Muraki never met the man he knew as Todoroki while the major was alive, having missed him by almost twenty years. But he knew of Todoroki from his grandfather's notes.

Ambitious and a zealous nationalist, from what Muraki could tell—not exceptionally so for a time of war, but enough that he had been willing to commit crimes against humanity in the name of his country and call his actions righteous. Muraki supposed he might owe the major some thanks. If not for the experiments Todoroki had helped his grandfather conduct on captured enemy soldiers and deserters and women abducted from conquered nations, perhaps Muraki Kazutaka would never have been born.

And for that reason, he would have been justified in ending the major's life. Muraki's only regret was that Todoroki was already dead.

However, dead or not, he still bled. He could still feel pain.

"But I . . . let you in . . ." Todoroki struggled to get the words out before the poison did its work. Muraki recognized the moment it sank in, just what he had been stabbed with, and relished the fear in Todoroki's eyes.

Todoroki's muscles seized, and Muraki let go of the shuriken, let the man slump coughing to the floor. "Does it really surprise you, Major, that the betrayer should find himself betrayed?"

Nonomiya saw the chance she had been waiting for and seized it. She spoke the last word of her litany, a name, and a bubble of golden light and fur popped into their dimension, surrounding her and Ukyou in its crackling shield. A curse on her lips, Kazuma grabbed her pistol, raised it, and fired three rounds at Muraki.

But the shield he erected with a slight flick of the wrist deflected the bullets.

And a blast from Natsume's gun, carving out the tunnel floor in front of her feet, warned Kazuma not to try again. "Don't kill him!" he shouted, moving himself into the line of fire.

Kazuma snarled back, the Black Lion bristling under her skin. The first opportunity she got, either she, or Shungei, was going to tear the kid apart. "You're with this asshole too?"

"Of course not!" Natsume said. "I hate him, more than you can imagine. But I need him alive. Just trust me on this."

Muraki regarded his erstwhile savior with narrowed eyes, perhaps noticing him for the first time.

"That's right. You remember me, don't you?" Natsume asked him through gritted teeth.

"No. Should I?"

And with that, Natsume utterly deflated. "You're responsible for my death, you psycho! Remember? University? Occult club? You summoned the demon bitch who ripped me apart! I got possessed by legions after I died and basically turned into demon chum because of you!"

But Muraki lost interest in Natsume's tirade almost as soon as it started.

"Don't you have anything to say?!"

"You should have known better," Muraki told him, "than to fool around with powers beyond your understanding. You have no one to blame for your death but yourself."

With a growl of rage, Natsume raised the shotgun at him. But he couldn't fire, not when he knew what would happen if he hit his mark.

Muraki was entirely unfazed by what he knew to be an empty show of frustration. Clearly this was not the way the shinigami had imagined his chance for revenge to go. But that wasn't Muraki's problem. He didn't even remember the kid.

"What did you do to Todoroki?" Kazuma asked him, while Natsume cursed Muraki and his own catch-22 under his breath.

"Merely returned to him I believed to be his."

"But he was helping you." It was as much a question needing explanation as it was an accusation.

"Yes," Muraki said, for the benefit of Todoroki, who he knew was still conscious at his feet, as much as hers, "and he deserved worse than what I did to him for that sin. He should have burned when he died, not been granted a comfortable afterlife as a shinigami. Enma took a risk putting that man in a position of power, after the way he abused it in life. After the dozens, perhaps hundreds all told, he tortured in the name of progress—or rather, my grandfather's version of it. In a way, you might say the major is one of those to whom I owe my existence."

"And that's how you thank him for it," Kazuma hissed. "By stabbing him in the gut."

"Exactly." And this silly woman could pretend outrage all she liked, but it seemed to Muraki that he had rather done her and her colleagues a favor. "I am a thing that should never have been born. If not for the work of men like the major here, I might not have been. But since I defied the odds, and Nature, and am standing here before you now, I can only surmise that everything that has led me here has been—for lack of a better word—fate."

Natsume scoffed at that. "Yeah, right. Just like it was my fate that I be eaten by demons. You uncovered Todoroki's connection to you and, like the psychopath you are, manipulated him into thinking you were some sort of savior. But the joke's on you. Don't you think Enma knew what he did when he was alive? He kept Todoroki around because of his connection to you and your grandfather! And you walked right into his trap," he spat, frustration rising again, "you smug asshole. . . ."

Whatever personal conspiracy theory the young man was referring to, Muraki had no idea. Nor did it concern him. "In any case," he said to the rest, "it seems you have bigger problems than myself to contend with tonight. From the alarms I would wager that Tsuzuki has broken into the offices of Judgment while you've all been playing hide-and-seek down in these tunnels?"

"What makes you so sure it was Tsuzuki?" Kazuma this time.

Muraki smiled. "Because I told him to do it. Well, to be precise, I planted the idea deep in his mind and waited for this place to provide the rain it needed to germinate. Steal the Kiseki and deliver it to me. A sin so heinous it's the only way he can ever be free of his torment."

When Tsuzuki could see again, he and his shiki were alone in a chamber that looked more like something out of a furturistic space opera than the usual early-twentieth century architecture that Tsuzuki was used to. A round room, lined with insulating panels, between which colored lights could be seen, many of them blinking. A smell of warm plastic heavy in the air. The hum of fans rang in Tsuzuki's ears.

In the center stood a configuration of tall towers vaguely resembling the innermost ring of Stonehenge, connected by a chandelier of draping wires and tubes to an upside-down castle of incomprehensible machinery.

For a moment, Tsuzuki wondered if they were still in the Judgment offices. But Tenkuu had a room within him with a configuration similar to this. Tsuzuki had always been of the impression it was the closest Tenkuu had to a physical brain.

"This is a supercomputer," he told Taimou. "I'm looking for a book."

"This is the location," Taimou insisted. "You doubt my sight?"

There was a challenge in those words, even if it didn't quite come through in Taimou's tone of voice. But she was his, and Tsuzuki did not fear her retaliation for a little backtalk, no matter what she might be capable of.

Alright, he conceded, so maybe the book was inside the fortress of computers. "You told me you could get me the Kiseki. If that's not true, I can find another way or a different shiki—"

The shadow-form swelled in size, its nebulous eye opening to glare at him. "I can get it for you," she declared. "But these encryptions will take longer to break. The signature of the one who composed them is . . . different than those I broke before."

Whatever she meant by that. No matter. They had time before anyone knew they were here, Tsuzuki figured, scoping out the doors leading into the chamber. They could barely hear the alarms through these thick walls—

Suddenly, Taimou screamed, and Tsuzuki turned to see chunks of darkness being ripped away from her form, like a piece of burnt and blackened paper dissolving under a strong gust of wind. She shrank before his eyes, unable to keep her mass from being eroded away from her.

And when she spun, eye blazing at her attacker, Tsuzuki spun as well—

And felt as though the floor had dropped out from beneath him. Of all the people he least wanted to meet here, in this moment— "Tatsumi. How did you find me?"

"You're not the only one who can travel by the shadows." They curled about the secretary protectively, like the tails of a familiar, but it was clear Tatsumi took no more pleasure in being here than Tsuzuki took in his arrival. "You can remove that mask now. It won't do you any more good here."

What he said was true enough, so Tsuzuki did as he suggested, rushing back into visibility, and let the mask fall to the floor. "If you've come to stop me, you're wasting your time."

