The final, persistent rains of the season had given way to the first signs of the Dry season. A different air settled over the Shadow-Wood, less damp, carrying the promise of parched earth to come.
From the village, the faint sounds of music and laughter carried on the wind – the annual celebration marking the turning of the seasons, the day that served as a collective birthday for all who had survived another year.
For sixteen cycles she had endured, yet her survival had never been celebrated. This day was no different. While the village honored another year of life, she was on its periphery, gathering the meager supplies she kept separate from their stores.
It was then that a figure broke away from the distant festivities and strode towards her. It was Elder Tanaka, his frustration radiating off him like the Great Ash Desert.
"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice sharp, cutting through the years of silent avoidance. "Why are you still here?"
Kimiko froze, stunned by the sudden address. Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? These questions had been her silent companions for years, echoing unanswered in the lonely space of her mind. But now, faced with his unexpected, harsh query, a stark clarity emerged from the depths of her despair. Her voice was quiet, raspy from disuse, a stark contrast to his sharp tone.
"I am no one," she replied, her hands trembling slightly, but her gaze steady behind the mask. "Just an outcast, pretending to be something I'm not. I don't even have a uniform... I can't call myself a demon slayer." She paused, the weight of her own words settling. "I don't know where else to go, but it's clear this isn't my place. It never was."
Gathering the last of her supplies, she turned and walked towards the edge of the village. She paused only to ignite the small tent that had been her solitary home for so long, the first visible act of leaving her past behind. Smoke curled into the bruised sky, a dark gray plume against the deeper violets of the approaching twilight.
Tanaka stood rooted to the spot, taken aback by her quiet resolve. "You'll die out there!" he finally yelled as she continued walking, his voice laced with a twisted mix of warning and spite.
Kimiko didn't stop. Didn't respond. As she passed by the other villagers, their heads turned, their voices rising in a familiar, hateful chorus.
"Good riddance!"
"Don't come back!"
"May the demons find you!"
"She's the real curse!"
They were praying for her failure, her demise, their dark wishes following her like a physical weight. But Kimiko, the "no one," the outcast, kept walking. Above, unnoticed by the jeering crowd, the flock of ravens shadowing her grew, more dark wings joining the silent procession, a mirror to the cold resolve hardening within her. She didn't need them. She never had. The road ahead was uncertain and perilous, but it was her road now, forged in isolation, free from the suffocating shadows of their judgment.
With the flames of her makeshift tent a silent, smoky farewell rising behind her, No One stepped out of the hidden village and into the forest beyond. The bruised, indifferent sky of Vorlag had settled into the deep indigo and charcoal of the Waning Twilight by the time she emerged from the protective edge of the woods, approximately five miles east of her former village. She stepped onto a road, well-worn by travelers, its packed earth a stark contrast to the soft, leaf-strewn ground she had navigated for years. Her journey north had begun.
Along the road, she passed others – merchants guiding laden carts, solitary figures on foot with weary shoulders, small groups traveling together, eyes darting nervously at the encroaching shadows. They were dressed in varied styles, some unfamiliar, others echoing faint, painful memories of the simple clothing worn by those in her old village.
She, however, was a stark, conspicuous figure. She had long black hair tied in a ponytail, burgundy eyes, and a mask. On her forehead, the Mark of the Raven's Gaze was a stark black sigil of a central beak and arching feathers. She draped the stripped pelts of a white wolf across her shoulders and wore a pelt skirt at her hips. Underneath the fur, bandages crisscrossed her torso and thighs, forming a makeshift fundoshi beneath the skirt. A katana rested at her left hip, its hilt worn from frequent use. A wakizashi was fastened horizontally at the small of her back, while a kusarigama's chain coiled like a serpent around her small waist. Her legs were bound in leather straps that secured kunai and shuriken. A small pouch clung to her back, storing her supplies and food. Her appearance, along with the lone raven now perched on her shoulder, its dark eyes scanning the travelers with unnerving intelligence, drew immediate, wary attention.
Eyes fell upon her. Children, their faces grubby with travel dust, gawked, quickly hushed by parents who pulled them closer, their gazes fixed on the black sigil just visible beneath the edge of her filter mask. They hurried along, their footsteps quickening. The surprised, wary glances were intensely familiar, a continuation of the ostracism she had always known. The raven on her shoulder shifted, a low click in its throat. She didn't turn her head, her gaze remaining fixed on the road ahead as she whispered, her voice a dry rasp. "See how they look? Just like the others. Fear is all they know." She offered no greeting, no acknowledgment, her face hidden, her silence absolute. She was used to being seen as strange, an anomaly to be avoided.
