Author's Note: Alright! After a month-long break from writing this, I'm back with another chapter! Cross the "this story's going to be short and sweet"—it's going to pretty long. 20k at least, so definitely not short, but I'll aim for sweet. Also, I don't really know what qualifies as "Rated M," but since there's a decent amount of bloodiness in here—not a lot, and not exactly super descriptive, but decently descriptive enough—I'll be changing the rating to "M," just to be safe.

That said, I hope you enjoy this next chapter! Miyako's really growing on me, and I hope you like her too :) Follow if you don't mind my update speed, and leave a review if you have anything to say!

Miyako passed many villages in her travels, but none so freshly overrun as the one she came upon now. The telltale smog of burning fires blackened the sky long before the acrid smell of smoke wafted into her nostrils, followed by the sharp, sourly metallic scent of blood.

Freshly spilled. There's a chance of survivors, Miyako thought, quickening her steps. Trackside refugees. Train riders. Tomio.

Tomio, Miyako thought, breaking into a sprint. I'm coming, Tomio.

Her feet thudded over the dirt, stirring up clouds of dust as she progressed towards the stone-walled settlement. Columns of brown-black smoke trailed into the ashy sky like smoke trails of vengeful spirits, demons descending towards burning houses to retrieve the few lingering souls that had managed to escape the black claws of fate.

The solid metal gates were still open when Miyako arrived, a blood-stained train haphazardly wedged between them. Scattered nearby were bodies of Kabane and humans alike, varied as much in death as in life. Wounds ranged from clean-cut to outright jagged, almost as if blown so by a hand grenade. From what Miyako could see, it seemed like the settlement walls had assigned patrols of guards; the katana-carriers were designated by forest-green bandanas tied around their right arms, browned by blood and grime as their bodies hit the ground.

Dead. Dead. Dead, she thought, eyes skimming over the bodies sprawled around the train. All dead.

A scream broke the humming crackles of the burning wreckage, and Miyako snapped into motion, sprinting in the direction of the sound.

It was a child's scream.

Tomio, Miyako thought, rounding a corner so abruptly she felt the earth beneath her feet give and sink a bit. That thought, however, flew out of her head briskly when she saw an ashen-skinned figure dart forwards at the intersection ahead.

Kabane, she thought, her katana in hand instantly.

Another Kabane was in the middle of crossing the intersection when Miyako arrived—a woman, kimono tattered and bloody. Miyako's blade flashed towards her without a thought, severing her left arm, then her head. The severed sections landed on the ground will dull thumps, but Miyako's blade was already arcing towards her next target.

The voice sounded again, shrill with fright, and Miyako pushed harder. Her movements became less fluid, more erratic, lashing out at whatever came her way. Kabane were felled quickly, the reflexive slashes nowhere near precise but cutting all the same. The final horde of Kabane were gathered around a tree, reaching for the small figure clutching desperately onto a high-hanging branch.

"Back off!" Miyako snarled, pouncing at the gray-brushed crowd blade-first. Using a combination of her elbows, knees, legs, and katana, Miyako fended off the drooling Kabane, knocking them back and cutting them down when they approached again. Bodies dropped one after the other, Miyako's breaths shorter with each gusty thump.

"Tomio!" Miyako shouted when she'd cut down the final standing Kabane, jumping up and grabbing a branch to swing herself onto the higher branches. The small, hunched pile finally opened up, a small, tear-stained face peeking out from between the gaps in the blue-green.

An unfamiliar face.

A snarl from down the street alerted Miyako to the approaching Kabane, and she made a snap decision.

"Hold on," she said, grabbing the boy and using his surprise to throw him over her left shoulder. "We're getting out of here."

With that, Miyako tipped herself off the branch she was crouching on, landing neatly on the ground below and shifting into a sprint for the gates she'd entered from. Her left hand around the boy's waist and her right around her katana, Miyako used a combination of her blade and her legs to fend off Kabane who got too close. Thankfully, the boy put up no resistance as she ran, remaining as light and present as a rag doll.

The gate in sight, Miyako took a leap, clearing the few Kabane who seemed to have figured out her exit and dashing out into the woods nearby, although still in the direction the tracks left the gates. The worst thing to do at the moment was to lose the tracks; finding them again was a pain, as she'd discovered after a few adventurous hunts for deer who'd put up a chase.

At the moment, Miyako's goal was to get away from the town she'd just left and continue along the tracks. The ruined train she'd seen earlier was of a different make than the one carved into her memory, which meant that Tomio—alive or not—was still somewhere down the tracks.