"And what exactly would I be stopping you from doing this time, Tsuzuki?"

There was none of the usual hint of pity in his voice. Tatsumi would not forgive what Tsuzuki had done to Hisoka. He wanted Tsuzuki to know it, to see the condemnation naked on his face. Tatsumi would not be hindered by past guilt or sympathy this time.

"I know whatever you have planned is somehow Muraki's doing," he said. "I know the sort of man he is, so I have some idea of what he must have done to you. But it neither excuses nor justifies this course of action you have decided to take."

Tsuzuki only chuckled at that. "You think I'm doing this because of what he put me through? Muraki showed me the truth. Of who he is, and what I am—what I'm meant to be—"

"And you listened to him? Knowing how he lies? All that bullshit about being your child—he used his relationship to you to guilt you into helping him, just as he's always used you! But you owe that man nothing. You didn't make him, Tsuzuki. Do not now take the blame for the Murakis' crimes!"

"You're wrong, Tatsumi." Tsuzuki smiled to himself. "But so is Muraki. Not about what we are, but about what he thinks I'll do. He put something in my head, an idea—almost more of an itch, one he wants me to scratch. He wants me to steal the Kiseki from Enma, and bring it to him."

Horror rushed like an icy finger down Tatsumi's spine at the mere thought: Muraki, with the power to decide who lived and who died, and who was to be thrown down into the fires of Hell to be tormented for all eternity, at his fingertips. The fate of every soul, at the mercy of the doctor's merest whim.

Tatsumi's hands tightened at his sides, the shadows amassing around him itching for him to let them loose. "You've gone mad," he said through his teeth. "You would willfully betray us all, for that—that monster?"

Tsuzuki clucked his tongue at him. "Careful who you're calling monster. And no, I'm not mad. Muraki tried to brainwash me, he tried to make me feel as though I had no choice, and it almost worked. But I have no intention of giving him the Kiseki. How can you even think I would? We both know what he would do with it."

"Then—"

"I'm going to destroy it instead," Tsuzuki declared, as though it were the most natural solution in the world. "No one should have that power. Not Muraki, not me. Not even Enma."

He was mad. He must have been. That was the only explanation Tatsumi could think of. Without the Book of the Dead, Enma-cho would be thrown into chaos. Without the authority of Fate behind them, judgments rested on shaky ground. Summons may as well not exist, with no way to prove that a soul had exceeded its allotted time among the living.

And that was exactly Tsuzuki's point. What he had been wanting for decades. Tatsumi saw that now. To make himself irrelevant. To make all shinigami irrelevant.

But in doing so, how many countless souls would he throw into limbo, guilty and innocent alike? "You know I can't let you do that."

"I know."

"Then I'll ask you just once more, Tsuzuki, to stop what you're doing." And Tatsumi did hope that Tsuzuki would do as he asked, even if he suspected such hope was in vain. Already Tatsumi could feel Taimou resisting his pull, her strength returning, and he did not know how long he could last against her, a divine being, in this tug-of-war of will and shadows.

"Surrender," Tatsumi tried one last time, "throw yourself upon Enma's mercy—or I will have no choice but to stop you by force. Do not think I will hesitate to cut you to ribbons if that is what I must do."

"I don't doubt it." Tatsumi must have known what happened between him and Hisoka. Tsuzuki could see it in his eyes, that he meant it when he said he would not hesitate. He only held himself back now out of respect for order and property. There was no point in Tsuzuki wasting time on excuses or appealing to whatever affections Tatsumi might still have for him—if any remained now.

And it was knowing that that put the first trace of fear that he might fail into Tsuzuki heart. He still cared. He did not wish harm upon Tatsumi. But if there was no other way . . . "You would die trying."

"Probably," Tatsumi conceded. "Several times over, I have no doubt. But I am done standing by and letting you turn everything around you into ash and rubble."

Before Taimou could slip away from his grasp, Tatsumi aimed all the darkness he had managed to strip from her in Tsuzuki's direction, sent it flying at the speed of his own shadows.

Tsuzuki threw his arms up before his face, attempting to deflect the blow, but the shadows were not like the physical blows of a fire or water spirit. Tsuzuki had no power over them, and no defense from them. Lances of darkness cut through him, sharper and colder than a blade of ice.

But Tatsumi had held back somewhat. Instead of skewering him those shadows sliced shallowly. Then, like ribbons of the thinnest sheet of steel, once they were done cutting they wrapped themselves around Tsuzuki and bound him tight. So tight he could barely draw in breath, his arms pinned to his sides.

Taimou screamed, outraged that her essence was being siphoned off and used to hurt her own master. And seeing Tsuzuki being squeezed like a boa's victim, she could no longer afford to divide her attention between Tatsumi and Juuohcho's computers. "You are not the only one who can command the darkness, Mr. Tatsumi!"

But Tatsumi was prepared for Taimou to break free of his grip of her, like the snap of a rubber band breaking. He released his hold on Tsuzuki just in time to erect a bubble of impenetrable darkness around himself as Taimou regained her mass and strength and unleased it upon him, shadow against shadow.

"That was Ms. Torii," Konoe said when he hung up his phone. "She and Fukiya are at the offices of Peacekeeping with the rest of Todoroki's agents. Or those of them who bothered to show up when the alarms sounded, anyway."

"Still no word on Todoroki's whereabouts, then?" Wakaba couldn't help a wry smile. Perhaps thinking of the reaming the Peacekeeping chief was sure to get from Enma for his mysterious absence while Judgment burned.

"None yet. As far as I can gather from Ms. Torii he is still MIA, and left no indication as to where he might have gone. But Peacekeeping is assessing the situation in his absence and formulating a plan for containing Tsuzuki and his shikigami. Hopefully they will decide on a plan of action soon, before he can make the situation in Judgment any worse."

Konoe ran his hand through his hair in frustration for the thousandth time that night. Leaving things to the proper department was taking a toll on all of them. Usually Summons would be out there on the front lines, the first to respond to a crisis involving one of their own employees. That was how they had always responded to Tsuzuki's blow-ups in the past.

And always with cataclysmic results. They needed to be smarter this time.

Wakaba glanced at Watari's monitor showing a live feed of Tsuzuki and Tatsumi's confrontation. There was no sound, but between the swirling black mist and Tsuzuki's blood, Wakaba could imagine the gist. Tatsumi may have had the upper hand for the moment, but "He won't be able to hold Tsuzuki for long. Not as long as Taimou is there with him.

"Chief," she straightened up, "permission for me and Hajime to back Tatsumi up? At least until help from Peacekeeping arrives."

Too exhausted to fight them on it, Konoe waved his consent.

"But do try to keep damage to a minimum!" Watari yelled after them. "That's some highly sensitive and irreplaceable equipment down there."

Speaking of which, "Where exactly are Tatsumi and Tsuzuki right now?" Hisoka had been curious to know that ever since their sudden appearance in that room.

"That," said Watari, "is the main hub of the Mother supercomputer. And not a place anyone is supposed to be able to reach without the proper security clearance," he added through his teeth, his anxiety and frustration with that fact coming through clear. "I mean, I was one of those who designed it and even I don't have official access. Then again, we never designed the system to keep out mother-fucking shadow people from other dimensions, a gross lack of foresight, in hindsight. . . ."

So that's Mother. . . . Dread dragged its icy finger down Hisoka's spine as that name jogged a memory that he hadn't thought of immediate importance before now. But with Natsume and K being among those unaccounted for, he didn't think he could keep it to himself any longer.

