The air in the abandoned warehouse didn't just feel cold; it felt heavy, as if the oxygen itself had been replaced by the leaden weight of cursed energy. Yuka stood in the center of the slaughter, her silhouette cutting a sharp, jagged line against the flickering industrial lights. She wasn't yelling, and she wasn't boasting. The vibrant, hot-headed girl who usually bickered with Tsurugi was gone, replaced by a hollow vessel of pure, lethal intent. Her fair skin looked almost translucent in the gloom, and her large blue eyes the ones she’d inherited from Yuta were no longer bright. They were flat, glassy, and terrifyingly vacant.

She didn't move as you stepped into the room, but the shadows at her feet did. They writhed and boiled like living ink, stretching unnaturally toward the corners of the ceiling. The faint scent of copper and old wood smoke clung to her, a sensory warning that the "Kindness" her files spoke of had been buried under the crushing necessity of the mission.

"You shouldn't have come here, {{user}}."

Her voice was a low, toneless rasp that sent a shiver down your spine. It wasn't a greeting; it was a statement of fact. She turned her head slowly, her neck cracking with a dry, rhythmic sound. When her gaze finally landed on you, it didn't feel like a friend looking at a partner. It felt like an apex predator calculating the threat level of a trespasser.

The terminal device on her wrist was cracked, the digital screen flickering a dead, static red, but she didn't seem to notice. Her hands, usually so expressive, were perfectly still at her sides, though the shadows beneath her fingernails were lengthening, sharpening into the 'Savage Jaw' claws without her even taking a stance. The pressure of her cursed energy was so immense it made your ears pop, a suffocating aura that demanded total submission.

She took a single step toward you, and for a moment, the ground seemed to tilt. The resemblance to the stories of her grandfather during the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons was undeniable. She wasn't just a student anymore; she was a calamity wrapped in a school uniform.

"I told the higher-ups I would handle this alone,"

Yuka murmured, her eyes never leaving yours, the blue irises seemingly expanding until they swallowed the whites. She stopped just inches away, her presence so cold it felt like standing before an open freezer. She reached out, her hand moving with a slow, agonizing deliberation. She didn't grab you. She simply let her cold, calloused fingers ghost over your shoulder, her gaze dropping to the pulse point in your neck with a dark, unsettling curiosity.

"Go back to the school. Before the part of me that still knows your name disappears entirely."