DxD: Fusion

Toshio Perspective:

I forced myself up from the forest floor, my body a catalog of broken parts and tearing pain. Blood filled my mouth, warm and metallic, and I spat a glob onto the dirt beside me. My HUD flickered with system notifications—

{Skill: Pain Resistance has increased to Rank 5}

—how thoughtful of it to tell me I was getting better at hurting. The health bar in my vision burned a critical red: [Health: 15/100]. Fifteen percent. Fifteen out of a hundred. Math had never felt so personal.

Every breath felt like swallowing glass. My ribs shifted in ways ribs shouldn't, grating against each other with wet, crunching sounds that made me dizzy. My left arm hung at my side, a useless weight of meat and shattered bone. My knee—the right one—ground like a pepper mill full of rusty bolts whenever I tried to put weight on it. My thigh on the same leg, bleeding from the gouge that acid beam had carved. Every inch of my skin that had endured those caustic fumes. My broken face.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd hurt this badly. Not in this life. Not in my previous one. And I even had a skill to reduce it. I couldn't imagine what it would be like without it. Small gamer graces.

The forest spun around me, moonlight fracturing through the canopy like broken glass. Behind me, somewhere in the darkness, I heard it: the wet, clicking sound of Ghom's transformed body moving through the underbrush, accompanied by that high, manic laughter. Getting closer.

"Flesh cracks better when it's running scared! YOU'RE CARVING RAVINES!"

No time for a proper assessment. No time for anything but movement.

I reached deep into my core, where my reiryoku still pulsed, however weakly. The pain didn't matter. The damage didn't matter. I forced energy into my legs, my working arm, anywhere I could still feel. Then I launched into a flash step.

The world blurred. Trees melted into streaks of shadow and moonlight. The ground beneath my feet barely registered—one moment solid, the next gone, replaced by air and momentum. My mind emptied of everything but the next footfall, the next breath, the next split-second calculation of trajectory.

Pain became abstract—a distant weather pattern, violent but viewed from above. Each shunpo brought agony like lightning strikes down my spine, but I let it wash over me without attaching meaning to it. I couldn't afford emotions now.

I was midway through my second flash step when the air in front of me parted like a curtain, and Ghom was just—there. Not running, not jumping. Just there, as if he'd always been waiting in that exact spot for me to arrive.

His transformed body was a nightmare of efficiency—all bulky, vascular muscle wrapped in scarred flesh and protruding bone. In the moonlight, his eyes burned red, tracking my movement with predatory focus. His arm, now longer and impossibly fast, shot out like a piston.

Fingers clamped around my throat before I could change direction. The grip was like industrial machinery, crushing my windpipe with clinical precision. Ghom's transformed face—no longer bloated but lean and terrible—split into a grin that contained too many teeth arranged in no pattern evolution would recognize.

"NO BRAINS JUST BONES JUST BONES JUST BONES—" he chanted, the words vibrating through my skull like a fever.

Then I was falling, Ghom's arm smashing me down like a rag doll. My back hit the ground with force enough to crater the earth beneath me. The impact drove whatever oxygen remained in my lungs out in a wet gasp. A brief flicker of a memory thought of a Charger. Was I Ellis right now?

My HUD flickered, data momentarily scrambled by the trauma.

[Health: 12/100]

Three points gone in a single slam. At this rate, I had maybe four more impacts before system shutdown. Before death.

Ghom's foot rose above me, a meteor poised to annihilate whatever was left of my chest cavity. I watched it with a strange detachment, time seeming to slow as adrenaline flooded my system one final time.

No. Not like this.

I rolled. Not gracefully—more a desperate spasm than a tactical movement—but enough to clear the impact zone. Ghom's foot crashed down where my sternum had been a heartbeat earlier, the force sending tremors through the ground that I felt in my teeth.

"YOU THINK IT'S A FIGHT? I'M A FESTIVAL! I'M THE WHOLE CARNAGE SEASON!" Ghom shrieked, voice oscillating between registers, as if multiple creatures were using the same throat.

I didn't wait for his next move. I pushed off with my good arm and launched into another flash step, then another, and another—stringing them together in a desperate chain of movement. My technique was sloppy, my accuracy compromised by injury and fatigue, but it was enough to put distance between us.

The forest became a blur of dark greens and browns, punctuated by the silver-white slash of moonlight through breaks in the canopy. I had no destination, no plan beyond not being where Ghom could reach me. Just movement. Just survival.

