The bone spikes fell toward the top of Inori's head.
These were not drones running a preset path. Each was directed by one of Muzan's brains — remote instruments, his attention split three ways to guide them. From this angle, the girl looked completely unaware. She was cradling the dark feathers at her chest, still, silent as a doll.
A fraction of a second before impact — three Red Feather Blades launched upward from the nest of feathers at her shoulders, angling to intercept.
He'd been noticed. She'd read his real intention.
Too late all the same.
Even while managing King Crimson's assault, Muzan let himself smile. The next step was his.
These Feather Blades were paper against his bone spikes. He already knew to aim for the Inner Eyes. Even if she tried to dodge, the spikes would track her — they had brains. There was no escape.
—?
If one symbol captured Kibutsuji Muzan's entire history of fighting Inori, it was that one. She never stopped producing surprises — from a girl her age, from that small head, came an endless stream of unexpected moves and abilities.
Bone spikes clashed with Feather Blades. He directed his spike toward the Inner Eye as he had before. It didn't pass through.
The eye's resistance hadn't increased. The spike had been absorbed into the space inside it.
Cold rushed through him. He understood immediately. She was using that ability from before — the spatial one. Where would the spikes emerge? Where would they come out?
—Could it — could it be—
He felt something at his back and grasped the worst possibility. But if he pulled his blades away to defend, King Crimson currently pressed against him would break through in an instant.
—Stop! Stop now!
Muzan sent frantic emergency signals to the three detached brains — but there was no pulling an arrow back in flight.
—Too late.
Three bone spikes erupted from the Inner Eye of a Feather Blade planted at his back. They drove straight through his skull — entering from behind, punching through and out the front of his face. The remaining two embedded in his neck and right chest.
The spikes, belatedly realizing they had impaled the wrong target, tried to retract. Inori severed the Inner Eye connections at that exact moment. The forcibly altered physics snapped back — and sheared those three aberrant objects cleanly in two. The brain-end of each tentacle stranded at Inori's side; the spike-end remained in Muzan's body.
The sudden catastrophic damage sent Muzan's consciousness flickering. Every brain gone. He could only absorb the impact. His own weapons, his own brains — they could be repaired in moments — but he had something far more immediate in front of him.
King Crimson had not missed its opening. Both fists punched through the instant gap in Muzan's stalled blades — the burning-blood fists drove into his face.
"Ora!"
The bone spike jutting from his forehead was in the way, so King Crimson flanked it — simultaneous impacts from the left and right, closing on both sides at once. The force was raw and absolute. Muzan's head was crushed inward between them.
—Crack.
The sound of his skull fracturing.
"Ngh—!"
Muzan coughed blood. He looked hideous — head caught between King Crimson's fists, squeezed flat as a deflated ball. King Crimson held the pressure.
"Ora!"
The battle-roar resonated through its burning-blood-forged frame. Its grip shifted — hands seizing Muzan's face and body — and hurled him into the sky like garbage.
Beneath the full moon: the Progenitor of Demons, once untouchable and absolute, now a broken wreck — bones jutting through skin, fractured spikes still buried in his body, his skull no longer anything resembling a human head. He rose to his apex. Began to fall.
—Divide. I have to — divide now.
It was the only thought cycling through what remained of his awareness — to activate his Blood Demon Art, self-division, scatter himself and flee. Get away from this woman. As far as possible.
But King Crimson's crushing blow had been catastrophic. During those brutal squeezing impacts, burning blood plasma had seeped directly into his cranial wounds. It was interfering with his ability to execute the technique.
Already too late.
"WRYYYYYYY—!"
Before Muzan completed his descent, King Crimson was already waiting. The towering monster blazed with blood-light from crown to sole, every surface burning — a war god. It punched, retracted, punched again, both arms weaving twin storms of crimson burning blood.
"Ora ora ora ora ora ora ora ora ora!!!!"
It was going to end Kibutsuji Muzan.
Burning-blood fist after burning-blood fist landed on Muzan's body, each impact cracking like an exploding charge. At that speed, the sounds blurred together into something almost like a machine gun. Muzan's body came apart under the endless barrage — chunks of flesh corroded and dissolved by the burning blood coating every fist — until nothing remained. The three detached tentacle-ends at Inori's side were mopped up by her Red Feather Blades, toxin delivered, dissolution complete.
No waiting for dawn. No need to worry about him desperately fleeing. Just as she had expected — Inori had found Kibutsuji Muzan, and killed him. The final boss of Kimetsu no Yaiba.
She cradled the feathers at her chest and watched the last severed tentacle writhe in the Red Feathers' corrosion. Watched it dissolve.
"It's over."
She said it to no one. And she felt nothing — no joy of victory. None of the relief and satisfaction she had felt after beating Eve, or Kira Yoshikage.
Maybe it was the lack of any real buildup. She'd found him where she'd expected to find him, and killed him the way she'd expected to. Nothing more, nothing less. For an ordinary human sword-wielder, Muzan would have been effectively invincible. But Inori was King Crimson's Stand user.
Even with King Crimson's strange transformation, that much hadn't changed.
"Ah~"
She raised slender white arms overhead, stretched, and let out a small yawn. A tear pricked at the corner of one eye and clung to her lashes.
"I'm tired."
"Let's go sleep."
King Crimson's blood-state shimmered, fractured into countless streams of bright red liquid, and flowed back into her body. The black feather outfit remained. The goldfish outfit did not return.
She turned that over idly. —Does this mean... my ability to summon a Stand has awakened? But that was strange — if the Stand had separated out as an independent form outside her body, why could she still use the Feather Blades?
Inori looked down at herself.
From this angle, her chest was quite unimpeded — quite a lot of it, actually. By rights certain details should have been clearly visible. The feathers, fortunately, maintained some dignity. They weren't that shameless.
The embarrassed resentment had mostly faded. Well — life was unpredictable. If fate had decided she was never going to be a normal person, what was the use in wishing otherwise?
Get those clothes back on, find somewhere to sleep.
Tomorrow could take care of the rest.