#tw corpses

Your contact — an older man who speaks your language slowly, carefully — introduces you to the village head in the shade of a large tree. You keep your hands visible. You keep your smile polite. You don’t offer too many promises you can’t keep. That’s a rule you learn early if you want people to let you work near their history.

They give you a place to sleep that’s plain and clean, a room that smells faintly of woven reed and sun-warmed dust. It’s simple but that’s all you need, you’re there to study, to learn. They feed you that first evening — stew, flat bread, fruit that bruises easily — and your mind keeps trying to translate everything into field notes.

You force yourself to listen like a person instead.

They talk about their crops first, because that’s what matters most. They explain the terraces, the timing of planting, the way they pull water from a spring without wasting it. They show you storage pits lined with ash and leaves, raised granaries that keep pests away, and the few solar panels that belong to the main hall, used for lights and a single battered router that coughs life into a thin internet connection when the weather agrees.

You ask questions you actually care about — how they manage repairs, how they trade, what storms do to the paths.

You don’t push, you let the conversation move where they want it to move.

The caves come up later, once the night is deep and the insects are loud enough to blur the edges of silence.

Someone mentions the storm.

The word for it is longer than yours, a specific kind of weather that means sliding mud and broken trees.

You see how faces tighten at the memory.

“The mountain opened,” a woman says, her hands busy with something small in her lap, like staying busy keeps her from thinking too hard.

“Opened?” you repeat.

She gives you a look that says don’t pretend you haven’t been waiting for this part.

“It moved. The slope fell away. The sealed place showed itself again.”

Your interest rises, controlled but hard to hide.

“Sealed by you?”

There’s a pause. The older men look at one another. A younger person shifts like they want to leave. Someone adds more wood to the fire even though it doesn’t need it.

“Yes,” the village head says at last. “Sealed by hands. Sealed by fear. Sealed by sense.”

Your pen hovers over your notebook.

“Why?”

He doesn’t answer right away. He looks at the dark line of the hills, as if the mountain can hear its own name.

“A god lived there.” he explains, reluctantly.

Not there was a god.

Not we believed.

The phrasing is firm, like a remembered bruise.

“A god?” you ask again, because the word has a broad shape and can hold so many things depending on who says it.

“Not a god like yours,” someone mutters. “A wretched evil with demands.”

They tell you what they are willing to tell you.

They say it reigned over this place when the village was smaller and hungrier. They say people brought offerings to keep their fields from failing. They say the mountain learned the taste of fear and started asking for more.

Livestock first.

Then crops.

Then people, when the old stories start turning vague and careful, as if language itself is trying not to touch the worst parts.

“If you didn’t give,” the woman says, “calamity came. Not always the same. Sometimes sickness. Sometimes a fire. Sometimes a flood. Sometimes men went into the hills and did not return.”

You keep your face neutral — you’ve heard enough oral histories to know how truth and metaphor braid together. You don’t dismiss them, you also don’t let your mind run away with it.

“Why were the caves sealed?” you ask.

“Because someone clever finally made it stop,” the village head says. “A long time ago. They sealed it. They made marks. They did prayers. They left it alone.”

“And now the storm breached it…” you murmur, more statement than question.

The woman nods once, tight.

“Now the mountain has a mouth again.”

You don’t sleep well. Not because you’re scared, exactly, but because your brain keeps sorting the night into categories — site access, preservation risk, local restrictions, ethical considerations, hazards.

You lie in your cot and listen to distant dogs and wind in the eaves and you try to pretend you aren’t already planning what you will pack.

In the morning, you ask permission.

You do it properly. You explain what you do. You explain that you won’t remove anything without agreement. You explain you will share your documentation. You offer to bring back prints of photographs and copies of notes. You promise you will not go alone if they insist you don’t, and you mean it, even if you prefer to work without an audience.

They don’t forbid you.

They don’t look pleased either.

“If you go,” the younger person from the night before says, voice low, “don’t speak any words you find.”

You blink.

“You mean enchantments?”

He swallows, eyes flicking away.

“There were rumors of spells. That’s why it was sealed.”

The village head makes a decision with a small tilt of his chin.

“You may go,” he says. “You are a guest. But you go with respect. If you feel wrongness, you return.”

You nod.

“I will.”

You pack like you’re preparing for a standard survey, not like you’re hunting a myth of an old god that ruled over the village with fear.

Protein bars, water, electrolyte packets, a gas lantern for reliability, an electric lantern for ease, spare batteries sealed in plastic, chalk for path marking, a small first-aid kit with extra gauze, nitrile gloves, a compact camera with a fresh SD card, your phone for backup photos and notes even without signal, a recorder with a windscreen, a length of rope, a headlamp, and a knife that’s more tool than weapon.

You tell yourself you’re being cautious because caves are dangerous. You don’t tell yourself you’re also building a kit for reassurance.

A teenager leads you part of the way.

Barefoot, quiet, carrying a stick like it’s an extension of their arm. They stop where the path narrows, where the hillside shows fresh scars from the storm — mud dried into ripples, stones knocked loose and piled in awkward heaps.

From here, they don’t go further.

They point at the dark opening in the rock.

“You see?” they ask.

You do.

The breach looks like a torn seam — the air that slides out is cool and smells of wet stone. You can hear water somewhere inside, slow dripping with a steady patience.

“Thank you,” you say, sincere.

The teenager hesitates, then speaks as if repeating something taught.

“If you hear someone call you,” they say, “you do not answer.”

You give them a small smile that’s meant to calm.

“Okay.”

They leave without another word, and you stand at the mouth of the cave and adjust your pack straps until they sit right on your shoulders.

You take a photo of the entrance. You record the location as best you can without GPS. You speak into your recorder with an even voice, describing the breach, the debris slope, the immediate risks.

Your voice sounds smaller once it leaves your mouth and gets swallowed by the stone.

Then, you switch on your lantern and step inside.

The cave eats sound.

Your boots scrape, and the echo returns softened, like the rock doesn’t want to give you back too much. The temperature drops quickly, the air is damp enough that you feel it cling to your skin.

Your breath looks faint in the beam when you exhale too hard.

You start marking immediately.

A white chalk line at eye level. A simple arrow, just utility. You mark every junction, every turn. You don’t trust your sense of direction underground, not when tunnels can curve without you noticing.

You move slowly, scanning walls and floor for hazards, keeping your light steady. The first stretch is plain stone and mineral deposits, uneven underfoot. You’re about to relax into routine when your lantern catches pigment.

A smear of red-brown on rock. A line that doesn’t belong to geology.

Then more — curved strokes, a figure with raised arms, a shape that might be a bowl.

You stop, heart picking up speed.

You don’t touch it. You don’t even breathe close.

You angle the light, take photos at different distances, then record a verbal description — approximate height, placement, pigment color, visible motifs. You focus on the work.

