The thick stench of blood and demons turned to drifting ash together, leaving only a few wisps of unwilling black smoke struggling briefly in the night wind before dissipating completely.
Kirishima Bupai stood where he was, his silver hair stirring gently in the cool night breeze.
He lowered his eyes to the tattered, deep-purple samurai kimono on the ground, now bereft of its owner.
Beside it lay an old bamboo flute, half-buried in dirt, seemingly with only half of it remaining.
The flute was covered in cracks left by time. It would never again sound those faint, clear notes that had spanned four hundred years.
An extremely faint, almost imperceptible emotion flitted through the depths of Kirishima Bupai's gray eyes, so quickly it might have been an illusion.
He said nothing, merely bending down to pick up the spider lily he had used as bait, which still gave off a faint blue glow.
Its stem still held the warmth of his fingertips and the scent of earth.
Walking over to the kimono and broken flute, Kirishima Bupai crouched down and blasted a small hole in the soft earth with Yamato's tip.
There was nothing affected about his movements, yet they carried a strange solemnity.
After digging away a little soil, he gently placed the blue flower inside, then slowly covered it with earth.
There was no headstone, no eulogy, only a handful of fresh earth covering a false flower, commemorating a long and twisted journey of the soul.
Once he had finished, he stood and brushed the dirt from the hem of his coat. His gaze swept over that patch of earth where falsehood and truth lay buried, lingering for less than a second.
Then he turned without hesitation and strode away, his figure merging into the darkness leading toward