So, setting aside fears of discipline for the time being, Hisoka told Watari and Konoe what Natsume had confessed to him a few months ago, about his and K's plans to hack into Mother and alter Muraki's fate in the Kiseki.

He hadn't thought the chief would be happy to hear it, and wasn't disappointed. "You didn't think this was information you should have shared with me right away, Kurosaki?"

"I guess maybe I didn't believe he would ever actually go through with it. And then other matters came up—"

"Like you dashing off to Gensoukai when you were told it was forbidden! How convenient for you and Mr. Natsume."

To Hisoka's surprise, Watari just laughed at the news.

"Joke's on Natsume," he snorted. "There is no Kiseki anymore. That is to say, the idea of an actual Book of the Dead is just that now: an idea. Has been for decades, ever since Enma had me and my team design the Mother program to digitize and automate record-keeping."

But that sounded like anything but a joke to Hisoka. The Kiseki was Mother? Or a part of it? "So, if someone hacked into it, could they change a person's entry?"

"And bring someone dead back to life?" Watari smiled. "It's an interesting idea, and just crazy enough that I can see how Natsume would think it might work. But frankly, Bon, it's just not possible. Mother doesn't work that way. She's an akashic record."

"Akashic . . ." Hisoka felt he must have heard that word somewhere before. Perhaps in his spiritual training, or over in Gensoukai.

Watari nodded sagely. "In Hindu mythology, Akasha is the name given to Space. The Aether, if you will. Basically the Universe and everything that has happened and will happen in it. King Enma's is a little more specifically tailored to meet the needs of his ministry. But she's still a vast repository of data, recording the actions taken in life by everyone who passes through the Land of the Dead, culminating in their soul's final destination. Which, by the way, I designed to be incorruptible."

"Is that why you call it Mother?" Maybe Hisoka was missing the significance.

"Oh, no. I named her that after the onboard computer in Alien. But that's not important." Watari waved his hand. "You can't just take a bit of information stored in her and rewrite it—or, well, I suppose you could do that, but it's not gonna change things in the real world. You couldn't, say, rewrite someone's death record to say they were still alive and, poof, they're alive again."

The chief narrowed eyes at him. "How sure are you of that?"

Watari's ready answer turned to hesitation the more he thought it out. "Pretty sure," he settled on. "The most you could do is create an inaccurate entry—"

"But even an inaccurate entry could be enough to alter a soul's fate, yes?"

Watari scratched his head. "I-I suppose. In theory—and if you managed to get to a person's entry at the precise moment between their death and processing in judgment, which is an incredibly small window of opportunity in peacetime. That's still assuming the Akasha would even let you alter her. She's supposed to be completely self-contained and automated, any memory accessed by an outside party read-only. In order just to get in you'd first have to break through layers of encryption that aren't just tough to crack, they're designed to simulate the levels of Hell. I'm talkin' horror beyond imagination! The psychic trauma of that experience alone oughta deter most would-be hackers."

"It ought to terrify humans, you mean," Hisoka reminded him. "Did you test those security measures on cats to see if they'd have the same effects?"

"Eh, no~ because cats aren't typically known for their computer literacy? But even if K got in, there's no guarantee she could alter Muraki's records—"

"Never mind Natsume and K," the chief said, his eyes glued to the security feeds on the monitor. "Tsuzuki is our immediate concern now. If that shikigami of his is capable of breaking any lock or spell, including the one binding him to Kurosaki, you can be damn sure she'll make quick enough work of your encryptions."

"Fair point. But what would Tsuzuki even want with that information?"

Hisoka thought he had some idea. That was, if he knew Tsuzuki's heart as well as he believed he did. "Could he destroy it?"

"You can't destroy information, Bon. Even if our records here were obliterated, that data would still exist out in the Universe. The dead would still be dead."

"But he could destroy the servers or Mother's brain or whatever that information is stored on. Right? Every soul whose information was stored on it would disappear—like they never existed."

Without another word, Watari spun in his chair toward another terminal, and began furiously typing away. Hisoka didn't need the scientist to tell him the results of that would be disastrous. Though he wished Konoe would say something, anything, to assure Hisoka he wasn't right about Tsuzuki. That he wasn't right in thinking Tsuzuki would do anything he believed would make it look as though he had never existed.

"It's as I feared," Watari told them after a moment. "Taimou's already trying to break through the encryption."

"Can you head her off?" said Konoe. "Keep her out?"

"I can try." More furious typing. And frustrated growling. "Her processing power is, like, way faster than mine, though—which only makes sense, she being a god and me being a mere mortal. But hold on . . ."

He blinked at the screen, leaning forward as if he couldn't quite believe what his eyes were telling him. "Someone's already doing just that. Ha-HA!" He slapped a knee. "Good on ya, K, keeping that shady bitch out of our systems!"

"What?" Hisoka practically jumped onto the back of Watari's chair, peering at the screen. Though he wasn't sure what he had expected to see, because he couldn't make sense of any of the lines and lines of code. "K's already hacked into Mother?"

"Not exactly," said Watari. "Let's just put it this way: If Taimou wants to get inside Mother, she's going to have to beat the biggest mahjongg solitaire puzzle ever meets three-D Whac-A-Mole first. I'm not sure how K's managing to do it, but I am loving the way her feline mind works!"

Kazuma had to laugh. If only because it seemed the only way to deal with the insanity of this situation. "You don't honestly think Tsuzuki's going to bring you the Kiseki itself, do you?" Muraki had to be living in a dream world if he thought that was ever going to happen.

He merely shrugged off her skepticism. He did not have the time nor did he care to share the details of the mind games he had played with Tsuzuki with this bunch.

"So then, where is he? Why hasn't he shown up with it yet, if that's the plan?"

"He won't bring it here," Muraki said, surprised she would be stupid enough to think so. "Why, you think that is the reason I came to Meifu in person?"

"Isn't it?" said Natsume.

"I came for Ukyou." And he stepped forward and raised his hand, as if inviting a partner to dance. "And I won't leave here without her."

For a moment, Muraki saw desire flash across Ukyou's familiar, ageless eyes. Desire to leave here. Desire to be safe, wrapped in his arms. She must love him still. She never could stop loving him, not even when Muraki had told her she was much better off cleaving to someone better. Someone whose hands, and soul, were cleaner than his.

But Nonomiya shouted "She's not going anywhere with you!" and the spell was broken. Ukyou recoiled from his hand, even though meters still separated them. She drew her own to her chest, as though worried it might betray her and reach for him before anyone else could stop it.

"She can speak for herself," Muraki told the shinigami.

But Ukyou shook her head. Swallowed hard. "I'm not going with you, Kazutaka. I know you want to kill this child, and I can't let you—"

"It's a monster!"

The words were out before Muraki could stop himself, and he regretted the effects they had. If even a part of Ukyou had wanted to reach out to him, he had just as well killed it.

Muraki willed himself to calm. Surely she was not so attached to this unborn thing that her reason had left her. "Ukyou, if you ever felt any love for me, then listen to me now. At this moment, I don't care what happens to that child. Carry it to term, keep it, or don't—none of that will matter if you stay here much longer. Enma cannot protect you—"

"I'd say we have this matter pretty well in hand," Kazuma snarled.

