Time seemed to stretch.
A week later.
The Butterfly Mansion, once the Demon Slayer Corps' logistical and medical center, always bustling with people and filled with the scent of medicine, was now shrouded in quiet.
Beds filled the largest sickroom, and nearly all the core members who had survived the final battle lay there.
Sunlight streamed through the windows onto the white sheets, bringing a trace of warmth.
"Mm..."
A faint groan broke the room's silence.
Nezuko Kamado, who had kept vigil beside the bed all this time, suddenly raised her head, looking with delighted surprise at the boy slowly opening his eyes on the bed.
"Big Brother!"
Tanjiro Kamado's consciousness slowly returned from a haze. His body felt as though it had been taken apart and haphazardly put back together, every inch of muscle screaming in agony.
Instinctively, he tried to raise his left hand, only to find his left sleeve empty. He tried to see his younger sister's face clearly with his right eye, only to find nothing but darkness on that side.
He had lost an arm and an eye.
But when he saw Nezuko's tear-streaked face, brimming with joy, none of it seemed to matter anymore.
"Nezuko..." His voice was terribly hoarse. "You... turned back..."
The brother and sister wept with joy.
Tanjiro's awakening was like a signal.
Before long, a blond boy in the next bed slowly stirred awake as well.
"Nezuko-chaaaan!"
The moment Zenitsu Agatsuma opened his eyes, he let out his signature, piercing wail and struggled to throw himself toward Nezuko, only for the pull of his bandages to leave him grimacing.
"Shut up, Wenyi!"
On another bed, a handsome boy without his boar's-head mask, his face covered in bandages, also woke and bellowed at the top of his lungs, **"I woke up