Rain hammered the brothel roof, fat drops pounding against warped wood and swelling the mud in the street. Lanterns swung, their firelight trembling, distorted by so many armored bodies pressing in—a tide of swords, polearms, fevered eyes, all hungry for vengeance.
Kazuya stood silhouetted in the entryway, scarf hanging heavy across his mouth, his icy blue gaze unreadable behind orange-tinted lenses. Beyond the glass, the mob surged. He did not move until the first yakuza broke ranks and charged.
Steel flashed.
His katana shrieked through the air—not dance, not play, but a killing line. The blade met flesh at the base of a neck, carving through trachea and bone. Blood sprayed across the threshold, painting Kazuya's sandals and pooling in the hollow between floorboards. A second thug swung a blade wide; Kazuya shifted—the strike missed by a breath. He drove his sword point up, under ribs, all the way to the hilt, feeling the resistance, the heat, the spasm as the man collapsed. A third came right behind. Kazuya's arm snapped, cutting downward with brutal precision, splitting skull from brow.
Two more.
A lunge—Kazuya's heel pivoted, his body low and coiled. A hooked sword missed; Kazuya swept his own blade along the attacker's forearm, shearing tendons and drawing a high, animal squeal. No hesitation—he buried his weapon in the man's heart, kicking the corpse off his blade as the last of the first wave faltered, seeing the carnage.
The survivors hesitated, faces blanched, rain mixing with streaks of crimson and brain matter on the stones. The legend was true: The Blue-Eyed Specter killed without mercy, and never wasted a motion.
Kazuya stepped back, wrenched the door closed, driving the bolt home and sealing them out. He did not glance at Madame Kaji as she dragged terrified employees down the stairs.
"In the cellar," he ordered. "Lock the hatch. If I fall, burn everything you can."
"Why did you bring this?" Kaji spat, voice trembling. But she obeyed.
Kazuya doused the lamps, the brothel plunged into blackness—his world, where only blood mattered and every step was potential death. His fists tightened around his sword, pulse slowing, mind flashing back—not to fire or orphanage, but the emptiness of years watching siblings train in jutsu, every demonstration ending with his father's flat, disappointed eyes.
In the dark, the loneliness was sharper than any blade.
The yakuza hammered at the barricade. Splinters flew. The door buckled, hinges screeching.
Then, chaos.
They rushed in, ten at once—smell of sweat, iron, old sake borne in on their boots. Kazuya became the shadow.
A throat slit in the space between candles—blood bubbling over a trembling hand, the dead man crumpling beside a silk screen. Kazuya's foot slid over lacquer, shifting into the gap behind a tipped table; a sword flashed, catching him on the shoulder, tearing fabric, drawing blood. Kazuya hissed low—anger, not pain—snagged the wrist and twisted, snapping bone with a wet crack, then thrust his blade into the attacker's mouth and out the base of his skull.
The next swung wild—Kazuya pressed close, using the wall for leverage, hacked twice at meat and exposed bone until the man dropped. The hallway became a kill-box.
Every move was calculated, an echo of fights alone in his family's yard, every spar the reminder he could not use chakra, could only rely on steel and strength.
Bodies stacked up—five dead in minutes. The brothel floors slicked with blood and viscera. Kazuya's breath misted in the cold as more yakuza closed in, hesitating, dread coiling in their guts.
Each death was proof that isolation meant survival.
Then, the leader emerged—the claws glinting, his voice thick with contempt. Kazuya met him, steel ringing against metal, teeth bared in silent fury.
The clawed man slammed Kazuya's blade aside, trapping it between honed hooks. Massive hands locked around Kazuya's pale throat, forcing him against the wall with bone-grinding force.
"You die slow, boy," he snarled.
Kazuya struggled, blade pinned. His hip exploded in pain as a dagger drove deep—exactly where past wounds throbbed, reminders of old battles fought as a black sheep, always alone.
He saw the faces—siblings' backs turned, a mother brushing past him, Taeko's expression of pity mixed with disdain after a village spar. The shame cut deeper than any metal.
In a savage burst, Kazuya twisted—fingers finding the seam in the claw-leader's armor, wrenching hard. His katana came free; he hacked downward, severing the claws in a fountain of blood.
The yakuza screamed; Kazuya tore himself away, sprinting deeper into parlors and narrow corridors, clutching at the roaring pain in his hip, blood soaking his sash.
He staggered into a storeroom. A teenage yakuza cowered before him, a cheap blade shaking in both hands.
Kazuya paused. For the briefest moment, he saw himself at fifteen—excluded, shadowed, a rival's blade bruising his ribs.
