Nekumo reached for him. “Take my hand and avenge yourself! Avenge your family honor for what they’ve all done to you. They turned a prince into a slave and mocked you for fun. All of them should pay for their dishonor.”

She was right. What had been done to him was despicable. He’d been denied his birthright.

Lied to by everyone. He’d been robbed of everything, even his real name.

“Take what is yours!” her voice urged him, driving away all his inhibitions.

It was impossible to deny her.

The Kai-dan began to scream. He heard them. Some part of him felt as if he should care, but it was as if he was outside of his body. Disconnected. Everything felt numb. Hollow. His ears rang. The only sound was the incessant beating of his own heart.

It became louder until it drowned out everything else.

You are the Night Wind. The shadows.

He had no idea what that meant exactly, but for some reason, it was funny, and he began to laugh.

Ryuichi felt Masaru trying to take over. But the demon was trapped inside Ryuichi’s body and struggled there while Nekumo circled him.

“Arise, Kage-taro! Become who you were meant to be!”

Now he heard the Kai-dan screaming louder and louder. That sound amused him to the point that he reveled in it . . .

* * *

“What is that?”

Sitting outside the home of the old merchant they were helping, Oishi, Koichi turned around at Oishi’s question. His jaw went slack as he saw the smoke and lights inside the man’s home. What the⁠—

“Is that supposed to be happening?”

Stunned, Koichi shook his head. “Here, hold my sake.” He thrust the bottle into the merchant’s hands, and like the fool he had once been, he ran toward the danger.

Last thing he wanted right now was to be sober. But . . .

The sake burned through his system as his instincts took over. This is why I drink . . .

Too many memories haunted him. Too many years of just this sort of thing.

Of lost innocence, friends, and colleagues. Of demons who cared for nothing other than carnage. Who preyed on lives, misery, and pain.

The more the merrier. They drank it up with a greedy, unquenchable thirst.

Koichi had once been all that stood between the realm of humans and that of the demons—the last of the slayers able to fend them off while the guardians remained frozen in stone. But rather than thanking him for what he’d done, the lives he’d saved, and all the sacrifices he’d made, the ones he’d risked his life and sanity for had mocked him too. Called him a charlatan and grouped him in with others who feigned his skills. Those who pretended to know the secrets of yin and yang.