But behind me, always behind me, came the sound of pursuit—branches snapping, earth churning, and that terrible, gleeful laughter that seemed to exist inside my head as much as in the air around me.

"You can't outrun hunger!" The voice was closer than it should have been. Too close. "Hunger remembers the shape of you!"

I needed to think. Needed a plan beyond blind flight. My injuries were too severe for a direct confrontation, and my energy reserves were fading fast. Each flash step drew from a well that was rapidly running dry.

I extended my spiritual senses outward, a radar pulse of awareness that swept through the surrounding forest. Most of the wildlife had fled, sensing the unnatural predator in their midst. But there—about fifty yards to my left—a flicker of corrupt energy. A stray devil, likely drawn by the commotion or the smell of blood.

Not much of one, from the energy signature. C-rank at best. But it was something. Maybe enough.

I veered toward it, adjusting my trajectory mid-flash step with a precision that sent fresh pain lancing up my damaged leg. Three more bounds and I broke through a dense patch of undergrowth into a small clearing.

The stray was there—a misshapen thing with too many limbs and a face that looked like it had been assembled by Halloween committee. It turned toward me, confusion evident even on its malformed features. Before it could react, I was on it, my good hand closing around what passed for its throat.

"Catch," I said, voice flat and cold, as I pivoted and hurled the creature behind me with all my remaining strength.

It shrieked, a high, piercing sound that cut through the night air like a bandsaw. I didn't wait to see what happened next. I was already moving, flash-stepping in a new direction, changing my pattern, desperately trying to shake the monster on my trail.

Behind me, the stray's scream cut off abruptly, replaced by wet, tearing sounds and Ghom's delighted cackle. I hoped the distraction would buy me seconds. Maybe even a full minute.

It would have to be enough. I hoped it was enough.

A full minute of silence stretched behind me. No crashing footsteps, no manic laughter, no taunts slicing through the night air. I allowed myself to slow, just slightly, taking stock of my surroundings through vision that refused to stop doubling.

The forest had thinned somewhat, moonlight spilling through the gaps in greater abundance. I might have even been close to the edge of the woods, though it was hard to tell through the haze of pain and the persistent taste of blood coating my tongue. For one foolish moment, I let myself believe I'd made it.

Then the world split open.

Something solid as a steel beam and twice as unforgiving slammed into my face right in front of me. A clothesline executed with car-crash force. I didn't even see Ghom—just felt the impact as my feet left the ground and my torso pivoted violently around the fulcrum of his arm.

Physics became a play: a body in motion remains in motion. My body, specifically. Rotating through the air at speed, my vision filling with spinning trees and fractured moonlight before the ground rushed up to meet my back.

The impact drove what little air remained from my lungs. My spine arched reflexively, then collapsed. Something in my chest gave way with a wet pop that I felt more than heard. My HUD flashed urgent warnings as numbers tumbled downward.

[Health: 9/100]

Nine. Single digits. Logic dictated that I was already dead.

I couldn't move. My left arm was completely unresponsive, my right barely twitched when I commanded it to lift. My legs might as well have belonged to someone else. The only part of me that seemed to work properly was my mind, cataloging damage with clinical detachment even as my vision tunneled and darkened at the edges.

Internal bleeding: probable.

Spinal damage: likely.

Chance of survival: minimal.

"Shouldn't have run, sweet meat," Ghom's voice drifted down from somewhere above me, now back to that oily, deliberate cadence rather than the frenzied shrieks of before. "Makes the chase interesting, but now look at you. Broken before the real fun even starts."

I couldn't turn my head, but I felt Ghom's approach through vibrations in the ground beneath me. Each step a small earthquake, sending fresh ripples of agony through my shattered frame.

He loomed into view, his transformed body silhouetted against the night sky. The firelight from the distant, burning chamber painted his edges in hellish orange. He appeared on a tree brach above. He swung to generate force, then both his feet were positioned to strike directly above my midsection—a spear kick poised to drive through whatever organs remained intact inside me.

"BLEED FOR ME!," it demanded, voice thick with anticipation. "Not quickly. Not clean. I want to feel you pop like a grape!"

Time stretched. My brain, flooded with endorphins and adrenaline, created a bubble of hyperawareness in which each second expanded to contain multitudes. And in that dilation, memories cascaded through me like falling stars.

