The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters Read Online Free PDF

stagger free. A cool breeze rushed upward from his feet. A good wind.
    The sound of water. A half moon in the sky. The creature towered before him. It attacked. Fuminari leaped up into the blackness of the night.

Two
    Bewitching Biku
    1
    Mt. Koya. Two in the morning.
    Jichiei lay in the monks’ quarters near the Hall of Lanterns. As he dreamt, he heard a scream in the distance. It was horrific. He had not heard it inasmuch as it seemed to have originated directly inside his skull, as though the raw fear it contained had been transmitted into his mind instead of through physical vibrations. The backwash stroked at his consciousness, chillingly real.
    Jichiei woke. He opened his eyes and saw only darkness. He was sweating, a cloying, cold sweat. His skin had broken out in bumps. The ghost of the scream hung in the air as an unholy stench, like the wake of some unseen demon. Jichiei took deep, measured breaths lying with his eyes wide open. A thick darkness cloaked the space between his bed and the tall ceiling.
    He listened for any sounds, but the oppressive silence was only punctuated by the soft rapping of rain. Jichiei focused on the sound, and gradually the tension in his pores started to fade; he felt the cold sweat begin to warm. Darkness flowed into his open pupils, wrapping itself around his insides. Am I imagining things? If so, the scream had originated somewhere inside him. I’m exhausted, he thought.
    Jichiei had always been highly sensitive, but years of training at the temple had sharpened his senses to the point of a fine glass needle. He sat up. The shadow of the shoji hovered as a pale-white glow in the darkness before him. He could hear the regular breathing of Seicho still fast asleep across the room. I am jealous of this man , he thought. Seicho had a temple. He had a guaranteed position to return to after finishing his training. Jichiei had no such place.
    “To become a monk you need certain qualities,” Geshin’s words from five years ago, when Jichiei was new to the mountain. Geshin had shown extraordinary ability. Even then, despite being only around 30 years old, he had already attained a high-ranking position within the order . It was as though his body released a constant flow of energy, like an aura. He had been the only monk at Mt. Koya with whom Jichiei had forged a close bond. Maybe I just lack whatever quality it was that he spoke of, Jichiei mulled over the idea.
    And now, Geshin had left the mountain. Jichiei did not know his reasons for leaving. There had been rumors, of course, that he had been banished after breaking some taboo, or that he had lost his mind and there had been nothing for it but take him away. He did not know what the truth was. He sighed as though releasing the darkness that had accumulated inside him.
    That was when he heard the sound. It had not been his imagination. A heavy, booming sound like two boulders colliding. It came from above, from the direction of the Hall of Lanterns. Everything became silent.
    Jichiei slowly got to his feet and stepped outside. The fog was thick. Heavy drops of moisture hung stagnant in the air, almost large enough to be rain. The pattering had been droplets of condensed fog dripping from the temple eaves. He was unable to see anything through the mist. It filtered the gleam of the lanterns in the distance, turning the lights into shining halos of milky-white phosphorescence. His breath was visible; it was June, but this was the mountains 900 meters above sea level. Over the course of a year, the temperature at Mt. Koya averaged five degrees below that of the outside world.
    Jichiei set out, tracing along a dark path of dampened stone. A forest of ancient, thousand-year old cedars lined the sides of the cobbled path leading to the inner sanctuary. Between the trees were dense collections of stone monuments, huddled together. Each was a grave, there were close to 100 thousand in total. A number of the gravestones had been fashioned into