𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕟𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 // Akaza x reader (+18)

Chapter 39 | Poisoned tongues

Akaza's POV

The fortress breathes like a dying thing. The deeper Akaza walks, the more the air thickens. No light. No warmth. Just stone and silence. Until it isn't silence anymore, but something worse. Expectation.

He kneels.

The floor is cold, black-veined, pulsing faintly like it remembers blood. He doesn't speak. Doesn't shift. He doesn't move until he arrives.

And then-

A scent like moonlight on corpses.
A rustle, like silk unraveling in a grave.

Muzan steps into the chamber.

He is breathtaking in the way a knife gleams before it cuts. Pale skin smooth as porcelain, hair dark and falling in sleek, inhuman waves to his shoulders. His eyes shift between endless hues-red, violet, something darker. Unreadable.

His presence wraps around Akaza's bones.

He isn't walking. He arrives as though the world bent to place him exactly where he intended. When he speaks, his voice is velvet sheathed in steel.

"Akaza."

The name drips with both fondness and warning.

"You've been difficult to find."

Akaza lowers his head again. "You hadn't summoned me, Muzan-sama."

There's a flicker of silence, long enough to be dangerous.

Then: "And so you wandered."

Akaza doesn't correct him. Doesn't justify.

"I encountered humans. I tested them. None were worthy."

Muzan's expression doesn't change, but the weight in the room lessens-slightly. Satisfaction, or something that wears its shape.

"Good," he says. "There are too many weaklings parading as slayers. Too much wasted flesh."

Then-

A new breeze. Sweet, too sweet. Like overripe fruit just beginning to rot.

He enters in a swirl of pale fans and rainbow silks, as though this hell was a theatre and he the only actor who remembered his lines. His eyes are wide, bright, but wrong. Too round. Too light. Something behind them doesn't blink.

"Forgive me, Muzan-sama," Douma purrs, gliding forward. "I heard you summoned us, and I simply couldn't wait."

He kneels next to Akaza, but not quite behind him. Always off by just enough to provoke.

Muzan's gaze flicks over him, unimpressed.

"Douma," he says coolly.

"Akaza-dono and I were just discussing humans," Douma says with a too-innocent smile. "In fact, I passed something curious recently. A scent, you might say. Sweet. Mortal. But strangely... familiar."

Akaza's jaw tightens.

Douma doesn't look at him. But he can feel the grin curl sharper.

"I could've sworn I smelled you, Akaza-dono, on a Slayer. A living one."

Akaza says nothing.
He doesn't have to. The pause is answer enough.

Muzan tilts his head, barely.

"You encountered a Slayer who still lives?" Muzan's voice tightens, quieter. Dangerous. Not loud-but sharper than before.

"I did not fight her," Akaza answers carefully. "She was not my target. Just another insect in a dying place."

"But she lived."