The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(95)

“Yes,” I said, my lips numb, my whole body numb as it finished healing.

I turned to Hiro, who still lay on his back, pinned under Izanami’s blade. I crawled the distance between us and laid my hand on his cheek, startling him into wakefulness. He gasped in a sudden breath and flinched away from Izanami’s blade before he noticed the time freeze. His eyes flickered to me, then back to Izanami, his expression devoid of any discernible emotion. I’d never seen a living creature look so lifeless.

I stood up and unlatched the blade from Izanami’s hand, forcing her fingers to release with a series of cracks. I dropped the katana to the ground and knelt beside Hiro, who sat up slowly, staring at the far wall.

The sting of resentment abated when I saw the lost look on his face. There would come a time when I would berate him for lying to me, but how could I keep my anger burning when he looked like such a hollow shell? While I knew how it felt to be an unwanted child, my father had never said anything so cruel to me. Hiro had still wanted Izanami to be proud of him.

“Hiro, I’m so sorry,” I said. I wanted to hold his hand the way he’d held mine after the Honengame’s horrific vision, but I was too conscious of Neven a few feet away.

Hiro finally looked at me, but his eyes gave away no emotion, as if he knew I was there but didn’t quite understand what that meant.

“Don’t apologize,” he said, and even his voice sounded completely soulless, an anonymous sound vacant of anything that made it Hiro. “You saved me.”

He got to his knees and pressed a kiss to my forehead, warm and sticky with blood. I tensed, aware of Neven watching behind me, but of course Hiro wasn’t exactly in his right mind.

“Thank you, Ren,” he whispered into my skin. “Thank you for helping me do this.”

“Do what?” I said.

But Hiro didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to Izanami, and in one swift movement, grabbed the katana and pierced it through her chest.

I gasped, the clock slipping from my fingers and crashing to the floor.

Death pulled me in all directions at once, yanking my left arm from its socket and smashing my kneecaps into powder and threatening to rip my teeth from my gums, no longer a stable force but a feral energy. Hiro’s overturned candle ignited the reed mats, and the darkness peeled away from the walls.

Through the chaos, Izanami’s decayed vocal cords let out a harrowing wail, a swarm of flies surging past her torn lips and spiraling into a buzzing tornado.

I clung to the burning mats as the winds and insects whipped my hair around my face and tried to pry me away. Beside me, Neven had caged himself over the Yokai, both of them clinging to the wall even as it grew slippery, the darkness melting into slick liquid.

Hiro stood sturdy as the world broke into pieces around us, the katana still extended from his right arm, his black eyes blazing as Izanami thrashed and screamed.

She lunged toward Hiro, impaling herself further on the katana and scraping her finger bones across his arm, tearing the fabric to shreds and coating his arm in a full sleeve of blood. He twisted the blade a few degrees to the left, and black tar spilled out from Izanami’s chest. She tugged at the blade until it began to saw her fingers off and the bony tips fell to the mat.

The winds surged harder, and the mat that I clung to came unglued from the floor, sending me crashing into the wall. I clawed at the wallpaper until my fingers sank into cracks in the wood, splinters piercing under my nails. The Yokai was screaming and Neven was shouting something about his clock, but even if I could have seen it in all the chaos, I wouldn’t have been able to reach it.

Hiro yanked the blade out of Izanami’s rib cage with a spray of acidic black sludge that singed holes into the reed mats. Izanami collapsed at his feet but still wouldn’t give up. She latched on to Hiro’s ankles, broken fingers scratching at his feet.

The constant tugging and crushing pressure of Death was like being torn apart by a pack of grims. I could no longer tell if the darkness kept surging over us in waves, or if I was constantly passing out from the raw power of Death. But in the sparse moments of light, I saw Hiro crying as he yanked Izanami up by the hair. He said something to her that I couldn’t decipher over the roaring wind and splintering wood, the maelstrom ripping his tears from his cheeks. He pressed his eyes closed, then raised the sword to Izanami’s throat and severed her head.

Both her head and body dissolved into a black powder, spilling through Hiro’s fingers. The hurricane of darkness and flies and bone fragments inhaled the dust, spinning it around in an ever-tightening orbit above us. The wind grew even stronger, beginning to rip my hair from its roots.

Hiro rose to his feet, unimpeded by the strength of the storm. All at once, the dark hurricane changed direction and spiraled toward him.

But rather than crushing him to the ground, the winds changed direction, and Hiro’s body began to inhale the darkness.

His skin absorbed the long tendrils of black that flowed endlessly into his open palms. The flies crawled into his ears and mouth, but he seemed not to notice them, his eyes suddenly so endlessly dark that they seemed not to exist at all, retreating into his skull.

With one final surge of twisted darkness into his chest, the pressure finally relented.

Being released from the torment was like dropping from the sky and landing flat on concrete. I couldn’t hold back the small cries of pain as my joints popped back into place and my bones reformed. Neven was groaning and the Yokai was crying, but I didn’t have the strength to get up and turn to them. I could only lie on the mat and look at Hiro. His katana clattered to the floor, but he made no move to pick it up, staring at the far wall and panting, face streaked with tears.