The stone was cold against Hayato's back.
He sat in the dark of the dungeon, his legs folded under him. The air smelled of wet earth, old straw, and fear. A thin bar of grey light fell through a high window. It was just enough light to see dust dancing in the air. Just enough to remind him of the world outside, the one he would never see again.
His death was set for dawn.
He did not waste his last hours on rage or tears. Those were for men who believed life owed them more. Hayato knew better. Life owed you nothing. You lived by the sword. You died by it. Or, in his case, you died by the axe because a lord's son needed someone to blame.
From the cell next to his, a voice hissed through the bamboo bars. "Hey. Ronin. You awake?"
Hayato did not open his eyes. "I am."
"You're quiet. Too quiet. Aren't you afraid?"
"Fear does not change the blade's path," Hayato said, his voice low and even. "It only makes the waiting worse."
The other man, a thief named Goro, gave a wet cough. "Philosophy from a dead man. Fine. Die wise, then. I plan to scream my lungs out. Let them remember my noise."
"They will not remember," Hayato said.
A heavy silence fell between them, broken only by the drip of water somewhere in the dark. Hayato let his mind drift away from the cold stone. He went to the garden of his childhood home. He saw the cherry tree by the pond. He heard his mother's voice.
The memory was shattered by the sound of the iron door at the end of the cell block groaning open.
Footsteps echoed, not the heavy tread of guards, but something quicker, lighter. A nervous patter. Hayato opened his eyes.
A figure stood outside his cell, wrapped in dirty grey robes. A cloth was wound around its head and face, leaving only sharp, intelligent eyes visible behind round glasses. The person carried a small wooden box.
"You are the ronin? The one called Hayato?" The voice was oddly soft, trying to sound gruff.
"I am. Have you come to measure my neck for the block?"
"I am the physician's assistant. They call me Kenji." The figure set the box down. "Lord Kiyomori has ordered all prisoners examined. There is… a sickness in the town."
Goro from the next cell scrambled to the bars. "Sickness? What sickness?"
Kenji did not turn. "A wasting fever. It is of no concern to you."
"Everything is of concern to a man with one sunrise left!" Goro snapped.
Kenji ignored him, unlocking Hayato's cell door with a key from a guard who lingered in the shadows of the hall. The physician entered and knelt before Hayato, maintaining a careful distance.
"Show me your arms. Your neck," Kenji said.
Hayato slowly pushed back the sleeves of his worn kimono, revealing his forearms. He tilted his head back. Kenji leaned forward, eyes scanning. The physician's hands, clad in thin gloves, hesitated before touching him.
"You have no marks? No sores? No fever?" Kenji asked.
"I have the fever of injustice," Hayato said dryly. "It does not show on the skin."
For the first time, he saw a flicker in Kenji's eyes that wasn't clinical fear. Something like humor. It was gone in a second.
"A poetic ronin. How rare." Kenji's tone was flat again. "Open your mouth."
Hayato complied. Kenji peered inside, then sat back on his heels. "You are clean. For now."
"What is this sickness?" Hayato asked, watching the physician's nervous eyes.
Kenji began packing his tools away. "It starts with a fever. Then the black veins. Then the mind goes. The body stiffens. Then…" He stopped.
"Then?" Hayato pressed.
Kenji looked directly at him. "Then they get back up. And they are hungry."
A cold dread, deeper than the chill of the dungeon, settled in Hayato's gut. "You are describing a folktale. A hungry ghost. A Gaki."
"I am describing what I have seen with my own eyes in the infirmary," Kenji whispered. The fear was naked now. "Three patients this week. They died. Then they rose. They attacked the orderlies. Two men are dead from their bites."
From the hall, the guard called out, his voice tight. "Hurry up in there, sawbones! This place gives me the chills."
Kenji stood quickly, grabbing the box. As he turned to leave, he paused. He looked back at Hayato, the conflict clear in his eyes. "The world is becoming a folktale, ronin. Perhaps you are lucky your sunrise is tomorrow."
The cell door clanged shut. The key turned. The footsteps retreated. The iron door groaned closed, leaving the prisoners in the dark with a new, more terrible silence.
Goro was the first to break it. His bravado was gone. "Did you hear that? The dead… walking? Eating people?"
"I heard," Hayato said.
"It's not possible!"
"The physician believed it."
