The charring along the side of his neck was still spreading.
Kokushibo lowered his head to glance at the gray powder left on his fingertips. His six moon eyes closed, then opened again, their irises changing from dark gold to deep purple.
Blood-red growths bulged along his blade, spreading from its base to its tip. His samurai robes burst apart at the collar, and something beneath the exposed skin pushed outward.
Not muscle. Bone.
Twelve crescent-shaped bone blades forced their way through the skin of his back and shoulders with a tearing sound, spreading into a fan. Dense clusters of eyeballs covered the cross section of each blade, their pupils pointing in different directions. Moonlight spilled from every eye at once, suffusing the entire platform.
His body swelled until he stood a head and a half taller than Yaha.
Behind the stone pillar, Shinobu Kocho gripped the edge of the fissure and stayed still.
She had seen it.
The strength of Kokushibo's grip on his sword was different from a minute ago. A minute ago, that hand had been steady, the preparatory flex of his wrist before every strike carrying an ease honed through centuries of training. Now he gripped too tightly, the skin between his thumb and forefinger whiter than the hilt.
That was the grip of someone afraid to lose.
She lowered her voice to the barest whisper. "He isn't pursuing victory. He's afraid of losing the same way he did before."
Yaha stood five paces in front of her, his back to her, and did not turn around.
"Then let's make his defeat absolute."
Then he turned halfway and pushed his right foot backward. It was not a kick, but a shove, landing precisely against Shinobu Kocho's abdomen and pushing her into the half-meter-wide fissure beside the