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

Chapter 51 | Snow

It's starting to snow.

Not enough to blanket the ground — just a few quiet flakes drifting through the cold air, melting the moment they touch your katana. The first snow of the season. The kind that arrives before winter is ready to commit, hesitant, fragile. A reminder that time is moving whether you want it to or not.

A month left. One month before Douma's deadline.

Akaza stands across from you in the training yard around the dojo, bare-chested, steam rising faintly off his skin with every breath. The falling snow catches in the air around him, evaporating before it can settle — as though even the weather isn't brave enough to touch him. His expression is calm, but you feel the heaviness behind it, a weight that's been there since yesterday.
The night you crossed a line you can't uncross.

"Focus," he says quietly, voice low. "Your stance is off again."

"You're one to talk," you mutter, adjusting your grip.

A ghost of a smile flickers across his mouth — barely — and then he moves.

Training begins.

His punches crack the air, forcing you to react on instinct, katana flashing as you parry, pivot, dodge. The ground is slick with half-frozen mud. The snowfall deepens just a little, whispering around you like a countdown only the two of you can hear. The cold bites harder with each pass, the flakes clinging to your eyelashes before melting with the heat of your breaths. 

Then something changes.
The air tightens — sharp, wrong.

Akaza stops mid-step, gaze cutting toward the trees.

You feel it before you see them — that suffocating pulse of demonic energy, thick and rotting, so at odds with the purity of the falling snow that it makes your skin crawl. Three shapes emerge from the dark. Their crimson eyes gleam brighter against the winter gloom, their breaths fogging in slow, hungry rhythm. Their mouths stretch with Muzan's hunger.

"The master sends his regards, traitor", one sneers.

"He wants your heads before sunrise", another hisses.

"You've both lived long enough", the third snarls.

Three of them. All powerful. All sent to kill you.

Akaza's eyes darken, his stance shifting. Snowflakes dissolve as soon as they land on his skin. "So Muzan finally noticed."

"He's serious this time", you whisper.

Akaza's jaw tightens. "Then so am I."

They come at once.

You meet the first with a burning slash, flames spiraling through the snow, melting it instantly into a hissing ring around you. The demon's claws catch your shoulder before you can finish the form — pain bright and cold. Akaza intercepts, kicking the creature with enough force to snap a tree in half — but the remaining two close in immediately, their movements slicing through the snowfall like shadows with teeth.

Their coordination is perfect. You're outnumbered, cornered, slipping out of sync. The rhythm you've built with Akaza disintegrates. Your breathing breaks; your step skids in the slush; Akaza's strikes whistle too close.

"You're throwing off my balance!", you snap.

"Then match mine!", he shouts back.

You barely have time to react before his hand catches your wrist mid-swing, twisting your motion into his own. The force pulls you forward, your bodies moving in perfect, terrifying unison. His fist drives into the air just as your blade arcs upward, and the two impacts — his strength, your fire — collide.

The world explodes.

A spiral of heat and force tears through the ghost town, golden fire blooming outward like a living lotus made of flame and shockwave. Snow vaporizes mid-air. The first demon is obliterated before it can even scream.

You stagger back, lungs burning. Akaza looks just as stunned — eyes wide, hands trembling faintly, snow melting in erratic bursts across his knuckles.

"What—" Your voice shakes. "What was that?"

"Something strong", he breathes with a devilish smile.

The other two demons strike again. You and Akaza don't think — you move. His fists carve the air, each shockwave pushing your flames forward. Your katana cuts through the pressure, shaping it. Guiding it. The energy coils together, merging into glowing petals of fire, light, and force.

The demons disintegrate in the storm you create. Ash mixes with falling snow, the night filled with the scent of winter and burnt earth. 

Silence.

You sheath your katana slowly, every muscle shaking. The ground between you is scorched in a perfect circle — a blackened bloom, petals spiraling outward.

"A lotus," you whisper.

Akaza's gaze lingers on the blackened mark. "A sign," he says. "Of power... or danger."

You shake your head. "It didn't come from either of us alone."

"No," he admits. "It came from the clash between us. The alignment."

His voice drops. "That's what makes it dangerous."

The snow drifts harder now, coating the edges of the lotus in a thin whitening frost. A contrast so stark it feels painful — fire and winter, creation and ruin. None of it should coexist. And yet it does. Just like the two of you.

You look at him — really look — and guilt twists in your chest. 

But when he looks back, the falling snow catches in his eyelashes, something inside you fractures again, softer this time.

"Why does it feel like this shouldn't exist?" you whisper.

"Because it defies everything," he says. "And yet... it exists anyway."

The snow falls silently around you — the first snow, the one that arrives to mark endings or beginnings, depending on who you are. It settles over the ruined ground, over your wounds, over the charred lotus still glowing faintly beneath the white.

And for the first time, you feel its meaning shift.

Not a warning.

A promise.

Akaza's fingers twitch once at his side — a brief, involuntary pulse of movement that betrays the lingering aftershock of your shared technique. He tries to still it, but you catch the motion anyway. His eyes narrow, not in annoyance, but in the sharp awareness of someone who hates being readable. His gaze shifts away, jaw clenching — the closest thing he'll ever show to embarrassment.

"You're trembling," he says, tone flat, almost dismissive.

"So are you."

He scoffs. "Hardly. You just surprised me."

"Uh-huh," you deadpan.

His eyes flick back to you. "Only because that technique shouldn't have been possible."

You exhale a shaky breath. "Yet we pulled it off."

He studies you for a long second — too long, too focused — then looks down at the scorched lotus. Snow lands on the blackened edges and hisses away immediately.

Akaza speaks quietly, but the weight behind it is unmistakable. "Power like that doesn't appear without a reason."

His fingers flex again.
He lets them.