What do I do with this boy? she wondered, leaves crunching under her pounding feet. Her breaths were short and shallow now, strained. I can't keep this speed up forever. Eventually, I'm going to have to take a break, and—

A wall slammed into her, choking the air out of her lungs and sending her crashing towards the forest ground. Only just managing to land on her right side and spare the boy the brunt of the impact, Miyako found her body unresponsive and her lungs filled with cotton. Her muscles had turned into stone, her joints stiff and unyielding, unable to respond to signals thought but not given.

I pushed too hard, Miyako thought, her vision swimming into darkness.

— — —

Miyako snapped up, eyes flicking around the trees quickly. Her head ached, her muscles ached, and her neck…

My necklace! she thought, hand reaching up to clasp the locket hanging there. Feeling wetness, Miyako retracted her hand, seeing some faint blood on her fingers. The chain cut in, but it didn't break.

A rustle above alerted her to the fact that she wasn't alone, and she looked up to see the boy she'd saved sitting hesitantly amongst the leafy branches.

He climbed up to save himself. I was too heavy for him to drag up, so he left me against the tree, Miyako realized. Smart decision.

"How long was I out?" she asked, voice cracking. Her head swam, but she relished the opportunity to converse with another human. Conversation was nonexistent on her travels, and she'd taken to talking to animals and inanimate objects when they came around.

The boy, however, didn't answer, instead clutching his pants a little tighter as he stared at Miyako warily.

He doesn't trust me, Miyako realized with a sigh. Well, I don't blame him.

"I came from the tracks. The villages—well, I haven't come upon one untouched by Kabane yet. You're the first survivor I've found. Usually, the bodies are long gone by the time I arrive," Miyako said. "You should come with me. I'm going to continue down the tracks, and I can protect you until we find a town that's safe."

The boy remained silent, eyes unblinking as they continued to observe her cautiously.

"I… I don't know what to do with you. You won't be safe if you wander off now, but you won't be safe if you come with me either," she admitted, frowning. "So… the choice is yours. I can do my best to protect you if you come with me, but… I don't blame you if you don't want to."

The silence from above continued unbroken, and Miyako figured that was enough of an answer.

"I'm sorry I can't do more for you," she said, rising from her place below the tree. Hesitating briefly, Miyako reached into her bag and pulled out some dried meat wrapped in cloth rags. "Here's some food. It won't taste good, but it'll keep you alive. I can't give you all of it, but I hope this is enough to get you to the next settlement down. I don't have a map, and I don't know where we are, but if you follow the tracks, you should reach another town soon enough."

Miyako stopped, finding herself out of words. "Good luck," she said, finding the saying to contain a bittersweet finality she didn't intend to express but unable to find words to soften the blow.

"Are you a Kabane?" a high-pitched voice rang out. It took Miyako a moment shake off her surprise at the sound of another human's voice. Lower than Tomio's yet higher and smoother than her own, the boy's voice cut in with a glint of suspicion—fear.

"I—" Miyako paused, unable to find the words. It was the question she dreaded—was she a Kabane? She'd asked herself this again and again, sometimes after burying bodies, and sometimes after biting into a bloody slab of animal flesh. The answer, though, remained biasedly constant. "No. I was bitten a long time ago, but I never lost my mind. Instead, I gained the strength to fight Kabane and find my brother."

The boy's face remained blank, his eyes equally inscrutable in their emotion, and Miyako figured that it was high time for her to leave.

"Goodbye," she said, offering a small smile to the boy. She didn't know his name, and she didn't think he'd tell her if she asked. So, with that, she turned away and made in the direction of the tracks.

He's probably going to end up dying, Miyako thought, heart aching a bit. The boy hadn't resembled Tomio at all; his eyes were too intense, his voice too low, and his hair black instead of brown and too short to be tied in Tomio's usual ponytail.

A thud from behind sounded, then the shuffling of leaves towards Miyako. Turning around, the girl was shocked to see the black-haired boy slowing to a walk beside her, an outstretched hand offering the meat she'd left behind.

"Kichirou," he said quietly. "Sasaki Kichirou."

"Hishima Miyako," Miyako said, a smile gracing her face again. "Nice to meet you, Sasaki-chan."

— — —

Kichirou had taken to Miyako's schedule with all the determination and discipline a child who looked around ten could muster, and Miyako found herself able to adapt and make up for his shortcomings.

To gain back some of the distance lost, Miyako had taken to carrying the boy on her back. The first time she'd offered, he'd shaken his head, but eventually it was clear that refusing would only inconvenience both of the travellers. So, whenever she sensed he was tired, Miyako would offer to let Kichirou ride on her back, herself speeding up to a more inhuman speed to make up for lost time.

Conversation was sparse and mostly one-sided, with Miyako asking the questions and Kichirou nodding or shaking his head. There wasn't much to talk about, and Miyako trod carefully around any touchy subjects, figuring that the boy wouldn't want to talk to her about them anyway. And, to his credit, Kichirou had refrained from asking any questions about Miyako's status as a non-human—not that Miyako had many answers to begin with.

