𝐀 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 [𝘈 𝘒𝘕𝘠 𝘍𝘢𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯]

Chapter 1

     A/N Hi! This is my first story so please don't expect top notch writing. I'm a massive Kimetsu no Yaiba fan and I came up with this idea last year. I'm currently still reading the manga, so my updates will be in correlation with how far I've read. Feel free to comment ideas for chapters because I haven't completely planned it out. Also, small LGBTQ+ warning and (just including this if you thought it would) this story will NOT include smut. Happy reading!

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  Hanako Kamado was the youngest sister of the Kamados. They were an average family that didn't have too much money. She did receive a proper education and had the chance to get a fairly good job to support a family of her own (if she ever wanted to). So why did she lose it all?

It was a normal day. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She had just greeted Tanjiro, before his morning coal run to the town at the base of the mountain (which was more like a rather tall hill) and was heading inside to finish up her morning chores. She was hoping to finish them early so she could help Nezuko take care of Rokuta, seeing as he woke up right after Tanjiro left and would most likely start sobbing the moment he realised that he didn't get a hug goodbye (despite the fact that he got to say goodbye every single day). Hanako, along with the rest of her older siblings, took turns delivering coal to the village at the base of the mountain. This was normally done in groups of two or three for the younger children, but Tanjiro and Nezuko could go on their own. Rokuta had wanted to go but was not allowed due to his age leading to another probable daily tantrum of being left behind.

Later, their mother Kie, called her into the kitchen to help with preparations for dinner (she had called Nezuko a couple of times but with the resounding sounds of Rokuta's yells, she was most likely occupied). They each took turns preparing meals, and taking care of Rokuta to help support their mother, who had had extreme difficulty with doing her regular household tasks since the loss of their father who had passed around a year ago.

The loss of her father hadn't affected her as much as it had affected her siblings. Nezuko, Takeo and Tanjiro, being the oldest siblings, got to spend a lot of time with their dad before his passing and seemed to know him best. Shigeru and Rokuta, her younger brothers, also somehow seemed to be more attached to her father than she was (which put to rest her idea that her connection issues with her father were caused by the lack of time she could spend with him). She couldn't understand why she wasn't as attached to her father as her siblings were and at this point had given up trying to figure it out. She just settled for the idea that they didn't have much in common and she had trouble connecting with him, seeing as they didn't have many similarities. Of course,she loved her father dearly and was incredibly saddened by the loss of him, but later reflected on the fact that the impact of his loss was never the same for her compared to her siblings.

Lately, her mother had seemed slightly out of it. When she thought they weren't looking you could see her muttering about being worried about raising Rokuta without his father. Often you could also hear her talking about old memories and sometimes speaking in an indistinguishable tongue that none of the children seemed to understand. So, when her mother spoke directly to her, asking to see if she could gather some pine needles to brew into a sort of tea together, she could say that she was pleasantly surprised. Wanting to keep her mother in good spirits, she grabbed a small hand-held oil lamp, lit it and laced up a pair of small leather boots. They were the pair that Tanjiro had previously bought for her ninth birthday and provided to then wander out of their home into the cold dark night. Exploring further around the outside of their house, she collected sharp, pointed pine needles off the ground that somehow managed to poke her hand no matter what position she held them in.

Suddenly, the faint sound of crunching snow coming from down the mountain reached her ears. Assuming it was simply Tanjiro coming up the mountain later than expected (as no one else would go through the effort of climbing up the mountain at this time of day), she called out, her voice echoing down the mountain, (read: hill) "Big brother! Mother asked me to grab some pine needles for tea, so I can't greet you at the moment. I'll greet you once you get inside!"

She ran back to the house and pulled open the wooden door with her shaky, half frozen fingers. Walking into the kitchen area, she set down the pine needles she had collected in a neat pile on their makeshift counter. Then, slowly, Hanako entered the bedroom where Nezuko and Takeo were wrestling with Rokuta, attempting to get him to put his night clothes on. Meanwhile, Shigeru was being of no help by giggling and rolling around on the floor.

"Older brother is home!" she called out to them, causing Rokuta to stop and look in her direction just long enough for Nezuko to get him into his night clothes. Pulling herself off the floor, Nezuko politely asked "Why has Tanjiro returned so late? I would have assumed he would have stayed with old-man Saburo, seeing as he doesn't like it when anyone stays out too long into the night."

"I still don't get why Tanjiro likes that old-man," added Takeo. "Ouch!" , he squeaked after being hit on the head by Nezuko.

"Don't be rude!" she said sternly, as they both entered the kitchen to receive dinner from their mother. Rokuta was already sitting on the floor, having somehow magically apparated into their living room unnoticed, scooping large heaps of rice into his mouth. He was staring intently at the door waiting for Tanjiro to open it, prepared to spring into his arms the moment he heard the creek of the door hinge.That was the moment when they smelt it.

The Kamado siblings all had an adept sense of smell that seemed to be a sort of genetic defect, but most would call it a sort of amazing superpower. Tanjiro's sense of smell was the best out of all of theirs. It might have just been because he was the oldest and therefore had the most developed sense of smell due to the amount of time he's currently had to continue living with it, but nobody had ever really bothered to test this theory out. Currently, Tanjiro could even smell emotions coming from a person if he wanted to, making him a well sought out person by the village folk whenever he came to drop off coal, but just because his siblings' smell ranges didn't extend to that level (yet?) didn't mean that their senses of smell were anything less than powerful. What they were smelling now was something so utterly revolting that Rokuta nearly threw up. It was a scent of pure darkness and it felt like it was slowly consuming their bodies, crawling into their eyes and their noses, seeping between their teeth and taking them over.

Kie, who didn't have the same smelling ability as her children didn't feel that way at all, but an overwhelmingly potent sense of dread started to slowly creep up on her as she was serving some rice for Shigeru. Turning around, she saw her children coughing and choking on what seemed to be normal air in unison.

Something isn't right.

Hanako's heart started beating rapidly and her breathing became ragged, turning into a strange form of choking and panting. Fear seemed to spiderweb around her entire body, making her shiver in a perfectly (questionable) heated room. Her vision started to fade to black, when she heard a sort of whimper being made by Rokuta. That seemed to jar Nezuko, Takeo and their mother back to their senses, with each person grabbing a younger child and scattering around the house finding a place to hide from the unknown source of fear.

Nezuko grabbed Rokuta and attempted to hide under a mattress. Kie latched an arm around Shigeru and pushed herself into a cupboard, shielding him with her arms as a sign of protection. Just as Hanako's vision blackened, she heard a knock on the door and felt an arm around her waist. Takeo's arm hoisted her up and pushed the both of them behind the large pot that they commonly use to cook rice. Screaming filled her ears, but she couldn't identify who the screams belonged to and if she was being totally honest she didn't want to either. She just couldn't bear the thought of losing a sibling, so she silently prayed that the screams belonged to their offender. Takeo's quiet intakes of breath scared her, seeing as her brother was a rather loud child and his messed up heartbeat pounded against her arm as he leaned over her in protection.

Hanako's breathing was slowly becoming more and more unstable, her heart rate speeding up rapidly, thoughts racing through her head a mile a minute, her vision was darkening and the screams that she was hearing got even louder. There was nothing she could do to help, everyone was dying around her, she was going to die, Takeo was going to die, Nezuko was going to die, everyone was going to die! That's when everything went black.