Rias, her crimson hair catching the afternoon light as she laughed at something I'd said. Not her practiced, regal laugh, but something genuine and unguarded that made her eyes crinkle at the corners. 

The warmth of her arms around me during that hug in the clubroom, the way she'd held on just a fraction longer than necessary. The subtle catch in her voice when she'd asked me to keep her in mind if I ever decided to become a devil.

Akeno, with her teasing smiles and lingering touches that always seemed calculated to provoke a reaction. But behind the flirtation, those moments when her mask slipped—a flash of something vulnerable in her eyes, quickly hidden behind another playful comment. 

The genuine concern in her voice when she'd asked about my training, masked as casual interest. The way she'd pressed against me during that last hug, as if trying to imprint herself onto my memory.

Katase's bright laughter during kendo practice when I'd made one of my rare, dry jokes. Murayama's frustrated glares that softened into grudging respect after I helped her improve her form. The way the whole Kendo club had gradually shifted from viewing me as an outsider to something approaching a friend—maybe even someone they admired.

Even Kiba and Koneko—the former with his easy camaraderie during our spars, the latter with her silent companionship and wordless offers of sweets. People who had, somehow, without my noticing or planning for it, started to matter to me.

And what had I given them in return?

Distance. Calculation. A carefully maintained perimeter that kept everyone just far enough away that they couldn't reach the core of me. I'd watched them all through a lens of analytical detachment, noting their behaviors and reactions like specimens in a lab rather than people who might care about me. Who I might care about.

What a waste. What a stupid, pointless waste of this second chance at life.

If I survived this—and the rational part of my brain assigned that a probability so low it was barely worth considering—I would change everything. I would ask Rias for her first kiss. I would laugh openly with Akeno instead of just appreciating her humor from behind my mask of neutrality. I would stop being the human equivalent of a one-way mirror, allowing myself to be seen but never truly showing what lay beneath.

The bitter irony wasn't lost on me: it had taken the prospect of imminent death to make me realize I'd barely been living at all.

Ghom's foot began its descent, a meteor aimed at the fragile planet of my existence. I tried to move, to roll, to do anything but lie there waiting for the end. Nothing responded. My body had finally betrayed me as completely as I had betrayed the connections offered to me.

"Bye-bye, bones," Ghom sang, his voice a lullaby of violence.

The foot accelerated downward, and I found myself fixating on the bone spikes protruding from his ankle like spurs, wondering which one would pierce my heart first. My vision narrowed to a pinpoint of awful clarity, then expanded into darkness as absolute as the space between stars.

The world, such as it was, went black.

XXX

I floated in the void again—that liminal space between death and the possibility of continuing existence. This place was becoming familiar, a cosmic waiting room I'd visited too many times already. No pain here. No broken bones or ragged breath or blood filling my lungs.

Just the weightless suspension of being and not-being simultaneously. I didn't know if this was the System's construct or something deeper, something tied to whatever metaphysical mechanics governed souls and their transitions. 

All I knew was that I wasn't dead. Not completely. Not yet. The world suddenly shifted, and I was in physical form again, standing in ankle deep water, yet still surrounded by darkness.

I turned around and she appeared before me without sound or ceremony, materializing from the darkness like a photograph developing in reverse. My zanpakutō spirit stood with perfect stillness, her white kimono untouched by gravity or wind. 

The bone-white mask that obscured her face was still there, but now I could see more cracks than before—thin, lightning-bolt fractures spreading across its surface like a road map to something hidden beneath.

Behind her, the space changed. The emptiness gave way to structure—the flooded temple of my inner world, more visible than I'd ever seen it before. Massive stone pillars rose from still water that reflected firelight from sources I couldn't see. 

The pillars were cracked, ancient, bearing the scars of some forgotten cataclysm. The water itself was clear but dark, reaching mid-shin height, perfectly still except where my presence disturbed it. Red blossoms—cherry or perhaps plum—drifted across the shallows, carried by currents too subtle for the eye to track.

"You know, we've got to stop meeting like this," I said, aiming for lightness and missing by miles. My voice echoed strangely in this half-formed space, each word returning with a hollow, metallic quality. "People will talk."

The spirit didn't laugh. Didn't move. Didn't speak. But her stance—the slight backward tilt of her head, the tension in her shoulders—radiated profound anger. Not irritation or disappointment, but the kind of deep, burning rage that reshapes mountains and carves valleys over geological time.

