Under the faint moonlight, a cold silver glow spread across the ground like a thin veil. It slipped through the sparse branches in the courtyard, leaving scattered shadows over the stone path below.
The pale light fell upon Kagaya Ubuyashiki, who sat leaning against the wall. It made his already fragile figure appear even thinner, as though even breathing had become a difficult task for him.
When Kibutsuji Muzan walked through the grove of wisteria trees, the hanging flowers swayed softly in the night. Mist continuously rose around them like pale breaths crawling out from beneath the earth, drifting around his feet and slowly spreading across the stone ground.
Supporting himself against the wall, Kagaya pressed his thin fingers tightly into the cracks between the stones and forced his weak body upright. His back bent for a moment before he managed to straighten it again.
With eyes that had not yet completely lost their sight, he looked at the "stain" upon the Ubuyashiki family.
There was no fear in his gaze. Only the heavy burden that had accumulated over centuries rested within it, while his dry lips pressed together tightly.
Because of this "stain", the Ubuyashiki family had carried a curse for hundreds of years. Countless members of the clan had died young under the weight of that curse.
"Hideous. You truly are unbearably hideous."
Muzan stopped walking and looked at Kagaya with pity. That frail body looked so weak that it could be killed with the slightest effort, like an insect that could be crushed at any moment.
How laughable.
This man posed almost no threat to him at all.
"The weak and pathetic Ubuyashiki… what gives you the courage to oppose me? What gives you the courage to interfere with me?"
Kagaya merely looked at Muzan in silence. He stared at the Progenitor of Demons, the very source of his family's thousand-year agony. His semi-blind eyes reflected the demon's figure, yet they were like a pool of stagnant water, devoid of ripples.
Only by uprooting this demon can we truly purge the world of evil. This thought had circled his mind for countless days and nights.
He wanted to kill this monster more than anything in the world.
But for Kagaya Ubuyashiki, such a thing was impossible.
Muzan's strength was overwhelming enough to drive a person into despair.
And yet… this demon continued to destroy the happiness of humans without restraint, never caring for the beauty of human life, casually tearing apart one family after another.
Was it simply because humans were weak that demons treated them as food and trampled over their lives so freely?
"What… do you think humans are?"
The words came from Kagaya's mouth slowly and weakly, yet every syllable was incomparably clear.
So clear that Muzan froze slightly.
Unknowingly, he recalled the question that man had once asked him long ago.
"What do you think life is?"
"Ha…"
At that moment, Muzan only found it ridiculous, absurd to the point of madness.
These people, just like Yoriichi Tsugikuni before them, knew nothing of his past. That was why they judged him so freely and relentlessly opposed him.
He lowered his eyes, and the pity within them transformed into something darker, something twisted, like the instinctive rage of an old wound being touched again.
All he had ever wanted… was to live.
Simply to live.
Yet these people continued to stubbornly interfere with him.
Why did I cast aside my humanity? His thoughts rushed back like a tide, dragging him back to that blood-soaked beginning.
It was because, from the very start, he was never allowed to live properly.
While still in his mother's womb, he was virtually a stillborn. On the day of his birth, he was declared dead. It was only when he was about to be cremated that he finally let out a cry, narrowly escaping the funeral pyre.
From that moment, his human life had essentially ended. His survival was a resurrection that no one had expected or wanted.
Even after that "resurrection," he spent his days confined to a sickbed. He lived in a world of tasting and smelling herbal medicines, feeling his body grow weaker and his breath fainter by the day. Bitter medicinal juices saturated every dawn and dusk. Every rise and fall of his chest felt like swallowing shattered glass—a dull, terminal pain.
Until that doctor arrived.
Under his treatment, Muzan stood up for the first time. He experienced the health of a human body and saw a glimmer of hope.
The warmth of sunlight falling upon his skin, the solid earth beneath his feet, the strength flowing through his limbs as he stretched them freely…
Everything felt so vivid that it was almost unreal, enough to bring tears to his eyes.
But very soon, his illness began to return. Worse still, it started to grow even more severe. Whenever he stepped into sunlight, his skin would burn, and an endless thirst for blood filled his mind every waking moment. One by one, the sensations that made him human slowly disappeared from his body.
The warmth, satisfaction, and peace that once belonged to humanity slipped through his fingers little by little, replaced only by hunger for blood and fear of the light.
At that moment, all he felt was rage.
The doctor had given him hope, only to immediately drag him into despair.
He was furious, but beneath that fury was an even greater fear—the fear that the doctor would continue to transform him into something worse.
And so, driven by anger and terror, he killed the doctor.
Even now, he could still remember how his fingers trembled as they tightened around the man's throat, and how the warmth of the blood that splashed onto his face seemed forever burned into his memory.
At the same time, he became what he was now.
Everything he had done since then had only been for one purpose: to live properly, to survive beneath the sunlight once more.
So why were these people so determined to oppose him?
Was it wrong for him to want to live?
Was it wrong to wish for a healthy body?
Was it wrong to want to overcome everything and walk beneath the sun?
…
Muzan slowly stretched out his hand. His five fingers spread open before tightening effortlessly around Kagaya Ubuyashiki's throat.
This man was so weak, so fragile, yet he still wished to end his life.
The thought felt absurdly laughable to him.
His fingers tightened slightly as he watched Kagaya's face gradually redden from lack of oxygen.
"How utterly… ridiculous." Muzan's face was filled with mockery.
Lifted into the air by his throat and barely able to breathe, with death only moments away, Kagaya Ubuyashiki showed no fear.
There was only hatred for the demon before him.
His feet dangled above the ground as his frail body swayed slightly in the air, yet a strange calmness appeared on his face, almost like relief. Only those half-blind eyes still burned with hatred accumulated over countless years, like the final flicker of a candle before it went out.
"As long as you die… everything will finally end."
The words were forced painfully from his crushed throat.
Calm.
Almost emotionless.
Muzan's pupils suddenly contracted.
Those crimson eyes narrowed sharply as an overwhelming sense of danger exploded within him. Almost instinctively, his fingers tightened violently around Kagaya's neck, crushing the fragile throat apart. His knuckles sank deep into flesh, and the faint sound of cracking bone rang clearly through the still night.
Blood spilled from Kagaya's mouth and dripped down his chin as his throat collapsed, yet he continued staring coldly at Muzan. Within those nearly blind eyes, there was still one final trace of clarity.
Then—
"BOOM!"
Flames tore through the night as the earth itself trembled beneath them. The shockwave swept outward with shattered stone and wisteria petals, swallowing everything within blazing orange fire.
The enormous amount of explosives hidden throughout the Ubuyashiki estate detonated all at once.
Gunpowder buried beneath the pillars, inside the floors, and within the walls erupted simultaneously, and the resulting explosion instantly blew the entire estate apart. Wood and stone exploded in every direction while thick smoke surged into the sky, turning the once solemn residence into ruins in a single moment.
Almost instantly, Kagaya Ubuyashiki's body was torn to pieces by the blast. His frail body shredded apart like paper and disappeared into the flames.
Even a creature as powerful as Muzan Kibutsuji found his body torn asunder by the explosion. Flesh flew and bones shattered as his entire form was charred black within the inferno.
Thud...
A body, burnt almost entirely to cinders, slammed onto the ground, kicking up a cloud of ash and sparks. The charred remains rolled through the rubble before finally coming to a halt.
His arms and legs had been completely melted away. All that remained was a blackened torso and a fragment of a broken skull. Aside from the faint silhouette of a human shape, he looked like nothing more than a piece of burnt, dead wood.