"Enma cannot protect you," Muraki repeated over her. "You're a living mortal, Ukyou. You are not under his jurisdiction. And he knows this. What's worse, Ashtaroth knows this. She is coming here, to drag you and that child back with her to Hell, and if you stay it is only a matter of time before she succeeds."

"Is that true?" Ukyou asked the shinigami, eyes wild in distress.

Kazuma clenched her jaw tight rather than answer. But Nonomiya said, in the gentlest voice she could manage, "We won't let that happen."

Muraki could have laughed. What lies! As if they would have any choice in the matter.

"It's true." That sober confirmation came from the last place Muraki expected it—and, in retrospect, maybe the first place he should have: Natsume. "I got a tip earlier tonight from someone in the biz that Juuohcho should be prepared for an invasion from Hell. I thought going to Todoroki with it would be the quickest way to ensure we got ready to meet it, but . . . well," he snorted down at the immobile but still conscious Peacekeeping chief, "you all saw how well that turned out. In my defense, at the time I didn't think the chief was in cahoots with our worst enemy."

"Not your worst," Muraki corrected him. Though it did give him some amount of pride they thought so highly of him.

"But pretty damn close! This tip mentioned something about a contract, an unbreakable one that guaranteed Ashtaroth custody of that child."

Now, really, why did Natsume have to go and mention that? It didn't take long for Ukyou to put two and two together. She must have remembered more of that last night at her house than Muraki had thought. Or else Ashtaroth and her legions had told Ukyou enough while they were holding her in Pandemonium.

"You son of a bitch!" Ukyou screamed at Muraki. "It was you who promised my child to the Devil!"

Nonomiya reached out a hand to calm her, no doubt concerned for her condition.

But she needn't have been. A pulse of energy shot out from Ukyou that sent Nonomiya flying backwards with a yelp.

Amazing, Muraki thought, that even in the womb the child reacted to her distress and came to her aid, exhibiting such potency already. So like its father. Though he still dreaded its potential, God, how he itched to test its power!

But he had no time to analyze this new development. Nonomiya's shikigami, startled and momentarily disconnected from its master's will, let down its shield, and Muraki saw his chance.

He rushed to Ukyou's side, heedless of Kazuma's shouts for him to stop or she'd fire, or Natsume's efforts to throw himself in between them. It really didn't matter to Muraki if he took a bullet now (though he very much doubted Kazuma would risk firing and hitting Ukyou). If he could just get close enough to touch a finger, a strand of hair, he could teleport himself and Ukyou back to their world in an instant—

But Yali curled himself around Ukyou, opening his saber-toothed jaws wide, and even if he still bore the marks of a cub, those jaws were already wide enough to fit Muraki's head between them. As Muraki had no desire to have his skull crushed or his throat slashed before he could get Ukyou to safety, he had no choice but to leap back and out of the way.

"You're making a grave error," he said. To the shiki or the shinigami—whoever would listen. "All of you." Ukyou had dropped to her knees and was holding her abdomen in shock at what she had just done, but Muraki wanted her to hear the truth. She needed to know. "Let me take her, before it's too late and Enma rules—"

"I think the lady's made it clear she wants nothing to do with you," Yali snarled.

"You stupid kitten!" Rarely had Muraki felt his patience tested so harshly as this. His jaw ached from clenching, he wanted to blast the shikigami to smithereens for this foolishness, but he couldn't risk harming Ukyou. "I am the only one who can keep her alive! You have no idea what's coming—"

But before he could explain any further, a deafening blast shook the earth around them. As the tunnel's ceiling cracked and began to collapse inward over their heads, it was all Muraki and the shinigami could do to get their shields up in time—and pray they held.

A new slew of alarms sounded in Peacekeeping's command center, confirming what the shaking and crash like thunder already told: that their world, their dimension had just been breached by a wormhole. That the breach had occurred under the cherry grove, causing massive structural damage to the tunnels that ran beneath it, triggering the cave-in they were watching in real-time.

What they didn't yet know was that the wormhole had been opened with intent, from an agent inside Enma-cho, one of their own, in order to connect their realm to Hell.

Below ground, in the reinforced halls of Judgment, the din of the destruction was dampened, but not the violence of the trembling. It nearly knocked Wakaba and Terazuma off their feet.

The hallway lights flickered. Caught off her guard in a dead run, Wakaba staggered into the wall, reaching out instinctively for her partner.

It was he who caught her first, with a bracing hand on her shoulder to ask if she was alright.

"Hajime, that wasn't Tsuzuki."

She could see by the look on his face that Terazuma already knew. Whatever just happened, it happened behind them.

What he could not have known, what only a gatekeeper would feel so deep and so surely in her bones, was that a gateway had just been opened—ripped through the membrane of their world like a knife through its belly. And Wakaba could all but taste the evil behind it, like a rotten stench crawling its way down the back of her throat. Everything in her screamed for that gate to be closed.

But Tatsumi needed their help, and they couldn't be in two places at once.

"What do you want to do?" Terazuma asked her.

Inside the room that housed Enma's supercomputer, the effects of the wormhole opening barely registered. Tsuzuki struggled against his intangible restraints, and Tatsumi was in the fight of his afterlife with the shadows. Those that responded to his will whipped about him in a cyclone, keeping Taimou's attacks at bay and absorbing what of her essence he managed to steal away.

But it took more and more of his concentration just to do that much, and with every second Tatsumi could sense his hold on Tsuzuki weakening. He was just one man. Perhaps it had been foolish of him to think he could stop them both on his own. But he could distract them. Keep Taimou's attention divided just enough that Watari could keep her out of Judgment's systems from his end. Wear her and Tsuzuki down just enough that Tsuzuki would be forced to relinquish his hold on Taimou and send her back to Gensoukai.

Though so far, the only one weakening appeared to be Tatsumi.

A burst of dark energy from Taimou and Tatsumi's restraints vanished. As the blood rushed back into his limbs, Tsuzuki wiped a trickle of blood from his chin. Not that it did much good when he was already bleeding from dozens of cuts, both shallow and deep. That last attack had wounded him deeper still, Tatsumi's shadows squeezing until Tsuzuki had felt ribs snap.

So Tatsumi wasn't lying. He wasn't pulling his punches. But his attacks were cold, lacking sympathy but lacking the necessary malice to win as well. He must still think he can wear me down until I change my mind. But it's going to take a lot more than this.

And in the meantime, they were getting no closer to the Kiseki so long as Taimou was preoccupied with nullifying Tatsumi's attacks. "Taimou, leave him to me," Tsuzuki told her as he picked up the Count's mask from where he had dropped it.

But, Master . . . he could hear her protest in his mind.

"I can handle Tatsumi." In fact, Tsuzuki was rather looking forward to evening the score a little, as he bore down against the discomfort of ribs retracting from lungs and trying to knit themselves back together. Not nearly as quickly as he would like. "I need you to concentrate on getting that firewall down. The sooner you get me into Judgment's systems the sooner this will all be over."

"Understood."

The mask molded to the contours of Tsuzuki's face as if made for him. He wondered if it was the genetic material he shared with the Count that was the reason for that, or if the mask would have recognized as its master anyone who was able to obtain it. By the time Taimou had pulled her essence back from Tatsumi, Tsuzuki was invisible but for that mask once again. He saw the momentary confusion on Tatsumi's face as he struggled to locate Tsuzuki.

Tsuzuki scrawled a command into the floor in his own blood, and it sent a wave of concentrated energy Tatsumi's direction that the secretary only narrowly managed to dodge. He summoned his shadows again, ready to send them zooming toward Tsuzuki the moment he got a lock on his location.

