The wind crawled across the dead plain, carrying the scent of rust and ash. Bodies lay scattered like broken dolls, their armor glinting faintly under a dying sun.
Among them, a lone figure walked. His name was Rin Tatsuya, once a retainer of House Arinaga now nothing but a ghost bound by vengeance.
His tattered haori dragged through the mud, streaked with dried blood that wasn't all his own. A single scar ran across his throat, faint but deep the mark of a blade that should have ended him. It hadn't.
In his hand hung a sword without a sheath. Each step left a faint print, dark and deliberate, as though he feared even the earth might forget his existence.
A crow landed on a corpse beside him, pecking at the dead. Tatsuya stopped. The bird tilted its head unafraid.
He raised his blade slightly, the reflection catching the fading light.
"...Still hungry?" he muttered, voice hoarse, almost alien to his own ears.
The crow croaked once, mocking him.
Tatsuya turned away. The sound of steel sliding into flesh followed brief, clean, merciless.
When the wind rose again, the crow was silent too.
He continued walking down the dirt path, toward the distant smoke of another burning village. His eyes never left the horizon.
The world had already taken everything from him.
All that remained to take was theirs.
The dirt road wound between blackened trees and half buried helmets, remnants of another forgotten battle. Every step crunched against the bones of men who once believed they'd die with honor.
Tatsuya adjusted the grip on his sword. The hilt was slick with dried blood, his own hand cracked and stiff from old wounds. He hadn't slept in three days, maybe four. Time had lost meaning somewhere between vengeance and survival.
In the distance, smoke curled into the sky thin and gray, the kind that came from homes, not war camps. Villagers, maybe. Or raiders. It didn't matter.
Where there was smoke, there was life. And where there was life, there were whispers of the men he hunted.
The wind shifted. A faint sound carried through the emptiness the soft rhythm of hooves.
Tatsuya stopped.
Two mounted soldiers appeared on the ridge, silhouettes against the sun. Their banners were torn, but the crest was clear, the Mon of Lord Aringais his fallen master.
He watched in silence as they rode closer, unsteady and unkempt, like scavengers dressed in old glory.
One of them shouted.
"Oi! You there! You bear no crest what clan are you from?"
Tatsuya didn't answer.
The soldier's hand went to his sword. "Speak, or-"
He never finished.
Tatsuya's blade flashed once, a clean silver arc that caught the light. When it ended, only the wind moved. The man toppled from his horse, throat open, eyes wide with surprise.
The other soldier stared, frozen. Tatsuya turned his gaze on him calm, empty. The man dropped his reins and fled without looking back.
Tatsuya sheathed his sword or rather, pretended to. The blade slid into nothing, for he carried no scabbard. Only the habit remained.
He stood there for a moment, watching the blood soak into the dust. Then he whispered,
"Forgive me, my lord. Your banner lives only in thieves now."
The words vanished into the wind.
Somewhere beyond the ridge, thunder rumbled or perhaps it was the sound of drums. Another army was on the march.
Tatsuya turned toward the smoke once more. The path ahead waited, as silent as the man who walked it.
By the time Tatsuya reached the village, the sun had vanished behind the mountains. Only the glow of dying fires marked what remained of the settlement.
Charred beams jutted from the ground like broken teeth. Roofs had collapsed into heaps of ash and ember. The air stank of smoke, sweat, and the metallic tang of blood.
He stepped over a shattered gate. The sound of wood crunching beneath his sandals was the only sign that anyone still walked these ruins.
Bodies lay where they fell peasants, guards, women clutching their children. Whoever attacked had made no distinction. A massacre, not a raid.
Tatsuya crouched beside one corpse. The man wore farmer's robes, yet the wound across his chest was clean a single stroke from a trained blade. Not bandits, then. Soldiers.
He brushed ash from the dead man's hand and saw a small wooden charm a crane carved from oak, its wings burned. The symbol stirred something faint in him, a memory that hurt to hold.
He closed the man's hand gently around it and rose.
A soft whimper reached his ears.
He turned. A movement behind a collapsed storehouse small, fragile. He approached in silence. Beneath the wreckage, a young boy clung to the body of a woman, his mother perhaps, too afraid to cry.
When Tatsuya knelt beside him, the boy flinched.
"Don't don't hurt me," he stammered, voice raw.
Tatsuya said nothing. He reached for his canteen and offered it. The boy hesitated, then drank, spilling half of it down his chin.
After a long silence, the child whispered,
"They came at dawn… men with the red serpent banner. They said we hid a traitor. They burned everyone."
Red serpent.
The name crawled through Tatsuya's thoughts like poison. He remembered the crest, the same one painted on a war fan the night his own clan fell.
He stood slowly, eyes narrowing toward the northern ridge.
"How long ago?"
The boy blinked, startled by the question. "Half a day. Maybe less."
Tatsuya looked back at the ruined homes, at the scattered dead. His jaw tightened. The trail was still fresh.
He turned to leave.
"W-wait!" The boy scrambled forward, grabbing at his sleeve. "You can't go that way they'll kill you too!"
Tatsuya stopped but didn't look back. "Then they'll try."
The boy's grip trembled, then slipped away.
As Tatsuya walked off, the fires hissed behind him, rain beginning to fall in thin, cold drops. It pattered against his shoulders, washing streaks of soot from his clothes.
By the time he reached the edge of the village, the rain had grown heavier. Thunder rolled again in the distance.
He paused beneath a withered torii gate, its red paint scorched black. There, someone had nailed a parchment to the wood a decree stamped with an official seal.
He tore it free and held it under the fading light.
"By order of Lord Masanori of the Red Serpent Banner, all villages found harboring remnants of the Arinaga Clan are to be cleansed. No exceptions."
His hand tightened around the paper until it crumbled to pulp.
So it was true. The slaughter of his clan hadn't ended that night. It had only spread like a plague of fire devouring all that remained of his lord's name.
He looked out over the wet horizon. The mountains loomed dark and distant, and somewhere beyond them, Lord Masanori's men marched.
Tatsuya exhaled, the sound soft and steady, like a blade drawn from its sheath.
The rain washed the blood from his sword as he whispered,
"One by one, I'll return what was given."
He slid the weapon back into his hand and started down the muddy path, the storm swallowing his silhouette.
For a long time, the world was only rain and silence. Then faintly the echo of drums again, rolling like thunder across the valley.
Tatsuya didn't look back.