He whispered, barely audible, "Go." The boy ran.
It cost him nothing, and everything.
Kazuya forced his body through a loose panel into a hidden crawlspace.
Breath slowed, heart pounding, memories pressing in—years of forced solitude, practicing kata at dusk while his family feasted together, the emptiness of "I'm proud of you" spoken to every sibling but him.
But there was no time for reflection. Six more yakuza broke into his hiding place.
He came up swinging. The fight was not pretty—all brutality, no mercy.
A blade rent his sleeve; he spun, sword thrumming, splitting a face open from brow to jaw. Another attacker tried to grapple him—Kazuya smashed his hilt into the man's temple, caving bone.
Blood spattered in arcs, soaking Kazuya's hands, splashing across his face.
The final body fell, throat torn, breath rattling out as Kazuya leaned on his blade, panting, shaking.
The clawed leader returned, eyes wild, stump leaking blood. He tackled Kazuya, hands closing around Kazuya's neck, pinning him to the floor. Kazuya choked, vision tunneling—old voices ringing: "Weakling," "Disgrace," "Don't embarrass us."
Only isolation answered.
Darkness rimmed his sight.
A scream. A flash of metal.
Akemi stabbed the yakuza leader from behind—blade slipping under ribs, yanking him off Kazuya. Kazuya slumped, but did not stir at her slap.
Only when two fresh yakuza rushed in did Kazuya's body react. Sword swinging, he bisected both with blinding speed—blood splashing onto Akemi's trembling hands.
"Get back to the others," Kazuya rasped.
She nodded, terror plain on her face.
Kazuya limped out, cutting through rooms, more enemies closing in. He smashed a support beam, showering splinters and dust across the floor, slowing pursuit, dragging debris to block a hallway.
He collapsed behind a heavy door, pushing it up and bracing himself as attackers hammered on the other side. Their blades snaked through gaps, slicing at his arms and legs.
The weight pressed down—five, six men piling on, shrieking and slashing.
Pinned, suffocating, blood pooling beneath him, Kazuya's mind fractured again.
He remembered watching family celebrations from the shadows, Taeko's sword at his throat after a brutal spar, her voice cold: "You don't belong here." That memory burned hotter than any wound.
Then, rage.
Kazuya lashed out, slicing the legs out from beneath one thug, sending him down amid the pile. The sudden shift let Kazuya wrench himself free, the door toppling to one side.
He slashed wildly, each movement violent, precise, relentless—the style of someone who learned alone, who honed steel as substitute for warmth.
Breath ragged, he reached for his calf and forearm weights, unbuckling them. Each restraint dropped with a heavy thud—symbols of self-doubt, discipline, and the weight of family failure.
Kazuya rolled the weights together, interlocking them onto his sword's hilt, transforming his katana into a naginata—the polearm he'd always been told was the outsider's weapon.
He wielded it with sudden, terrible speed.
Thousand Claws lunged. Kazuya moved like a specter—slicing through their ranks, the steel flashing in arcs, cleaving shoulders from neck, stomach from spine. Blood poured out, hot and reeking. Severed arms flopped to the boards.
The last two survivors turned and ran, leaving only whimpers behind.
In the aftermath, he found the same teenage yakuza from before, crouched in terror.
This time, Kazuya's eyes were dead—he stabbed once, clean, expressionless. No mercy was real.
He limped toward Hamata's gambling house, the weight of exhaustion dragging at his limbs. He burst in, sword leveled; the crime lord offered no resistance as Kazuya dragged him into the street.
"Justice is yours," was all Kazuya said, voice a harsh echo of everything he'd never received.
Kaji and her women descended—what they did was not mercy, not redemption. Hamata's screams faded, drowned in the rain and Kaji's quiet words:
"More man than any brought through my door."
Kazuya turned, ankles sinking in mud and blood.
He paused—momentarily glimpsing his reflection in pooling rain, a face once soft and childish now cut with scars and absence. The world had given him nothing.
Akemi's father's samurai arrived, crest banners soaked, blades glinting. They seized her, ignoring her pleas for help, for rescue.
Kazuya watched, unmoving.
"You're safer with them," he told her, voice flat. "Safer than with me."
Akemi screamed as she was dragged away. Kaji's gaze was unreadable. The brothel was silent, except for the hush after violence—a stillness that always follows slaughter.
Kazuya left, sword resting across his shoulder, rain washing blood from his arms but never from his memory.
Every step was lonely, but every step was his.
He vanished into the night, a crimson ghost in a house full of knives.