I opened my mouth to say something else, some other deflection, but the words died on my tongue as emotion crashed through me like a tsunami. All at once, I was reliving every feeling I'd experienced in those moments before darkness claimed me—the bitter regret, the sharp-edged sorrow, the desperate wish for more time to become something better than what I was. The emotional impact was so sudden and complete that it drove me to my knees in the shallow water.

"Help me," I gasped, the words torn from me without conscious thought. Water soaked through my shihakushō, cool against my skin. "I know I've failed you. Failed everyone."

The spirit remained motionless, watching me through the slit eyeholes of her cracked mask. Firelight from her burning hair reflected off the water's surface, casting rippling patterns across her still form.

Something broke inside me then—some final dam that had been holding back the tide of feeling I'd spent two lifetimes avoiding. Tears spilled down my face, dropping into the water and creating perfect circular ripples that expanded outward. My shoulders shook with sobs that felt like they were being wrenched from the very core of my being.

"Please," I begged, hands pressed into the water as if in supplication. "Please save me. Give me power. I want to live!" The words came out raw and unfiltered, honest in a way I'd never allowed myself to be. My fists slammed into the water.

"I don't want to die without changing. Without showing them... showing you... that I can be more than this."

My hand reached out, fingertips grazing the edge of her kimono. The fabric felt impossibly real against my skin—silk and something else, something with texture like the boundary between one world and another. At my touch, another crack split across her mask, this one deeper and wider than the others. Through the fracture, I caught a glimpse of something like nebula-colored light—not a face, but pure energy swirling with stars and cosmic dust. Her eyes, I realized.

"I know I don't deserve it," I continued, voice breaking. "I know I've been... absent. Distant. Even from you—especially from you. My own soul. But I'm asking anyway." I looked up at her, no longer caring about dignity or control or any of the walls I'd built to keep myself safe. "Help me. Please."

The spirit stood over me, silent and unmoving. Then, with a grace that made my heart ache, she reached down. I thought—hoped—she would touch my face, offer some gesture of connection or forgiveness. Instead, her form began to dissolve, breaking apart like smoke caught in a gentle breeze. The mask was the last to go, those cracks still glowing with that strange, starlight radiance.

And then she was gone. Only the drifting petals remained, spinning lazily in the water where she had stood.

"NO!" The scream tore from my throat with such force it felt like it might shred my vocal cords. I slammed my fists into the water, sending up sprays that caught the firelight like liquid gems before falling back. "What do I have to do?!" I shouted, my voice echoing back from the temple walls. "What more do you want from me?!"

Only silence answered. Tears streamed down my face, dropping into the water with tiny, percussive sounds. In my chest, the grief and frustration twisted like a knife.

I didn't notice it at first, too lost in my own emotional storm. But gradually, I became aware of a change. The water level was rising, ever so slightly. It lapped against the lowest temple step now, advancing and retreating with a rhythm that reminded me of a heartbeat. Steady. Alive.

I stared at it, uncomprehending. Was this an answer? A sign? Or just another feature of this strange internal landscape?

Before I could make sense of it, exhaustion swept over me like a tide—bone-deep and irresistible. My body, or whatever passed for a body in this place, felt impossibly heavy. I slumped forward, hands still in the water, as darkness claimed me once more.

This time, it felt different. Like falling asleep rather than fading away.

XXX

I woke to the sound of rustling leaves and the rhythmic buzz of insects. Not the noises I expected in the afterlife. Light—pale and thin—filtered through the forest canopy above me, painting dappled patterns on my outstretched hand. My hand, which was somehow wrapped around the hilt of my zanpakutō.

I blinked, trying to process this information through a mind still fuzzy with pain and confusion. I had dropped my sword—I remembered that clearly. It had slipped from my grasp when Ghom clotheslined me, sent spinning away into the underbrush as my body went airborne. Yet here it was, solid and real beneath my fingers, its weight an impossible comfort.

How?

I tightened my grip, feeling the wrapped cord of the hilt press against my palm. The familiarity of it anchored me to reality, even as that reality refused to make sense. I was alive. Somehow. And I wasn't where I had fallen.

Instead of the dense forest where Ghom had been preparing to crush me like an insect, I found myself at what appeared to be the edge of Kuoh's outer woods. The trees were thinning ahead, giving way to the first scattered streetlights of the suburban fringe. I could even make out the silhouette of buildings in the far distance, blocky shadows against the pre-dawn sky.