"We're locked in a stone box!" Goro's voice rose to a panicked shout. "If those things get in here… if they come down those stairs…" He began to rattle the bars of his cell, his chains clanking. "Guards! Let us out! You can't leave us to be eaten!"
"Be silent," Hayato said, his voice a command that cut through the panic. "Your noise will not help. Save your strength."
"For what? To be a tastier meal?"
Hayato did not answer. He looked at the high window. The grey light was fading into the deep blue of evening. His last evening. He wondered if the stories were true. If a man beheaded at dawn could still rise with hunger at dusk.
The night passed in fits of terror. Goro whimpered and prayed to gods he'd stolen from the week before. Distant screams, too faint to be sure they were real, sometimes filtered down from the world above. Hayato sat perfectly still. He breathed. He waited for the dawn.
It did not come as it should.
First, the smell changed. The damp stone and straw smell was pushed aside by a new scent. It was the smell of a butcher's yard on a hot day. Copper and waste and something sweetly rotten.
Then, the sounds. Not the orderly change of the guards. This was chaos. A distant crash. A shout that was cut off into a gurgle. Running feet, many of them, pounding on the earth above their heads.
Goro was pressed against the bars, shaking. "What is that? What's happening?"
The iron door at the end of the hall did not groan open. It was hit with tremendous force. BAM. A solid, meaty impact. BAM. The metal shrieked in protest.
"They're here," Goro whispered, his face white.
BAM-CRACK.
The door's hinges tore from the stone. It fell inward with a thunderous crash. Dust billowed down the corridor.
In the doorway, backlit by the torchlight of the guard room beyond, stood a figure. It was the guard who had watched Kenji the physician. His helmet was gone. His face was grey. Dark veins crawled up his neck like tree roots. His eyes were milk-white, but they fixed on the two prisoners with a terrible, knowing hunger. His mouth hung open, and a low, continuous groan rumbled from his chest.
Behind him, more shapes shambled into view.
"No… no, no, no…" Goro moaned, backing into the far corner of his cell.
The guard-thing stepped over the fallen door. Its movements were stiff, jerky, but fast. It shuffled straight toward Goro's cell. It grabbed the bamboo bars and shook them, its groan growing louder.
Hayato stood up slowly in his own cell. He watched, his fighter's mind working despite the horror. The thing had no weapon. It did not try the lock. It just wanted in.
Other infected prisoners and guards filled the hallway now. They moved past Hayato's cell, ignoring him, drawn by Goro's sobs and the sound of his chains. They piled against his cell door, a press of grey, groaning bodies. The bamboo bars splintered.
Goro screamed. A true, raw sound of absolute terror.
The first thing grabbed him. Hayato saw it all. He saw the teeth sink into Goro's shoulder. He heard the wet tear of flesh. The scream became a choked bubble. The things fell on him, feeding.
Hayato turned away. He looked at the floor of his cell. He focused on his breathing. The sounds were unspeakable. They went on for a long time. Then, they stopped.
A new sound began. A slow, dragging shuffle. Chains clinking.
Hayato looked up.
Goro stood in the ruins of his cell. His throat was a ruined mess. His eyes were white and blank. He took a stiff step forward, tripping over his own chains. He righted himself. He turned his head. Those milk-white eyes passed over Hayato… and moved on. He shuffled out into the hall, joining the other figures now milling aimlessly, their immediate hunger sated.
They were all leaving, shuffling back toward the broken door, drawn by some new noise from above.
All but one.
The first guard, the one who had broken in, remained. It stood in the middle of the hall. It turned its head slowly from side to side. It sniffed the air. Like a dog on a scent.
Its head snapped toward Hayato's cell.
A fresh, low groan came from its throat. It took a step. Then another. It walked with purpose now, straight for Hayato's bamboo bars.
Hayato took a step back, his chains rattling. He had no weapon. His hands were bound by iron cuffs linked with a short chain. He raised them.
The guard-thing reached the cell. It did not shake the bars. It simply reached an arm through, fingers clawing at the air, trying to reach him. Its jaws snapped open and shut.
Hayato calculated the distance. The thing's arm was long, but he was just out of reach if he stayed against the back wall. He would wait. It would grow bored. It would leave.
Then, the thing surprised him. It grabbed the bamboo bars with both hands. It braced a foot against the cell wall. With a strength no living man of its size should have, it pulled.
The bars, already old and weakened by damp, tore loose from the upper and lower brackets with a scream of wood and metal. The entire cell door was ripped open, hanging crookedly from one last hinge.
