There was no sky.
Only grey.
It pressed down from above, thick and unmoving, not cloud, not mist, not smoke.
Just something like a memory of sky, something forgotten by the sun.
Wind stirred dry dust across the barren slope. Sparse, brown grass clung to patches of cracked dirt, and a dead tree groaned against the breeze, its branches bent like broken fingers. In the shadow of that tree lay a figure, unmoving, carrying bandages over his half body, half-covered in ash and soil, like the earth had tried to bury him and failed. His upper face is hidden by a red mask, leaving only his eyes and half of his face visible.
The man's fingers twitched first.
Then his chest rose.
The wind passed through again, dry and sharp, carrying the scent of rot and smoke distant fires, long since smothered, but never fully gone.
He opened his eyes slowly, blinking against the dead light.
The first thing he saw was the sky.
The second was his swords.
Two of them lay in the dirt beside him, one familiar in weight and shape, the other wrong in every way. He didn't know why, not exactly, but something in him recoiled from the red-bladed one. The air around it shimmered faintly, like heat rising from stone. Its edge didn't reflect light, it consumed it.
He pushed himself up with effort, legs stiff from stillness. His bandages seemed to be undone. He had been in a fight. Recently.
No. Not recently.
Always.
His hands gripped the hilts of the blades, pulling them close, like a man waking from war and expecting the next strike to come at any moment.
He looked around.
Nothing but dry hills, broken fences, stone ruins and the outline of a village in the valley below, if it could be called that. More like a scattering of shacks built from scraps and silence. Smoke trailed from one crooked chimney. No voices.
And yet he could feel it.
Eyes. Watching. Not with curiosity, but with caution.
Not the kind of caution born from politeness, the kind born from knowing what monsters look like, and wondering if he was one.
He tested his limbs. Still functional. The ache in his chest was dull, but distant, like something had once pierced him and then passed on. He touched beneath his collarbone, fingertips brushing a rough scar. No blood. But something old.
His name?
It took a moment. He searched inward, not with thought, but with instinct.
Yone.
It felt real. Familiar. Like a scabbard to a blade.
But beyond that… nothing. No place. No family. No clan. Just the word.
And a whisper, cold and absolute, like a blade across his spine:
Slay the Azakana.
The words didn't come from him. They didn't sound like a voice he knew. But they belonged to him. They echoed behind his breath, behind every movement of his hands and his swords.
He didn't know what an Azakana was. Not really. But he knew they needed to die.
The village wasn't far. A ten-minute walk, maybe less, though his steps were slow at first. As he descended the slope, he passed the bones of what may have once been farms. Stone walls half-fallen, carts overgrown with weeds, scarecrows weathered into faceless totems. Life had tried to live here. It had failed.
When he reached the outskirts, he noticed the people, not openly, but through gaps in wood and cloth. A child with sunken eyes peering through a broken door. A woman clutching a water jar like a shield. No one spoke.
He walked quietly, not because he was hiding, but because there was nothing to say.
He stopped at the center of what passed for the square, a flat patch of dirt with a well that hadn't seen water in years. The wind brushed his bandages. He felt the weight of silence.
And then, behind him, a sound.
Not a footstep. Not a voice.
A breath.
Except it wasn't human. It sounded like air being pulled through broken glass. Wet. Rattling. A hiss wrapped in hunger.
He turned.
It stood just beyond him, a twisted, skeletal figure taller than any man. Its limbs were stretched and sharp, arms dragging across the ground, fingers curled like claws. A white mask covered its face, inhuman, with black holes where eyes should be. And in the center of its chest, a gaping hole.
Yone did not know what it was.
But his fingers moved on instinct.
Steel hissed free from its scabbard.
The red blade followed.
The creature screamed.
It lunged.
Dust exploded from the ground as its claws slammed into the spot where Yone had been standing, too slow. He was already behind it, blades flashing. The steel katana cut first, a clean arc, honed and controlled. The red blade followed, heavier, like a scream made metal.
