Heart Of Fire; Veins Of Ice | Kimetsu No Yaiba Fanfic (Kyojurou's POV)

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Pulling onto the reins of the horse tightly, Yousuke prayed that he would be able to get up to the mountain in time. The temperature was dropping steadily, as the night embraced the cold and became one, where darkness erased the light and its warmth, leaving only the cold vacuum to consume what remained.

He wondered what temperatures demons could live under, since their bodies had high metabolism and used up energy at a tremendous rate, they were unlikely to survive well in the cold, but there were always exceptions.

For now, he just needed to get to Kyojuro-kun in time.

With the demon slayer's sword in hand, he can feel its warmth and the weight it carried with it.

"Help!"

A girl.

The shrine maiden. Fuyuko.

The horse knows to instinctively track down the voice, even amongst the howling winds and falling snow, and he knows, without a doubt, that Kyojuro would have wanted him to save her first.

Covering ground quickly, he caught sight of the girl, who was kneeling on the ground, dressed in those robes, which were at least sufficiently thick enough to prevent her from freezing to death for the moment. She was partially drenched in blood as well, near her chest and arms, but she appeared to be fine and well, as he brought the horse over and her eyes lit up with relief, gratefulness, and most importantly, hope.

What was most curious was how the cold did not seem to bother her in the slightest. She was panting heavily, likely from running a lot, but she was not shivering at all. It was as if the cold was nothing more than a mere wind over her shoulder, as she fumbled to stand up without tripping on the long cloth of her costume.

He gets off of the horse, which trots over close to the girl, and he knelt down, checking her for any injuries as she held out her hand into the cold air.

"It's coming." She spoke, grey and white eyes filled with an unspoken sorrow.

"The avalanche?" She nodded. He did not question how she knew it was coming. He had seen her several times, able to seemingly control the weather. But now, he highly doubted that. It was prediction which she excelled in. Perhaps it was like an uncanny, inhuman sense or affinity to nature. It was no different than how animals could predict when natural disasters could happen and take place and flee before they were devoured by it.

"Rengoku-san stayed to fight Nobu-san. He told me to get away first, but I'm worried for him," She spoke, as she got up and looked at the peak of the mountain, where the temple was. She had managed to largely make it through the forest unscathed despite the blood coating her clothes, Yousuke wondered why none of the demons had gone after her.

But Kyojuro.

"You don't need to worry about him. He's a demon slayer, and one of the best as well. If anyone could kill that demon, it's him."

Her ringed irises of grey and white looked into his own.

He had absolute faith in Kyojuro.

But even a demon slayer was powerless without a potent weapon.

That was the one concept Tatsuo had always drilled into all of their heads. A good weapon meant that your chances of survival would increase exponentially. If that demon was strong enough to overcome the wisteria poison laced on the edge of those normal steel blades, regardless of how many blades he had, he would never be able to slay the demon.

Could he get this nichirin blade to him in time?

The horse beneath him huffed and pawed at the ground, as if asking him why he was still hesitating.

The snow pressed down on the both of them, pushing him to hurry up and make a choice, before time ran out. The environment itself was lashing out at them, as the winds battered at the skeletal limbs of the dead trees around them, where the cold caused ice to form on their branches in brutal spears angled down over them, which threatened to break off and fall.

He made his decision.

"I need to get this blade to him, and I need to bring you back as well. Can you lead me the way you came?"

He would both protect her and get the blade to him.

She nodded, determination overriding the fear and hesitation in her gaze.

The two of them got onto the horse, as it began to sprint across the snow even without being told to, and he had Fuyuko sit in the front and hold onto the reins as he brought his own set of steel fans in case he would have to use it.

The trees passed by in a blur, leading to a small sloped clearing to which he saw those six armed, four eyed demons all slowly, seemingly succumbing to the cold. Ice formed on them, as it seemed to choke them and rob them of their breath. Several of them tried to lunge, but their limbs all failed them and instead, they collapsed to the ground. Snow and icy mist seemed to coalesce around them, purging them from its territory as if something was cleansing the mountain.

Just to be safe, he steered them far away from the entire slowly dying horde of demons, he counted thirteen as they passed by, all slowly suffocating or freezing to death in the cold. They had no time to deal with them or finish them off, as evident by the sharply dropping temperature at the top of the mountain.

But for the barest of moments, as he pulled up his goggles and handed Fuyuko a spare while keeping a hand on the reins, he caught a glimpse of a figure in the snow.

With long white hair, she levelled a cold gaze at them.

"She's defending her territory," Fuyuko murmured as the horse continued on its hastened sprint, and Yousuke heard her words.

She could see her too.

But there was no time to think of this, not while snow piled up unevenly amongst the rocks, and it grew hollow beneath their feet. Behind them, the demons all turned into ice, and shattered like glass statues into nothingness.

The temple was coming in sight, as the horse leapt over snow which collapsed beneath their feet, and-

The ground shook beneath their feet. The two of them looked to where the temple was, as a wave of snow overtook it and drowned it within its empty white blankness.