Summer loosened its hold like a tired hand.
The world around Akuru slipped quietly into other colours. The lush green of July folded into the bright heat of August, August sighed into the honeyed light of September, and finally, by the time he noticed the first stubborn yellow on a maple leaf, the breath of autumn had settled into the air. For three months, the road was his map.
The land changed with him; when leaves started to loosen their green and edges brightened into yellow. Summer's thick haze thinned into the cool knife of autumn, and his actions followed the season's lead.
The bandages were gone now. The days wrapped in linen that smelled faintly of wisteria and the house's polished cedar no longer had faded after a month on the road. The Wisteria family had taught him how to listen to the body as much as the soil, and he kept that lesson like a key in his pocket.
He and Huginn walked. The villages blurred into one another like pages in a book. He greeted each gate, each elder sweeping the stoop, each child who thought a swordsman was some sort of miracle. The small kindnesses stacked into a larger warmth. Each one was its own individual chapter in his journey and each one was as meaningful to him as the last.
From soup given without question, to water handed as he began to step out the gates, directions offered with a yawn and a thumb. Akuru accepted all of them with a quiet gratitude that slowly felt less like debt and more like belonging.
Along the way training had crept back into his days like ivy. At first, it was simple healing exercises ordered by the Wisteria healer that became a discipline that he followed every day. Slow breaths, a measured walk; the repetition of pulling air in, holding, then releasing until the pattern felt like the pulse in his palm. He still continued to do it everyday, less impactful now that he had healed but the habit had stuck to him. Then, as his muscles fully recovered to normal, the practice deepened. He stood for hours with his blades and empty air in front of him, practicing footwork and the transition between forms. The heat of dry afternoons and calm evening damped his clothes and cooled it. But through it all he had learned to find the center of the storm in the cadence of his breathing.
He even found time to use his eleventh form again. Though never against a demon, he hadn't found one that needed it since the blood moon.
Huginn even turned out to be an unexpected teacher.
Not in the art of swordsmanship. But in the art of breathing.
The brunt of his training wasn't spent on swordsmanship after all, it was spent mastering what he had been taught by the healers at the wisteria house. Total Concentration: Constant Breathing, something he hadn't thought he would need until he began practicing it.
Huginn was his fail-safe. When Akuru's concentration wandered at the hours where moonlight was the earth's lamp, when muscle memory hummed too loudly, or exhaustion slid a blanket over his thoughts, Huginn would give a small, insistent peck or tap at his wrist. That tiny interruption was enough to pull Akuru back. Everyday beneath a sky still holding the last warmth of the season, he'd wake, breathe deep, and find the rhythm again. It would repeat again and again. Huginn wasn't a teacher; he was a blunt instrument of reminder. Loyal and impatient. When the raven gave that peck, it felt less like counsel and more like a friend slapping his shoulder: rude, effective, and necessary.
After a couple of weeks, something subtle shifted for Akuru. Huginn didn't feel the need to poke him anymore. Akuru slept and woke up without disturbance. The quiet truth fell into place; he wasn't being prodded at midnight to get his breath back into rhythm.
He had fully mastered it. Total Concentration: Constant Breathing.
He didn't get it while at the Wisteria House like he had originally thought, but he got it down not long after, so to Akuru it didn't really matter. He didn't have a single breakthrough moment to point to. It was the culmination of small habits.
The strength of Total Concentration: Constant Breathing was in how practical it was. It didn't let him fight forever; what it offered was steadiness, a way to remove the tiny dead spaces in a fight when fear or fatigue might let the world slip through his fingers. When Akuru settled into it, there was no lull between strikes, no half-beat where doubt crept in. His lungs became the metronome that kept the rest of him honest.
Shorter recovery, steadier hands, and a faint, constant hum under his skin that let him chain all his movements into one without losing focus. The boost it gave was small but crucial. It didn't leave him with a towering power but a clean edge, like the way the air gets sharper when summer thins toward autumn and everything suddenly cuts truer.
He felt it most clearly on days when the heat of the fields was still thick, but mornings began to hold a sliver of cool. The afternoons kept the hammered brood of summer, sun-baked and heavy. Moving to an evening that lulled you into the night. In those late hours, his breathing practice made his senses sharper than ever.
Muscles that before would complain and slow down became capable of small, patient work for longer. The effect wasn't flamboyant; he didn't become a storm, but fights lengthened into a series of purposeful notes instead of short, gasping chords. Where once he might finish a blow and need a moment to collect himself, now the next move came before the thought.
A step already ready to soften the landing.
An inhale that fed the shoulder an extra boost of strength.
An exhale that would sharpen the cut.
All of it built into a beautiful puzzle, that left him far stronger then before. Ready to take on more responsibility, as he continued his journey.
Life on the road afterward fell into a companionable rhythm. He'd practice in the spare minutes between life. He noticed that as autumn came, the smaller errors between steps faded, like unfortunate stones thrown in a clear stream that water quickly swallowed.