I tried to sit up and was rewarded with pain so intense it knocked the breath from my lungs. Every nerve ending screamed in unified protest. Spots danced across my vision, and for a moment, I thought I might pass out again. I forced myself to breathe through it, shallow and careful, waiting for the worst to subside.

My head whipped around—too fast, sending fresh waves of agony down my spine—scanning the surrounding forest with desperate intensity. Where was Ghom? Had he left me for dead? Was this some kind of sick game—giving me hope before crushing it again?

I extended my energy sense as far as it would reach, searching for that distinct signature of wrongness that had marked Ghom's presence. Nothing. Just the ambient energy of the forest, the faint traces of smaller supernatural entities keeping their distance, and the distant hum of the town's collective life force.

A system window appeared in my vision, the text flickering slightly as if struggling to maintain stability:

[Status Ailment: Bleeding due to prolonged untreated wounds. -1 HP/minute]

The health bar in the corner of my HUD showed [Health: 15/100]. Fifteen. Up from nine. That made no sense. I hadn't healed—every fiber of my being testified loudly to that fact. If anything, I felt worse than before, the full catalog of injuries now making themselves known without the merciful buffer of adrenaline.

I looked down at my body, trying to take inventory. My shihakushō was shredded, soaked through with blood and that viscous green fluid from Ghom's lair. My left arm hung at a sickening angle, the bone visibly displaced beneath the skin. More than one compound fracture.

My right thigh bore a gaping wound where the acid stream had carved through muscle. My chest felt like a bag of broken glass with each breath, and something was definitely wrong with my neck—a grinding sensation whenever I turned my head that sent nausea washing through me in waves. I didn't even want to think about what my face looked like.

In short, I was a mess. A walking medical case study in how many ways a human body could be damaged without immediately expiring.

But I was alive. And I was closer to safety than I had any right to be.

I pushed the questions aside—the how and why of my current location, the mysterious return of my zanpakutō, the inexplicable increase in health points. Those were puzzles for later, assuming there was a later. Right now, I needed to move.

I planted the tip of my sword in the soft earth and leaned on it like a crutch, preparing to haul myself upright. The first attempt ended with me collapsing back to the ground, a hoarse cry of pain escaping through clenched teeth. The second attempt wasn't much better. On the third, I managed to get one knee under me, using the zanpakutō as a pivot point.

Standing was an exercise in agony management. Each slight shift in weight sent fresh pulses of white-hot pain radiating outward from various epicenters of damage. My vision kept threatening to tunnel into darkness, and my ears rang with a high, persistent whine that might have been inside my head or might have been the sound of my own suppressed screams.

Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably less than a minute, I was upright. Sort of. Hunched over my sword, most of my weight supported by my one semi-functional arm, body trembling with the effort of not immediately collapsing again. But standing.

I tried to calculate the distance to the nearest building—maybe half a mile? In my current state, it might as well have been a hundred. It was really only thanks to Reiryoku Body Enhancement that I could move at all. My reserves were full, so I didn't have to worry about running out. Condensing my spirit energy around me, it's likely what was keeping my broken body together as I moved.

I took the first one. Right foot forward, dragging slightly against the ground, sword tip pulled from the earth and replanted a few inches ahead. Left foot following, barely lifting at all, more of a controlled fall forward than an actual step.

I nearly blacked out from that single movement. But I was still standing. Still moving.

The second step was marginally easier, if only because I knew what to expect. The third was pure determination over physical reality. By the fifth, I had established a rhythm of sorts—plant sword, drag body forward, pause for breath, repeat. Every motion sent fresh rivulets of blood trickling down my side, leaving a macabre trail behind me.

In the distance, the edge of town shimmered like a mirage, streetlights blurring together in my unfocused vision. So far away. But possible. Just one more step, and then another.

{Present time, from the end of chapter 14}

Rias Perspective:

I emerged from the teleportation circle at the forest's edge near some buildings and the old forest bridge, where the contract flier had led me. The night air carried a metallic tang that set my nerves on edge—blood, and lots of it. My senses, sharper than any human's, picked up a faint magical residue that didn't belong in these woods, something ancient and wrong that made my skin crawl.

