Kenji Sakata nearly ran into the ruined house.
The moment he stepped past the shattered entrance, the smell hit him.
Blood.
Burnt wood.
Charred flesh.
And beneath it all, the sour stench of fear that seemed to have soaked into the walls overnight.
Sakata wrinkled his nose in disgust and covered his mouth with the back of one hand.
Half the building’s walls and ceiling had been torn away, allowing morning sunlight to pour directly into the room.
That bright, clean light only made the scene inside look more obscene.
The ritual circle on the floor had not yet dried.
Blood filled the grooves carved into the wood, darkening into a nauseating shade of red.
Two corpses in the white robes of the Meiyuan Church lay beside the circle.
One had a hollowed-out chest.
The other had no head at all.
Red and white matter had splattered across the remaining wall, turning it into a grotesque painting that no sane person would ever want to understand.
Several men in police uniforms were moving around the scene.
They were not investigating.
They were arranging evidence.
Syringes.
Small bags of white powder.
Empty drug packets.
Clothing disturbed in ways meant to imply a sordid party that had gone wrong.
Every item was placed with practiced hands and careful calculation.
One officer noticed Sakata and quickly approached.
“Police Inspector.
We’re almost finished.
As long as forensics cooperates and issues the report we prepared, this can be closed as a drug overdose and internal dispute.”
Sakata gave a curt nod.
The Meiyuan Church’s roots had long since burrowed deep into Tokyo’s business circles, political factions, and police departments.
Last night’s livestreamed human sacrifice had shaken far too many important people awake.
The order from above was simple.
Suppress everything.
At any cost.
As for the oni girl who called herself Ibaraki-Douji, they were to search for her with all available resources.
The appearance of supernatural power had made countless powerful men restless.
To them, the deaths of a few disposable cultists meant nothing.
The dead girl meant even less.
What mattered was the impossible power that had appeared on that livestream, a power capable of overturning the common sense that held modern society together.
Sakata waved impatiently, irritation rising as he looked over the bloody room.
“Hurry up!
That crazy woman from Tokyo Daily is watching outside.
Don’t let her catch anything useful.”
He pointed toward the bodies on the floor and began giving orders.
“There are three relatively complete corpses here.
Two men and one woman.”
His gaze fell on the dead girl tied to the cross.
“For the woman, write that she died of a drug overdose during an obscene party.”
Then he pointed at the two cultists.
“As for these two men, say they fought over her and killed each other.”
He glanced at the ruined half of the building, where the third cultist had vanished beneath black hellfire.
“The one who disappeared along with half the house?
Mark him as missing in the report.
Treat him like he was never here.”
Not a single officer objected.
Those sent to handle the aftermath were all the same kind of people as Sakata.
They had ties to the Meiyuan Church, debts to its patrons, or secrets that could ruin them if exposed.
Every man present knew exactly how to turn black into white and call it public order.
“Yes, Police Inspector!”
The officers moved faster.
Sakata had just finished barking orders and was about to inspect the scene again when laughter rang out from above.
“Yahahaha!”
It was crisp.
Pleasant.
Almost childish.
Yet the moment it reached their ears, every man in the ruined house froze.
“This is truly impressive.
Even a real oni like me cannot compare to you mortals when it comes to telling ghost stories.”
The voice was not loud.
It did not need to be.
It slipped into their ears as clearly as if the speaker were whispering right beside them.
Sakata’s body stiffened.
Cold sweat crawled down his back.
One by one, the officers slowly raised their heads, their necks moving with the rigid horror of men under a curse.
“From what I know,” the voice continued lazily, “a maiden offered to an Oni God must be pure.”
Under the morning sun, a petite figure floated in midair.
She wore a magnificent golden kimono.
Brilliant blonde hair fluttered behind her in the breeze spilling through the broken ceiling.
Her skin was almost translucent beneath the sunlight, and above her head rose a pair of crimson horns that declared, more clearly than any words could, that she was not human.