Her northward path eventually led her towards a small village visible just off the main road. It appeared relatively new, still in the process of establishing itself, likely hoping to capitalize on trade. As she walked towards it, intending only to pass through, she felt the weight of eyes upon her once more as travelers pointed or steered wide around her. Some gazes held fear, which she attributed, as always, to the visible Mark of the Raven's Gaze—a brand of her curse in their eyes, something inherently monstrous to those who didn't understand.
Before she reached the cluster of buildings that marked the village center, a man emerged from the shadowed opening of a stable. He clutched a pitchfork, its tines gleaming faintly in the dimming light. Elderly, his face was etched with suspicion and anger.
"Who are you?" he yelled, his voice cracking but loud. "Get out! We won't have bandits here!"
No One didn't respond. Her stride remained even, unwavering.
Then, her foresight flared—a sudden, violent, jarring flash from the Mark on her forehead that stole a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She saw it with terrifying clarity: the elderly man's face contorted in rage, the quick, shuffling charge, the glint of the pitchfork raised high, the sharp, tearing pain as it plunged into her back, the world going black.
Reacting instantly, her body moving with the speed her brutal self-training had forged, she pivoted sharply on the ball of her foot, drawing her katana in the same fluid motion. Her hand closed around the worn hilt, a muscle memory forged in solitude. The katana was a reflection of her own existence: functional, scarred, and pieced together from a broken past. The blade itself, though sharp from her own relentless whetting, was marred by tiny chips and scratches along its length—permanent reminders of desperate parries and clumsy, early mistakes. The hilt was wrapped tightly in faded red cord, a silent tribute to Akamura, the village she had lost. Over this, she had meticulously woven a black leather over-wrap, creating a pattern of striking, red-shaped diamonds. It was the only color, the only sentimentality, she allowed herself.
The pitchfork scraped harmlessly past where she had been a split-second before. Her sudden, deadly efficient move startled the old man speechless, but it also galvanized the other villagers. Shouts erupted. Figures poured out of buildings, grabbing tools—hoes, axes, shovels. As they surrounded her, a murder of ravens descended from the sky, settling on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings—a silent, black-feathered jury.
"Bandit!" they screamed, eyes wide with panic and rage.
"Get her! She's one of them!"
"Look at that gear... definitely a bandit!"
"Just one? It's a trap!"
She scanned the faces around her, listening to the torrent of hateful words, her grip tightening on her katana.
"It's rare to see just one like her," she heard a nervous man mutter near the back of the rapidly closing circle. "Maybe it's a trap... they're testing us."
A woman's voice, filled with weary, desperate rage, rose above the din. "We're tired of being robbed by these filthy bandits! This lone one won't stop us this time!"
"Kill her!" someone shrieked.
A younger man armed with a hatchet, his face contorted with blind rage and perhaps a desperate need to prove himself, charged at her.
Her foresight flared—a split-second warning from the Mark, a flash of his hatchet cleaving towards her head. With a swift, precise movement honed by countless hours of solitary, painful practice, she deflected his wild attack with her katana, the jarring clang echoing in the sudden tension. Before he could recover, before his rage could find a new target, she moved with a cold efficiency born of sheer survival. Her blade flashed, a blur of steel, severing his swinging arm at the elbow.
He fell, screaming in raw, animal agony, the sound a brutal, visceral punctuation to the chaos, silencing the other villagers for a fleeting second.
In that brief, stunned silence, as she analyzed her attackers—their fear, their anger, their desperate, uncoordinated movements—a chilling realization settled within her. She had grown up surrounded by the veiled contempt and open blame of her own people, a constant, heavy weight. But this... this was different. This was raw, pure, unadulterated hatred, directed at an unknown stranger based on assumption, fear, and past grievances she knew nothing about.
She had thought cruelty was primarily the domain of demons and the harsh world of slayers. But these humans, fueled by their terror and suspicion, seemed no different. Perhaps even worse, their cruelty born not of inherent evil, but of desperation and ignorance. She glanced up at the rooftops, where the murder of ravens watched the scene unfold, a silent, black-feathered jury. "You see now, don't you?" she whispered to the unblinking eyes above. "There is no difference."
A cold, hard resolve solidified within her, settling deep in her gut. She hated them. She hated them all – the demons who had destroyed her family and her life, the villagers who had abandoned her to the wolves, and now these strangers who saw only a target for their fear and misplaced anger. She widened her stance, her grip tightening on her katana hilt until her knuckles ached, her focus narrowing on the fearful, hate-filled faces surrounding her.
They would all die.
The hatchet man's screams faded to whimpers, but his agony was drowned out by the renewed yelling of the crowd, their momentary shock replaced by even greater fury.
