Grief and helplessness submerged this stretch of Yoshiwara's ruins like the icy tides of the deep sea.
A hero's end.
After giving everything to defeat an Upper Rank undefeated for a hundred years, he was about to die so unflashily in the deepest darkness before dawn, all because of a poison he could not resist.
"Lord Tengen..."
Suma and Makio were sobbing too hard to speak. They clutched their husband's cold hands, trying to use their own body heat to hold on to his rapidly ebbing life.
Hinatsuru, well versed in medicine, knelt beside them, her face filled with the despair of professional knowledge crumbling before certain death. She knew that no medicine could save him now.
"Mr. Uzui!"
Tanjiro knelt beside Tengen Uzui, tears spilling uncontrollably from his eyes. He watched this powerful, flashy, ever-confident man, whose flame of life now flickered like a candle in the wind, liable to go out at any moment.
There was nothing he could do.
He could only watch helplessly as a great life came to an end before him.
"Don't... don't cry... for me..." Tengen Uzui used the last of his strength to maintain that smile, his voice so faint it was barely audible. "I'm... the God of Festivals... even my final curtain call... has to be flashy..."
His eyelids began to close slowly.
His heart was about to stop.
Amid the deathly stillness utterly shrouded in despair, a faint sound broke the silence.
Creak-
The door of the wooden box on Tanjiro's back was gently pushed open from inside.
A small hand reached out of the box.
In a corner unnoticed by everyone in their grief or despair, a tiny figure in a pink kimono slowly crawled out of the box.
It was Nezuko.
Her small body still bore wounds from