Her bright golden eyes looked down at the panicked mortals below with open interest.
Bare feet rested on empty air.
Around her body burned a ring of purgatorial black flame, its heat so intense that it made the air ripple like boiling oil.
The officers had all seen the interrupted livestream through various channels.
They had all seen the face captured in the camera’s final moments.
How could they fail to recognize her?
“Oni…”
Someone’s voice cracked.
“An oni!”
“It’s Ibaraki-Douji!”
After a moment of dead silence, screams erupted inside the ruins.
The officers abandoned their tasks, stumbling backward in panic.
Several nearly tripped over the scattered evidence they had planted themselves.
Hands fumbled at holsters.
Pistols were drawn in clumsy desperation and aimed toward the impossible figure floating beneath the open sky.
None of them had imagined that an oni would appear again.
In broad daylight.
“Umu, umu.”
Facing more than a dozen black muzzles, the blonde girl in the air showed no sign of fear.
Instead, she nodded with great satisfaction, as if responding to the cries of worshippers.
“Indeed.
It is I.”
Her lips curved proudly.
“The leader of the oni of Mount Ooe, Ibaraki-Douji.”
Her golden slit pupils swept across the terrified faces below before finally settling on Sakata.
A playful smile appeared on her face.
“I seem to have heard you officers saying something quite strange just now.”
Her voice remained childish and pleasant.
That only made the words feel colder.
“Something about the sacrifice offered to the oni of Mount Ooe being a promiscuous slut?”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
Sakata stared at Ibaraki-Douji, his heart pounding so violently it hurt.
Fear gripped him like an icy hand.
But beneath that fear, another voice whispered.
A sweeter voice.
The Meiyuan Church cadres had promised him.
If he could capture Ibaraki-Douji alive, or at least bring back her corpse, his promotion to Police Superintendent would be guaranteed.
More than that, he might even climb to Chief Police Superintendent one day and step into the true upper levels of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Chief Police Superintendent.
For a non-career bureaucrat like Sakata, Police Inspector was almost the highest point he could ever hope to reach.
If he could rise further, it would be more than a promotion.
It would be a leap in class.
A rebirth.
A completely new life.
His hunger for power smothered his terror in only a few seconds.
“Stop playing tricks!”
Sakata forced courage into his voice and shouted at the girl in the sky.
“The oni of Mount Ooe is nothing but a myth from the Heian period!
You’re using some trick we don’t understand to put on a show!”
He tightened his grip around his pistol until his fingers ached.
Then he roared at his subordinates.
“Stay calm!
She’s only one person!
We have more than a dozen guns!”
His voice rose, sharp and strained.
“Come down and surrender immediately, or we’ll open fire!”
The cold metal in his hand gave him a thin, pathetic thread of courage.
Inside Ibaraki-Douji, Tachibana Hibiki nearly laughed.
This man was perfect.
Arrogant.
Greedy.
Stupid.
The kind of stage prop that delivered itself to the spotlight and begged to be used.
“Really, you mortals…”
Ibaraki-Douji puffed her cheeks in displeasure.
“You tell more lies than even oni.”
She looked genuinely annoyed by their disrespect.
“You do not even intend to answer my question?
Enough.
You have no manners at all.”
She shook her head as if she could no longer be bothered with them.
Then she slowly raised her right hand.
A pitch-black oni claw spread beneath the sunlight.
The officers’ pupils shrank.
They had seen the recording.
They knew what that gesture meant.
A giant oni hand appearing from nowhere, burning with hellfire, powerful enough to crush reinforced concrete with a single strike.
“Fire!”
Sakata’s composure shattered.
His scream came out hoarse and broken.
“Fire!
Fire!”
Survival instinct overwhelmed everything.
The officers pulled their triggers.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
More than a dozen pistols spat flame at the same time.
Bullets tore through the ruined house, forming a dense net of death as they rushed toward the petite figure floating in the morning sky.