"Filthy bandit!"
"Monster!"
"Murderer!"
A rock whizzed towards her head from the edge of the mob, thrown by someone too afraid to get close. But the Mark of the Raven's Gaze gave her a fraction of a second's warning—the rock's trajectory, the sting of impact against her skull. She tilted her head barely an inch, letting it harmlessly whistle past.
The villagers came in waves—shouting, wielding rusted machetes, axes, broken spears, even crude farming tools gripped with trembling hands. Fourteen of them, surrounding her in a tightening circle of desperation and fear.
She didn't speak. The white wolf pelt across her shoulders fluttered like a ghost's breath. Her right hand rested on the worn hilt of her katana; the left, already reaching behind for her wakizashi.
A flash from the Mark—her jaw cracking beneath a hammer. She stepped aside before the clumsy swing had even finished its arc and cut the man clean through the collarbone, his torso folding open diagonally in a gurgled scream. Blood hit the dirt.
Another warning flared—her ankle twisting mid-turn. She pivoted instead on her heel and ducked low, the blade of her wakizashi separating a man's legs just below the knees. He collapsed screaming, and she rose into a spinning slash that opened a second attacker from hip to shoulder.
The others hesitated. She moved.
The katana arced, a gleaming crescent under the dim twilight. It split a man down the middle—his body clapping apart as if unzipped from scalp to navel. Behind him, two more surged forward, wild and off-balance.
Her foresight warned her again—shoulder dislocated mid-swing. She stopped the attack short, letting her forward momentum flow into a side-step. Her wakizashi came up under the arm of one villager and slid clean through the ribs, the point emerging beneath his armpit as he gasped, pinned. She wrenched it out and pivoted again in a single, fluid motion, slashing through another's wrist. The villager's sickle was sent spinning into the air, but before it could clatter to the ground, she had already reversed her wakizashi's grip and plunged it into his throat, silencing his shocked gasp. The sickle landed in the dirt beside his corpse.
Another flash—nose broken by an elbow. She ducked. A head rolled. Then another.
The ring of villagers was breaking—turning to flee, stumbling over each other in panic. No One gave chase.
Her katana sheared through two fleeing backs in a single horizontal sweep. Another villager turned just in time to see her wakizashi punch through his eye socket, the blade buried to the hilt.
A final warning flared in her mind—shin shattered on impact. She adjusted mid-kick, planting her foot instead and vaulting over a flailing spear. Her katana came down in a brutal overhead slash, cleaving a man's head in half as her landing reversed into a backwards roll.
Only three remained.
One charged with a hoe raised high. She didn't move—until the flash came. A warning of cracked ribs. Her body twisted left, avoiding the blunt impact, and the katana drew a clean red line across his throat.
The last two tried to coordinate—one going high, the other low. Her foresight screamed—spine snapped from a fall. She leapt, tucking midair, flipping just above their blades. In that suspended moment, she felt the storm calm. Her arms moved with perfect control. The katana sliced through the first man's neck while her wakizashi slashed open the second's chest as she landed in a low crouch.
No One rose slowly. Fourteen bodies lay broken and bleeding in the dirt around her. Not a scratch on her.
Even the man whose arm she had severed at the start, desperately attempting to crawl away, his whimpers a sickening sound, was not spared. She impaled him with her katana, a final act of cold efficiency, saving him for last only because he no longer posed a threat.
The rest of the villagers, those who had hidden or not joined the attack, watched in horror from the perceived safety of their homes as a single, silent figure cut down their defense with terrifying speed. Helpless and terrified, they retreated further into their houses. But No One wasn't finished. Raising a torch she'd taken from the stable entrance, she systematically began setting them ablaze.
The flames, licking greedily at the dry wood and thatch, rose quickly into the darkening twilight sky, their orange glow a stark, violent contrast against the deep violets and blacks of the night. She watched for a moment, a grim satisfaction settling in her gut. Then, leaving the crackling sounds of the inferno behind, she continued her journey, walking out of the burning village and back onto the road.
The twilight had deepened further into its Deep phase, the world growing dimmer. She was tired, the physical exertion and the emotional toll weighing heavily on her small frame. A few miles north of the smoldering village, the smell of smoke still faint on the wind, she made camp. Under the perpetually bruised, starless sky, she ate her meager meal of berries, nuts, and leftover rabbit. As her rage and adrenaline subsided, the flock of ravens that had followed her furious rampage settled silently in the trees around her camp, resuming their quiet, unnerving watch.
She was a solitary figure finding a moment of cold, hard-won respite in a world that had proven, yet again, its cruelty.