The Hollow howled.
He didn't know why that word came to mind, Hollow, but it fit. It felt like emptiness.
The creature turned faster than he expected, lashing out with a hooked limb. He ducked, pivoted, slashed low, a leg fell away in a spray of black mist.
He moved like a man who had fought a thousand battles he couldn't remember.
The Hollow charged again.
Yone let it.
He closed his eyes.
When it struck, it passed through him — no, not through. Around. Like wind.
And suddenly, he was behind it again, body lagging in one place, spirit in another. The red blade cut the mask in half with a single strike.
The Hollow shrieked, then vanished, its form dissolving into the wind like ash on water.
Silence returned.
Yone stood still, breathing slow, blades in hand.
His bandages flapped once, then settled.
He looked at his feets.
The ground where his body had once stood was cracked, slightly scorched. The villagers were gone now, doors shut, windows covered. Not in fear. Not entirely.
In respect. Or perhaps reverence.
'They've seen this before, he thought. Maybe not me. But things like me.'
He sheathed his blades slowly.
The red one hummed faintly, not with sound, but with presence. As if it had enjoyed the kill.
He turned from the village.
Whatever that creature was, it hadn't been an Azakana. Not quite. But it was close. Close enough to stir something in him. To make his heart beat faster.
There would be more.
He knew that now.
And if he kept hunting them… maybe he would find one that remembered what he had forgotten.
-----
He stood for a while.
Long after the creature vanished.
The mask had crumbled into the wind, its hollow cry fading like a bad dream, but Yone didn't move. Not right away.
His breathing had slowed, but something inside him hadn't settled. A faint ringing remained in the back of his skull, like the blade had struck more than flesh. Like the thing he'd just killed had screamed inside his bones.
He looked down at his hand.
Fingers clenched. Still trembling.
Not from fear. Something else.
Recognition.
"That wasn't the first," he muttered to no one.
The words felt strange in his mouth. Like they weren't entirely his. Like he was remembering something his body already knew.
He looked down at the twin blades.
One was quiet, still warm from motion, the edge gleamed faintly under the dull sky.
The other pulsed.
The red one.
Its color hadn't dulled. The blade shimmered faintly, even as it rested in the dust. It wasn't blood. He was sure of that now. That thing, had bled something else entirely. This red was... something older. Something alive.
And just for a second, Yone thought he heard it hum. Not a sound, exactly. More like a vibration that echoed beneath it.
"...You liked that."
He stared at the blade for a moment longer. Then sheathed it with care. Not out of reverence, out of caution. That sword wasn't to be trusted, not even by him.
He left the village in silence.
No one came out to see him off. No one offered a word. But from the corner of his vision, he caught shapes moving behind paper screens and split wood. A child's eye in a shadow. A woman whispering prayers under her breath. The village didn't thank him.
And he didn't expect them to.
He wasn't sure he was the kind of man people thanked.
The road out was crooked and dry. The path bent around cracked stones and the remains of an old cart half-sunk into the mud, long since stripped for parts. Beyond it, the hills rose again, not steep, but lonely.
Yone didn't mind.
He needed quiet.
He didn't know why.
But something in him whispered that the noise came later.
The wind picked up in the afternoon.
Carried the scent of rust and dust and something faintly sweet, fruit, maybe, overripe and half-rotted. Yone followed the road until it wasn't a road anymore. Just stone giving way to dirt, then dirt to dry grass.
When he found the riverbed, it was dry.
Just cracked earth and brittle reeds.
Still, he sat beside it. Let his back rest against a smooth, sun-bleached rock. He laid the swords beside him, one on each side and exhaled for what felt like the first time.
His mask shifted slightly as he leaned back, the red lacquer scraping softly against the stone.
The wind pressed against him.
It wasn't cold.
But it whispered.
Not in words. Not exactly. But in impressions. Echoes.
"Azakana."
That word again. Always that word.
