Temple Demon
The Temple Demon is Tanjiro's first real encounter with a demon. It had been lurking near a small temple hut on the path to Narrow Mist Mountain, picking off travelers who stopped there for shelter. When villagers warned Tanjiro that people were disappearing in the area at night, they didn't realize how immediate the threat was.
By the time Tanjiro and Nezuko reached the hut, the demon had already killed three people. It lunged at Tanjiro, trying to strangle him, but Nezuko intervened with a kick that cleanly severed its head from its body. Even headless, the demon remained dangerous—it could still control its body and even sprouted a pair of hands from its detached head to keep fighting.
When the body attacked Nezuko ferociously, Tanjiro tackled it and hurled it off a cliff, though this didn't kill it—just caused it severe pain. He also pinned the severed head to a tree with his axe to keep it immobilized. But Tanjiro's compassion worked against him here. Too hesitant to finish the job himself, he essentially delayed long enough that the demon ended up dying from exposure to the sun's first rays at dawn instead.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
