
Cold Cry tried to swing his blade a few times, but the crowd kept pressing in and throwing him off balance. Some of them understood they were leaning on his protection. Others seemed to think it was the other way around, that they were protecting him.
Noe, Kimura, and Akino fought their way to the edge of the crowd, cutting down demons that lunged in while trying to get everyone to spread out and stop bunching together.
But with the Spider Demon and Jumping Demon picking people off from every direction, all anyone wanted was to stand next to the strongest person there. It felt like the only way to live.
"I... I'll help you."
Noe finally shoved her way through to Cold Cry's side and fell in beside him, swinging her blade at the demons closing in.
Not far off, the Three-Headed Demon dragged itself back up off the ground and fixed its glare on the huddled crowd. It wouldn't be long before it came at them again.
Cold Cry tried to push his way clear, knowing that staying put would get him dragged down along with everyone else eventually. But every time he moved, the crowd moved with him. The message was clear: wherever you go, we go.
Watching the Spider Demon and Jumping Demon keep cutting people down, with the Three-Headed Demon back on its feet behind them, Cold Cry felt something in him about to snap.
Noe swung her blade and took a demon's hand off, but didn't see the one climbing up the side of the crowd, lunging straight for her face.
Cold Cry shoved her out of the way and beheaded it himself. As it died, he turned a sharp look on her, still shaking, and snapped, "Help me? With what? Someone who can't even bring herself to kill a demon, and you think you belong in the Demon Slayer Corps? Don't make me laugh. Get out of my way."
It was the first time he'd ever spoken to her like that.
Those two words landed like a blade going in. Being turned away by Kimura back in the square had only stung. This was worse. This left her cold all over, dizzy with it.
Cold Cry had been the first person to know what she was and accept her anyway. She'd guarded that carefully ever since, terrified of the day he'd take it back. She just hadn't expected it to actually happen.
She looked up at him, still fighting for his life in the middle of the crowd, and her eyes blurred with tears before she could stop them. That was when she caught it: a gray shape cutting sideways through the air, straight at him.
The Jumping Demon?
It was. With Cold Cry too stretched thin to watch every angle, it had finally found its opening. It hadn't forgotten the Nichirin blade that had gone through its palm earlier.
Everyone had already seen what that thing's legs could do. A direct hit like that wouldn't kill him outright, but it would take his ribs with it.
Noe froze for half a second, then screamed his name and threw herself through the crowd, arms out, putting herself between him and the demon before she'd even finished deciding to.
By the time Cold Cry registered the attack, it was already too late to stop her.
He hated being shielded by a woman more than almost anything, and this girl had gone and done exactly that.
She threw everything aside and put her body between him and the blow.
The impact tore through Noe and hit him anyway. Even with her taking the worst of it, the force still slammed into his chest hard enough to knock the air out of him.
The two of them were thrown clear through the crowd and sent flying backward. It happened so fast that no one had time to react.
Cold Cry was the whole team's hope now; his life meant the difference between all of them living or dying, and nobody had expected the Jumping Demon to go after him directly.
By the time anyone caught up to what had happened, the two of them had already flown more than ten meters and slammed into a tree.
Cold Cry let out a strangled sound and spat blood where he lay. Noe, still in his arms, had gone still, no telling if she was even alive.
The Contestants sank back into despair. Every face went gray, every set of eyes dulled with defeat.
Some stopped fighting back at all. The ones who kept swinging did it without any real belief left in it, and the group kept giving ground.
Kimura felt something close to panic settle in his chest. Were they really about to repeat the first night all over again?
"Are you giving up? Is staying alive really harder than this? Would you rather run straight into death than take one last stand?"
Every head turned toward him.
Kimura swept his gaze across the crowd, unflinching. "We can't keep leaning on someone else. It's our own cowardice, our own selfishness, that just cost us the one thing we were counting on." Everyone knew whom he meant.
They looked at him, then at Cold Cry and Noe crumpled against the tree roots, no one sure if either of them was still breathing, and heads dropped one by one.
"We're out of the road. Either we die here on Fujikasane Mountain and end up as meat for these things, or we fight until the end and put at least a few of us in front of tomorrow's sun. Those people carry the rest of us with them."
His words hit like liquor going down, a hot burn that got everyone's blood moving again.
"If we give up now, no one remembers us. Fight to the last second, and we won't be forgotten. I'm honored to have stood with every one of you. Let's finish this together."
It worked, the same as before.
The crowd let out a roar and raised their blades like they were raising glasses. Then, with Kimura leading, they threw themselves back at the demons. People still fell, here and there, but nobody flinched, and nobody ran.
Fear only exists because something in you still wants to live. Let go of that, and death stops being able to touch you.