The guard-thing lunged inside.
Hayato had no room to dodge. The thing's hands grabbed the front of his kimono. Its rotten-meat breath washed over his face. Its head darted forward, jaws wide.
Hayato did the only thing he could. He slammed his forehead into the bridge of the thing's nose.
There was a crunch. The thing backed away, but its grip was iron. It snarled, a sound of pure rage, and bit down on Hayato's left forearm, where he had thrown it up to block his throat.
White-hot pain lanced through Hayato. He grunted, but made no other sound. He could feel the teeth meet through his flesh. He could feel the warm gush of his own blood.
So this is how it ends, he thought with strange calm. Not by the axe. By the teeth of a monster.
He waited for the darkness. For the fever he'd been told about.
The guard-thing held on, chewing at his arm. Then, it stopped. It released its bite. It took a stumbling step back, its head tilted.
Hayato looked at his arm. Blood soaked his sleeve. The bite marks were deep and clear. But as he watched, the bleeding… slowed. It seemed to thicken and stop. The fierce, fiery pain of the wound cooled to a dull, distant ache.
The guard-thing made a new sound. A confused, almost pained whimper. It clutched at its own stomach. It looked at Hayato, those white eyes seeming to see him anew. Not as food, but as something else. Something wrong.
The thing turned and shambled away quickly, as if fleeing.
Hayato stood alone in his wrecked cell, holding his wounded arm. He stared at the retreating back of the monster. He felt no fever. His mind was clear. He poked the bite. It hurt, but it was just a wound. A deep, bad wound, but nothing more.
"What…?" he whispered to the empty, blood-stained hall.
The sound of careful footsteps made him look up.
The physician, Kenji, stood in the broken doorway, holding a small lantern. The wrappings around the physician's face were spotted with fresh blood. Kenji's eyes were huge behind the glasses, taking in the carnage in Goro's cell, then settling on Hayato standing in his own.
Kenji saw the torn sleeve. The bloody bite.
"You…" Kenji's soft voice was full of disbelief. "You are bitten."
"I am," Hayato said.
"And you are… standing. You are talking."
"I am."
Kenji took a step into the hallway, avoiding the dark pools on the floor. The physician came to the threshold of Hayato's cell, lifting the lantern high. The light fell fully on Hayato's face, then on his arm.
"Show me," Kenji breathed.
Hayato held out his arm. Kenji leaned close, not touching. The physician's breath caught.
"The wound… it is not festering. The veins are not black." Kenji looked up, meeting Hayato's eyes. The clinical fear was gone, replaced by a blazing, intense curiosity. "How do you feel?"
"Confused," Hayato answered truthfully.
"No fever? No strange thirst? No urge to… bite me?"
"No."
Kenji stared a moment longer, then made a decision. The physician reached into the robes and pulled out the key to the manacles. "Give me your hands."
Hayato held out his bound wrists. Kenji's gloved hands were steady as they unlocked the iron cuffs. They fell to the stone floor with a heavy clank that echoed in the silence.
Hayato rubbed his raw wrists. Freedom, after weeks in chains, felt dizzying.
"Why?" Hayato asked.
"You are a medical miracle," Kenji said, the words tumbling out fast. "You are the only one I have seen bitten who did not sicken and die in hours. Your blood… it might hold an answer. A way to fight this."
"So I am a specimen now, not a prisoner."
"You are a man who can walk out of this dungeon," Kenji said sharply. "Or you can stay here and wait for more of those things to come, or for Lord Kiyomori's soldiers to come and burn this whole place to the ground to stop the plague. They are talking about it already. Burn the jail, burn the infirmary, burn the town if they must."
Hayato looked at the open doorway. He looked at his bitten arm. He had planned to die with honor at dawn. That was gone. Now he had a pointless, bleeding miracle and a nervous physician who saw him as a puzzle.
A loud crash and a chorus of groans echoed from somewhere above. Closer.
Kenji flinched. "They are in the main hall. We have little time. Come or stay. Choose."
Hayato took one last look at his cell. He thought of Goro' final scream. He thought of the guard-thing's confused whimper. He stepped over the broken bamboo bars.
"I choose to walk," he said.
Kenji nodded, turned, and hurried back down the hall, lantern bobbing. Hayato followed, leaving the darkness of his death behind, walking into a world that had become something far worse.