He finally caught a glimpse of the mask coming toward him—but too late. A smart crack across the face shattered one side of Tatsumi's glasses and whipped him around, but not so hard that he lost his hold on the shadows. They surrounded him like an inky mist as he staggered back, clinging to and parting around Tsuzuki's invisible form when he charged through, and this time Tatsumi was ready enough to sidestep his attacker, and grab on to Tsuzuki's arm as it narrowly passed him.

But Tsuzuki was prepared for that, his lessons with Muraki coming back to him like second nature. In no time at all he had flipped Tatsumi down onto his stomach, one arm pinned beneath him and the other behind his back and a knee in the dip of his spine. Tsuzuki allowed himself a grin of triumph. Tatsumi needed his hands and line of sight to control the shadows well. He would have to be foolish or desperate to risk using them to attack Tsuzuki when the two of them were pressed this close.

Before the thought had even finished crossing Tsuzuki's mind, however, tendrils of shadow like ropes or tentacles began moving up his arms, up his back, reaching for his throat. He may have pinned Tatsumi's arm, but the secretary could still move his fingers.

Tsuzuki put an end to that right away. Tatsumi grunted in pain when Tsuzuki pinched the nerves deep in his hand hard. The shadows retreated, but only just. Still a gun pointed at his head, just without the finger on the trigger.

"Give up," Tsuzuki hissed. "And get out of here. Leave me alone. I don't want to hurt you."

But you do, the demon voice inside him rebutted. You've been wanting to hurt him for fifty long years. It would be so easy, that voice said, curling deliciously in Tsuzuki's stomach, to run his finger through all that blood dripping down onto Tatsumi's back, and write a spell to blow him to kingdom come.

It was all Tsuzuki could do to push that voice to arm's length. "But I will if I have to."

"You know I can't," Tatsumi bit out from beneath him. "I can't—nn—let you do this—"

Then you know what you have to do. (All that blood . . . all that power—) Listen to him. He's practically begging you to. (—just begging to be used.)

Something knocked into Tsuzuki with the force of a freight train and ten times the speed, and pain erupted in his left shoulder as teeth dug in.

Then everywhere in his body as his attacker spirited him quickly out of reach of Tatsumi and crashed with him through several walls, before skidding to an actual screeching halt at the end of a long hallway.

Steam billowed from the nostrils of the giant dappled steel horse and into Tsuzuki's face. He tried to push its massive head away, his right arm having somehow survived the assault unbroken, but the rest of him was too battered to contribute.

"Senri-. . .-ma," he grunted, remembering the horse from his first trip to Gensoukai. He remembered trying to win her as a guardian, and being told only after he did every stupid time-wasting thing she asked of him that she already had a master far more worthy of her powers than he. "Still taking orders . . . from a kitten . . . I see."

"And you're still causing problems for Enma. It seems neither of us much likes change."

Her peg teeth dug deeper into Tsuzuki's shoulder, threatening to rip his arm from its socket and wrenching a scream from him. It seemed like more than what was necessary to carry out K's orders and keep him away from the computers. This felt personal.

"Out of respect for Kurosaki, I'll refrain from tearing you to pieces. But I warn you not to to try what little patience for you I have left."

What have I done to make you hate me so much? Tsuzuki wanted to ask. But he knew the answer. It's because you are what you are, of course. You see? One by one, they're all turning against you.

Tsuzuki's instinct was to reach out to Taimou, command her to come to his rescue. But he couldn't risk pulling her away from the Kiseki. Not when he was so close to having it.

He would have to endure this, long enough to think of a way out. It couldn't be that hard. After all, he'd endured so much worse, so many times before.

"Master Tsuzuki!" Taimou screamed as Senrima whisked him away.

But when her eye swiveled to find Tatsumi, trembling in her pitch-black face with rage and vengeance, he knew that his time had run out.

Still, as long as he had some fight in him, he wouldn't let the shikigami have her way. He put on a brave smile as he straightened and readjusted his broken glasses, summoned his strength for one final effort. "It's just you and I now, Taimou. Don't think I'll let you have your way with Enma's systems without putting up some resistance."

And with his mind, he reached out to the room's shadows, bid them circle Taimou like a lasso and bond their essence with hers. Then he pulled. Pulled like a black hole stripping the nearest sun of its mass, watching the darkness swirling around him, obeying him, grow larger, darker, while the howl of the shikigami's rage filled the room.

Have it your way, Tatsumi.

He felt as much as heard her voice in his head. But Taimou was Tsuzuki's servant. Tatsumi wasn't supposed to—

If the shadows are what give you strength . . . What will happen, do you suppose, if I strip them all away?

"What are you afraid of?"

Those words echoed in Tatsumi's mind like a whisper. Not Taimou's voice, yet feminine. Familiar.

No. Don't look! (The up-welling of guilt—I did this.) It couldn't be her—

. . . Mother?

He opened his eyes (how long had they been closed?)—

And found himself in the center of a conflagration.

Momentary disorientation. How did I get here?

That's right. The crash of the bombs. The screaming. It woke him out of a deep sleep and he ran out of his house.

This is his street, but unrecognizable. Every roof, every tree ablaze. The air so choked with flame even the smoke in the black of night is bright red-orange. His heart hammers as he looks around for an exit from the flames—but there is none. A horse still yoked to a cart goes crashing past, its mane and tail and the whole cart on fire. Over there, a walking torch stumbles a few more steps and falls down. He recognizes the print of his neighbor's monpe trousers before they're turned into ash on her crisping flesh.

This can't be happening, he thinks. This can't be real. (It already happened! . . . didn't it?) It's a scene of Hell. But he can't pinch himself awake. He can feel the heat in the air with each breath in, feels it scorching his lungs, slowly charring them as black as his neighbor's corpse. The house on his left side collapses in on itself, so he races to his right. But the flames surge toward him and he stumbles back, afraid he will never get up again. Afraid even if he does, there's nowhere to go.

Fear. Overwhelming fear.

Freezing fear, even in the middle of the firestorm.

It petrifies him. His legs refuse to work. His heart feels like it will beat out of his chest. But that isn't how it happens. He knows. He can feel it coming, Death, just like it did then, and he couldn't move then either. He couldn't beat back the flames that reached for him, reached down his throat, burned every last atom of oxygen from his lungs. He gasps at the searing pain, burning him inside and out, one cell at a time.

And still he doesn't die. He turns—

And lives the whole thing over again fresh. The fear. The desperation, the awful, blistering pain, and always that ubiquitous fear, that terror of knowing he is going to die. The absence of hope. The absence of any little sliver of shadow into which he might disappear and escape what's coming.

Except for the ones like charred fingers that dig into his mind and his soul and pull out this one memory, forcing him to revisit his death state over and over and over. So he can't fight back. He can't do anything, but cower, frozen in fear, and wait for the moment that fire finally consumes him.

Only once the tunnels had ceased crumbling around him and he could see sky through the debris cloud did Muraki let his shield fall. All he cared about at the moment was that Ukyou was still alive. The shikigami might have protected her, but there was so much dust in the air from the shattered concrete and disturbed earth, he couldn't see them. It was hard enough just to breathe.

Oddly enough, it was the sound of coughing—Ukyou's coughing—that almost made Muraki fall to his knees in relief.

But it was short-lived.

