The old man—now wearing Leo’s strong, young body—tilted his head, the movement eerily birdlike. “A trade,” he said, Leo’s voice already warping into that familiar rasp. “A soul for a shell. Yoru is patient. Yoru waits.”

Akira’s mind screamed, but his body was frozen. He saw the truth now, a完整 picture of horrible, simple logic. The old man didn’t live in the crow. He used it as an anchor, a reservoir. His life force was tied to it. Hurting his body was useless. But killing the crow… that didn't kill him. It just forced his soul out of the anchor, making him need a new, immediate host. A body killed near the crow. Leo’s body.

The thing that was Leo took a step forward, the crow fluttering to its new shoulder. “You are quick. Quicker than the others. You understand the rule.”

“The crow is the lock,” Akira breathed, backing away. “Not the heart.”

A dry chuckle. “And the key is death. My death near the lock sets me free… to find a better lock.”

Akira’s eyes darted to the front door. It was there again, a normal door in a normal frame. An exit offered by a predator playing with its food.

He ran. Not for the door, but deeper into the house, into the kitchen. He heard the slow, confident footsteps behind him. He grabbed the only weapon he saw—a small sack of coarse salt from a cupboard.

He burst into the hall, making for the front door. The Leo-thing was there, blocking his path, smiling with Leo’s face. The crow watched.

“The door won’t open for you,” it taunted.

“I know,” Akira said. He hurled the handful of salt not at the man, but at the crow.

It wasn’t a weapon, but it was a distraction. The crow, silent as ever, flapped its wings instinctively to avoid the spray. For one second, its perfect, observing stillness was broken.

And in that second, Akira lunged—not at the man, not at the bird—but at the old, discarded body of the original hermit still slumped in the chair. He shoved it with all his might, toppling it towards the fireplace.

The Leo-thing roared and surged forward, but it was too late. The hermit’s brittle body struck the stone hearth with a sickening crack. A final, rattling breath escaped its lips—a death right next to the perched, agitated crow.

The crow froze. Its fathomless black eyes swirled like oil, and it let out the first sound they had ever heard from it—a tiny, almost pitiful click from its throat.

The Leo-thing stumbled, clutching its chest. “No… not yet… this one is still fresh!” it wailed, but the voice was fading. The vibrant light bled from Leo’s eyes, leaving them dull and empty. The body collapsed.

The crow shuddered on the mantel. Its inky eyes seemed to dim. It looked at Akira, then at the two dead bodies—one old, one young. It seemed… untethered.

Akira didn’t wait. He sprinted to the front door. The knob turned easily. The grey morning light hit his face. He didn’t look back.

Weeks later, in his small apartment in the city, Akira tried to forget. The police had found the bodies on the hill, calling it a tragic hiking accident and a mysterious hermit’s death. Case closed.

But Akira couldn’t close his eyes without seeing those black, reflective voids. The rule was burned into his mind: The crow is the anchor. A death near it sets the soul free to jump.

A deep, chilling loneliness had settled in him, a silence that echoed the crow’s. One evening, walking home through the park, he saw a fledgling crow fallen from its nest, one wing bent. It looked at him. Its eyes were ordinary, shiny black.

An idea, terrible and desperate, uncoiled in his heart. A companion. An anchor of his own. Something to hold onto in the vast, silent fear.

He took the bird home. He nursed it. He named it Yoru.

Tonight, as a cold rain taps his window, Akira sits in his dark living room. The healed crow is perched on the back of his chair. It is perfectly still. Perfectly silent. He has been feeding it strange things—herbs from old books, a drop of his blood each night in its water.

He turns and looks into its eyes. The ordinary shine is gone, swallowed by a deep, endless black. A black that holds no reflection of the room, only a deep, waiting void.

Akira smiles, a slow, weary smile. He feels a strange duality—himself here, in his body, and a faint, whispering awareness there, in the comforting, observing silence of the bird.

He is no longer just Akira. And he will never be alone again. The crow on the hill had a passenger. Now, so does his.

The End.

Thanks for reading 

Next chapter on next week Saturday