Borlsche moved without hesitation. Every step he took felt like walking through a memory. Damp earth clung to his boots, and whispers of leaves shifted around him with each step. The gnarled trees of Aokigahara stretched high above him, their branches entwined like skeletal fingers across the pale morning sky. Faint rays of sunlight casted shadows that seemed to move at the edges of his vision.

But he ignored them. 

He had no time to dwell on the impossible; how he was still alive.

Gone were the wounds he'd sustained, yet his katana and armor remained, completely unscathed.

But he remembered everything.

Tenso, crushed beneath the demons.

Kiko, dragged into the abyss before she could even draw breath to cry out.

The village, burning in the wake of their advances.

And Borlsche—he died. He’d felt everything; how their claws pierced his chest; and his ribs shattered like brittle glass.

His heart pounded as he pushed forward with steady force. He ignored the way the air thickened around him; the way the light seemed to dim even as the morning sun filtered through the canopy above. 

He knew where to go and what awaited him.

And when the ground beneath his feet vanished; when the world caved in on itself and swallowed him whole, there were no screams.

***

He landed hard, rolling onto his feet as the air in his lungs turned to ice.

The cold of Yomi pressed around him like a second skin. The silence was suffocating, the stillness unnatural. There were no signs of life, just an overwhelming wrongness that sank into his bones.

Ahead of him, the torii gates stood waiting.

Beyond them, the village.

Untouched. Whole.

The scent of forge smoke clung to the air, warm and familiar. 

As if everything he experienced had never happened.

His breath came quick and shallow as he forced himself forward. Each step felt heavier. His fingers curled into fists at his sides, his knuckles white beneath his gloves.

And then—

“Suits him? Please, he looks like a lost crow.”

The world around him stopped.

He turned, his breath catching in his throat.

Kiko sat perched on a wooden post, her twin tails flicking lazily behind her as she smirked at him. Her golden eyes gleamed with amusement, her expression light, playful. And then—untouched by horror.

Behind her, Tenso stood outside his forge, arms crossed. His sharp, avian gaze fixed on Borlsche as if seeing him for the first time. The weight in his chest tightened.

They were all alive.

He barely found his voice. “Kiko.”

She blinked, tilting her head. “What, you know me already?”

Borlsche’s stomach lurched.

His breath came too fast and shallow. His nails dug hard into his palms as he turned, desperately searching for something—anything—that made sense.

He turned to Tenso.

“You—don’t you remember?” His voice cracked, barely above a whisper. “The demons. The battle. The village—”

Tenso’s expression darkened. His stance shifted, his weight pressing subtly forward as his grip on his hammer tightened. “Who are you?”

The words hit him like a blade to the gut.

Borlsche staggered back.

His heartbeat pounded in his ears, drowning out everything else.

They didn’t remember.

As if none of what had happened was real.

Kiko hopped down from her perch, her smirk faded into something more cautious, calculating. Her tails twitched once, twice. “You act like we’ve met before, crow-man.”

Borlsche felt something inside him splinter as he figured out the truth.

He did die… but the day had somehow restarted.

He tried desperately to warn them, but they didn’t believe him.

The demons came sooner and the village burned again.

Tenso’s body hit the ground first.

Kiko followed soon after, her laughter cut short. 

Borlsche fought harder, his blade moving faster than before. 

But it didn’t matter.

They tore through him anyway.

His vision blurred as the pain swallowed him whole.

Then he woke up.

***

Borlsche lost count of how many times he watched them die.

Each time, the day began anew, and he’d run to the village.

The loops slowly blurred together with every failure.

His mind began to fracture under the weight of it all.

He had to break the monotonous cycle. 

In one loop, he found a mana crossbow, buried deep beneath the roots of a twisted tree. The weapon hummed with raw energy, its glowing bolts struck true, burning through the demons like fire through paper.

He still failed, but the crossbow remained with him.

In another loop, he lifted a cursed-looking greatsword from a dead Hollowspine demon, the embedded gem pulsed in his grip and the whispers began.

The greatsword was alive.

He then swung it wildly, recklessly, savagely.

The demon fell, but so did Borlsche. 

The next time he woke up, the massive greatsword was there, laying beside him.

It had survived the loop.

Just like the crossbow.

Just like him.

But something about it was very different.