"My, isn't this a pleasant surprise," sang the voice he had been dreading to hear most. "I was not expecting to find you here too, Kazutaka, on this night of nights. Is this what humans mean by 'icing on the cake'?"

She stood above him on a slab of ruined concrete, so she could look down on him. As she had always looked upon him. A goddess who preferred her subjects in a position of obeisance. And she had dressed up for the occasion in a crown of interlocked horns and a breastplate of dragon scales, blood-red hair falling down her back in tight ringlets.

But if Muraki could see her feet beneath her skirts, he was sure they would be clawed and scaled like a harpy's. "Ashtaroth." He snarled the name like the curse it was. "I won't let you have her."

"Oh, I don't think you understand," Ashtaroth laughed. "It isn't up to you. Not anymore."

"Then take me instead. Renounce your claim to the child and I will swear—"

"Zepar already came to me with this offer on your behalf," she cut his protestations down with a wave of her hand. "I find it as ridiculous now as we did then, when we had a good laugh over it. Begging to be brought back in so soon after being released from your debts to us. You miserable clone. . . . What, did you really think you could come crawling back into my favor the moment it suited you? Did you think I might reward your disloyalty by making you my consort in that child's place?"

Nothing of the sort had ever been Muraki's desire or intent, and Ashtaroth knew that. She was mocking him. She narrowed her eyes. "You had your chances, Kazutaka, and you squandered them all. I'd no more trust the sincerity of any vows you made than I would a snake trying to slither its way into my bed. Come to think of it, I might trust the snake."

She could say whatever she liked, it made no difference to Muraki. But the longer Ashtaroth went on, he began to feel a tingling in the back of his artificial eye.

Then a burning. Then a mounting pressure he could not ignore.

Seeing his trouble, Ashtaroth clucked her tongue, as though at a whimpering child. "What's the matter, Kazu-kun? Is your eye bothering you?"

At her words the pain surged like a knife stabbing through the socket and into the brain. Its suddenness doubled Muraki over, and he tore off his glasses—

"Well, you know what they say. If your right eye offends you . . ."

He plucked it out. It was the only thing he could do that would stop the torment. Dug his fingers in beneath the artificial eye until it popped out. Felt the warm wetness of blood under his fingernails in his haste to end the misery. Even that hurt far less than leaving the eye in. It wasn't the first time the accursed thing had caused Muraki trouble. Only in the past he had accepted the discomfort and occasional malfunctions as nuisances, perfectly bearable considering everything he had to gain—the power, the knowledge, the access—from Ashtaroth's gift.

No longer. Muraki dropped the eye on the dust and concrete and ground it beneath his shoe. Wincing as its sight and sensation was finally severed from him completely, but he could not afford to take any chances.

Far from offended by how he treated her gift, however, Ashtaroth only grinned as gleefully as ever.

"This changes nothing," Muraki spat at her, defiant. "I'll end Ukyou's life myself, if that is what must be done, rather than allow you to lay a finger on her."

"In your crippled state?" Ashtaroth laughed back. "With what powers? You have nothing that I did not give you. And now I've taken it all away!"

But Natsume put her amusement on hiatus, forcing Ashtaroth to defend herself from a sudden blast from his shotgun, its cartridges filled with purifying salt. "What, no lions this time?" he snarled at her. "I was hoping to get some payback for their tearing me apart, but I guess I'll just have to take it out on you."

The barest flash of recognition was all that had time to pass across Ashtaroth's features before she was bowled off her perch by a mass of black fur and horn and flame. Kazuma had relinquished her hold. Kokushungei had arrived.

The other four and Nonomiya's shikigami saw the queen of demons disappear beneath Shungei's bulk, but they knew better than to count her out. Caught between the black lion's teeth and paws, Ashtaroth began to expand at exponential rate, her human shape morphing into something else that threatened to fill the entire crater around them.

When all was said and done, in her place there stood a dragon as large as a sauropod, and just as serpentine in form and scaled hide. That was where the similarities ended. Her elongated, tightly-corded body and snarling face were those of a lioness, but covered in tough blood-red scales like mail, and her skull bristled with horns. Immense eagle's wings sprouted from her sides, eagle's talons from her paws. To finish off this chimeric Mesopotamian monstrosity was a tail like a serpent's, which Ashtaroth used to pummel and sting Shungei like a whip until the black lion let go.

Shungei's lips curled and her ears lay flat against her skull as she growled back at her opponent. Black flames gathered with her inhale of breath—

But Ashtaroth had flames of her own to meet Shungei's attack, an inferno clashing against an inferno, lion-dragon against lion-dragon, and the humans and shinigami on the ground could feel the searing heat of the two beasts' fury even through their defenses.

Shungei dug in her heels as the beat of Ashtaroth's wings threatened to throw her off her feet, and dipped her head, looking for a weak spot at which to aim her twisting horns. But Ashtaroth was confident, and dared not give Shungei the chance to plan her next attack. She reared back, slashing out with her wicked claws; and when Shungei went for the blow, shot out with her neck like a cobra for the strike, sinking her fangs deep into Shungei's flesh, tearing away chunks of flesh and fur.

Shungei howled, but she was not alone. Just when Ashtaroth believed herself to have the undisputed upper hand, a volley of blinding white light flashed across the width of the crater and shot through her body. Those tough scales, hard as steel, offered little resistance to Muraki's attack, which bore down on Ashtaroth like a meteor shower of pure, angelic light. And burned—burned like holy water burned, like sage smoke and salt burned.

Like that accursed creature, that unholy thing, that science experiment, Muraki Kazutaka, should never, not in a thousand years, have been able to burn her!

Now Ashtaroth did scream, in frustration and disbelief as much as pain and outrage. How could Muraki have possibly hidden this from her—she, who made him what he was? What spells he wove, what monsters he summoned—he did so at her pleasure! "What is this treachery?" she raged. He must have lied to her all those years ago about what he was. There was no other explanation. "Where could you have possibly—?"

Then it was Muraki's turn to laugh at her confusion. "Not everything up my sleeve was given to me by you, Ashtaroth. I learned a few tricks all on my own. I am, as you say, a clone, after all. And our sort have to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Even with one eye, I still know how to hurt you."

As he spoke, Ashtaroth watched in horror as the creature he had summoned pulled itself through into their world—summoned from a dimension she had no access to. A pale, alien thing, all glowing, writhing tentacles with no face to speak of save a gaping mouth at its center, like some enormous sea anemone wreathed in stardust. Ashtaroth knew that if she allowed it to touch her, it would attempt to suck her into its world.

And she could not let that happen. She could not let Muraki Kazutaka, of all creatures, defeat her. Not when she was so close to her goals—to that child who would cement her supremacy for the next millennium, and to the end of Meifu.

Pandemonium had long been itching for a war.

So at the first glimpse of Meifu's bleak fields on the other side of the gate, a cry of palpable excitement went up through their ranks, and they surged forward with their weapons brandished high, tearing the wormhole wider in their rush to all go through, eager to spill the undead blood of Enma's dogs.

Like newborn terrors, Zepar mused, ripping their mother apart on their way out of the womb. The destructive poetry of the image aroused him.

His excitement was tempered, however, by Focalor's appearance beside the gate. Of course he would be there. Focalor had opened it, after all.

Even wearing the meat suit of that captured shinigami, Keijou, Zepar recognized his colleague's mannerisms, his energy signature. Focalor had gained full control of his host—and in record time, no less. Must have been one hell of a kiss.

