Against the combined assault of the Wind and Flame Hashira, Inori had drawn the Golden Feather Blade—a weapon completely unlike the Red Feather Blade. It was a power inseparably linked to King Crimson's signature technique: Time Erasure.
King Crimson, in its original form, could erase several seconds from the world's flow of time. No one except Inori could react to whatever happened in that window.
The Golden Feather Blade, born from part of the Nameless Monster's body, worked differently: whoever it struck would, for up to ten seconds, enter a state of Time Erasure—unable to react to anything that occurred during that window, continuing mechanically along their original trajectory.
Say someone who hated sweet dumplings was tricked into receiving a box of what they assumed were the salty kind—but turned out to be sweet. Under normal circumstances, one bite of the wrong flavor would be enough to stop them. But if they'd been struck by the Golden Feather Blade before eating, by the time they came back to themselves—they'd have put away the entire box of sweet dumplings they despised, unable to stop for the taste being wrong.
But the Golden Feather Blade had its own particular constraint: once a shot was fired, it required a preparation interval before another could be launched. Inori theorized this was tied to the color distribution of her Goldfish Outfit—red was the dominant tone, gold only an accent.
Rengoku, struck by the golden feather, had completed his original swing without ever noticing Inori had slipped away without a sound.
"?"
Not just Rengoku—Sanemi had caught the strangeness too. Just now, Rengoku's movements had gone strangely slow and mechanical. Flame Tiger covered an enormous range; at that distance, a simple sidestep shouldn't have been possible. Yet Rengoku had charged straight for his original target point like a man who couldn't see Inori at all. Had that woman done something to him?
"Inori!"
Shinobu's voice cracked as she called out the name.
The clash had been unavoidable in the end: Inori fighting both Hashira, and all Shinobu could do was stand here and watch. She couldn't side against Inori. Not in her heart. But she was a Corps member; she couldn't turn her blade on a Hashira either.
Hadn't Inori stopped both her and Onee-san from drawing, over and over? For exactly this reason. Her choice was clear; she would rather carry all of it herself than deepen the misunderstanding between both sides, and she was trying to clear both sisters from any involvement before she left.
"Don't worry about me, Shinobu-chan."
"I'll come back to see you."
Inori stood on the narrow outer wall, feet as steady as if she were walking flat ground. The black haori stirred in the wind. Her pink hair lifted on the breeze. In the moonlight, she looked like a black iris in full bloom.
"Kill her—both Hashira-sama, kill her now! You can't let her escape!"
The Red Feather Blade was still lodged in Kaigaku's shoulder, and he bit through the pain to force himself back to his feet. He couldn't pry the thing out on his own, but with Inori about to flee he couldn't spare a thought for his wound.
If she escaped, she'd find a way to come back for him. He was certain of it.
"Wind Breathing, Third Form—"
Sanemi had barely shaken off his shock when several Red Feather Blades screamed at him from every direction. He was forced to change mid-form and cut out three spinning wind blades to intercept.
But the Feather Blades—blazing crimson trails through the dark, impossibly fast, moving like they were toying with him. They feinted at him and then, the moment his counter should have landed, veered off at the last instant. He swung. Missed. The moment he caught his breath they wheeled back in to harass him again. Back and forth, without end.
Sanemi was furious. And he had no answer for any of it.
Rengoku gathered himself and looked up. Inori was balanced on the narrow wall-top—steady, unhurried—surrounded by a revolving cloud of Red Feather Blades with their watching eyes flying to and fro, forming a natural defensive barrier.
He was the Flame Hashira, but his temperament ran counter to fire's nature: measured, deliberate. The brief exchange had told him enough—Inori's abilities were unlike anything he'd encountered. If she truly wanted to go, neither he nor Sanemi could stop her. He needed to observe. No reckless moves until it was truly necessary.
Wait.
—Why is she still here, drawing this out against us?
"You're called Kaigaku, weren't you? Hmph—I don't bother remembering the names of vermin. But I suppose I owe you a small thanks."
Inori watched Kaigaku on the ground with a cold smile. More precisely, she was looking at the Red Feather Blade still buried in his shoulder—calculating the exact distance from herself to that feather.
"Ha? You... are you out of your mind?"
Kaigaku's voice went flat. He was terrified underneath, but he forced a bold front.
"If you hadn't set me up, I wouldn't have had this chance to leave the Demon Slayer Corps. So, as a parting gift, I'll give you the most glorious execution I can."
She said nothing more. She only raised her arm, reaching toward one of the Feather Blades floating at her side.
What followed—witnessed by everyone present—was a spectacle that shattered the narrow limits of their world.
Inori pressed her hand against the eye on the Feather Blade's surface and opened a hole in it. The hole swallowed her arm whole. From the outside, she looked as though her arm had been severed at the elbow.
Then—thirty-odd meters away—Kaigaku, still gasping on the ground, let out a sudden shriek.
The vanished half of her arm had emerged from the feather-eye lodged in his shoulder—a ghostly claw, slamming around his throat and squeezing hard. Then it yanked. Kaigaku was hauled bodily through the tunnel of the eye and deposited directly at her side.
The Inner Eye could bridge more than just feathers. In theory, it could transmit any object—and unlike the Golden Feather Blade's deletion of time, this was a Stand ability that deleted space itself: Space Erasure.
"D-demon... demon..."
Kaigaku turned purple, eyes bulging, his hands never stopping their frantic kicking and clawing as he spent every last scrap of his strength trying to break free. It didn't budge. Inori's arm hung in place like a nail driven through solid air.
—Just how strong is she?
The pain was one thing. What swelled larger was sheer, primal terror. He might have been frightened to death before she even crushed his windpipe.
"Let him go. We can talk this through—don't kill him."
Rengoku didn't like informants of Kaigaku's stripe. But he liked even less watching a human get killed by a demon right in front of him—and besides, this contemptible creature was still critical as a witness.
"There's something I'd like to tell you, Flame Hashira."
"I have never eaten a human. And I don't plan to start."
The pond below reflected moonlight, brilliant. The fire Rengoku had driven into it burned on, releasing coils of rising mist, the water churning and bubbling.
"But I am very curious what cooked human flesh smells like."
The moment the last word left her mouth, she flung the writhing thing in her hand down toward the water below. The steam parted. The body struck the surface with a heavy crash and sent up a spray.
The pond was shallow, not much water. Even the small flame Rengoku had sent into it was enough to bring it to a boil: a small pot of clear broth.
Kaigaku bobbed to the surface of the scalding water. His bulging eyes stared wide. What little expression remained on his blood-smeared face was something between disbelief and resentment, and it faded as his foul cheeks slowly deepened to the cooked red of meat.
Kaigaku was done.
No one wanted to eat him, not even a demon. The smell coming off him was genuinely, wretchedly revolting.
Being boiled alive was perhaps a cruel way to die.
Even so, it wasn't enough to erase what he had done.
So die he would. Someone like him was a hazard alive. Sooner or later he would manufacture more tragedies, and someday he would turn on Zenitsu and Jigoro Kuwajima for his own benefit, and there would be no stopping it.
Kaigaku was dead.
Inori felt much better. Her mood lifted, clear and bright. It had been a long, long time since she'd killed anyone with her own hands. Even with Yoshikage Kira, all she'd done was release the parking brake and let the Jo-bulance run him down.
She hoped Zenitsu and his Jii-chan wouldn't hold this against her.