That’s how you keep your mind steady.

Further in, the paintings appear in clusters.

Some show animals with exaggerated horns. Some show small figures lined up, hands lifted. You see repeated symbols — circles with a dot in the center, slashes that look like tally marks, a crude spiral that could be wind or fire.

The scenes feel sequential, like someone tried to tell a story to stone.

You follow the main tunnel until it splits. You choose the wider path first, because it’s safer and because your caution wins over your curiosity. You mark the junction with chalk and a strip of cloth tied around a protruding rock so it catches your light on the way back.

The corridor slopes downward.

The floor shifts from loose grit to smoother stone, worn by something — water, feet, time. Your lantern beam starts to lose itself in darkness ahead, and you feel the scale of the place changing.

The ceiling rises.

The walls pull apart.

Then you step into an open space and your breath catches in your throat.

It’s a chamber, vast enough that your light can’t reach the far end cleanly. The air feels still, thicker, as if it has been trapped for years and doesn’t like being disturbed. The smell changes too — old smoke, stale mineral damp, something faintly metallic. You can be wrong, but something smells like sandalwood.

Your light sweeps across shapes that are not natural.

Altars.

Crude stone platforms, arranged in a rough half-circle. A central slab that’s darker than the rest. Broken bowls, fragments of pottery, bone scattered in corners where debris has gathered. Ropes long rotted into threads. A rusted blade half buried in sediment.

Things that had purpose once and now only exist as evidence.

You walk carefully, taking pictures and recording, noting the layout. You find a line of stones set like a boundary. You step over it only after you’ve photographed it, and you’re surprised at how deliberate the boundary feels even now.

At the far wall, your lantern finally finds what the others have been orbiting around.

A mural, enormous, painted directly onto the rock. Whoever made it used the natural bulges and fissures to shape the figure, like the wall itself wanted to become a body.

The depiction is unmistakable.

It doesn’t look like a man in a mask — It looks like something built wrong on purpose.

Two torsos stacked, one emerging from the other as if the body can’t decide where it ends. Four arms, thick and long, each hand drawn with claws. Four eyes, arranged in a way that makes your brain itch — two on flesh, above the left cheekbone, one where it’s supposed to be and one right below it. Other wo set into a crest — like growth on the right side of the face.

The crest is painted with extra care, patterned like armor, like a second skull layered over the first.

And the tattoos.

They ink over the painted skin in bold lines, curling around shoulders and down arms, across the chest, framing the gaping mouth with sharp teeth that exists on the lower torso’s stomach. The patterns are not decorative, they look like declarations. A warning.

The figure stands above smaller people rendered as sticks, kneeling. There are offerings drawn at its feet. Around it, fire motifs bloom outward in sharp petals. Above its head, a symbol repeats — an eye in a circle, split down the middle.

You can’t help it — you stand there longer than your schedule allows.

You don’t blink much.

You let the details soak in, and you feel that strange mix of excitement and unease that comes when you realize you’re looking at something that mattered enough to frighten generations.

You photograph it in sections, moving the lantern beam carefully to avoid glare. You record your observations. You resist the impulse to narrate the feeling.

Near the mural, on a flatter section of wall, you find writing.

It isn’t a neat inscription like a formal temple would have. The characters are carved and painted, some repeated, some corrected, some scratched over as if different hands returned at different times.

You don’t know the language at a glance. You recognize patterns — repetition, spacing, lines that begin similarly.

You photograph everything, take close-ups, then back up for context.

You trace the outlines in the air without touching.

Part of you wants to stay until your batteries die.

The sensible part of you checks your time, your water, the humidity, the way your lantern heat fogs the lens if you’re not careful. You know better than to push your luck in an unknown cave. You know how quickly a small accident becomes a problem no one can solve for you.

So you mark the chamber entrance with chalk. You take a final wide shot. You turn back the way you came, following your own white lines and cloth markers like a trail of breadcrumbs you’re pretending not to need.

On the way out, the cave feels different — occupied by your awareness now, every drip and shift of gravel a sound you register too sharply.

When you reach daylight again, it hits your eyes like a slap.

You blink hard.

You breathe air that feels thin and bright compared to what you just left.

You return to the village without incident.

People glance up as you cross between homes, then look away, pretending they weren’t waiting. The woman from the night before watches you a little too closely and your mouth goes dry when you realize you’re hoping she approves of your safe return, as if her approval has weight.

You keep your voice steady when you thank them. You don’t talk about what you saw yet. You go straight to your room, spread your gear out, and start backing up your files.

That night, you eat in the main hall because it’s the only place with reliable light.

The fan rattles overhead. The generator hums, sounding tired with effort. A few kids whisper and giggle when they see you working, your face lit by a laptop screen like something unnatural.

You plug in your camera, pull up the images, and start the careful work of sorting.

Mural sections. Altars. Pigment scenes. Writing close-ups.

You label everything with time stamps and file names that make sense while you’re tired.

Then you begin to decipher.

You don’t have full resources, you have a weak internet connection and a handful of reference books you brought because you always bring them. Still, modern scholarship is stubborn and widespread. You search motifs. You search the symbol of the split eye.

You search descriptions of two-faced or double-bodied deities in regional myth.

At first, you get nothing useful.

Folk stories. Tourist sites. Forum posts full of people mistaking fiction for history.

Then you narrow your terms.

You use transliteration attempts based on character shape. You compare your photographs to scripts you recognize. You hunt for a match the way you’ve hunted for pottery fragments in dirt — slow, methodical, patient.

Ruthless.

Hours pass. The main hall empties. Someone turns off extra lights to save power. The fan keeps wobbling like it might give up.

And then it clicks.

A name appears in an academic scan of a translated text — an old reference to a figure described as a calamity, worshiped and feared, associated with ruin and fire.

The formatting is clunky, the PDF barely readable, but the name is clear enough.

Ryomen Sukuna.

Your stomach tightens, not with fear, but with the sudden jolt of recognition.

The mural in your head comes back — four arms, four eyes, that wrong layered face. Two-faced, not in the sense of lies, but in the sense of anatomy made into a living statement.

You whisper the name under your breath as if testing it.

Ryomen Sukuna.

The Two-Faced Calamity.

You dig deeper.

You find mentions scattered across different sources — mythic accounts, regional folklore, later references that treat him as a warning.

Some texts describe him as a demon. Some call him a god. Some refuse to categorize him at all and simply list what he did — demanded offerings, took what he wanted, punished disobedience with disasters that didn’t always have a pattern.

You find repeated associations with fire. Not ordinary fire, but a “wielded” flame, the kind attributed to beings that aren’t bound by human limitation.

You find descriptions of villages appeasing him, of people leaving food at thresholds, of rituals performed with precise wording because the wording mattered more than the intent.