"You wear that crow well," Zepar remarked when his own turn came to pass through the gate.

"I suppose I should thank you for ridding me of my last vessel," came the equally frigid response. "It was destined for the dung heap with or without your help, but at least you made my supposed demise sufficiently convincing. If unnecessarily messy."

Zepar had had enough. Even if Focalor was doing their mistress's bidding, Zepar seized him by the shirt and drew him close. Close enough for Focalor to smell the venom in his words. "Once a traitor, Focalor, always a traitor. Ashtaroth may have been willing to overlook your treachery this once because it suited her plans to do so, but I will not. This isn't over between us. When our mission here is done—"

"Yes, Zepar," Focalor cut him off, and this time he was the one left laughing, "when we're done here, I intend to show you my appreciation in full." And his hand on the hilt of Keijou's sword at his hip left little doubt in Zepar's mind how he intended to show it. "Look forward to it. If you survive."

The command center was in chaos, and running on little sleep. Even so, its officers sprang into action, grabbing their coats and sidearms to engage the new threat directly or taking over unmanned consoles, trying to find any answers they could as to what was happening outside.

In Todoroki's office, Endo clenched his cell phone tight, feeling himself losing his grip the longer it rang and rang without being picked up. Damn it! Where was the chief when they needed him—and why couldn't he answer his fucking cell?

"What are you still doing here? Aren't you pretty much Todoroki's second-in-command?"

He looked up, hardly recognizing the voice, and found Saya and Yuma blocking the doorway. It was the former who had spoken, and she glared down at him with hands on her hips, no trace of the meekness he had found it so easy to manipulate before in her aura.

"I can't get ahold of him," Endo growled back. "What fucking business is it of yours anyway? This isn't your department."

"We were sent to liaison with your people," said Yuma, "so we can all keep informed, figure out what our next move is going to be. That's all we're trying to do."

"Yeah, well, you came to the wrong place, because your guess is as good as mine." Endo went to push past them, trying to put a quick end to this conversation—

"Is that it?!"

—but the force in Saya's tone stopped him.

"Are you just going to give up? All your colleagues are out there trying to do something about this mess, in case you haven't noticed, and you're in here cowering behind your chief's desk!"

Endo wanted her to pay for that insult, making him sound like some whimpering little child who was afraid of something as harmless as lightning. Only that wasn't a simple storm out there. He'd seen the footage on the monitors. Those were demons from Hell, beings of pure evil, bred to inflict maximum pain and despair, and their numbers were overwhelming. Endo considered himself a realist, and he didn't see any way Enma-cho could hope to win. "Don't you understand?!" he railed back, no longer caring when tears stung the backs of his eyes. "I can't go out there, I can't—face those things—"

He wasn't expecting the hand on his shoulder.

"Then go to that command center," Saya said, no trace of vitriol or vengeance in her that he could see or hear, "and be the leader that Chief Todoroki would want you to be. Yuma and I will be right there with you every step of the way."

She shamed Endo with her kindness, her determination. But right then he was glad for it. If he wanted to prove himself worthy of the great coat on his back, to stand tall and command unwaveringly, even in the middle of this nightmare, was what he must do.

For nearly twenty years, Natsume had been dreaming of avenging himself on the demon bitch who took his life.

But as he stared up at the several-stories-tall dragon that she had transformed herself into—to speak nothing of the giant black fire-lion that was just barely a match for it, or that eldritch horror Muraki had summoned—he realized that he was quite out of his league. At this point, it looked like his plans to keep Muraki out of harm's way were going to have to be scrapped, too.

"Na-tsu-me!"

Now there was a voice he was happy to hear! He looked around for the source of it—

And saw Tsukiori Kira waving to him from the rim of the crater. Even dressed like a priest—if a priest wore tight pants and leather—she was the epitome of a badass. Her blessed sword with its sunburst hilt in one hand, she beckoned for him to join her with the other.

Just in time, too. Natsume had only taken his eyes off the kaiju fight for a second, and a second was all it took. Ashtaroth's lashing tail slammed into the spot he had been standing in just moments after he teleported, carving up the rock and concrete beneath it even more.

Natsume whistled in relief and straightened his glasses as he stared down from his safer perch. Well, relatively safer. Now that he was on higher ground, he could see just how vast Ashtaroth's army was. Her minions poured out of the mouth of their wormhole, climbing up out of the crater and racing across Judgment Bureau grounds towards its buildings, all manner of crude, rusty-looking weapons in their hands, including some Natsume would swear were made from human bones.

"I see you made the most of my warning," Kira said to him as they set off to face the hordes.

The sarcasm did not escape Natsume. "Hey, I did the best I could! It just wasn't best enough. Not my fault I'm surrounded by distrusting bastards with their own agendas. Glad to see you here, though. If there's any night we could use the help of an exorcist—"

He paused to fire his shotgun at a demon running toward them with an obsidian-edged macuahuitl. The shot took off the top half of his attacker's skull, and the demon dissolved as it fell to the ground. Natsume couldn't help wise-cracking, "As long as you don't lose your head."

"Ha-ha," Kira deadpanned. But the lopsided grin she couldn't keep off her lips went straight to his dead little heart. "What'cha got in there? Salt rounds?"

"Marked with a tiny banishment seal for good measure."

"Hope you've got a backup plan for when you run out of ammo."

Natsume was going to tell her that he had his backup plan in his back pocket, but Kira was already rushing ahead of him to dispatch a charging mutant snapping turtle with her sword.

Natsume whistled his appreciation. It was almost too bad he had to fight as well, instead of being able to sit back and watch a master at work. But there was something to be said for the thrill of battling alongside a comrade in arms, especially when said comrade was such a righteous babe.

From the second the Hell portal opened up inside the cherry grove, tearing the land around it apart in the process, it was clear that Tsuzuki and his shikigami were no longer their greatest concern.

And when demons of all shapes and sizes began pouring out of it, rushing for all buildings at once, regardless of function, no one could afford to hang back from the fight any longer.

Hisoka looked over to see Konoe already waiting to meet his gaze. "Chief," he began, ready to make his argument for action.

But Konoe just said, "Go." The time for caution was over. In the face of this new threat, he didn't care what Kurosaki summoned, or if he had to take the heat for it before Enma's throne afterwards. Just so long as there was an afterwards that didn't end in Enma-cho being captured or destroyed.

Without another word, Hisoka raced downstairs to the commons. Along the way, his shikigami sprang to the fore of his mind. It didn't matter what prophecy had been made. They were needed now if they ever were.

"Grant me the foreknowledge to see my enemy's move before he makes it," the words came to Hisoka's lips as he ran out on to the lawn as if channeled through him from another plane, "and the wisdom to guide my strike true. Come to me—Rikugou! Kurikara!"

He was prepared for their forms this time. The sunbird flashing into being like a flare, the red and black dragon uncoiling like a twister of flame in a wildfire. Spinning around each other, a double helix slowly unwinding: the primordial light of creation, and the inferno that would forge it into its own righteous image. They were even more magnificent to behold when they were cowled by their elements, like this, than in their own world.

Even their voices were like heavenly music to him. "How can I serve, Lord?" "I am yours to aim, Master."

Lord. Master. Their trust in him warmed Hisoka's heart.

