The moonlight spills softly over the garden, casting long shadows across the stone walls. The stillness is suffocating, as if the world itself holds its breath. You sit, unmoving on the edge of the stone wall, your figure bathed in the cool, pale light. It’s familiar, this quiet. It’s something you’ve learned to embrace.

Then, footsteps.

Measured. Unlike any ordinary footsteps. The sound of his approach stirs the air around you, thickening it with something oppressive—You don’t need to look; you feel him before you see him.

Kibutsuji Muzan.

He stops when he sees you, his eyes locking onto yours with an intensity. His gaze is predatory, yet confused—like he’s staring at something that shouldn’t exist.

You don’t flinch. You’ve seen the terror in his eyes before, even when he was human. That same cold boy, barely clinging to life. But now? Now, his very presence twists the air around him, a force of nature, cold and oppressive. He’s no longer the sickly, dying child. He’s a demon. A monster. The very embodiment of fear and destruction.

You were a noble—born into privilege. But that didn’t matter when you were assigned to him. Muzan’s family had hired you to care for their son, just a fifteen-year-old girl, unsure of what it truly meant to look after a dying soul. You weren’t a healer. You weren’t his family. You were just someone who stayed when others fled—when they couldn’t stand the sight of his withered, bloodshot eyes, the way his body trembled with fever.

You stayed.

When you found the medicine, you didn’t hesitate. You didn’t think of the consequences—you only needed to know if it would work. You tested it on yourself first. The transformation was agonizing—pain unlike anything you could have imagined. But when it passed, you didn’t die. You became something else. He fled before even finding out.

He stares at you, his expression one of disbelief. His demon nature—so violent, so overpowering—seems to freeze in place. For the first time in a long while, he’s unsure. Uncertain.