You look at your photos again, zooming in on the writing near the mural. You adjust contrast, brighten shadows, rotate angles. Your eyes burn from staring. Your neck aches.

You don’t stop.

The patterns in the writing start to make sense in structure before they make sense in meaning.

Some lines repeat exactly, as if spoken again and again. Some sections have spacing that resembles a chant.

There are symbols like markers, like instruction breaks — begin here, repeat, offer, call.

You feel your pulse in your fingertips when you realize what you’re looking at.

Not a narrative.

A ritual.

A prayer that isn’t simply praise. A set of steps designed to reach something.

You sit back in the creaking chair and stare at the screen. The hall feels too empty now, too quiet except for the fan and the generator and the distant rustle of someone sleeping nearby.

You think of the teenager warning you not to speak words you find.

You think of the village head saying names are doors.

You’re not superstitious at all. You’ve spent your life studying how humans build meaning around unexplainable things and fear and structure around forces they don’t understand.

Still, your throat feels tight.

You copy a few of the repeated lines into a document, transliterating symbols as best you can. You annotate them the way you always do, turning mystery into something you can hold.

Then, without quite deciding to, you read one line aloud.

Just once.

Quiet.

Experimental.

A test of sound and rhythm.

The words feel awkward in your mouth. You don’t pronounce them perfectly. You stop immediately after and let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

Nothing happens.

Of course nothing happens.

You laugh under your breath at yourself, more irritated than amused, and rub a hand over your face. You’re tired. You’re overstimulated. You’re letting a cave painting get under your skin.

You start packing up, saving files, shutting down tabs.

That’s when the lights flicker.

The generator coughs.

The fan stutters.

The laptop screen dims for a fraction of a second and comes back.

A normal thing in a place with fragile electricity.

Except the air changes along with it.

Not temperature. Not smell. Something subtler — like pressure shifting, like the room has gained some weight. The hair on your arms and nape lifts and stays lifted.

You freeze with your hand on the laptop lid.

From outside, you hear a dog bark once, sharp and startled, then go quiet.

Someone in the hall murmurs in their sleep.

You tell yourself it’s nothing.

You tell yourself you’re hearing patterns because you’ve been staring at them for hours.

You tell yourself you’re not that impressionable, you are just really exhausted.

And then, very faintly, you hear it.

That’s not a voice the way a person speaks.

Not a sound with clear direction.

More like a vibration that seems to come from the floor and the walls and the air at the same time.

A single syllable that matches the shape of the name you found.

You go still enough that you feel your heartbeat in your ears.

The sound doesn’t repeat. It doesn’t grow. It simply… exists for a moment, then disappears, leaving behind the hum of the generator like nothing interrupted it.

Then you notice the chalk dust on your sleeve.

You didn’t bring chalk into the hall, your clothes are changed, you are bathed, there’s no way you smeared chalk on that piece.

You freeze, looking down.

A white smear marks the fabric near your elbow, fresh and bright. You lift the sleeve closer to your face.

It smells like stone.

Your mind scrambles for explanations — maybe it was on your hands, maybe it transferred from your notebook, maybe you didn’t wash well enough—

The lights flicker again.

This time they dim for a heartbeat, and in that heartbeat, the reflection in your dark laptop screen shifts.

Not your face.

Something behind you.

Too tall.

Too broad.

A silhouette with shoulders that don’t fit the doorway.

You turn so fast your chair legs scrape against the floor, loud in the small hall.

There’s nothing there.

Just the door, the wall, the shadow of your own body thrown by fluorescent light.

Your breathing comes sharp now, too loud, too human. You stand slowly, lanternless, absurdly exposed in a room that suddenly feels like the mouth of a cave.

You swallow and force your voice to work.

“Hello?”

The answer isn’t a word.

It’s that low hum again, now inside the room with you, vibrating through the bones of the building.

Your teeth feel it. Your ribcage feels it.

The air feels thicker yet, that way it always feels before a storm breaks.

Then, very close to your ear — close enough that your skin burns with the proximity — you hear a voice like stone scraping stone.

“Say it again.”

You don’t move.

You can’t.

Your mouth opens and you taste smoke.

Your eyes flick to your notebook on the table, to the careful copied symbols, to the name written at the top of the page like a title you thought you owned.

Ryōmen Sukuna.

The Two-Faced Calamity.

And behind you, in the space that should be empty, something breathes as if it’s been waiting a very long time to be remembered.

You sit very carefully, as if sudden movement might break something.

You look at your screen again.

There’s nothing behind you, you repeat mentally like a mantra.

It doesn’t feel like nothing.

You swallow the rising fear that tries to take the best of you and turn around.

Nothing.

You close the laptop with a little more force than necessary.

When you leave the hall, the night air outside feels colder than it should.

You glance toward the mountain — in the dark, it’s only a larger patch of black against the sky, but you find yourself searching for the outline of the breach, the place where stone learned to open again.

Back in your room, you try to sleep.

You turn on your phone flashlight and check your chalk-stained gloves. You check your camera bag. You check your recorder like it might have captured something you missed.

At some point, your exhaustion wins. You drift off in shallow fragments.

You wake before dawn with a dry mouth and the uneasy sense of having been called.

The village is quiet, as it always is this early.

You sit up, rubbing your face, and listen.

Nothing.

No whisper. No vibration. Just the distant sound of water somewhere and the slow waking movement of people who will soon go back to work.

You tell yourself you imagined it.

You tell yourself you have evidence, and evidence is all you need.

You go back to the cave the next morning with your pack heavier than yesterday, not because you need more gear, but because you can’t shake the feeling that you missed something obvious.

The entrance looks the same from afar.

The slope is still raw where the storm tore it open, the air that leaks out is still cool.

Up close, though, the smudge of chalk at the threshold bothers you again. You crouch and run a gloved thumb over the white residue.

It comes away powdery, mixed with grit. The line isn’t simply faded.

It looks dragged, as if something brushed against it with weight and purpose.

You re-mark it, slower this time. You add a second arrow beside the first. You press harder, leaving a thicker streak.

You tell yourself it’s for safety. You don’t like how much it feels like insistence.

Inside, you move with the same method you always use — steady pace, eyes scanning low for loose stones, then up for markings, then across for changes in texture that might mean a side passage. Your lantern beam catches moisture on the walls, beads that glint and then disappear when you shift the light.

Your earlier chalk marks guide you through bends and junctions. Some are clean. Others are disturbed. A line that should be crisp is smeared downward. An arrow looks like it’s been rubbed with a palm.

You stop at each one, photographing, noting the difference, forcing yourself to treat it as data instead of an omen.

The ritual chamber opens up the way it did before, swallowing your light at the edges. The altars sit where they sat, hunched and worn. The broken bowls and bone fragments remain scattered in the same pockets of debris.

You circle the central slab again, not stepping on anything you don’t need to, taking fresh close-ups of the dark staining.