But what he had not planned for was the tsunami of energy that accompanied them, that nearly picked him up off his feet. Hisoka had to stop and brace himself against its force, but when he did, the fires that trailed the two shiki swept in to surround him. Their majesty was almost too much to look at—too much to hold to this plane of reality. The combined strength of their power was a force of nature in its own right, and it flooded through Hisoka like a drug through his veins. He could feel them pounding with it, burning hot, threatening to make him burst from the inside out.

This was a mistake. Whatever had possessed Hisoka to make him think he was strong enough to command two of the most powerful shikigami at once, let alone to anchor their forms to this world? He didn't know what he was doing! He hadn't trained for this! And he could feel their power weighing on him, amassing at his core. It was all he could do to hold his own soul together, but for how much longer? How long could he keep himself from flying apart?

Let me help, a voice within him said. You know I can help.

"Lord Kurosaki!" It was Kurikara's voice that broke through to him, the same voice Hisoka remembered from their talks in the Imaginary World. "You must summon Yatonokami from within you like you did when you faced me!"

No! Anything but that! Its dark power within him, coiling like a viper readying to strike, was almost as hard to bear as their combined qi pressing down on his soul. He couldn't let it out! He knew what it would do, if given half a chance—

"You must!" Kurikara tried. "You know you must or we will destroy you!" It wasn't a threat, just the truth. A truth it seemed from his voice that even the great Dragon King feared.

But the Yatonokami grinned wickedly, Yes, you know you must, and Hisoka couldn't let it win.

"Listen to Kurikara. You're not strong enough to stabilize the two of us in your world," Rikugou tried, "when you're only half yourself."

"I can't!" Hisoka whimpered. Didn't they understand? He couldn't let that thing out! If it was the last thing he did, he had to keep it contained. Otherwise, if it took over his body, people would die, his friends would die. He could feel its evil desires. Yatonokami would turn him into a monster—

"It won't," Kurikara swore, and it was clear to Hisoka then that the dragon had seen into his mind, and that Hisoka had unwittingly invited him in. "Do you think I would heed your call if I thought for a minute your soul would cave to that snake's desires? I would sooner destroy such a one than obey so weak a master."

"You may have to. If I do what you say." Hisoka would rather not exist at all than exist as that monster Yatonokami had shown him in his nightmares.

"We won't," Rikugou said. But Hisoka heard the promise in there, too. That he was prepared to do what was necessary, if that was what Hisoka wished. "If you trust us, Hisoka, then do this thing."

"Now, Kurosaki! Your soul won't last much longer!"

"Please. We cannot do it for you."

They were right. Hisoka could not deny that they were right. If he tried and failed to control Yatonokami, then the result would be obliteration. The end of the person who was Kurosaki Hisoka.

But if he did nothing, he would be destroyed anyway. By his own guardians. And he would be no help to his friends and the Judgment Bureau. And no help to Tsuzuki.

It was remarkably simple, to reach out and touch that separate consciousness that at the same time had always been with him in the back of his mind. As if out of his own body, he saw himself reaching out his hand to grasp it—

And saw that hand, that arm, everything that was attached to it, swallowed up by that immense serpent the color of rotten flesh. It was like being plunged into a vat of his own tears, with no hope of ever reaching the surface.

Only instead of drowning Hisoka, it reinvigorated him. Reinforced him, binding that which had been threatening to fly apart back together, stronger than ever. Yatonokami was the gravity that remade him into a solid object. Charged him up. Hisoka could feel the colors of his shikigami's auras like they were limbs of his own body. Power flowed through him—Kurikara's, Rikugou's, and his own. But it still threatened to burst. The yatonokami's power still wanted out into the world.

You belong to me, Hisoka warned Yatonokami. You are me. And you will do what I tell you to do. That is the only way I will ever let you out!

"Give me a manifestation of your power!" he commanded it. "In a form I can use this time."

Instead of a pressure in the center of his forehead, he felt a sharp tingling down his right arm, all the way to his fingertips.

Hisoka turned his hand as his palm itched. I understand. And as he let the serpent's qi flow, it cut its way out of his palm, birthed itself out of his arm, icy steel, snake scale-wrapped handle and all: the Sword of Night. Or at least some shard of it that had always resided within him, formed into the shape of a katana.

It fit Hisoka's grip as if it had been tailored to him, because it had been, out of his own flesh and blood and bone. His ancestor Ren could not have been so comfortable with the weight of his blessed sword in his hand.

But Hisoka could feel its darkness, too, like the center of a black hole, and the keenness of its edge, twining up to overtake him. Begging him to let it loose upon his enemies, to slake its thirst on their blood. It would feel so good, the sword all but purred in his ear like a lover, to cut them in half, to glory in their suffering, to curse them with pain the likes of which they could only begin to imagine. Had he not suffered too? Was he not due his vengeance? Would it not feel like heaven, to track down everyone who had hurt him, and return those hurts in spades?

"Kurosaki," Kurikara warned, sensing him slipping.

And his voice shook Hisoka back to himself with renewed determination. He would not give in to Yatonokami's temptations. He knew temptations were all they were—empty promises with no actual relief from his pain at their end. That road did not lead to Heaven, but to a hell of his own making.

Gripping the Sword of Night tight in his right hand, Hisoka closed his eyes, and ran the fingers of his left over the flat of the blade from hilt to tip. And as he did, he spoke the words that appeared from within his heart: "King of Dragons, Subduer of Demons, take this blade of sin and reforge it in your likeness—quench me in your righteousness and make this soul worthy to wield you—Kurikara!"

With the dragon's name, the sword burst into flame, as Kurikara's manifestation shrank down to sheathe it in even harder, sharper, glowing steel. The Sword of Night was still there, a mighty heart of darkness encased in swirling flames, but the fire did not burn Hisoka. Moreover, he felt the madness of Yatonokami's rage lift off his soul. It was as if a blindfold had been lifted from his eyes.

And when it did he could see the battlefield that stretched out before him perfectly. Rikugou had condensed time around Hisoka without being asked, and hellions and demons poured out of the mouth of the portal and the ruined ground seemingly in slow motion. Some were stopped by Juuohcho's security system—the automated system installed after Tsuzuki's possession by Sargatanas—some by Peacekeepers or other shinigami who had rushed to do their duty at the same time as Hisoka. But there seemed to be no end to Hell's legions, standing between him and Tsuzuki.

The anger Hisoka felt now was entirely his own. There was nothing else for it. He would have to fight his way to the halls of Judgment.

Only this time, he would not have to face his enemy alone. And Hisoka knew already, he could feel it as sure as he could feel there was still solid ground under his feet, that Kurikara would vaporize Hell's army like a flaming knife through butter. Soon Ashtaroth and her generals would regret even thinking that they ever stood a chance against Enma-cho's employees.

It was only what he would have to face at the end of this that Hisoka truly feared.

So he could not allow himself to dwell on it for even a second.

Notes: The concept for Ashtaroth's dragon form was inspired by the Babylonian motif of a stretched-out, scaled lion- or leopard-like creature, as well as the idea that dragons were first conceived as a mashup of the most fearsome parts of a snake, an eagle, and a lion (or tiger or jaguar, depending on the part of the world). Astarte/Ishtar is also sometimes depicted as having wings and raptor feet, accompanied by lions, and wearing a crown of horns, which is a symbol of divinity. My hope, though, is that some shades of the Beast and red dragon of Book of Revelation fame also came through in this chapter.

For more on Kurikara and swords, see chapter 24's endnotes.