Smoke.
Not from fire. Not from ash.
But from the sky itself—thick plumes of ember-red clouds rolling overhead, blotting out the sun as if heaven itself had turned against the earth.
Hizusuki stood at the edge of a burned-out field. The once-vibrant rice terraces were reduced to charcoal, their water veins dry and cracked. A village lay ahead, smothered by silence and ruin. Roofs caved in. Statues toppled. The wind carried the scent of soot and something far worse—blood that had long since dried but never faded.
"This… wasn't a battle," Hizusuki murmured, kneeling beside a scorched offering bowl. "This was a purge."
The girl behind him tightened her grip on her shawl. "Is this where the next fragment is?"
"No," he said, standing slowly. "But this place… it remembers the man who took everything from me."
Her eyes widened. "Simo Roy?"
Hizusuki didn't respond. Instead, he moved forward, hand instinctively resting on the newly awakened katana at his hip. The blade pulsed quietly, as if it, too, sensed what was coming.
---
The center of the village held a pyre—a towering one, made not of wood, but bone and stone. Carved into its sides were spiraling inscriptions. Runes of exile. Of silence.
And kneeling before it, as if in prayer, was a figure draped in coal-black robes. A single lantern flickered beside him.
"I was wondering when you'd arrive," the man said without turning. "You carry the fragments now. I can smell them."
Hizusuki's hand moved to his blade. "Who are you?"
The man stood slowly. He turned, and his hood fell.
His face was a mosaic of scars—twisted, unnatural. But it was his eyes that unsettled Hizusuki. One was black as pitch. The other—an artificial eye, glowing faintly with orange light—seemed to shift like liquid metal.
"I am Kagen Tetsura," the man said. "Shadow-Father of the Ember Veil."
Hizusuki's expression tightened. He had heard whispers of that name in the scrolls Buddha Mong once guarded—Tetsura, a disciple once sworn to protect balance, who turned against the spirit realms for forbidden knowledge.
"You were exiled by the Spirit Monks," Hizusuki said coldly.
"I was enlightened by the truth they feared," Tetsura replied, voice calm. "And now you walk the same path. The Legacy you seek—it is not salvation. It is temptation."
"I didn't come for riddles," Hizusuki growled.
"No," Tetsura said, reaching into his cloak. "You came for this."
He produced a fragment.
Black.
Unlike the crimson shard Hizusuki carried, this one pulsed with dark energy—like ink in water, like blood in a cup never meant to be filled.
Hizusuki's breath caught. "Where did you get that?"
Tetsura smiled. "From your father. On the day he begged for his life."
That was all Hizusuki needed.
He drew his sword.
Tetsura's body shifted instantly—his cloak unraveling into hundreds of shadowy tendrils, each forming claws, blades, and faces of screaming spirits. The forge-born katana met them with light and fury, carving through the spectral limbs with every strike.
But Tetsura was not fighting to kill.
He was testing.
As blades clashed, the shadow-monk whispered words in an ancient tongue. Runes spiraled through the air, forming a sigil of fire beneath Hizusuki's feet.
Too late, Hizusuki leapt back—but not fast enough.
The ground erupted.
A shockwave sent him flying into a shattered wall. Dust clouded his vision. He staggered to rise.
Tetsura stood above him now, holding the dark fragment between two fingers.
"You are not ready," he said. "When you are… come find me at the Gate of Thorns. If you survive."
Then he vanished—swallowed by flame and shadow, leaving only scorched earth behind.
---
That night, Hizusuki sat in silence beneath a dead tree. The girl watched him from a distance, unsure whether to speak.
He gripped his blade. The red shard pulsed with urgency. The spirit within the sword murmured faint warnings.
> "There are many pieces… but not all belong."
Hizusuki's eyes burned with quiet rage.
> Tetsura has a fragment. And he touched my father's final hour.
He would follow him.
Through flame.
Through the Gate of Thorns.
To the truth.