The greatsword rested unnaturally still in the dirt before him, its jagged edge half-buried in the soil like it had been waiting for him to come back. The gem embedded in its hilt pulsed a slow, rhythmic beat—like a heart. Not a jewel, nor an arcane artifact, but something alive, something that had been watching him.

The air around it felt warped, the space just slightly wrong, bending in ways his eyes couldn’t fully understand. He could almost feel its presence crawling into his skin, burrowing deep into the marrow of his bones, threading itself through the cracks left behind by his endless deaths.

Then came the whispers.

Soft—softer than the wind.

“Use me.”

Borlsche exhaled, tension rippling through his body as honeyed words slithered across his ears. They didn’t belong here. They weren’t his thoughts.

“Take me.”

His fingers twitched at his side.

The whisper curled closer, inside him now, filling the spaces between his breaths, sinking into the places he had been trying to ignore, unraveling him from the inside.

“You need me.”

Borlsche’s hand moved before he could stop himself.

He reached forward, fingers brushing against the cold, unholy steel, and the moment his grip closed around the hilt—the whispers roared in his ears.

A rush of something ancient surged through him, ice and fire twisting together in a violent collision, sinking into his flesh like claws. The air cracked around him, the weight of something monstrous pressing against his chest. The greatsword trembled in his grasp, as if it was thrumming with anticipation.

It was waiting for him; for this.

He staggered back with a sharp breath, his heartbeat now hammered against his ribs in two rhythms—his own, and the blade’s.

His vision began to flicker at the edges, with moving shadows where there should be none.

It must be the blade that’s distorting the world around him, and yet he didn’t let go.

He forced himself forward into Yomi, and soon reached the torii gates.

The village laid ahead, untouched by the horrors that had claimed it so many times before.

A sight all too familiar.

He clenched his teeth as his boots carried him across the dirt path, passing by the same streets, homes, and people.

Death has permeated this place too many times.

And there she was perched on her usual post, her tails flicking lazily behind her. Kiko smirked down at him, her golden eyes gleaming with mischief.

“What brings a stranger like you to our little village, crow-man?”

The words bounced off him like arrows hitting a shield. 

The same words; The same teasing tone.

As if she hadn’t already seen him fight and die hundreds of times. 

His fingers curled tighter around the hilt of the greatsword.

She didn’t remember.

She never did.

Tenso eyed the greatsword with unease, his feathers ruffling as his sharp gaze flickered between Borlsche and the weapon in his grip. Beneath his cautious gaze, something else flickered in his eyes—fear.

“That thing…” His voice quieter than usual, but no less firm. “It reeks of something ancient.”

Borlsche didn’t respond.

The Hollowspines were coming. That was all that mattered. This time, he had something stronger.

The mana crossbow gave him an edge before, but it wasn’t enough. No matter how many times he fired, no matter how many demons he struck down, more would overpower him in the end.

But the greatsword… The first time he made contact with it, he felt something shift.

And now, as the air around the village grew thick with the sickening stench of the approaching demons, as the distant echoes of their shrill cries drifted through the mist, he knew.

This time would be different.

When the demons emerged from the darkness, he did not reach for his crossbow.

He wanted to feel the blade hit.

He wanted them to pay. 

The greatsword should have been heavy, a weapon too large for even him to wield properly. Its jagged edges, its unnatural shape—it should have been cumbersome, unwieldy.

But when he swung it—

It moved too fast.

The blade cut through the first demon in a single arc, its form not severed, not burned away like the mana crossbow did, but erased.

There was no body to fall.

No blood to stain the ground.

No trace of the creature’s existence at all.

Only the echo of its scream remained, lingering for half a second longer than its form, before that too was swallowed by the void.

The gem embedded in the hilt pulsed—once, twice, faster.

A rhythmic beat.

A second heartbeat, pounding in tandem with his own.

He didn’t stop nor hesitate.

He didn’t realize what was happening to him until it was too late.

With each kill, the blade grew lighter in his hands.

With each strike, his movements became sharper, faster, unnatural.

The greatsword no longer felt like a weapon, but rather an extension of himself.

And the whispers roared louder in his mind.

“More.”

“Faster.”

“They deserve this.”

Borlsche moved through the battlefield like a shadow given flesh, cutting down anything that stood before him. His breath came in ragged snarls, his vision blurred at the edges, but it didn’t matter.

Because for the first time in dozens of loops, the Hollowspine Demons weren’t winning.

They were running.

They had never done that before.

