Chapters
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“Earth to Temujin!!” Pink fingers snapped in front of his face. He looked to Sesame and pulled himself back to something that felt more comfortable than nirvana. “Is it over?” She hugged him so tightly the air left him. He hugged back. Finally, a lovely touch. Yulaan came limping through the wreckage, hair ragged and down, side bleeding freely. She looked him up and down, taking in the burn marks, the dark wrist-curse, the stupid living face. Then she rushed him, wrapped one arm…-
56.5 K • Ongoing
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The medical attendants came for Bakuga with a little black funeral stretcher and no jokes. That, more than the blood, told the arena what had happened. Demons could laugh at torn arms, burst skulls, gut-spills, headless men walking three steps in search of revenge. They knew what to do with ordinary violence. They leaned into it. They paid for it. But the small body in the orange tunic, the still firefly on the crooked goggled hat, and Mukhahīna Śveta walking away with his arms behind his back had…-
56.5 K • Ongoing
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The yōkai repair crew had learned to move fast. The faceless priest repainted bronze trigram lines around blood that refused to wash out. Two turtle-backed masons argued over whether a cracked lotus panel could be billed as new if the crack now resembled a sacred river. Mali hovered above them, microphone tucked under one arm, red flag under the other, cheeks puffed as if a delay in bloodsport were a personal insult. Temujin sat near the rail-edge of the now-quiet fighters’ pavilion with one…-
56.5 K • Ongoing
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The Makai was not Hell, and had no wish to be. Hell was a better place with worse people. Scribes of Demon World (proud as warriors with none of the celebrity) wrote of demon life and published their words as truth, sold topside as postcards from Hell. To Hell with that, scribe-slaughterers would say: demon readers wanted blood and its debts paid in violence. But the doomed calligraphy masters pleaded anyway— sometimes to ignorant Earth mobs with torches, sometimes to the devil eating them…-
56.5 K • Ongoing
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The wheel turned. RyūeiversusIwagashira Dokkan Dokkan crushed his way out of the pavilion first and Temujin liked how onryō-killing he looked. The Stone-Head Oni of Mount Abura rolled his shoulders as he walked, slate-blue skin thick over muscle, black horns polished by habit because Temujin didn't take him as vain. The orange sash at his waist had been tightened. Someone had painted a fresh charm across his brow in black ink. He spat into his bowl one last time and handed it to a small attendant,…
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56.5 K • Ongoing
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Beyond them, demons who had stopped cheering and started edging away. The hyena mother and Zeru and Temu, skittering to safety not far off from Makku, who ran and didn't turn back. Injured spectators crawling over broken seats. Sword-school disciples forming a defensive ring around their wounded master. The arena’s appetite had curdled. The crowd that had come to watch death had discovered death laughing back. He saw Utita pulling Ari-apari, but the boy refused to move. And the manly voiced boy…-
56.5 K • Ongoing
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The yōkai repair crew had stopped pretending the arena could be saved. Still they patched it. That was tournament law, or temple habit, or the stubborn pride of little contractors who had seen six hundred and fourteen tournaments of idiots ruin stone and still considered every crater a personal insult. The broom-armed oni swept the last of Mame into a lacquered tray while two turtle-masons dragged trigram strips back into the floor with their teeth. A faceless priest in a saffron raincoat stood over…-
56.5 K • Ongoing
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Bakuga KōtenversusMukhahīna Śveta A part of Temujin grumbled that the two most interesting fighters were about to go at it, but that part took a blow to the nads. Heaven above, he hoped Enekai faced off against whoever won this one. She was probably going to sweep this, and he wasn't entirely bothered by the thought, though his own martial pride didn't let him entertain blowing their inevitable showdown. Yeah, it'd be the two of them, surely. He felt he could take the others. Well, Ryūei…-
56.5 K • Ongoing
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