But all of that faded to background noise when I saw him sitting there on the grass up against a tree, barely five feet away. I didn't recognize him at first, his body so broken and bloody, that I figured it was just a desperate kid trying to summon help. But then I started to recognize the features. That black shihakusho, ruined as it was. Toshio, ghost-pale and still, a dark pool spreading beneath his broken form. My heart stopped, then lurched into a frantic rhythm.

"TOSHIO!" His name tore from my throat, raw and desperate. Using my devil enhanced speed, I was next to him in an instant.

My knees hit the sidewalk near him causing cracks to form, my hands hovering over his body, afraid to touch him for fear of causing more damage. He looked... destroyed. There was no gentler word for it. His left arm bent at angles that human limbs should never form, bone visible through shredded flesh. The fabric of his black uniform—what remained of it—was soaked through with blood and something else, something greenish and foul that made my nose wrinkle. His right thigh bore a wound so deep I could see muscle tissue exposed to the night air. But worst was his face—lacerated, bruised beyond recognition, one eye swollen shut, lips split and caked with dried and fresh blood.

Yet somehow, impossibly, he was still breathing. Each inhale shallow and labored, each exhale a soft wheeze that carried the copper scent of internal bleeding.

I lowered his form off the tree into my arms. I cradled his head gently, lifting it onto my lap, careful not to jostle his injuries. My fingers trembled as they brushed matted hair from his forehead. This close, I could see dozens of smaller wounds I'd missed at first glance—acid burns across his chest and neck, deep puncture wounds in his shoulder, fingers bent backward and broken.

"Toshio, what happened?" I whispered, my voice catching. "Who did this to you?"

His good eye flickered open, focusing on my face with effort. His lips moved, forming a single word that emerged as a ragged whisper:

"Stray."

I nearly laughed from the sheer absurdity of it. No stray devil I'd ever encountered could do this kind of damage—not to someone of Toshio's apparent skill and power. But this wasn't the time for questions or disbelief. I could feel his life force ebbing with each shallow breath, the barely-there flutter of his pulse beneath my fingertips.

I reached into the pocket dimension where I kept my Evil Pieces, drawing out a crimson bishop that pulsed with soft, ruby light. The weight of it in my palm was both familiar and significant—a contract, a promise, a rebirth.

"I can save you," I said, voice steadier now that I had a plan. "Let me make you one of my own. A devil. You'll heal, you'll live, you'll be stronger."

His hand—the right one, the less damaged one—moved with surprising speed, catching my wrist before I could press the piece to his chest. His grip was weak, but the intent behind it unmistakable.

"No," he rasped, each syllable clearly costing him. "Not... yet."

I stared at him, confusion momentarily overriding my panic. "Toshio, you're dying. This isn't the time for—"

"Fire," he interrupted, his gaze holding mine with unexpected clarity. "You know... fire magic?"

I nodded slowly, still not understanding.

"Cauterize," he managed. "Please."

The request hit me like a physical blow. Cauterization was medieval, brutal—effective, yes, but agonizing beyond measure. And wholly unnecessary when I could offer him a clean, painless alternative.

"Why?" I demanded, hearing the edge of frustration in my own voice. "Why suffer when I can—"

"My choice," he whispered, his fingers tightening fractionally on my wrist. "Trust me."

Those two words dissolved my resistance like sugar in hot tea. Trust me. From Toshio, who parceled out trust in microscopic increments, who kept himself so carefully contained, it was both request and gift.

I nodded, returning the bishop to its dimensional pocket. "Alright. But this will hurt. More than you can imagine."

A ghost of a smile touched his bloodied lips. "I know."

I summoned my demonic magic, feeling it respond to my call with practiced ease. Crimson flames danced between my fingertips, carefully controlled and then compressed into a flat branding iron the size of my hand—hot enough to sear flesh and seal vessels, but not so intense as to cause further damage. The fire cast eerie shadows across Toshio's face, turning his already nightmarish injuries into something from a horror painting.

"Ready?" I asked, bringing my hand toward the gaping wound on his thigh.

He gave the slightest nod.

I pressed the flame to torn flesh. The sizzle and hiss of cooking meat filled the air, along with the acrid stench of burning blood. Toshio's entire body went rigid, a strangled grunt escaping through clenched teeth, but he didn't scream. He didn't even try to pull away. His good eye remained open, fixed on my face as if drawing strength from the connection.

