The night after both Kazuki and Kuroyuki died, the warriors held a discussion evaluating their previous battle and planning for their future endeavors. While the others grieved for their lost comrade, Hoshikawa held a grudge against Kyuuto and his team after Kuroyuki told him about the truth.

He raised his voice and stood up, "The darkness isn't what we thought," he pointed out, while still locking his sight on Kyuuto and others, "Kuroyuki told me the truth of the curse. All they ever wanted to do was to take Kyuuto, and destroy what's inside him,"

"Why are you so sure you weren't lied to?" Aosuke asked for his confirmation. The darkness is still their enemy, so he didn't want to risk any information coming from them, "what's your proof?"

Hoshikawa looked down for a moment, as he remembered what Kuroyuki told him at the end of his life, then continued with, "Those who wield darkness as their element have enhanced memory, and are able to project it to others. Kuroyuki gathered information from Yamisuke himself that---" he pointed to Kyuuto, "inside him, two souls remain dormant. One is his ancestor, Kurouzu... while the other---"

"Don't you dare---" Hikiri stepped forward and unsheathed part of his blade. The warriors were staring at him and his team, the situation was getting tense.

After the short pause, Hoshikawa continued, "---The curse wasn't placed by Yamisuke. But by him," as the warriors murmured, he kept on speaking, "there's a much stronger force inside Kyuuto. The devil himself, a cosmic entity even the ancestors did not understand. Volkus,"

"---ARGHH!!" hearing that name, Kyuuto's head began to throb strongly. This headache happened before, everytime he heard the name Volkus uttered by others. The warriors grew even more suspicious of him and his team, while Hikiri drew his sword even farther from its scabbard.

"What is that reaction?!" Aosuke also prepared his blade to be drawn.

"It's true then, what my brother told me. Volkus is said to be the equivalent of a god. He controls the world and all the darkness within it. If we want to end this curse, we have to kill Kyuuto now. Prevent him from being released!--- and stop wasting time," Hoshikawa proposed, his eyes brimming with hatred. Desperate of an end to his life full of lies.

As the tension rose in that small discussion room, and as the moon rose even higher in the cloudless sky, even a single drop of sweat could determine the outcome of this possible deadly meeting.

"I'm sorry for this," Hikiri unsheathed his sword fully, then conjured his wind element to blow the warriors in front of him away, creating chaos in the meeting room, he created a time window for his teammates to escape.

"Seize them!!" Hoshikawa struggled to stand, with the help of his sword.

Soon every warrior in the vicinity hunted Kyuuto and his team with their swords and gloves. Hikiri and Ishigaki tried their best to defend the team from behind, while Kanata and Rin did the same from the sides. One of the warriors tried to strike Kyuuto from behind his back, but somehow he was able to sense him and clashed their blades instead.

Kyuuto was able to overpower said warrior and nearly killed him with a blade towards his face, but he quickly snapped back to reality, "I'm sorry..." they then continued to run beyond the light barrier.

----

The night was getting cold, and with no spare beacons to turn back time and space, Kyuuto's team, which was nearly all of the main Aotori from the past, struggled to find a comfortable hideout. At first they wanted to stay in the Ookami residence, but there were a lot of the possessed there, marking it unsafe. They then settled in an abandoned mall building.

They had to make fire to warm themselves as the electricity of the mall didn't work at all. "I can't believe Kazuki's gone," Rin uttered as she sat down on one of the broken platforms for food products. They stayed in the department store area of the building, particularly in the food section. Because they didn't bring any beacons, they couldn't reverse time and space to refresh the expired foods around them.

"We didn't even know his motives beforehand," Ishigaki lamented, "everybody has their own backgrounds," hinting at his possible dislike of the ancestors. He then lit the bonfire by conjuring a spark of fire from his palm.

A moment of silence then came, only broken by a noise from the dark part of the department store. The team then prepared for a possible intruder. Three daggers then sighted in a flash, there was no time to dodge, but as Kyuuto tried to unsheathe his sword and deflect the projectiles, Hikiri came from the side to do the same but even faster.

The daggers were deflected to the floor, as a dark figure approached from the shadows. "Your reflexes are still one of the best. The last time I saw you was centuries ago," it was Karito, smirking as he pulled back all three daggers with his magnetic ability.