[The Oni’s Perspective]

  "The best option is to hunt the Yajuro. Those monsters are multiplying in the northern forests," (404) said with his digital voice in my mind, as I stood before the village notice board, scanning posters of wanted men and beasts.

  Examining the face of a distorted criminal, I asked: "What about the human targets?" (404) replied: < A suitable choice, but we need more data on the target to determine the threat level. Monsters are more predictable. >

  I ignored logic. My eyes fell on the Yajuro’s poster. I remembered how he made Clara run in terror, how he made me flee like a rat. I said with cold malice: "This beast must pay. I’ll start with him."

  I embarked on a four-day journey. I finally reached a forest in the north. It was a strange and intensely beautiful place. The trees had glowing blue leaves, shimmering in the dark as if dipped in moonlight. This was the forest closest to Edo, and the home of the Yajuro.

  I entered the forest and began searching like a madman. I was looking for a fight, for a release. The first thing I saw was a massive blue ogre. I remembered how ogres used to terrify me two months ago. Now? I defeated him in seconds. I dismembered him before he could even raise his club. Weak. Then I saw a tiger... I killed it with a single strike. Weak.

  And finally... after a long search... I saw him. The Yajuro. The same disgusting form. The massive head, the single leg, and the four arms. He was feeding on a deer carcass. He raised his head and saw me. He roared...

  And then... the film cut.

  I don't remember. I try to remember the moment I raised my sword... the moment of the attack... nothing. Total blackout. The first thing I recall after that was sitting on the Yajuro’s chest. Or what was left of it. The monster’s face didn't exist anymore; it was just a paste of crushed flesh and bone. My stone hands were covered in his blood and meat. I was panting violently, my heart beating the drums of war.

  What happened? I looked to (404) in my panic: "What happened?! Did you take control of my body?!" (404) replied: < No. I did not intervene. > Then he added a sentence that made my blood run cold: < It was you. You are the one who leaped on him and began striking him with your bare hands for ten continuous minutes, even after his death. >

  "Is there... is there a monster playing with my mind?" < Low probability. Data is insufficient to analyze your mental state. Behavior is illogical. >

  I carried the severed leg of the Yajuro as proof and placed it on the horse. I moved toward the nearest town to claim my reward. I entered the bounty office and threw the giant leg on the table. I began to hear the whispers of the staff and other bounty hunters: "Look at the leg... it’s pulverized... this isn't a clean kill... it's the work of a monster.

  That person... he is an Oni, not a human." As they spoke, I felt a burning in my heart. I tried to ignore it. Thinking of the reward, the clerk looked at the corpse in shock, then at me: "In whose name shall we register the kill?" "Dio."

  I took the money. It wasn't much, but it wasn't little. But the monsters are weak; the strong ones are only on Mount Ryu. I decided to pivot. Hunting humans.

  A month has passed since hunting the Yajuro. A month of fog. Every time I fight, it repeats. I find a target, prepare for combat, then... blackout. I wake up to find my opponent dismembered or crushed, and I’m standing over them. I wanted to leave some of them alive... but the "thing" that takes over me is merciless.

  This time, the target was big. Inka. A famous thief who steals to give to the poor. A dangerous wanted man. A rogue Samurai. I was searching for him like crazy. He was my ticket into the world of high-ranking Samurai. And here I am... before a thread leading to him.

  A poor old man living in a dilapidated wooden hut in the same village near the Yajuro forest. "Why does Dio the Oni seek me? I am just an old man," the man said, trembling. I looked at him, and a sudden hatred for his weakness and acting filled me.

  "I know you know where Inka is. You were the one distributing the stolen money to the poor on his behalf." The old man said in a quivering voice: "He descends from the sky like a ghost, gives us the money, and vanishes. How would I know who he is or where he is?"

  Lies. I saw the lie in the pulse of his neck vein, in the movement of his eyes. Immediately, I grabbed his neck with my stone hand and brought my masked face to his. "I hate liars. I hate those who lie to me."