From his wariness and the state of her wounds when she'd woken after escaping the town she'd found him in—that is, recently cleaned—Miyako deduced that Kichirou had tried to wipe her wounds with the spare clothing in her bag. As he did so, however, it seemed he'd also discovered the spiderweb of glowing cracks flowing out from her heart and onto her shoulders, which had sent him into hiding in the trees. Despite this discovery, it seemed like Kichirou trusted her to a certain extent; his eyes held a certain amount of fear and wariness around her, but he still shied towards her when bushes rustled in the dark.

Miyako had dreaded mealtimes with the boy. As the human, the rations of dried meat were automatically redirected to Kichirou while Miyako stuck with hunting, only eating some dried meat to keep up pretenses. Having seldom lit fires—they were both a signal to the Kabane and a hazard since, in order to avoid the Kabane, most fires had to be started in the denser parts of the forest—Miyako was usually able to slip away and snag an animal when Kichirou was resting, telling the boy that she rarely felt hungry when he seemed curious.

Eventually, however, the dried meat had disappeared, and Miyako was forced to share the bloody reality of her meals: she had to have raw meat or blood once in a while. Such was the conclusion of repeated self-experimentation, all of which connected the surfacing of her inner "beast" to long periods without fresh sources of iron. To her surprise, however, Kichirou hadn't even looked a bit surprised when Miyako bit into the uncooked half of the drained rabbit she'd saved for herself, instead calmly waiting for the legs roasting over the fire to finish browning.

He's seen something. Bad. Most likely as a result of the Kabane, Miyako thought, dropping her eyes from the boy and focusing on keeping watch instead. Survivor's guilt—such was the curse of the living. Miyako herself was plagued by it, her parents and townsfolk often gracing her dreams, screaming and wailing as they faded into redness. Tomio had been featured in a few of the darker dreams, sadly shaking his head and smiling at her. Those were the dreams Miyako despised—dreaded—because that was the one possibility Miyako refused to entertain.

Tomio left on a train. He survived, and I won't believe that he's dead until I find that engine, that crew, and ask them face-to-face. He's alive out there, and I'll find him.

Such was the mantra Miyako had developed over the weeks on the road, and such was the mantra that left her feeling more dead than alive at times.

— — —

Somewhere along the road, killing Kabane had become second nature. No longer were they humans with untold stories who'd been transformed into mindless, blood-seeking monsters; they were monsters who looked like humans, deceptive until death with their likeness to the living. Guilt had all but faded from Miyako's mind by the time she'd found Kichirou, and—since the boy didn't seem affected by Miyako's cutting them down either—it was now only a hypothetical tangent she sometimes followed mentally when she was keeping watch as Kichirou slept, a vague set of dubious questions Miyako no longer felt bound to have answers for. Kabane were the enemy that took her family, separated her from Tomio, and made her what she was. They were the mindless bodies that constantly threatened the safety of her and now Kichirou, the threat that kept her on her feet and her hands ready to reach for the sword at her hips.

While she'd love to have called it her best friend, the truth was that Miyako's katana had broken multiple times, either chipping until it finally gave or outright snapping during combat. Upon closer examination of a Kabane she'd cut down, she'd discovered the reason for the sword's downfall: Coiling around the Kabane—and especially around their hearts—were metal-like cages, sturdy and unyielding in their hardness. Most katanas were completely unable to cut through this metal barrier, only able to sever limbs and heads until the reinforced bones proved too much for them as well.

So, Miyako was left scouring every town for swords. Sure she'd seen spears, axes, and even guns, but she preferred the simplicity and efficiency that came with a well-crafted blade, and since such a blade was rarefound as it was, she soon took to carrying spare blades on her back. Currently, she had three, but at her height she'd owned an amazing seven katanas.

It was around then that she realized that she was strong enough to wield a katana with one hand, which led to her current attempts at dual-wielding. Having only ever heard stories of rounin who wielded two katanas at once, Miyako was a mix of pleased and dismayed to discover that the same was possible for her. The antagonists of children's tales never seemed as close as when Miyako finally managed to decapitate two Kabane at once—an accomplishment she tried not to think about.

Since all her blades gave in eventually, be it wear and tear on Miyako's part or on the Kabanes', Miyako tended not to get too attached to them. If she were to name a favorite, it would have to be the first katana she'd owned; the ornate handle had always seemed too expensive for anything Miyako would have ever owned had the Kabane not come, and she both loved and loathed the blade for that reminding her of that when she looked down.

— — —

"You want to find your brother."

