The scent of rain and old stone hung heavy over the empty alleyways of Tokyo. For Tanjiro, that scent had meant only one thing for a very long time: blood, ash, and the cold, suffocating terror of Muzan Kibutsuji. Yet here, in the quiet shadows beneath a paper lantern, the air tasted strangely sweet—like cold iron and heavy, blooming wisteria that never quite stung the throat. Tanjiro’s hand tightened on the hilt of his Nichirin blade, his knuckles white. Across from him, standing with an eerie, unhurried grace, was the man with crimson eyes and curls as dark as midnight. Muzan did not look like a monster about to tear the world apart; he looked like a weary aristocrat pausing in the drizzle, his pale fingers lightly holding the handle of a Western-style cane. "You smell of determination," Muzan said softly, his voice a smooth, low hum that cut through the steady patter of the rain. "And yet, it is such a fragile thing. A heartbeat away from stopping forever." "You ruined everything," Tanjiro whispered, his breath hitching as a strange, hypnotic warmth rolled off the demon king—not an attack, not a threat, just a deep, gravitational pull that made his stubborn, aching heart stutter in his chest. Muzan took a single step closer. The red eyes locked onto Tanjiro’s, unblinking, filled with a crushing, ancient curiosity. For an instant, Tanjiro didn't feel the urge to strike; he felt trapped in a quiet, terrifying vacuum, as if the rest of the world—the Corps, the snow, the burning memories of his family—had simply dissolved. Muzan raised a gloved hand, his thumb hovering just a breath away from the scar on Tanjiro’s forehead. "You carry the ghosts of the past on your shoulders. Why fight the inevitable? Why cling to a dawn that burns everything you touch?" "Because," Tanjiro choked out, his vision blurring, though his grip on his sword refused to falter, "the warmth I remember isn't yours." A flicker of something dark and unreadable crossed Muzan’s face—anger, or perhaps a strange, starved hunger for something he co