Just as Tanjiro thought he was dead, the attack from behind seemed to be blocked.
"Tomioka-san!" A look of pure, relieved joy flashed in Tanjiro's eyes at the sight of the newcomer.
Kazama Aoi also let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. With a Hashira here, they were finally safe.
"You did well to hold out until I arrived," Giyu Tomioka said, looking at Tanjiro and Aoi's battered bodies. His brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. "Leave the rest to me."
Rui, seeing yet another Demon Slayer appear, snapped irritably, "One after another. You are incredibly annoying!"
"Blood Demon Art: Cutting Thread Rotation!"
With Rui's furious roar, countless sharp wheels woven from spider silk accelerated once more. With an even more violent momentum, they swept toward Giyu like a maelstrom of death!
In Rui's eyes, this newly arrived black-haired man was just another ant waiting to be shredded.
However, Giyu Tomioka's expression didn't change in the slightest. "Water Breathing, Eleventh Form: Dead Calm."
The moment the words left his lips, the violent "maelstrom of death" raging throughout the clearing seemed to hit a pause button.
Those high-speed, screeching wheels of thread instantly stagnated a meter away from Giyu, as if they had fallen into an invisible realm of absolute stillness.
There was no thunderous collision, no sparks of clashing metal—only a deathly silence.
"What...?" Rui's crimson pupils shrank. For the first time, genuine confusion and shock registered on his face.
He could feel that his connection to the thread-wheels was still active, but no matter how hard he tried to command them, they remained frozen, unable to move an inch.
It was an incomprehensible phenomenon, a suppression that transcended physical laws.
"This is impossible. Again." He couldn't accept that his proud Blood Demon Art was being neutralized so effortlessly. A sense of frustration and fear took root in the deepest parts of his soul.
He frantically urged the blood within his body, pouring even more power into his Blood Demon Art.
However, Giyu Tomioka was faster. The Nichirin Sword in his hand carved a graceful, fatal arc through the air.
Pfft—!
A line of blood instantly bloomed across Rui's neck.
Before he could even register what had happened, his head—still wearing that expression of shock and madness—flew high into the sky in a tragic arc before rolling onto the ground.
炭治郎 dragged his exhausted body over, struggling until he crawled next to Rui's head.
He looked at Rui's crimson eyes, which had lost all their luster and now held only an endless void. A strange, indescribable sadness welled up in Tanjiro's heart.
"Why... are you crying?"
A weak voice emerged from Rui's head, his lips struggling to move.
Tanjiro was taken aback. He only now realized that his own tears had fallen unknowingly, scalding as they tracked down his cheeks.
"Because... you are so sad," Tanjiro said softly. He could clearly feel the waves of despair and loneliness radiating from the demon's severed head.
A extremely faint smile, almost one of relief, seemed to touch the corner of Rui's mouth.
"Is that so... So that's... how it is..."
As the last whisper vanished, Rui's head completely crumbled into ash, scattering into the cold night air.
[Warning: Host's Stamina has dropped rapidly. Initiating forced unconsciousness.]
Aoi felt her vision go black, and she collapsed forward.
Tanjiro turned pale with alarm and tried to reach out to catch her, but his overextended body refused to move. He could only watch helplessly as Aoi's limp body fell toward the ground.
"Kazama-san!"
A hand caught her just before she impacted, sparing her from colliding with the cold earth.
Giyu Tomioka had arrived at her side unnoticed.
He gently lifted Aoi into his arms. While the motion wasn't exactly tender, he held her with unwavering stability.
The unconscious Aoi had no idea what happened next. Her consciousness seemed to plummet into a vast, bottomless ocean—cold, pitch-black, and without a single glimmer of light.
In this silent darkness, she couldn't feel the passage of time, nor the pain in her body.
The cold system notifications in her mind had long since vanished, replaced by a chaotic blur of fractured images flashing before her eyes like a revolving lantern.
"Mama!"
She saw a tiny girl, covered in injuries, kneeling before a pile of ruins, desperately digging through charred wood.
"Mama! Mama, where are you! Answer me!"
That girl was a young version of herself.
And not far in front of her, beneath a burning roof beam, a familiar figure was pinned.
It was her mother. Her body was already charred black and unrecognizable, but those eyes remained fixed on the girl's direction.
The last thing she saw were the tears in her mother's eyes—a mix of despair, reluctance to leave, and resolve—and then the massive beam finally collapsed completely, swallowing everything.
"MAMA—!!!"
"Haa—! Haa—!"
Aoi bolted upright in bed, gasping loudly for air. Her forehead was covered in a cold sweat, and her heart was hammering violently against her ribs.
"Mama, I miss you so much."
Suddenly, she heard Tanjiro's shout: "Nezuko!"
Following the sound, she stumbled out of the room. The shouts were coming from the courtyard.
When Aoi rushed to the doorway, she was met with a scene that shocked her beyond measure.
Sanemi Shinazugawa's sword had been thrust into the box containing Nezuko. In an instant, blood stained the box red.
Aoi's eyes widened. She saw the color drain completely from Tanjiro's face as he threw himself toward the box like a madman.
"Tanjiro!"
The involuntary exclamation left her lips, her voice warped by terror.
In that fraction of a second, what flashed through her mind wasn't the ironclad rule of the Demon Slayer Corps, but rather that silhouette from the clearing on Mt. Natagumo—Nezuko, recklessly throwing herself in front of Rui to protect Tanjiro.
That silhouette overlapped perfectly with the figure from the depths of her memory—her mother, collapsing to protect her.
"You bastard... YOU BASTARD!!" Tanjiro's voice was hoarse and broken as he stared death at Sanemi. Tears and fury intertwined in his crimson eyes. "Nezuko, she won't eat humans! She absolutely won't!"
"Hmph. A demon is a demon!" Sanemi sneered. He violently wrenched his Nichirin Sword free, blood dripping from the blade. "Now, do you have anything else to say?"
Within the box, Nezuko's aura instantly became faint. A thick scent of blood diffused through the air.
Aoi's body reacted before her brain could form a conscious thought.
She didn't know where she found the courage—perhaps because the System's cold warnings were still echoing in her ears, or perhaps because the bond between the Kamado siblings had touched the softest part of her heart—but she rushed forward and snatched the box containing Nezuko away from him.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing now?!"
Sanemi's roar exploded above her head. A flicker of awkwardness crossed his face when he recognized her.
"Nezuko, she... she's different!"
"Different? How is she different?" Sanemi looked at her like she had just told the world's most ridiculous joke. He grabbed Aoi's collar with one hand, hoisting her entirely off the ground along with the box.
The massive force left Aoi dangling. The collar constricted her airway, making it difficult to breathe, and her face turned scarlet. Yet, she continued to clutch the box with a death grip, refusing to let go.
"Bullshit! A demon is a demon! Nothing but man-eating monsters! Are you fucking enchanted by a demon?!" Sanemi's gaze grew increasingly ferocious. His other hand raised the still-dripping Nichirin Sword, the tip aimed directly at Aoi's eyes.
"I'll just carve you up today too, you demon-enchanted piece of trash!"
"Stop it, Shinazugawa!" Giyu Tomioka stepped forward once again, horizontalizing his blade in front of Sanemi's sword. "She is a member of the Demon Slayer Corps."
"A member? A member who speaks up for a demon is no different from a demon itself!" Sanemi glared at Giyu, the murderous intent radiating from him nearly physical in its intensity.
Just as the tension reached its breaking point, two female voices rang out.
"The Master has arrived."