You go to the far wall and bring up yesterday’s photos on your phone, comparing the mural section by section. The figure’s outline hasn’t changed. The pigment is as fixed as it can be after centuries. Still, you take new pictures, closer to the crest on the right side of the face, closer to the four eyes, closer to the tattoo lines that frame the mouth and run down the arms. You angle your light and watch how the rock’s uneven surface makes the painted body look like it has depth.

The writing beside it draws you again.

You’ve already photographed it, already copied shapes into your notes, but you lean in and take your time anyway, looking for what your first pass might have missed — small marks that indicate breaks, symbols that could be offerings or instructions, the repeated lines that gave you that tight feeling in your throat.

You don’t speak this time, you don’t even mouth it — you simply record.

A clatter pulls your attention. Loose stone settling somewhere behind you. You freeze, then turn the beam slowly, scanning the chamber. Nothing moves. No animal eyes catch your light. No flutter of wings. The chamber settles back into stillness.

You force yourself to breathe evenly and continue your sweep, checking the edges of the room where debris has collected. Rotten rope lies in coils, more fiber than cord now. It smells faintly of mold when you lift a strand with the tip of your gloved finger. You find bull skulls tucked near one altar — two of them, heavy and cleanly stripped, horn bases cracked with age. You photograph them from above, then from the side, noting placement. Their eye sockets are empty, black holes that your light doesn’t fill properly.

Near the back, half buried under rubble and collapsed wood, you find something that wasn’t clear yesterday because you didn’t know to look for it.

A structure.

You clear loose stones with your boot, careful not to shift anything too much, and the shape becomes more obvious — thick beams that have split and softened, a base that might once have been raised. You find a curved piece of wood carved with shallow grooves that echo the tattoo patterns in the mural. The carving is crude, not decorative, more like a sign.

A seat, if you can call it that.

A back, if you can call it that.

A throne.

Even dismantled, even collapsed into ruin, it is too large for any human body you can imagine sitting on it. The base spans wider than your shoulders. The height of the back — what’s left of it — could have risen well above your head.

You stand there for a moment and let that fact land in your bones. You don’t feel awe. You feel calculation. Someone built this with a figure in mind. Someone put their labor into a seat that was meant for something that would never fit into their own world of scale.

You photograph every angle, you record in a low voice, describing the materials, the decay, the possible supports. You try to identify tool marks, but time has softened everything. The wood has been eaten by damp and insects. The stone under it looks scratched and darkened, as if weight rested there for years.

You look down again at the bones scattered among the rubble. Some are clearly animal — rib arcs too wide, leg bones too thick. Some pieces are smaller, more delicate, and you can’t immediately place them without handling them.

You don’t handle them. You just photograph and mark their position.

You leave the chamber after two more careful passes, your head buzzing with details that won’t line up neatly in your notes. On the way out, your lantern catches another new scratch near one of your chalk arrows — fresh lines in the stone, shallow but recent, like someone dragged a sharp point with a steady hand.

You don’t want to give that too much meaning.

You take a picture and move on.

Outside, the day feels too bright, as it often does after exploring a dark place.

Your eyes water, your shoulders ache from tension you didn’t notice building. You drink water, eat half a protein bar without tasting it, and head back down the path.

The village is in motion when you return, but it’s different from yesterday. People aren’t just working. They’re watching. Voices drop when you walk past. A few heads turn too quickly, then turn away as if looking at you is risky.

You go straight to your room, shut the door, and lay out your equipment. You back up the new images. You add time stamps. You write until your hand cramps. You try to keep your mind inside the frame of your work: site disturbance, ritual architecture, iconography, possible chronological layers.

That night, you fall asleep exhausted and still restless.

Your sleep is not deep. You keep surfacing, half aware of your body, half tangled in whatever your brain is doing with fear and excitement. At some point, the dream sharpens enough that you remember it afterward.

Four eyes.

Not a vague impression of being watched. Eyes with color and heat. Crimson, steady, close enough that you feel the burn of attention on your skin as if you’ve stepped too near an open flame. You try to move in the dream and your limbs feel heavy. You try to look away and your neck won’t turn. You wake with your heart pounding and your mouth dry, the blanket twisted around your legs as if you’ve been fighting it.

The room is dark. The village is quiet outside. You sit up and wait for your breathing to slow.

Nothing looks changed at first. Your pack is where you left it. Your boots sit by the door. Your phone is on the shelf.

Then you glance at the far wall.

A white smear runs across it at eye level. Chalk, dragged in a thick, ugly streak, like someone took the end of a line and wiped it sideways. Your stomach drops hard enough that you feel slightly sick.

You get out of bed and cross the room in three steps. You touch it with the tips of your fingers and the chalk dust comes away clean, bright against your skin.

You didn’t have chalk in here.

You didn’t bring your chalk into the sleeping area.

You remember that clearly because you’re careful about contamination.

You stand there with your hand hovering, staring at the wall until your eyes start to sting.

In the morning, you try to research again because research is something you can control.

You carry your laptop and notes to the main hall, where the electricity is steady enough to hold a connection. You open your folders, pull up the writing photos, and start cross-referencing. Your brain latches onto familiar tasks — compare symbols, search transliterations, look for mentions of “Ryomen Sukuna” outside the scattered myth sites.

You dig into older scans, archived articles, theses uploaded by bored grad students a decade ago.

You don’t get far.

The agitation hits the hall like a gust. People rush in and out. A woman is crying, her voice thin and raw. Two men speak to the village head with fast, urgent sentences, gesturing toward the hills. You close your laptop slowly, already knowing what’s coming.

The village head comes to you with a rigid face and a tired anger that looks more like fear forced into a shape that can stand upright.

“Someone is missing,” he says.

Your throat tightens and eyes widen a fraction.

“Who?”

He gives you a name you can’t pronounce properly on the first try. An older man, apparently. Someone who went to check an animal pen before dawn and never returned. They searched the paths. They checked the stream. They checked with nearby farms.

Nothing.

The village head’s eyes fix on you as if you’re part of the landscape now, a new hazard to account for.

“What did you do?” he asks, blunt. “What did you take? What did you touch?”

“I didn’t take anything,” you say immediately. “I recorded. I photographed. I marked my route with chalk. That’s it.”

“And the words?” he presses.

You hesitate for a fraction too long, and his expression hardens.

“I didn’t remove anything,” you repeat, choosing your words carefully. “I didn’t break anything. I didn’t—”

“Did you speak?” he asks.

Your mouth goes dry again.

You decide to lie and it comes out too stiff.

“No.”

He watches you, then looks past you at the hall, at the faces gathered, at the way the room seems to lean inward to hear his decision.

“You leave,” he says. “The bus comes in two days. You will be on it.”

The unfairness sparks in you.

