Dawn lingered beyond the horizon, the sun’s cleansing light still imprisoned beneath slate-gray clouds.

  Tanjiro stirred awake, remnants of the dream clinging like cobwebs. In his sleep, Kie had appeared—her smile soft as rice paper, Hanako and the boys giggling behind her. No words passed their lips save hers:

  “Don’t grieve, Tanjiro. Don’t dwell in sorrow.” Her voice feathered through the haze. “We’re going somewhere… lighter.”

  Then they turned, dissolving into a boundless radiance. He’d chased them. Oh, how he’d chased—lungs burning, bare feet tearing across dreamscapes. He sprinted toward her retreating figure, arm outstretched to catch the fluttering hem of her kimono—Gone.

  Tanjiro jolted upright, straw mat damp with cold sweat. Just a nightmare. He pressed palms to his eyes, relief souring as fingertips came away wet.

  Two glistening trails marked his cheeks.

  His chest constricted. The dream’s hollow ache lingered, sharper than any blade.

  The blizzard had relented to a drowsy flurry. Tanjiro peered outside—still dark, but traversable.

  He scooped a handful of snow from the windowsill, scrubbed his face with it. The bite shocked his nerves awake.

  Dressed and basket secured, he crept toward the exit. The weather-beaten door creaked like a wounded beast.

  Old Man Saburo stirred in his bedding. "Heading back already?" His voice rasped with sleep. "Dawn's still hours off. Demons prowl these—"

  "I... I need to go." Tanjiro gripped his basket straps. "This hollow feeling in my chest—like part of me's been severed."

  Saburo sat up, eyes clouded with memory. "Kin share invisible threads. When one strand snaps..." He trailed off, fingers brushing a yellowed portrait on the wall—a young man's smiling face. "I had nightmares days before his accident. Should've known..."

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Tanjiro's throat tightened. The dream's residue curdled in his gut.

  "Go." Saburo waved him off. "Tend your roots."

  Outside, Tanjiro eased the door shut with monastic care.

  "Such tenderness," the old man murmured to the dying embers. "Surely the gods will shelter him."

  But gods rarely shelter the gentle.

  Fate delights in cornering souls at cliffs’ edge, savoring their desperate scrambles like a child burning ants with a magnifying glass.

  Tanjiro reached the mountain’s midway point, home now a stone’s throw away.

  His nose twitched—coppery notes cutting through the pine-scented chill.

  No. No. No.

  He broke into a sprint, boots punching through fresh powder. The scent thickened—metallic, cloying, unmistakable. Blood.

  A dark speck materialized ahead. Their cabin.

  The door hung splintered. Blood bloomed across the snow like gruesome camellias.

  Tripping over a buried rock, Tanjiro crawled the final yards.

  Inside—

  Silent.

  Too silent.

  Mother’s knitting basket upturned. Nezuko’s half-mended kimono. Hanako’s hair ribbon coiled like a dead serpent.

  He checked each still form. Cold. All cold.

  When his fingers brushed Rokuta’s stiffened cheek, something ruptured—a guttural wail tore from his throat, raw and primeval. Tears flooded his vision as he gasped against the vise crushing his ribs.

  His family’s final tableau burned into retinas:

  Kie’s protective embrace around Shigeru, Takeo’s hand still clutching a whittled toy sword, Nezuko’s face frozen mid-laugh.

  The hearth lay dead, its ashes colder than the corpses.

  Just as despair threatened to drown him, Tanjiro glimpsed movement—Nezuko's shoulder twitched.

  "Nezuko!!"

  He lunged forward, cradling her bloodied form. "Hold on! I'll save you—I swear!" Her skin felt clammy yet faintly warm. Alive.

  "Mother... everyone... I'll come back," he choked out, hastily draping Nezuko over his shoulders. As he turned, jagged gouges on the wall caught his eye:

  TANJIRO—LIVE. WAIT FOR ME.

  Kawagishi's handwriting.

  Brother survived? Then why—

  No time. He charged into the blizzard, Nezuko's weight light as a sparrow against his back.

  he panted, boots crunching through ice. "The town doctor can—"

  Unseen behind him, Nezuko's face contorted. Ghostly veins pulsed beneath her pallid skin like roots of a poisoned tree. Her nails elongated into talons.

  ......