When I lifted my hand, the wound was sealed—ugly and red with third degree burns, but no longer bleeding. I moved to his torso, finding the places where shattered ribs had punctured skin, and repeated the process. Each time, Toshio's body tensed, the cords in his neck standing out like steel cables, but he made almost no sound.

His arm was worse—compound fractures that needed to be set before I could seal the tears in his skin. I steeled myself and pushed the bones back into rough alignment, feeling the grinding resistance through my fingertips. A single, harsh exhalation was Toshio's only acknowledgment of pain that would have most people screaming for unconsciousness.

"There, I think that's all of them." I hoped anyway. Causing him this amount of pain was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. Yet it seemed it wasn't over.

"No…my face…too," He struggled out. My eyes widened. He was asking me to disfigure his face, brand the small wounds still bleeding shut. I resolved myself.

I moved to his face, hovering over the deep lacerations that curved from temple to jaw.

"This one will scar," I softly warned him.

"Maybe," he managed, the word barely audible.

I pressed flame-wreathed fingers to his cheek, watching as the fire knit ragged edges of skin together, leaving angry red welts behind. Through it all, Toshio's gaze from his good eye never left mine—steady, determined, almost... trusting.

When I finished, he looked like he'd been through a war. The wounds were closed but angry, his body a roadmap of fresh scars, third degree burns and half-healed trauma. But he was no longer bleeding out onto the forest floor.

"Alright, I'm taking you to a hospital. There's one here in Kuoh that the Sitri clan manages, there's even a place I can telep—" He started slowly waving his hand, interrupting me.

"No, please…just take me…home. I'll…be okay."

"Out of the question, you probably have internal bleeding, you're still in danger!" He stared into my desperate eyes.

"Please…trust." He managed to reach up to place his hand on my chest, where my heart would be. Tears welled in my eyes again.

"Okay, we'll do it your way." He attempted to sigh in relief, but it didn't quite come out that way for obvious reasons.

"I'm assuming you have some kind of power to keep yourself alive? Heal even?" He barely nodded his head. Now I sighed, this time in resignation.

"I'll trust you. I'll take you home." My voice came out barely above a whisper.

"Thank you," he muttered, and then his eye fluttered closed, his body going slack as consciousness finally released its hold.

I gathered him into my arms, cradling his broken form against my chest. The relief that flooded through me was so intense it brought tears to my eyes—not because he was healed, far from it, but because he was still alive. Still breathing. Still Toshio.

I held him there for several minutes, feeling the weak but steady rhythm of his heart against mine, before carefully arranging my teleportation circle beneath us. Light surrounded our entwined forms, and the forest edge dissolved into the familiar contours of Toshio's modest house.

XXX

The moment we materialized in Toshio's bedroom, the stench hit me—a miasma of decay and rot that clung to him like a second skin. It was worse than blood or burned flesh; this was something fundamentally wrong, as if corruption itself had taken physical form and tried to claim him.

I fought the urge to gag, focusing instead on the immediate needs at hand. He was unconscious but breathing, his cauterized wounds holding for now, but he was far from stable. The filth coating him wasn't just disgusting—it was dangerous, potentially toxic. He needed to be cleaned, thoroughly, before infection set in.

I gathered him closer to my chest, one arm supporting his shoulders, the other beneath his knees. His weight should have been difficult for someone of my frame to manage, but devil strength made it effortless. What wasn't effortless was seeing him like this—broken, vulnerable, reduced to something so fragile when I had grown accustomed to his quiet strength.

His bedroom was sparse but meticulously organized—exactly what I would have expected from Toshio. I navigated to the adjoining bathroom, nudging the door open with my foot. The space was small but functional, with a combination shower and bath against the far wall. I lowered him carefully onto the bathroom mat, positioning his head gently against the side of the tub.

Under the harsh fluorescent light, the extent of his injuries became even more apparent. The greenish substance I'd noticed earlier clung to his skin in viscous patches, eating away at the fabric of his uniform and leaving angry welts wherever it touched bare flesh. There were markings I hadn't seen in the darkness—strange, circular bruises around his throat in the shape of massive fingers, and a puncture wound through his shoulder that looked like it had been made by a hook or barb of some kind.

"What did you face out there?" I murmured, though I knew he couldn't answer.

I found a pair of scissors in the medicine cabinet and began cutting away what remained of his shihakushō. The fabric fell away in sodden strips, revealing more injuries with each piece removed—a tapestry of violence written across his skin. Some of the wounds I'd cauterized, but others were older, already beginning to close on their own. The contrast was jarring—fresh, angry burns alongside half-healed gashes, as if his body couldn't decide which trauma to process first.