The professional part of you wants to argue about ethics and evidence, about how you’re not responsible for a disappearance you didn’t cause.

The human part of you looks at the crying woman and the tightened jaws and understands that fear doesn’t care about fairness.

“I can help,” you say. “Let me—”

“No,” he cuts in. “You are a guest. You were warned. You went anyway. Now, you leave.”

You try again, softer.

“I can share what I found. If it helps you understand—”

“We understand enough.” someone snaps from behind him.

The decision is final.

You see it in the set of the village head’s shoulders, the way he doesn’t look at you with curiosity anymore. You pack your things that afternoon with hands that shake slightly whenever you pause too long.

You sleep the next night in short, broken pieces.

And someone else goes missing before dawn.

This time it’s a younger person. Someone who was supposed to meet friends near the spring.

The friends waited. Then they searched. Then the shouting started.

You don’t go back to the cave that day, you don’t even mention it.

You keep your eyes on your hands, on your packed bag, on the small, safe space of your room.

The village turns on itself and then turns back to you.

By midday, the head of the village is at your door again with two men behind him. Their faces are drawn. Their eyes are red. One of them has dirt under his nails like he’s been clawing through the hillside.

“We looked everywhere else,” the village head says. His voice is lower now, as if anger has been burned out and only necessity is left. “We do not go into that place. We sealed it for a reason. We will not cross it.”

He holds your gaze, and you see the shift — you are no longer simply a problem to remove.

You are, in their minds, the one who opened a door and therefore the one who must reach through it.

“You go,” he says. “You bring them back.”

Your stomach knots.

“I can’t guarantee—”

“You can go,” he says, sharp. “You have lights, you have rope, you have your marks, you already went. You do not fear it like we do.”

That’s not true, you do fear it.

You just refuse to name the fear because you don’t want it to become real.

You swallow.

“I’ll try.”

They don’t thank you. Gratitude doesn’t fit in the space they’re in. They simply step back and let you gather your things.

You leave in the late afternoon, when the sun is less brutal and the shadows on the path grow longer. You bring both lanterns. You bring extra batteries. You bring rope and a headlamp. You bring a small first-aid kit and your recorder, because part of you still needs proof that you’re not going insane.

No one follows you past the last cluster of homes. They watch from a distance until you’re small against the hillside. You can feel their eyes on your back like a weight, like a shove.

At the breach, you stop and breathe. You check your gear again. You switch on your headlamp and keep the electric lantern in your hand as backup. The gas lantern stays in your pack, for when batteries fail.

The cave receives you the same way it did the first time — cool air, damp stone, the sound of water somewhere deep.

The chalk at the entrance is blurred again.

The thick line you made yesterday is smeared, the arrow dragged into a pale ghost of itself. Your second mark is scratched over by something thin and sharp.

You photograph it quickly, more out of habit than hope that documentation will matter if you don’t come back out.

You step inside.

The cave feels narrower today even though you know the measurements haven’t changed. The air sits heavy. Your breathing sounds loud in your own head. You focus on the practical — foot placement, wall distance, light angles. You follow your route, checking each junction, re-marking where you can.

The deeper you go, the more you notice a faint metallic scent. Not strong enough to gag you, but persistent, sitting at the back of your throat.

You tell yourself it’s mineral-rich water, iron in the stone.

You repeat it like a fact while your pulse climbs anyway.

You hear something before you see the opening of the chamber.

A sound that doesn’t fit the cave’s usual language of drips and settling rock. It’s irregular. A soft, rhythmic scrape, like something being dragged gently across stone. Then a pause. Then again.

You stop and listen, holding your breath until your lungs burn.

The sound comes again, farther ahead, and you can’t tell if it’s close or simply echoing through the tunnels.

Then a wet sound. Also rhythmic, but… wrong. Sounds like leather being torn apart. Then, something cracks. Sharp, brief soung followed by more wet, unnerving ones.

That uncertainty makes your skin crawl.

You move on, slower now, every step deliberate.

At the last bend before the ritual chamber, your headlamp beam catches a flicker on the far wall.

Light.

Not your light.

Not the clean white of LEDs.

It’s warmer, uneven, orange-yellow, moving like flame. It reflects off wet stone in brief flashes.

The cave ahead glows faintly, then dims, then glows again.

Your heart hammers hard enough that you feel it in your throat. Your first instinct is clean and animal — turn around, get out, get someone, don’t be alone with whatever is making fire in a sealed place.

Your second instinct is the one you’ve trained for years — verify, observe, document, do not jump to conclusions.

You keep moving because you don’t want to believe in superstition. Because you need to bring missing people back. Because you’ve already been blamed and leaving without trying would make you the villain in their story forever.

You tighten your grip on the lantern until your knuckles ache. You angle your light low, trying not to announce yourself too brightly. You keep your steps quiet, placing your boot on flatter stone instead of loose grit.

As you approach the chamber opening, the heat touches your face first. It’s subtle at the edge, then clearer, real enough that it dries the dampness on your upper lip.

The metallic scent sharpens with it.

You reach the threshold.

For a second, you only see the flicker against the far wall and the silhouettes of the altars.

Then your eyes adjust and the scene resolves into something your mind fights to categorize.

The chamber is almost exactly as you left it.

The same high ceiling lost in dark. The same rough altars, cracked bowls, piles of debris in the corners. The murals glisten where your lantern beam hits mineral and old pigment.

The difference is the fire.

A bonfire burns in the center of the space, built right on the floor in front of the central slab. Thick branches, old beams, things that look like pieces of the collapsed throne, stacked and burning hot. Flames climb and fold in on themselves, orange and white and deep red at the base. Heat rolls off in waves that dry the cave’s damp from your skin.

Around the chamber, stone bowls you remember as empty now hold smaller fires. Each one burns steady, no smoke that you can see, as if the cave is swallowing it. The light they throw jumps against the walls. Markings and figures you documented yesterday move in the jitter of it, their lines bending, stretching, gathering in corners. Your eyes know they are still, but your brain keeps trying to track motion that isn’t there.

You step past the threshold, a little closer than feels wise.

The metallic smell that followed you from the tunnel is stronger here. Not just iron in the rock. Blood, warm enough that it hasn’t settled into the dull, dry scent of old accidents. It sits on the back of your tongue.

You tell yourself to turn back.

You tell yourself to go and bring the village head here, show him, make this someone else’s responsibility.

Your legs don’t listen.

They carry you forward in small, unsteady steps, the lantern beam shaking slightly in your hand.

You see pieces before you see bodies.

A smear on the stone. A shape that doesn’t belong to the floor.

Then fabric.

A hand, fingers curled, detached from anything that could move them.

Your stomach pulls tight.

Near the bonfire, you find what’s left of the first missing man.

Half a torso, lying on its side, spine torn somewhere below the ribs. The edge isn’t clean. The flesh is ragged, pulled, as if something with strong jaws chewed and wrenched until bone gave up.