He closed his eyes. Not to sleep, to chase something deeper. Something under the surface. A face, maybe. A name. A voice calling to him from before this place.
Nothing came.
Only the wind.
And the sense that something inside him was missing.
He did dream.
He hadn't meant to, he hadn't meant to sleep at all, but the quiet had dragged him under.
And in the dream, there was a mountain.
A place of stone and ash.
He stood at its base, barefoot, his swords gone, hands red to the wrist. There were voices overhead, screaming. A language he recognized but didn't understand. His feet moved without his consent, climbing, climbing toward the summit where the sky broke open and something watched him.
It didn't speak.
But it knew him.
And he hated it for that.
He woke with a start, one hand already reaching for the red blade.
Nothing there. Just empty hills. Distant wind. A crow's caw splitting the silence.
Yone sat still, letting the thump of his heart settle.
"You dream like someone who died a long time ago," he murmured to himself.
The words felt too real.
Too sharp.
He stood, dusted himself off, and walked toward the horizon again.
That night, he found another village. Smaller than the last. Five houses, maybe six. Most of them half-collapsed, the rest leaning like they wanted to fall.
No lights. No sound.
But something was wrong here, too.
It was in the air, too thick. The kind of stillness that lives right after blood has been spilled.
He didn't bother knocking.
He stepped over the broken fence, eyes scanning every corner, every crack in the walls, every window left ajar. His feet made no sound. His mask glinted faintly in the moonlight.
The first house was empty.
The second was not.
Bodies. Not fresh. Not rotting either. Something in between.
They hadn't bled much.
They hadn't had time.
And just outside, claw marks.
Long, deep, unnatural.
Yone knelt, dragging his finger lightly through one. The wood was scorched at the edges.
"Fire…?"
No. Not fire. Not heat.
He didn't know the word, not consciously. But the sensation clung to the mark like static, heavy, faintly humming, the aftertaste of something violent that had barely passed.
He stood slowly, brushing his fingers against his bandaged forearm, then the edge of his mask.
The house behind him groaned. Wood settling, or something else.
He didn't look back. He didn't need to.
Whatever had killed these people wasn't here anymore.
But it had only just left.
Yone walked out into the dead street. The wind had stopped. Even the crows were silent now.
There was no fear in him, only something quieter.
A kind of focus. Like his body had already chosen a direction before his mind could catch up.
He paused near a small shrine tucked beneath the roots of a broken tree, its offerings long since taken or scattered. A rope of paper charms hung limp over a bowl of ashes. He reached out, without thinking, and touched one.
It disintegrated at his fingertips.
The air shifted behind him.
His hand dropped to his blade.
Nothing moved.
But something was watching.
Not the vague caution of villagers behind doors.
This was sharper. Direct. Not hiding. Studying.
He didn't turn around.
Instead, he spoke aloud, voice steady and quiet.
"You followed me."
A pause. Still silence.
Then a voice.
Light. Calm. Almost amused.
"You noticed."
It wasn't close. But it wasn't far either. Somewhere behind the broken archways. Perched, maybe. Listening. Waiting.
Yone didn't answer. He listened to the wind, to the pressure in the air. A subtle difference. Like stepping into deep water, pressure building against the skin.
The voice came again.
"Curious. You're not one of them."
A soft rustle of cloth. A flicker of movement, too fast to fully catch.
"I saw what you did. In the last village."
The voice had shifted. Closer now.
"I thought perhaps... you were an evolved Hollow."
Yone's hand tensed slightly on his hilt.
"But you're something else entirely," the voice mused, becoming more evident that it was a woman. "My mission here was to take care of the gangs but I have a better thing to do. Fight me."
A breath passed through the empty street.
Yone didn't turned arround and didn't speak.
The silence stretched long enough that it might've ended there.
Until the voice added, "You don't even know why you hunt theses things, do you?"
That broke something in him.
He turned in one clean motion, blade half-drawn,
a woman stood there looking at him with a smile