Miyako looked at the Kichirou in surprise. This was the first time he'd initiated contact with her; usually, it was her asking him mundane questions in an attempt to strike small talk gold. It rarely worked, however, although sometimes she had been able to get a few sentences out of him before he clammed up. Having him ask her a question—Well, more a statement than a question, Miyako thought wryly. But something of a question all the same—left her feeling rather pleased.

"Yes. My brother—Hishima Tomio. He's a year younger than you at ten, and a lot more talkative too, mind you," she teased. When Kichirou didn't offer a response, Miyako cleared her throat. "Well, I promised my father that I'd look after him. That was his dying wish. Kabane—they overran our town, and I got bitten. He managed to escape on a train, and I've been chasing that train down the tracks ever since," Miyako said.

"How do you know he's not dead?" Kichirou asked.

Miyako snapped around, anger flaring. Kichirou flinched back from her, eyes wide

"Sorry. I just—I believe he's alive," she said, recoiling and looking away from the boy. "Tomio's alive. I haven't seen a single shred of proof to disprove that fact, so I'll keep going until I find him."

Or until I find his body.

The unspoken words filled the silence, unvoiced but heard all the same. Perhaps Kichirou had said them to himself in his mind, or perhaps he understood that Miyako couldn't say them herself. Either way, the silence continued from there, that particular conversation topic having reached its end.

"Did you have any siblings?" Miyako asked, figuring that she'd shared enough on her side to start asking about his.

Kichirou shook his head.

"Then it was just you and your parents?"

"Parent," Kichirou said, eyes dropping to his hands. "My mother died when I was young. Sickness."

"I'm sorry," Miyako said.

Kichirou's face remained curiously impassive, but it was clear from the way he continued to knit his fingers together, picking at his nails every time one of them caught his attention, that he wasn't.

He's a lot more mature than Tomio was, Miyako thought, turning away to hide the wry smile that crept onto her face when her brother's face appeared in her mind. Tomio… I'm not giving up on you. I never will.

"How long have you been walking down the tracks?" Kichirou asked.

"Today will be the sixty-eighth day," Miyako replied instantly. Each day was another mental tally, another day in her quest of finding her brother. She never lost count, despite not keeping physical records; the numbers were the only divider between "today" and "tomorrow," and Miyako's days didn't contain enough excitement to cause her to forget to count.

Kichirou seemed taken aback at her answer, perhaps having assumed that Miyako was a survivor like himself, recently struck by tragedy and forced to move. With her answer, it must have occurred to him that she was no stranger to the endless hike down the tracks.

Will he be reassured knowing that I'm sufficient protection against the Kabane, Miyako wondered, or will he be plagued by worry seeing that my journey appears to be one that's never-ending?

"Do you want to take a break soon?" Miyako asked, seeing the sun graze the treetops. Sunset would occur within the next hour, meaning that they'd been walking for a good two or three hours.

Kichirou shook his head, adjusting the bag on his back and picking up the pace a bit. His neck had a faint sheen of sweat, but it seemed that he wasn't about to admit his exhaustion just yet.

Smiling, Miyako matched his pace.

— — —

"Don't come in," Miyako said sharply, reaching a hand back to stop Kichirou in his tracks. The boy rolled to a halt behind her, freezing. "Let's… Let's check out a different house."

Not giving the boy a chance to question her—not that he would have—Miyako turned heel and grabbed his arm, dragging him out of the house with her. The two were exploring a small town they'd found along the tracks, and—judging by the dust and long-dried bloodstains—it seemed the town had been deserted for a good month or so. Since their supplies were always looking to be restocked, Miyako had figured that even a long-deserted village might yield something useful. The first few houses had been relatively empty, delivering some well-worn clothes that were too big for Kichirou and too bulky for Miyako, but the fourth had unveiled a pair of still-decaying bodies.

A father and son, Miyako thought, glancing back at Kichirou. She hadn't let him see the bodies—hadn't even told him of their existence—but, by the tone of her voice and the urgency in her steps, she figured the sharp boy would be able to guess at what she'd found.

"I'm fine," Kichirou said. Miyako slowed her steps, looking at the boy in surprise. Kichirou met her eyes dully, tiredly. "You don't have to try and hide bodies from me. I've seen them before. Many of them."

Of course he has, Miyako thought. I've killed Kabane in front of him, for heaven's sake, and he's seen his share of bodies in the other settlements we've passed through. Hiding this from him now… Well, it's a bit ridiculous, but… it seemed like the right thing to do.

"I'm fine," Kichirou repeated. Miyako hesitated before nodding.

"Okay," Miyako said. She paused, thinking it over for a moment before leading Kichirou to the next house over.

There wasn't anything useful in the last room anyway. Just dusty shelves and pottery, Miyako thought. Dusty shelves, pottery, and a pair of bodies you don't need to see.