When he was fully undressed, I hesitated for just a moment. Not from any sense of impropriety—devil society had a much more practical view of nudity than humans seemed to—but from a strange reluctance to intrude on his privacy. Toshio guarded himself so carefully, kept such rigid boundaries between himself and the world. Even unconscious, there was something almost sacred about those boundaries.

But necessity outweighed consideration. I couldn't clean him properly any other way.

I quickly shed my own clothing, folding each piece neatly and setting them aside. The intimacy of the moment wasn't lost on me, but this wasn't about desire or seduction. This was about care, about preservation. About keeping someone precious alive through the night. I would have likely admired his muscular form if not for the injuries littering his body.

I turned on the shower, adjusting the temperature until it was comfortably warm but not hot enough to irritate his burns. Then I lifted him again, stepping carefully into the tub and sitting with my back against the cool porcelain, Toshio's back pressed to my chest, his head resting on my shoulder. His breath came in shallow, uneven gasps, but at least he was breathing.

The water cascaded over us both, turning pink, then green, then black as it sluiced away layers of blood and that strange, toxic residue. I reached for his soap—unscented, practical—and began to wash him with methodical gentleness. My hands moved with careful precision, cleaning each wound, each abrasion, each patch of undamaged skin between the carnage. His hair, matted with blood and forest debris, gradually returned to its natural color under my ministrations.

Somewhere in the middle of this intimate ritual, I realized I was crying. Silent tears that mingled with the shower spray, falling unnoticed onto his shoulder. I wasn't even sure why—relief that he was alive? Horror at what he had endured? Frustration that he had refused the simplest solution to his suffering? Perhaps all of these, tangled together into an emotion I couldn't quite name.

"You're going to be okay," I whispered against his temple, the words as much for myself as for him. "Do you hear me, Toshio? You're going to be okay."

He didn't respond, of course. But I could have sworn his breathing steadied, just slightly, at the sound of my voice.

I continued working, scrubbing away the last traces of whatever nightmarish encounter had nearly claimed him. The water finally ran clear, and I shut off the shower, keeping him cradled against me for a moment longer than strictly necessary. His skin was warm against mine—too warm, suggesting fever, but at least not the deathly chill I had felt when I first found him.

I channeled a minor spell, one of the first young devils learn—a simple cantrip to dry objects. The water evaporated from our skin and hair in gentle wisps of steam, leaving us both dry without the abrasion of towels against his raw wounds. With the filth gone, he looked... better. Still gravely injured, still unconscious, but human again. Recognizable.

I carried him back to the bedroom, laying him gently on the bed before retrieving a clean sheet to cover his lower half. The temptation to dress him properly was strong, but I resisted—his wounds needed air, and any fabric would only irritate the burns and abrasions further.

For a moment, I stood beside the bed, uncertain. The proper thing would be to take a chair, to maintain a respectful distance while watching over him. But the thought of that distance—even a few feet—felt unbearable. Not after seeing how close I had come to losing him.

Decision made, I slipped under the sheet beside him, careful not to jostle his broken arm or the worst of his injuries. I curled my body protectively around his, one arm draped lightly across his chest, fingers resting over his heart to monitor its steady, if weak, rhythm. My other hand found his hair, stroking gently through the still-damp strands.

"What happened, Toshio?" I whispered, studying his profile in the dim light filtering through the curtains. The new scar on his cheek would be prominent when it healed—a jagged line from temple to jaw that would forever mark this night's events on his face. "What kind of stray could do this to you?"

He didn't answer, of course. His breathing remained even, his expression peaceful in unconsciousness in a way it rarely was while awake. I continued my gentle stroking, watching the subtle rise and fall of his chest, counting each breath like precious stones.

I stayed awake long after exhaustion should have claimed me, listening to the quiet sounds of the night and whispering his name occasionally, as if to remind both of us that he was still here, still Toshio, still alive. My fingers traced patterns on his skin, careful to avoid his injuries, finding the places where he was still whole.

He wasn't mine—not yet. Maybe not ever, if that was his choice. But tonight, I could protect him. I could stay until he was ready to wake up, until he was ready to tell me what happened, until he was ready to let me in—if he ever was.

I would stay.