The lower half is nowhere. One arm is still attached, reaching toward nothing. Blood has soaked the stone around him in a wide patch. It reflects the firelight, too bright in some places, already darkening at the edges.

The second body lies a little beyond, on its back, closer to one of the altars. Less torn apart, but the damage is still obvious.

Chest open, throat ruined. The face is almost intact. You recognize clothing from the village, a piece of a bracelet you noticed on someone’s wrist two days ago. The features are slack. The eyes are half-lidded. If you squint, if you remove the missing pieces, you can almost imagine them breathing.

Almost.

Your throat closes. For a few long seconds you can’t swallow. Your breath starts to come too fast and you have to force it slower, one counted inhale at a time.

You know you should run.

You know, in the part of your mind that understands risk and probability, that you are standing in the middle of something you’re not equipped to handle. You have no weapon that matters here. No backup.

No guarantee that whatever did this is gone.

But there is also the need that brought you here in the first place, the piece of you that has always leaned closer when most people pull away.

You have bodies.

You have fire that shouldn’t exist.

You have a name that has followed you from dusty PDFs to wet rock.

You lower yourself into a crouch near the first corpse. Close enough to see clearly, not close enough to touch. You don’t want your gloves marked with this blood. You angle your lantern to examine the torn edge of the torso. Teeth marks. Not the ragged tears of an explosion or accidental collapse. Curved impressions in bone. Bites big enough that they took whole mouthfuls.

Something large.

Something that can crush and tear without much effort.

You move your light along the exposed ribs. Your stomach flips once, but you push it down, focusing on shape, pattern, distance between marks. You find more of the same on the second body’s shoulder and neck. Repeated force, not cautious.

Efficient.

The feeling of being watched creeps up your back like a slow hand.

You stand, the movement stiff in your knees, and turn a slow circle. Fire throws shadows onto every surface. The mural of the god seems to shift with it, tattoos and mouths and eyes flexing as the flames jump. The writing beside it gleams. The corner where the throne collapsed is deeper in shadow now, the burned remains of wood feeding the central blaze.

Nothing moves that isn’t shadow.

You know what all of this suggests.

You know how it lines up with the stories and the warnings and your own stupid choice in the main hall when you whispered a name into a room that didn’t ask for it.

It feels delusional.

But so does standing in front of two half-eaten villagers in a cave full of fire that wasn’t here yesterday.

You wet your lips.

The air feels too thick.

You take one step backward, then forward again, like you can’t decide which direction is safer.

“Ryomen Sukuna.” you speak, feeling like maybe you’re really going insane.

The name is clear and loud.

You force your voice steady, even though your chest is tight.

The syllables hit the stone and travel.

For the briefest moment, the sound of the fire drops.

The bonfire still burns. The smaller flames still move. But the aggressive crackle and pop of wood easing into ash dulls, as if someone took a hand and pressed it over the noise. The background dripping of water quiets. Even the constant, low hum of the cave’s air seems to pause.

You hear your own heartbeat. You hear your breath. You hear nothing else.

Then you see him.

You don’t see him arrive. There is no flash, no swirl of smoke, no convenient spectacle your mind can use as an entrance.

One moment, the space beyond the fire is empty, only wall and painting and shadow.

The next, something stands there.

Impossibly tall.

Two torsos stacked, the lower one broad and rooted, the upper one just slightly offset, so the chest and shoulders above look like an extension and also like something added.

Four arms hang at his sides, then shift as he moves, each hand large enough that your neck would fit inside his grip.

His skin is pale where it shows under the blood, inked with thick black markings that run over shoulders, down arms, across his throat and chest and stomach in deliberate patterns.

His face is wrong in exactly the way the painting promised.

Four eyes. Two set where they should be, on skin, one above the other — two more embedded in a crest that grows over the right side of his face like extra bone. The crest curves back, ridged, heavy, as if someone carved a second skull and laid it over the first. All four eyes are open, focused, their irises a deep, steady carmine that catches the firelight and holds it.

His mouth is not human either. Lips thin, teeth too sharp when he sneers. Below the line of his ribs, the flesh distorts again, forming another maw where no mouth should be.

It is closed now, but the line of it is clear.

He is covered in blood.

It streaks his arms, stains his hands, clings in patches to his chest and the ink on his skin. Some of it is drying brown. Some of it is still wet enough to shine. You don’t need to check whose it is. The bodies on the floor answer that without question.

You don’t move.

You don’t even flinch.

Everything in you screams to turn and run, but your muscles refuse. Your heart slams so hard you feel it in your throat. Your palms sweat around the lantern handle. Your mind, for some reason you can’t explain, sinks into details instead of panic.

He is magnificent.

Not in a kind, holy sense. In the way of an earthquake, a flood, a wildfire. A force shaped into a body that the human eye can’t quite file under any known category but still can’t stop tracking.

A Calamity.

He tilts his head, crest catching the light, and you see a small change at the corner of his mouth.

Amusement.

“You don’t run.” he comments.

His voice is deep, the sound of someone who doesn’t need to raise it to be heard. It carries in the chamber without echo, as if the walls listen.

“Most creatures piss themselves or faint by now.” The corner of his mouth lifts more. “Or kneel.”

He steps around the bonfire and comes closer. The ground shudders a little under his weight. You take a half step back without meaning to, then stop. The distance between you is nothing for him.

Two strides and he’s near enough that you don’t need your lantern to see him.

You stare up. Your neck aches from the angle. He looks even larger this close. The ink lines on his skin are clearer, sharp and deliberate, not smudged like old paint. Some of the markings look like the characters on the wall, broken and turned into ornament.

The heat coming off his body mixes with the fire, smells of iron and smoke and something older.

“Your instincts work,” he says, watching your throat, your shoulders, the grip you have on your light. “I can hear them. Yet you stand there like you’re looking at a stone.”

He moves faster than you can track for a second.

Two of his hands are on you before your brain finishes processing the motion. One clamps around your waist, fingers closing over your ribs and back, firm and unyielding. The other wraps around your throat, thumb pressed against the side of your neck, fingers spanning almost all the way around.

He doesn’t squeeze, but he doesn’t need to for you to feel how easy it would be.

The lantern jerks in your grasp. You somehow don’t drop it.

The shock slams through you harder than any fear you’ve felt so far. Your body finally understands that this isn’t a painting or a legend or a hallucination brought on by bad air.

This is weight and heat and pressure.

Flesh against yours.

Your breath stutters. Your vision sharpens.

“I came to find the missing people.” you manage, your voice thin against his grip, hoarse.

He looks down, following your quick glance to the bodies near the fire.

A low sound rolls out of him, a rough, amused huff that passes for a chuckle.

“You found them,” he says. “You can drag what’s left out if it makes you feel useful. Your little herd won’t thank you. They’ll only see the mess.”