  The old man looked at me, and suddenly his tone shifted from fear to desperate defiance: "What a rude child... striking an old man on the brink of death?" I replied coldly: "Don't think that striking is the end. Tell me before I begin." He spat in my face: "Do you think an old man who lived through all this crap will fear the punches of a madman like you?"

  There... I felt it. Something in my secondary heart... something burning. A pressing urge to hear the sound of his bones breaking. I grabbed him and tied him to a chair. I began the torture. He didn't speak. I decided to escalate the game. Slowly... I reshaped my body. I canceled the Ronin disguise. Gray skin appeared, the long hair, the dead gray eyes. I turned into an Oni.

  When he saw me, he began to scream. Real screaming. I felt the burning in my chest increase. Strike him... make him scream more... this is comforting. I don't know why... but his pain extinguished my fire. Finally, after an hour, he broke. "In the nearby forest... there is a cave at the edge... a secret hideout." I looked at him. (404) confirmed: < Vital signs indicate truthfulness. >

  Finally, he didn't lie. I smiled at him. "Now... will you release this old man?" he asked with a faint hope. I looked at him. That thing in my heart was screaming: Don't leave him. Finish it. I began punching him. Smashing him like a plate of freedom.

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  I was screaming with every punch. Emptying all the burning in my heart, all my sadness into this old man's face. "Die! Die! Die!" I screamed and screamed until his face turned into something unrecognizable. After I finished... I felt "relief."

  I smiled, decapitated the old man, and put the head in a cloth bag. "Your thief friend must see you. A gift for him." I cleaned the place coldly and left to complete my mission. I returned to the blue forest. For some reason, this island loves to bring me back to forests. I reached the mentioned cave. I entered cautiously. The place was full of stolen books, plenty of money, and jars of fine sake. But he wasn't there. I'll wait for him.

  I sat on the ground and placed the bag with the head beside me. I waited... and waited. The burning in my heart returned. It began to escalate. I want to strike something... I want to cut something... I wanted to go out and look for him, but (404) said: < He will flee if you go out.

  If you stay here, he will think his old friend is visiting him. >

  Suddenly... someone entered. He said in a loud and cheerful voice: "Old man! Did you start drinking the sake without me?" I looked at him... and was shocked.

  He was nothing but a monster. A green-skinned creature with a beak like a turtle, and on his head, a small "saucer" filled with water. On his back was a shell. A Kappa. But he wasn't an ordinary Kappa. He wore fine Samurai clothes and two swords at his waist.

  He looked at me in shock, then his eyes fell on the bag dripping blood, and on my stone face. He grabbed his sword with lightning speed. "Who are you?" Then he saw the old man's head peeking out of the open bag. His green face turned into a mask of hellish rage. He screamed: "YOU ONI!!"

  I didn't care that he was a Kappa. Or a legend. Perhaps it would be better. Monster against monster. Finally... This time, I screamed inside: I don't want to black out! I don't want the "Monster" to steal this moment from me! I want... I want... I want to feel that relief I felt while smashing the old man.

  I want to burn this Kappa. I drew Shakujo. We rushed toward each other. The swords collided. CLANG! The sound echoed in the cave, and the sound of my heart burning echoed with it.

  [The Kijo’s Perspective]

  A month has passed and I am here, stuck between heaven and earth. My doubt had begun to reach its limits, like cold poison filling the cup drop by drop. I do not trust the words of that drunken Samurai. Is Dream really alive?

  Is he truly alive, or am I deceiving myself to stay alive? Did the plan fail so quickly? No... no. Impossible. It’s impossible for him to be wrong. He would never make a mistake. He would never miscalculate. Surely everything is moving under his grand plan with the precision of a clock.

  But... the question that gnaws at my mind in the cold nights and prevents me from sleeping: Is my survival and Dream’s survival part of his plan for victory? Or is our death the necessary part of the sacrifice?

  I struck my head with my hand to drive away the black thoughts. Do not doubt, Kage. You must not doubt. Doubting him is a heresy against my truth. He is the only creed I possess, and the only rope preventing me from falling into the abyss.

