[Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba] Stay With Me [GiyuShino]

Chapter One: Never Letting You Go

Tmp, tmp, tmp. My feet slam into the wooden floor as I run. I must hurry. Being late is not an option. I hope the others are all right.

Tanjiro's feet smack the ground beside me, and we exchange glances. The fate of the entire world rests it's heavy weight on our shoulders. I attempt to shut off my thoughts, afraid that te crushing presence will toss me to the ground and force me into submission.

I am disappointed in myself. I thought I could look Death in the face without a shudder, yet here I am, the cold sweat of fear glistening on my brow. Regardless of what I want others to belive - what I want myself to believe - I am afraid. Ripples of fear run through the eternally still waters of my heart, and it thumps almost painfully in my chest. A feeling I've never felt before washes over me, pooling inside my mind, my heart, my very existence.

I am truly terrified.

But not completely for myself. My heart tugs in worry for Tanjiro, hurrying along by my side, Zenitsu and Inosuke - I can only guess as to their whereabouts - Nezuko, the target of the very evil we are risking everything to fight, and my heart nearly pulls itself apart when I think of her. If anything happens to her-

"Deceased! Deceased!" a crow squacks.

A fellow Hashira must have died. My eyes stretch wide in shock. One of us is already dead. The blood drains from my face and heart seems to have stopped working. I wait with bated breath for the crow to annouce the name.

"Kocho Shinobu is deceased!"

My heart shatters.

It's not true. It can't be true. She wouldn't die so quickly. She's inhumanly fast and agile; she could have dodged any attack that came at her. It must be a mistake. This crow must be a new edition to the Corps. The new master shouldn't have made this one report the news.

But the crow flaps away without correcting it's mistake as I gaze at it's back, disbelieving.

It's a mistake. It has to be a mistake. I'm hoping, praying with whats left of my conciousness that it's a mistake.

But as tears squeeze their way out of Tanjiro's sorrowful eyes, as the crow disappears down the hallway, I realize something that rips every last ounce of feeling, of strength from my body.

It's not a mistake.

I think I've forgotten how to cry, that all my tears have been sucked up by my body, being used as fuel to keep my legs from giving way. Numbly, my feet move. I'm still running, vaguely aware that I have to move.

The hallway morphs into a mess of colors, each one bleeding into the other, a reflection of my jumbled thoughts, as I lose the strength to see.

I must be going blind, because it looks like I'm running through a black void, like I'm running backwards through my own life, and hallways aren't supposed to look like voids.

As I pass a warped scene that reminds me of the time Tanjiro made me remember my will to live, my no longer existent reason to survive, I begin to think I've been caught in a Blood Demon Art.

No matter. It wouldn't make a deference if I lived or died anyway. In the state I'm in, I would only be a hindrance to the others.

I've been running for what seems like ten minutes now, and my remaining endurance is rapidly draining away. My vision turns spotty, then fades into black. I experience the strange sensation of falling. I've never seen a Blood Demon Art like this before.

Eventually, I hit something that feeling like solid ground, and my awareness fades away. In my last seconds of consciousness, I pray to every god out there that I won't wake up again. At least, not in this messed up reality.

A/N: Hello readers! I just wanted to thank you! I'm so glad you decided to give my story a chance! :)

PS: I didn't want to make the first chapter too sad, so I avoided going too much into detail, and as a result the chapter was cut a bit short.