He didn't dream.
There were no childhood flashbacks, no fragments of sutras, no faces of monks or demons or gods. There was only a pressure, like he was underwater in a still lake where something massive watched him from beneath the silt. It didn't move. It just waited.
Shinjuro opened his eyes.
Stone. Darkness. His blood had dried into flaking streaks across his robes. The smell of rot was gone. So was the demon. But not its presence.
He sat up. His joints cracked. No birdsong. No wind.
Dead quiet.
Then—tick, tick, tick.
A sharp, wet sound echoed inside his skull. It wasn't outside. It wasn't imagined. It was coming from his own thoughts.
His heartbeat was gone.
He put two fingers to his throat. Cold. No pulse.
He breathed in. Slowly. Deeply. But the air did nothing. He didn't need it.
"This is not death," he thought.
"But it is not life either."
⸻
Outside the cave, the wind had picked up, howling through the pine trees like the wails of a funeral procession. Snow had stopped falling. The world had frozen in place.
Shinjuro emerged like a ghost, barefoot, eyes darker than before. Not bloodshot—just hollow, as though someone had scooped out the light and left the frame behind.
He walked for three days without food, water, or sleep. Not because he pushed himself—but because he couldn't stop.
His body was no longer a thing of limitations.
It was a tool.
An instrument finely attuned to one purpose.
And it hummed now. With hunger.
⸻
Somewhere North: The Demon Slayer Watchtower
"I'm telling you, he's not human anymore."
The two lower-ranked demon slayers argued beneath flickering lamplight. The one on the left, Tetsuya, clutched a half-burnt field report scrawled with frantic kanji.
"Mission complete, target neutralized. Exorcism Complete ."
"Exorcism Complete?" The second slayer laughed bitterly. "That's old-world nonsense. No one's used such terms before."
Tetsuya didn't laugh. "You haven't seen his eyes."
⸻
Shinjuro returned to the Corps' northern barracks seven days after the mission.
Alone. Silent.
His white robes were black with ash and dried blood. His blade—once pristine—was now wrapped in talismans scrawled with his own handwriting, verses scratched so violently the parchment tore.
When they asked what happened to the demon, he gave only this:
"I did not slay it. I consumed its prayer."
They laughed. Uncomfortable. A joke, they thought.
But the next day, the barracks dog refused to go near him.
And two slayers found their written breathing forms missing pages—entire memories blank, like they had been stolen.
⸻
Flashback
The demon's blood slick on his hands.
His sword humming like a tuning fork of the soul.
Shinjuro knelt. He whispered over the demon's body:
"You were not a beast. You were a hymn that was never finished."
The blood seeped into the prayer cuts across his arms.
Not because he drank it.
Not because he begged for it.
But because it recognized him.
The moment it touched his skin, his breathing stopped.
The snow outside reversed direction.
And for one instant, the world looked at him—like it realized what had just happened.
Then it turned away in fear.
⸻
Back in the barracks, the Hashira were told.
Only one of them volunteered to confront Shinjuro: the Mist Hashira, Hagane.
⸻
In the garden of the barracks, under a pale moon, Hagane found Shinjuro seated beneath a cedar tree, writing verses on parchment and folding them into intricate origami shapes—each shaped like a bleeding eye.
"You've changed," Hagane said.
Shinjuro didn't look up. "Everything that breathes must change, or it rots."
"You smell like ash and rusted blood. You haven't drawn breath in days. What are you?"
"A verse in progress."
Hagane drew his blade. "Then I'll end it."
The mist around them thickened. Hagane's movements were fast—flashes of white through the vapor. His blade sought arteries, tendons, joints.
But Shinjuro didn't move.
He recited.
"This is the first line:
For the man who draws his blade in fear."
Hagane faltered mid-strike. His foot misstepped.
"This is the second line:
For the hand that trembles before it strikes."
Hagane's grip slipped. His vision blurred.
"And this is the third:
For the heart that remembers the name it wishes to forget."
Hagane gasped.
He couldn't remember his first breathing form.
Couldn't remember his father's face.
Couldn't remember why he had drawn his sword in the first place.
He dropped to his knees.
Shinjuro finally stood. Calm. Almost tender.
He placed a hand on Hagane's shoulder and whispered:
"You'll remember when it's too late."
And he left.
⸻
Two Days Later
The Mist Hashira officially retired due to "neurological injury sustained in the field."
He could no longer fight.
He could no longer remember his own name without reading it.
Only one word remained etched into his subconscious:
"Verses."
⸻
Shinjuro stood before a rusted mirror in the ruins of a forgotten temple—the one he was born in.
He looked at his reflection. His skin was pale, veined with black. His teeth longer now. His eyes two bottomless pits, flickering like candles in a crypt.
He spoke—not to himself, but to something deeper.
"I was never yours, Muzan.
I do not kneel. I do not pray to false gods.
I am not your spawn.
I am your replacement."
He gripped his blade.
Lit a match.
And began to burn his old slayer uniform, talisman by talisman.
The final verse of the chapter:
"This is the last verse:
For the corpse that thought itself holy."
The fire crackled. And from beneath the floorboards, something watched. Something without a name.