The finger slid down his throat.
The origin, transformed into a cursed object, sank down his esophagus like a lump of red-hot iron. Yaha crouched amid the ashes still belching black smoke, muffled cracks sounding inside him as his bones shattered and reformed.
More intense than last time.
The origins of two Upper Ranks had poured into this human shell in a single night, pushing its capacity to the brink. Cursed markings spread up his neck, crawled across half his face, and reached his forehead. The black patterns pulsed under the moonlight as though alive.
Phantoms of four arms burst from his back. Dark red and translucent, each carried the King of Curses' distinctive aura of decay. They lasted only three seconds before the reverse cursed energy within Yaha forcibly pressed them back inside.
But three seconds were enough.
Spiritual pressure radiated from him. It carried no killing intent, targeted nothing, and simply existed. Like a boulder sinking into a pond, the splashes and ripples were merely by-products.
Cracks appeared in the ground at the center of the Swordsmith Village.
They spread outward from beneath Yaha's feet, reaching the ruined workshops fifty meters away and the swordsmiths' dormitories a hundred meters away. The air grew viscous, as though someone had mixed an invisible layer of glue into it.
Tanjiro knelt on the ground, unable to force a full breath through his throat. His lungs felt clenched in someone's fist, his chest tightened, and his vision began to blur.
Mitsuri's flexible sword slipped from her hand and clanged against the ground. Her legs went weak. She stumbled back two steps and leaned against a wooden post that had yet to fall. Her pale green pupils trembled, her lips moving without a sound.
Muichiro stood a dozen meters away, gripping his sword.