Chapter 62 : The Path of the Blade

The mission file was thin.

Two pages. A blurry photo of a half-collapsed apartment block. Handwritten notes in red ink: Three disappearances. Suspected special-grade infestation. No civilian witnesses willing to talk.

Kishibe closed the folder slowly, fingers lingering on its edge.

Yaga stood across from him in the underground command room, arms folded, face etched with concern beneath the weight of old grief and new scars.

"This one's unofficial," Yaga said. "I pulled it from the pile of cold leads. We've already lost two grade 1 sorcerers trying to scout it. I can call someone to back you up."

Kishibe buckled his belt with mechanical precision, each movement slow and deliberate. His blade hung at his back like a silent partner.

He didn't look up. "I said I'll go alone."

Yaga exhaled through his nose. "Don't do this to punish yourself."

Kishibe tightened the strap. "I'm not."

"Then why?"

Kishibe looked at him, finally. Eyes flat. Hollow.

"Because someone has to."

Yaga nodded grimly, though his throat twitched as if swallowing a protest. "Then at least come back alive."

Kishibe gave the faintest shrug, turned, and disappeared into the tunnel.

---

It stood on the city's outskirts like a tumor grown from concrete and silence.

Seven stories of rot and rust. The balconies sagged. Windows gaped like empty eye sockets. The smell hit him before he even stepped inside: mildew, death, and something sweetly decayed.

He entered through a rusted service door. His boots scraped over old linoleum that peeled like dead skin. The flickering lights cast trembling shadows across the graffiti-stained walls.

The air shifted.

His cursed energy prickled at his skin.

Something was watching him.

He stopped, hand resting lightly on his blade.

Not yet, he thought. Wait for the right moment.

A soft noise echoed—a child's laughter. High, wrong, metallic. It came from above.

He moved like a phantom, every step calculated. The building creaked with every breath. On the second floor, he passed a shrine of toys, some burned, some wet with old blood.

On the fourth floor, the hallway yawned open like a broken mouth. The light was gone. Darkness pooled like water here.

He stepped into it.

---

The first thing he saw were the bodies.

Hung from the ceiling by strands of cursed webbing, their faces covered in curses. The sorcerers who had come before him—eyeless, twisted, posed like puppets.

The air buzzed.

The curse emerged from the far end.

A mass of limbs. Eyes blinked on its shoulders. Its mouths whispered lullabies in reverse.

It screeched, and the sound scraped across his skull like a scalpel.

Kishibe didn't flinch.

He drew his blade slowly.

"About damn time," he muttered.

The curse charged. A blur of claws, teeth, writhing flesh.

He met it head-on.

The first swing was a test. He parried. Sparks flew. The second was a feint—a low sweep that took two limbs off its left flank. The creature howled.

He didn't smile.

He activated Severance.

The hum of the blade changed, rising to a note too sharp for mortal ears.

The third strike cleaved through three heads at once.

A bolt of pain lanced through his temple. His knees buckled. His vision dimmed at the edges.

He grunted. Bit the inside of his cheek. Blood filled his mouth.

The curse paused, hesitating.

He struck again.

And again.

And again.

Until the creature was nothing but twitching remains.

---

He stood amid the gore, panting.

The walls dripped black ichor. The floor steamed. His shirt clung to him with sweat and blood.

His blade rattled slightly in his grip.

He sheathed it.

Then lit a cigarette with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.

The first drag burned.

He exhaled.

"One down," he murmured.

He glanced at the ceiling, eyes hollow. The ghosts of the dead sorcerers stared back in silence.

"Only a thousand more to go."

---

Nanami and Haibara sat on the stone steps of Jujutsu High's training hall. A paper report lay open between them, stained with fresh rain.

"He did it again," Haibara said quietly. "Went alone. Special grade curse. Walked out alive."

Nanami didn't look up. "How long can he keep doing this?"

"I don't know."

They were quiet.

"He doesn't even talk to us anymore," Haibara added.

Nanami finally looked at the horizon.

"He was different before. Still cold. Still harsh. But he used to laugh. Remember?"

Haibara nodded slowly. "Now it feels like… he's not here. Just something wearing his skin."

Neither said the word.

Not yet.

But both of them knew:

Kishibe wasn't healing.

He was unraveling.

And somewhere beyond the school gates, in the ruins of a world only he dared enter, Kishibe moved toward the next hunt.

His blade sang.

And the silence that followed was the kind only a killer knew how to keep.