He even crossed paths once with Haruto on a mission. It was nothing difficult, a regular patrol run that the Corps logged as routine, far easier than their first assignment. Both of them took joy in that fact. As the days patrol came to a finish they even found time to spar in a small clearing when their duties permitted it.
The most direct form of conversation between two swordsman.
A light exchange that would let both of them showcase how far each had moved since the last meeting. Akuru watched Haruto's swordplay and felt a little prickle of pride. Haruto had sharpened in ways Akuru admired; his strikes were looser now, less needy of force and more of direction. The spar finished with neither of them hurt, it was only a conversation no need for a winner to be spoken out loud. Akuru walked away impressed at how far his friend had come. A final clash of swords was their way of saying goodbye. An end to the conversation.
Huginn flew with pride all throughout that day, it knew who had really won.
He had learned, in the days that followed, that progression within the Corps could be found out using the Wisteria Engraving he had gotten when he joined. Walking toward another assignment in late October, the air already holding a damp edge and maple leaves scattering like little coins along the path. He clenched his hand, and kanji started to become visible on the back of his hand.
Hinoto.
The word in itself was small, almost bureaucratic, but the weight of it sat warm in his chest. He was getting closer to the top, he knew that demons was the only final goal. But rank meant someone else had looked and decided he was to be trusted with more; it didn't change his chores or make him grand, but it made him quietly proud. He folded that small pride into his breathing practice and walked on with the easy straightness of a man who'd earned a small measure of notice.
The months lengthened, and the landscape shifted. He even met other survivors of the Final Selection in ways that felt less like reunions and more like checkpoints on a long road. Missions that intersected or tasks that required more than one blade were what led to these checkpoints. In the small lull between conflict they shared food and gossip, tended minor wounds for each other, and traded the same supply of mock bravado that knit soldiers together. None of the meetings was heavy; they were the light, essential contacts of people who'd been through the same door and found each other again.
They were friends by necessity, comrades by habit. But it held its own beauty. A connection forged stronger then most.
But only for small moments throughout the months would Akuru meet others. The rest was just him and Huginn.
Although travel in these months alone with Huginn had taught him many things; one of the most important lessons was listening to the smaller things. The squeak of a wheel that meant a cart needed fresh rope, the silence of frogs that otherwise crooned through dusk, the way a flock of birds scattered when something strange hunted beneath the trees. These cues gathered like silent evidence. Sometimes useful in the now, but would be most definitely useful in the future. For that Akuru could deal with the time spent alone on his missions.
Time continued to pass.
On one long, misty morning, he paused on a ridge that looked back towards a town he had just killed a demon in. It was a rather easy demon nothing compared to even the demons in the grass lands on that night. He had just come from praying for it, he decided that he could take a moment to reflect by looking at the town. The valley below had shed its summer gloss; the fields were a matte gold, and wet edges of frost tweaked the toes of grass. He breathed in. He could feel the way his fingers tightened on the hilt. His muscles had gotten stronger over the months, far more than even before the injury.
As Akuru continued to stare at the town he heard the sound of flapping echo throughout the morning.
Huginn flew above the mist that had built up near the roots of the tree and landed on top of his head. He had come with Akuru's next mission. A mission to Tokyo, his chest beat with a patient hum. His breath came out with a plume, while it was still autumn, winter couldn't be held back for too long.
It seems the corps wanted to keep him busy, a mission right after he completed one.
He held a sense of anticipation for this mission, far more then the one he just completed. A mission to the capital city was no small thing. The name held a sense of gravity to it, a metropolis of cobbles and trains, of shipping and clamor, a place where modernity pressed against tradition. Tokyo wasn't the simple provincial place of the towns he'd wandered these months. The Corps had requested him and another slayer to investigate.
To investigate what?
Well, Akuru didn't know yet, the corps had informed him through Huginn he would get further info once there.
And who would accompany him in the mission?
Well, the corps didn't tell him that either. He would just have to find out. He guessed that the corps would place him with someone near his rank, so it should be fine. He was excited; he hadn't met many people on the same rank as him or higher in a while.
The next morning, Akuru cleaned his blades until the metal sang and spoke with Huginn at length.
He boarded a coach heading east, the journey far too long for him to walk. The coach carried him along roads that held the crisp scent of fallen leaves. He watched fields slide into small clusters of houses and then into stretches of taller architecture.
Tokyo was a promise on the horizon when he finally climbed down at the drop-off area.
Steam flooded his sights, compressed people walked everywhere, the clang of carts rang through his ears, and the staccato footfalls of a thousand errands continued to be shouted all around him.
A city was like a net for countryfolk, it was almost overwhelming for him. His first time in a place like this and he would be forced to fight a demon somewhere in this area. Akuru told himself that he had to get familiar with the place quick. He felt the weight of the city settle upon his shoulders, and for the first time in months, a precise buzz of expectation lit within him.
The leaves fell around him in languorous applause as he stepped into Tokyo, and somewhere beyond, a bell struck the hour.
He had arrived in Tokyo.