  I tried to distract myself by watching these foxes. Do they do nothing but eat, drink, dance, and sing? Are they not at war? Why don't they train? Why don't they sweat? Why don't they try to become stronger?

  They live as if death isn't standing at their door. The only fox I saw training was "Fox Number One." The first fox I saw. He was the only one who held a sword in this place, training all day with terrifying seriousness, striking tree trunks until his hands bled.

  At first, he watched me and cared for me, but after he realized I understood nothing or perhaps saw me as "useless," he stopped caring about me entirely. During the rain... he trains. During his stomach's hunger... he trains. During his thirst... he trains

  . His life was built on training, just like a machine that never stops. His face while training, and that permanent scowl between his eyebrows... it resembled Dream’s face. An angry, desperate face, thirsty for something that cannot be named, emptying his rage into the air. I hate that face.

  One night, it was time for sleep. I was sitting in my wooden room, hugging my knees to my chest, listening to the sound of the wind outside striking the windows. Hooo... Hooo... Suddenly, the door opened violently, slamming against the wooden wall with a loud bang.

  Fox One entered. He was panting, sweat covering his fur, and his eyes were burning with repressed rage—rage accumulated from losing the war, from helplessness, from seeing his friends dancing while the world burned. He needed to vent this rage on anyone, and I was the easiest target.

  He began screaming in my face. Screaming in their strange language, sharp and fast words, full of blame and oppression. I didn't understand a single word, but the tone... the tone of contempt and anger...

  I no longer heard the sound of the wind outside. The sound of the rain that suddenly began to fall mingled in my ear with another sound... the sound of splashing water. I looked at the wall behind him. The lantern light cast his shadow on the wood. But the shadow wasn't that of a fox. The shadow began to elongate... to swell... the ears disappeared, and horns appeared... the shoulders became as broad as a mountain.

  It was the shadow of the Oni.

  And in that moment, the fox’s face distorted before my eyes. His long nose faded, and his fur color changed. I saw cracked gray stone skin. I saw dead eyes with no life in them. It was him. Time flowed back. To that night by the lake. The night my soul broke. When he raped my body, and violated my being with cold brutality. I couldn't endure it then, and I can't endure it now.

  I was ready to sell my body for the mission, for anything, for Inma. But not like this... I remembered the pain... a sensory and real pain. I felt the coldness of my own daggers as they cut my skin... I remembered how he took them from me, my weapons that were my pride, and wounded me with them.

  He drew pain on my skin slowly while he was inside me, while the cold grass struck my back. I remembered his voice as he screamed at me: "Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me all that time?" And I said in a choked voice, my voice lost under his weight: "I’m sorry... I’m sorry." Apologizing for a sin I didn't commit.

  But what I hated wasn't the beating or the rape. It was that one second, he would strike me like all the others—I was used to that—but the next seconds were new. In the next second, he would collapse, hug me, and cry like a child, saying he loves me, showing me a warm and terrifying love, touching my wounds that he made with his own hand.

  Then, in the next second, he would start crying and screaming, saying he is a "sin." Then he would look into my face with stoicism and scream: "You are not Clara!"

  The cycle continued. And continued. And continued. Love... violence... regret... madness... rage. An endless circle.

  The fox approached me a step, shouting, his hand raised in the air. At that moment... I saw Dream’s giant stone hand rising to strike me again. My breath caught. I fell from the bed to the floor and crawled back with insane speed until my back hit the wall. I curled myself into a ball, covering my face with my hands to protect myself. And I exploded in a hysterical scream, my voice trembling with absolute terror:

  "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" "I'm sorry for leaving you! I'm sorry!" "Don't hit me... I'm sorry, Master... I'm sorry, Dio!"

  The fox stopped shouting. He froze in his tracks, his hand still hanging in the air. The shadow faded, replaced by total bewilderment. He was looking at the woman who had seemed cold and lethal, now a heap of terror and tears at his feet, trembling like a leaf in the wind, apologizing to a ghost that no one but her could see.

  He looked at her, his eyes widening in shock, unable to understand what had broken her in this way.