His hand on your waist tightens. He lifts you as if you weigh nothing, bringing you up until your face is closer to his. Your boots leave the ground. The hand on your throat supports your head as much as it restrains you. He is careful not to crush your windpipe.

It feels intentional, not merciful.

Up close, you see every detail you studied on the wall rendered in skin.

The crest is ridged and solid, like living bone. The extra eyes embedded there blink a fraction out of sync with the main pair, never losing focus on you. The black markings cut across his features, some sharp, some curved, framing his eyes and mouth, crossing the bridge of his nose.

There are smaller lines you didn’t catch in the painting, thin marks near the corners of his mouth that look almost like scars.

You should be screaming.

You should be crying.

Instead, your mind catalogues, and you hate that you can’t turn that part of yourself off.

He is unique, and that word feels insufficient.

As if he hears the direction of your thoughts, his brows draw together.

“You’re staring at me,” he ponders, a little annoyed. “Not just in terror. You’re… measuring.”

There’s a brief confusion there, as if he’s sorting through expectations and you’ve stepped outside them.

“You’re beautiful.” you whisper under your breath before your sense of self-preservation can stop you.

The words leave your mouth and hang between you, absurd in the blood and fire.

Silence follows.

His grip doesn’t change, but something in his posture does.

One of the lower hands flexes, claws tapping once against his thigh.

One of the extra eyes narrows.

Then he huffs again, a short, sharp exhale. Not quite a laugh. Not quite annoyance.

“Your kind has strange tastes,” he mutters. He lowers you a little, enough that your feet find the floor again, though he doesn’t release you.

The hand at your neck relaxes a fraction, still a collar, less a threat of immediate breaking.

“Why shouldn’t I kill you?” he asks.

There is no moral weight in the question. It’s not a test of your goodness. It’s practical. He has killed twice very recently. Two bodies on the stone prove it. A third would not change his day.

You open your mouth, then close it.

You have nothing that would mean anything to him.

Pleas about innocence or purpose or family feel small and useless where you stand.

“I don’t know,” you admit, because there’s no time for a lie he won’t believe. “You don’t care about our rules.”

His eyes sharpen at that. He seems to approve of the answer, in his own way.

“I started researching you,” you add, the words tumbling out faster now that you’ve committed. “When I found the mural. When I saw your name in the texts. I came back to understand what you were. I… read some of the ritual.”

His grip firms for one instant at the last word. Not enough to hurt, enough to remind your body who is holding you.

“You called,” he says. “You did not know what you called, but you spoke the shape of it and fed it with attention. The seal was already broken. The mountain had already given way. All I needed was breath and blood.” He glances toward the corpses. “They took care of that part for you.”

Your stomach twists.

“So if I had stayed away—”

“You wouldn’t have,” he cuts in. “You are not made for staying away. You draw lines on walls into holes in the ground and you call it work.”

He studies you for another long moment, then shifts his weight. The movement pulls you a little closer, enough that you feel the heat radiating off his chest.

The lower mouth on his abdomen stays closed, but the sight of it this near, line of teeth barely visible between lips, sends a cold prickle down your spine.

“You want to understand,” he says. “So ask, woman. Before I decide you bore me.”

The chance is absurd in context.

Two half-eaten villagers at your feet, firelight bending shadows, a god — calamity, demon, whatever word fits — holding you by the throat and offering a question-and-answer session.

You take it.

“Are you a deity?” you blurt out too quick. Your voice steadies as you go, because this part is familiar. “Or… did you become this over time? Were you ever human?”

His mouth curls, exposing teeth.

“Human,” he repeats, as if tasting something sour. “Once. Long ago and small. I killed and took and broke until I was no longer counted among them. Their fear made stories. Their stories made offerings. Their offerings built this.”

He gestures with one free hand, indicating the chamber, the altars, the throne pieces, the mural.

“Call it a god if you like. Call it a curse. Call it King of Curses, as some did. Names are cages they tried to put me in so they could pretend they understood me. It changes nothing about what I am.”

“The flames,” you continue, eyes flicking to the bowls, the bonfire. “They said you wielded fire.”

“They said many things,” he murmurs, amusement back. “But yes. Fire answers me. So do other things. Tearing. Rotting. The thin little threads that hold your kind together.” He tilts his head. “You walked into my shrine with your own light and still needed me to show you what fire can do.”

There’s no bragging in his tone — it’s simple truth to him.

“The villages,” you press, because you may never have another chance. “The stories say you destroyed them for denying you. How much of that is… embellished?”

He bares his teeth in a slow grin.

“Embellished,” he echoes, and for a heartbeat you think he might be offended. Then he laughs, low and rough. “They were modest. I did worse than they had the words for. Sometimes I destroyed because they stopped feeding me. Sometimes because I was simply bored. Sometimes because I felt like walking and did not enjoy what I found.”

Your hand tightens on the lantern. You feel sweat slide down your spine.

“Why here?” you ask. “Why this mountain?”

He glances up briefly at the ceiling as if he can see through the rock.

“They brought me here first. When I stopped fitting in their little houses. They carved me into the walls so they could pretend I belonged to the stone and not to their choices. They built the throne.” His gaze drops back to you. “Then they tried to shut the door when they realized closing their eyes did not make me vanish.”

“The sealing,” you say. “They stopped the sacrifices. They closed you in.”

“For a time,” he agrees. “Long enough for more stories to grow. Long enough for my name to settle into the dust.” His fingers flex slightly at your throat, reminding you that he is no longer settled. “Storms break stone. Curiosity breaks the rest.”

You remember the breached slope. The washed-out entrance. Your chalk smeared at the threshold. Your own voice in the main hall repeating lines you didn’t understand.

“Those people,” you say, nodding toward the dead. “You lured them.”

“I called,” he says without shame. “They came. Animals follow fear as much as they follow food.” He shrugs with one massive shoulder. “I needed meat. I needed blood. I need more, if I intend to stand outside this hole again.”

The idea of him loose on the surface makes your chest tighten in a different way.

Villages. Roads. Cities.

“You want to rebuild your shrine.” you say quietly.

He hums, a low sound that vibrates through the hand on your waist.

“It will rebuild itself if I let it. Fear is mortar. Desperation is stone.” He looks you over again, from your boots to your face, lingering on the set of your mouth. “You, however, are… new.”

You blink.

“New?”

“Most that find me fall apart,” he says. “Their minds crack. Their bodies follow. You stand here and ask for my history.” His grin widens. “You even call me beautiful. You are either very brave or very broken. Either way, you might be useful.”

The hand at your throat shifts, thumb stroking once along the line of your jaw in a gesture that is not gentle, just thoughtful.

Your heart jumps at the contact.

“Useful how?” you ask, because the question is already there and you might as well say it.

