"Huh?! What do you mean by that?" Gabimaru asked, his head snapping toward Yorimitsu.
"There!" Yorimitsu pointed toward one of the Shimenawa talismans dangling along the perimeter wall, violently swayed by the howling wind. "There's blood on it!"
"Phew..." Gabimaru exhaled deeply, stepping to the edge of the roof.
Without hesitation, he bit down on his thumb. A single droplet of crimson blood fell toward the tiles, but before it could hit the roof, Gabimaru twisted his wrist. Channelling his Reiryoku, the blood suspended itself in mid-air. The surrounding rainwater instantly swirled around the droplet, encasing it within a glowing, sphere-like bubble of water.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, Gabimaru launched the floating sphere across the alleyway. It streaked straight toward the shrine, perfectly enveloping the blood-stained talisman without breaking the boundary line.
Gabimaru raised his index finger and pinky, holding his middle fingers back with his thumb in a focused spell-seal.
The encased talisman flared with a faint, crimson light as Gabimaru's spiritual energy forced a connection.
"Wha... co... eme..."
A distorted mess of static-like voices flooded directly into his mind, and in the next heartbeat, his consciousness was yanked into a spiritual vision.
Though his sight remained hazy and blurred, Gabimaru could make out two figures standing inside a dimly lit shrine in a completely different location from the alleyway below.
"Do you truly believe you can pull this off...?" asked a slender man with snow-white hair, dressed in the formal robes of a high-ranking monk.
"Well... I don't know," replied the hooded figure beside him, his voice casually arrogant. "The Yōkai you've assigned to work with me doesn't seem all that impressive."
The hooded man reached down and popped the seal on a large, clay wine drum bound tightly with yellow paper talismans. He pried open the heavy wooden lid, revealing the horrifying entity stuffed inside.
Curled within the jug was a faceless creature with pale, corpse-like skin and long, matted black hair, draped in a sheer, bloodless white dress.
"Well, it might not look like much right now, but it can grow," the white-haired monk said, a wide, eerie grin spreading across his face.
The monk reached down into a second clay pot resting at his feet. Rattling frantically inside were several minor Tsukumogami living straw slippers with tiny, twisted faces, scrambling to escape the moment the wooden lid was lifted.
Before the slipper-monsters could leap free, white silk ribbons burst from the monk's sleeves, wrapping tightly around the squirming creatures and hoisting them into the air.
With a slight nod, the monk gestured downward toward the open wine drum.
Before the trapped slippers could even reach the rim of the vessel, they dissolved into pale ash and vanished. Inside the drum, the faceless creature's skin distorted violently, spawning a massive, gaping maw lined with jagged teeth that snapped shut before instantly melting back into smooth, blank flesh.
"Hohoho! Yes... I can definitely work with this one," the hooded figure chuckled softly.
Reaching into his sleeve, the cultist drew a silver knife and sliced cleanly across his own palm. He squeezed a drop of his blood onto a blank talisman, slapped the wet paper directly onto the creature's smooth forehead, and slammed the heavy wooden lid back onto the drum.
"I'll go set up the ritual boundaries," the hooded man said, sealing the jug with heavy iron bands. "You go preach to the villagers... Make sure it gathers enough karma to mature."
Without saying another word, the white-haired monk turned on his heel and bounded away, gaily singing a nursery rhyme as he skipped from side to side into the darkness.
Just then, Gabimaru felt his consciousness yanked deeper into the vision's timeline.
He watched the entity's grotesque evolution play out in fast-forward: first, it devoured lesser Yōkai to mutate its physical form; next, as the terrorised villagers began praying to it, its blank head sprouted multiple shifting faces. Once those faces fully materialised, the creature began tearing pieces of its own flesh away.
Those severed fleshy fragments mutated into four miniature shrines, splitting the entity's soul into four separate bodies while its primary core remained anchored to the main shrine.
"Cough... Cough... Cough!"
Gabimaru snapped his eyes open, returning to reality as a wave of cold rainwater splashed over his face.
"Take deep breaths," Yorimitsu said calmly, standing guard beside him with his hand resting on his hilt.
"It's... it's not a natural spirit," Gabimaru wheezed, pushing himself up onto his knees as he wiped the water from his eyes.
"Mmm... I figured as much, considering the shrine setup and the curse marks," Yorimitsu replied smoothly.
"No, it's worse..." Gabimaru rasped, forcing himself to his feet. "If we want to kill it, we have to destroy all four of its bodies. It divided its spiritual core into four distinct vessels."
Gabimaru pressed his hands together, forming a spell-seal as four distinct droplets of glowing crimson blood floated into the air before him.
"Where are Watanabe and Shion?" Gabimaru asked, looking around the roof.
Yorimitsu gestured downward toward the flooded street below, where Shion and Watanabe were already moving like blur-like strikes, their blades slicing cleanly through a swarm of monstrous Kappa spirits that were attempting to crawl out of the torrent toward the children's makeshift barrier.
"The lesser spirits are trying to devour the children!" Watanabe yelled, parrying a claws-out strike from a Kappa. "They're trying to gorge themselves on the dense karma gathered around that shrine!"
"We have to move now!" Shion shouted, severing the wings of another approaching beast.
"Phew..." Yorimitsu exhaled, leaping high into the stormy air above the rooftops.
"Follow the butterflies!" Gabimaru roared.
With a quick flick of his hand, the four floating droplets of his crimson blood burst into swarms of glowing, red-tinted spiritual butterflies. The insects scattered into four distinct directions across the ruined village, cutting through the heavy downpour.
Leaving the alleyway behind, the squad scattered to give chase, while the echoes of the terrified children faded into the roaring wind behind them.
"Mother...!"
"Father...!"
"Inoue, come in," Yorimitsu spoke into his communication talisman as he bounded across the slippery tiles.
"Kzzzt... Psshh... Pssst..."
Nothing but harsh, static-like friction echoed back through the spiritual link. Inoue did not respond.
"Tch... I can't reach him," Yorimitsu clicked his tongue in irritation. 'Is there a spiritual jammer blocking signals where he is...?'
Yorimitsu leapt over another collapsed roof and dropped down toward the flooded street below. Using his speed and balance, he bounded effortlessly from one piece of floating wooden debris to the next, surging directly toward the abandoned mansion where Shinju-maru had collapsed.