He would have noticed and should have questioned it, but the hunger in his chest, the fire in his limbs—everything felt too good.

And then, amidst the chaos, something shifted.

A voice.

A scream.

Not from a Hollowspine.

From Kiko.

Borlsche turned, breath still heaving, hands gripping the hilt so tightly his knuckles went white.

But the battlefield changed, the demons were gone, but he was still fighting.

His breath hitched, the world warped around him in unnatural ways, as the bodies before him changed form from demon to… humanoid.

Bloodstained figures.

Tenso.

Kiko.

The villagers.

Their bodies broken. Their faces twisted in horror.

Borlsche stood in the center of them all, the greatsword dripping.

They were screaming.

Begging him to stop.

But his hands wouldn’t let go and the blade continued to move.

Unable to handle reality crumbling around him as the blade’s whispers laughed in madness, he brought the edge of the blade up to his neck and—

Slice.

***

When he woke once again, something changed.

The endless cycle, the suffering—it was gone.

For the first time, the nightmare ended. He felt it. Yet, the greatsword remained on his back, the mana crossbow firm in his grip.

The whispers were screaming before his fingers wrapped around its hilt.

“Kill.”

“Burn.”

“Rip them apart.”

No cycle anymore. No next time. No redo.

He stumbled into the village, wild-eyed and unfocused.

Kiko smirked from her usual post, tails flicking idly.

“You’re not looking so hot, crow-man.”

She didn’t know this would be the last time she would say those words.

Tenso stood by his forge, eyes sharp with suspicion. “Something is wrong with you.”

Borlsche’s hands twitched as the greatsword thrummed in his grip. 

The dark purple gem in its hilt pulsed. 

And Borlsche no longer resisted.

When the Hollowspines came, he did not fight to protect—only to end.

He moved like a beast unleashed.

There was no form, no strategy—only rage.

The greatsword cleaved through them like paper. Their bodies did not fall. They were unmade.

His breath came in ragged snarls.

His eyes burned crimson.

He howled as he killed.

Flesh, bone, air—nothing mattered. Everything had to be destroyed.

Kiko’s voice cut through the chaos, instinctively as though she shouted his name before. “Borlsche!”

He turned—and saw her.

For a split second, her face twisted—morphed into a Hollowspine’s skull.

The greatsword roared in his hands.

“Kill her.”

“She’s one of them.”

“She’ll kill you first.”

Borlsche lunged.

Kiko barely had time to react.

Her daggers flashed up to block, but the sheer force of his strike sent her flying.

She crashed into the ground, coughing, eyes wide.

“Borlsche, stop!” 

But he couldn’t hear her anymore.

All he saw was red. 

All he heard were the whispers.

“Kill. Kill. KILL.”

Tenso came next—rushing toward him, hammer raised.

Borlsche moved too fast.

He ducked. Twisted. Slashed.

Tenso’s body hit the dirt before his hammer did.

Kiko’s scream shattered the night.

The last Hollowspine fell and the battle was over.

And Borlsche… He was still standing.

But the village was silent. 

Tenso’s blood dripped from his blade.

Kiko shook where she lay, her face frozen in horror. 

For the first time, Borlsche truly saw himself.

Not as a warrior.

Not as a protector.

Not a man.

Just a monster wearing his skin.

The greatsword laughed in his hands as the eldritch influence clawed at his mind. 

His breath came in ragged gasps, his body lurched forward, twitching, shaking, his grip on the greatsword tightened as dark tendrils emerged from the gem and wrapped themselves around his arm like a lover’s embrace. 

He staggered into the village ruins, his vision still red, his body still wanting to kill. Although nothing was left, no one left, he did not stop moving. 

A beast in human skin.

A warrior turned monster.

A nightmare given form.

In the distance, watching the carnage unfold from atop a nearby cliff, stood an agent from the Tenryū Kikan’s Umbra Vanguard Unit. 

The Tenryū Kikan had received reports of strange disturbances in Aokigahara—whispers of an anomaly, a man repeatedly disappearing from Aokigahara into the world of darkness. 

But what Agent Ken saw before him was far worse than he expected.

Borlsche—or what was left of him—was a creature of pure, mindless violence.

He had seen men consumed by power before, but this?

This was something else entirely.

His orders were clear.

Report back to Director Seiryū. Immediately.

The Tenryū Kikan would need to act soon.

Before Borlsche was lost completely.