The moon was full, but it offered no comfort. It hung in the obsidian sky like a bleeding eye, casting a crimson pallor over the bamboo forest. The air was stagnant, heavy with the scent of pine and the metallic tang of ancient blood.
Yoriichi Tsugikuni stood perfectly still.
At eighty years old, his body was a map of time. His skin was paper-thin, wrinkled and spotted with age. His white hair, tied back in a messy ponytail, was thinning. To any observer, he was a gust of wind away from crumbling into dust. But inside, beneath the frailty of failing organs and brittle bones, the sun still burned. It burned with a quiet, terrifying consistency.
He did not need to see with his eyes to know who stood before him. Through the Transparent World, the world was rendered in perfect clarity. He saw the shift of muscle fibers, the flow of blood, the expansion of lungs. He saw the grotesque, unnatural reconstruction of flesh that stood ten paces away.
A creature with six eyes. A creature that wore the warped visage of the man Yoriichi had loved more than anyone in this world.
"You..." The voice that broke the silence was deep, vibrating with a mixture of shock and a primal, instinctive fear. "You are still alive... Yoriichi?"
Michikatsu. Or rather, the demon now known as Kokushibo.
Yoriichi looked at his brother. He did not see a monster. He saw the shadow of the boy who had once given him a flute when they were children. He saw the samurai who had wanted to be the strongest.
The tragedy of it—that his brother had forsaken his humanity, his honor, and his descendants, all to escape the fear of death and to surpass a younger brother he could never understand—pierced Yoriichi's heart more painfully than any blade.
Tears, hot and unbidden, welled in Yoriichi's eyes. They spilled over his wrinkled cheeks, tracing the lines of age.
"My poor brother," Yoriichi whispered. His voice was raspy, worn down by decades of silence and solitude.
The demon's face contorted. The six eyes narrowed in a unison of rage. The pity in Yoriichi's voice was poison to him. "Stop it," Kokushibo hissed, his hand gripping the hilt of his flesh-forged blade. "Do not pity me. I am infinite. I have transcended. And you... you are a decrepit relic refusing to rot."
Yoriichi slowly lowered his hand to his waist. There was no killing intent radiating from him. There never was. He was as calm as a windless lake, his spirit devoid of malice, ambition, or hatred. This was the Selfless State—the void that made him the ultimate predator against demons, for they could not sense his strike until their heads were already rolling on the ground.
"I have come," Yoriichi said softly, his thumb pushing the guard of his black blade, "to kill you."
The air pressure dropped.
For Kokushibo, time seemed to warp. He was the Upper Rank One. He had lived for centuries. He had slaughtered Hashira as if they were insects. But looking at the eighty-year-old man before him, every instinct he possessed screamed one word: Death.
Yoriichi breathed.
Breath of the Sun.
It wasn't a technique. It was a law of nature. The oxygen flooded his dying cells, revitalizing them for one final, impossible moment. The temperature in the bamboo grove spiked. The crimson moonlight seemed to be bleached white by the sudden, invisible flare of solar energy radiating from the old man's small frame.
He moved.
It was faster than sound. Faster than thought. One moment, Yoriichi was standing ten paces away; the next, he was inside Kokushibo's guard.
Thrum.
The sound of the blade cutting through the air came after the strike.
Kokushibo's eyes widened to their limit. He hadn't seen it. Even with six eyes, even with his own access to the Transparent World, he hadn't seen the draw. He only felt the sudden, searing heat at his neck. The flesh-sword in his hand was halfway through a defensive swing, but it was hopelessly, laughably too slow.
The blade bit into the demon's neck. Tougher than diamond, reinforced by centuries of consuming humans and Muzan's blood, the neck of the Upper Rank One yielded like soft butter against Yoriichi's red blade.
I have failed you, brother, Yoriichi thought, time stretching into infinity as the blade sliced through skin, muscle, and windpipe. I failed to save you from your envy. I failed to kill Muzan. I failed to protect my wife and child. All I have ever done is fail.
He could see the fear in Michikatsu's eyes. The absolute terror of a "perfect being" realizing he was about to be unmade by a dying old man.
Yoriichi prepared the follow-through. The torque of his hips, the alignment of his wrists—it was perfection. One more inch. One more push of the blade, and the head would fall. The nightmare would end. His brother would be free from this cursed immortality.
Rest now, Michikatsu.
But then, the universe halted.
It wasn't an external force. It was the internal clock reaching its final second.
Yoriichi felt a sharp, hollow thud in his chest. His heart, which had beaten faithfully for eighty years, which had endured the loss of his family, the exile from the demon slayers, and the crushing weight of loneliness, finally gave out.
The flow of blood stopped. The oxygen required to maintain the Breath of the Sun vanished.
The blade froze.
It sat there, buried three inches into Kokushibo's neck, poised to sever the spine. But the hand holding it had lost its strength.
Yoriichi stood there, motionless. His stance remained perfect. His grip remained firm. He did not fall. He simply... ended.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Kokushibo stood frozen, waiting for the head to fall. Waiting for the death he knew had arrived. But seconds ticked by. The burning pain in his neck began to regenerate, the flesh knitting itself back together around the stalled blade.
"Yoriichi?" the demon whispered, stepping back in horror.
The old man remained standing. His eyes were open, looking forward, past his brother, past the forest, perhaps gazing into a place where a woman with obsidian eyes and a smiling child were waiting for him.
He was dead. He had died standing up, in the middle of a swing that would have saved the world.
Kokushibo's shock morphed into a trembling, incoherent rage. He screamed—a sound of frustration and denied victory. He swung his blade, a wild, dishonorable strike that cleaved the standing corpse of his brother in two.
"Why?!" Kokushibo roared at the two halves of the man on the ground. "Why do you always win?! Even in death, you look down on me! You escaped me again! You escaped old age! You escaped me!"
But Yoriichi could no longer hear the screaming.
Darkness.
It was not the darkness of the grave, nor the darkness of sleep. It was a warm, encompassing void.