“As a toy,” he says lightly. “As a priest. As a tongue that speaks my story to your kind when I grow bored of their own.” His eyes narrow slightly, studying the panic you try to keep out of your face. “As something I decide to keep rather than crush.”

You think of the village, of the bus that won’t matter now because you’re here, inside the mountain, held by something that doesn’t care about schedules or roads.

You think of your family, of inboxes that will stay unanswered until someone wonders why.

“No one will come in here after me,” you mutter. It isn’t a plea. It’s a fact. “They’re too afraid.”

He nods once.

“They remember enough to stay out. For now.”

You are, you realize, very simply alone with him.

He has every advantage. Strength, knowledge of the place, access to whatever power let him ignite old wood in a cave with no draft.

The only thing you have is your ability to ask and your refusal to faint.

“I can record you,” you say, words coming out before you fully plan them. “Your stories. The truth. Not just the myths, if you intend to step out again, you’ll want them afraid of the right things.”

It’s a gamble.

You have no idea if something like him cares about how he is remembered.

But he did talk about names.

About stories.

About offerings built on fear.

His eyes narrow. One of the lower hands taps the side of your hip slowly, like a count.

“You offer to write scripture,” he ponders, tone again amused. “For a god you do not worship.”

“I don’t worship anything,” you answer. “I document. I learn. That’s what I have... That’s what I can give you.”

“And what do you want in return?” he asks.

You swallow. The hand on your throat feels heavier for a second. You force the words out anyway.

“To live,” you say. “And… if you can hold back for a while… for them.” You nod toward the general direction of the village. “They blame me enough already. Give them time.”

He stills.

All four eyes stay on you. You feel the weight of it in every nerve.

The stomach maw doesn’t open, but something in the way his chest rises and falls changes, deeper, slower.

“You bargain for cattle,” he says finally. “From their god of slaughter.”

“They’re people,” you say, the word sharp.

Maybe not wise, but you’re past wise.

He considers that, then lets out another low, rough laugh.

“You have teeth for something so small,” he says. “Fine. I will not flatten your little nest today. I am not at my full strength yet. I am patient when it suits me.”

Relief hits so hard you almost sag in his grip.

“Do not mistake that for mercy,” he adds, leaning in until his face fills your world. “If they come in here, if they bring me more offerings — willing or not — I will take. If you try to run, I will find you. If you bore me…” His fingers at your throat tighten just enough to make your next breath a struggle. “I finish what it has been started.”

You nod as much as his hand allows. It’s a jerky little movement.

He loosens his grip again, just enough for air.

“Good.” he says.

One of his lower hands reaches out and dips two fingers into the blood pooled near the torn torso. He lifts them, smears a small, cold line across your forehead. It dries almost at once in the heat. His grin shows you he did this solely because he knew you would grimace. And you do.

“You are mine, little digger,” he states. “My scribe. My witness. My amusement.”

The mark itches. You resist the urge to wipe it away.

“You will write,” he continues. “You will learn my words properly, not the broken ones you found on your glowing toy. You will sit on that stone—” he jerks his chin toward the dais where the throne once stood, “—and watch as this place wakes up. You wanted to understand. Now you will.”

The bonfire roars higher as if someone fed it fresh air. The bowls flare. The shadows stretch.

You stand in his grip, heart pounding, mind racing, and understand that the bus arriving in two days belongs to another life entirely.

The careful plans, the schedules, the neat stacks of notes and files — those belong to someone who could leave.

Here, in the cave that is not just a cave, with the Two-Faced Calamity’s blood-damp thumb resting against your pulse, you are kept alive for reasons that have nothing to do with justice or luck.

You are here because he chose not to kill you.

You are beholden to his questions and his moods and the thin, sharp interest in your stubborn curiosity.

And for the first time since you arrived in the village, the thought that follows that realization is not I should escape.

It is — I need more paper.

----

Tim was the one who had found the first body a week ago. He'd been on patrol when he'd spotted it propped up against a dumpster in an alley. It couldn't have been there longer than an hour, the blood was far too fresh.

Tim had planned to just check out the scene and call it in, but then he actually saw the body. It'd been eviscerated, torso ripped open organs spilling out and its hands had been frozen to the ground- hell the entire body seemed to be coated in a layer of frost.

Tim kept tabs on the investigation, if anything for simple curiosity. Then they'd found the second body. Body frozen to the ground, same victim profile- but the death had been completely different. Slashed throat, face mutilated.

Then there was another, and this time Tim wanted to see it in person. This was either a serial killer or the start of a new rogue, and for Tim to be able to tell he needed to see. He sent word to Gordon, if anything more of a warning. He was greeted by the medical examiner.

Greeted was a strong word.

The medical examiner was... strange. Tim had heard news of him starting work and as far as Tim was aware of he was clean, and an almost boring person. The medical examiner that Tim met was unnerving. Pale, staring almost through him and carried blase attitude to his work.

What was worse is that he reminded so much of a corpse, not just a corpse but the corpse.

Then it struck him.

Fenton could be a target. Fenton could be the focus of the killer's obsession.

He'd have to keep tabs on Fenton, too bad he might be the most reckless Gotham citizen in existence.

----

Gotham, admittedly hadn't been Danny's first pick after he finished medical school. Danny had always intended to become a medical examiner, dealing with your own corpses for years would do that do you. 'Finished' was the real problem, Danny had been doing well, great even but then he'd died. Twice. Real unfortunate really, hit and run and then poison, left him with a dry throat for weeks.

His own classmate apparently tried to kill him, which means it would be more than hard to actually finish medical school. That's fine, he had access to Tucker, an actual godsend who was able to make it look like he had all the proper qualifications... as long as you didn't look too hard.

Gotham was apparently pressed for a good medical examiner. All he needed to be was experienced.

Thankfully he had that in spades.

Things frankly only started going down hill last week. He'd made a habit of taking on requests between work, occultist avoided Gotham like the plague leaving him the only voice for the dead. Usually it was pretty easy gig, collect some momentos, help a few ghosts recognize they're dead. Until he'd had to deal with a Wraith.

It didn't go well. Danny was dead set on handling it as a human, appearing as Phantom could cause all matter of chaos. Danny had also not been informed that the claws of a wraith could pierce through human flesh so there's that. Danny was once again evicted from the mortal coil, dropping his own corpse and having to finish the fight off

Danny had planned to deal with his body after gaining his human form back and making sure that the thing could no longer return to the earthly plane. Turns out a bat got there first, turned the place into a crime scene. Just his luck he was beaten bloody enough to be unrecognizable.

His luck continued to go down hill when he was killed, not once, not twice but three times (this of course, wasn't accounting for the times he'd needed to go ghost). He'd gotten good at taking care of his bodies in Gotham at that point, or so he thought, until he was told he had not only a new body on his table and Red Robin waiting to be escorted to his morgue.