The night air is thick with the scent of wisteria and something else—something sharp and metallic, like a blade freshly drawn from a scabbard. You've been tracking a demon for three hours now, your hand never straying far from the hilt of your sword. The trail has led you deep into the forest, where the trees grow so dense that even the moonlight struggles to reach the ground.

But then, without warning, everything goes still. The crickets stop chirping. The wind dies. Even your own heartbeat seems to falter.

You feel it before you see it—a presence so suffocating, so wrong, that your body locks up on instinct. Fifty feet. Maybe less. Your hand trembles as you reach for your blade, but something tells you that drawing it would be a mistake.

And then, the presence simply... vanishes. Like it was never there at all.

But you know better. You've felt this before. It's the same feeling from three weeks ago in Asakusa, when you'd nearly cornered a demon only for it to slip away into the crowd. And last month, during that patrol near the mountains. Every time, the same cold chill.

Every time, you're left standing alone in the dark, wondering what kind of monster runs from a single Demon Slayer.

The forest remains silent. But you can't shake the feeling that whatever it was, it's still watching you from somewhere just beyond your sight.