Moonlight slipped through the broken mouth of the mountain cave like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath. It carved pale lines across stone, across frost-bitten ground, across the figure seated at the cave's heart.
Tomora sat cross-legged, unmoving, as if carved from the rock itself.
Snowmelt dripped from the cave ceiling, each drop striking stone with a hollow, patient sound. One bead of water slid down his knuckles. Another traced the veins on his wrist. Where it touched him, the air darkened—thin smoke curling upward, not rising like fire, but sinking, folding back into itself as though gravity had reversed.
His face was half-lit, half-swallowed by shadow.
Three scars clawed through his right eye. They were not clean lines. They were ugly. Thick ridges of torn flesh zigzagged across the orbital bone, branching and intersecting like the legs of a dead spider frozen mid-crawl. The skin there never quite healed. It pulled when he moved. Burned when the cold sank deep enough.
His remaining eye—deep purple, sharp as shattered glass—stared forward without blinking.
The mountain wind howled beyond the cave, carrying the distant groan of glaciers shifting under their own weight. Somewhere far below, an avalanche thundered like a god turning in its sleep.
Tomora clenched his fists.
Water dripped faster now, running over his fingers, pooling at his palms. The droplets didn't fall. They hovered. Trembled. Then spiraled, winding around his hands in slow, deliberate arcs. Darkness bled into the motion, staining the water until it reflected nothing at all.
Two years.
The thought did not come as words. It arrived as pressure—tight, familiar, lodged behind his ribs.
Two years since blood had soaked the mountain stone.
Two years since names had become graves.
Two years since mercy had been carved out of him piece by piece.
He exhaled.
The spiraling water collapsed, splashing harmlessly to the ground. The darkness followed, retreating into his skin as if it had never existed.
The cave widened behind him, opening onto a jagged overlook. Beyond it, snow-capped peaks stabbed into the night sky, endless and merciless. No roads. No lights. No sign of civilization—just wilderness stretching until the world curved away.
This was the only place that didn't whisper his name.
The moment shattered.
A bad memory replayed two years earlier
The forest swallowed sound.
Moonlight barely penetrated the canopy, breaking into fractured beams that slid across roots and stones. Tomora moved through it low and fast, boots barely disturbing the frost-coated leaves beneath them. His breath came shallow, controlled, each inhale measured against the ache in his chest.
Blood had dried stiff along his sleeve.
His shoulder screamed every time he shifted his weight, but pain was an old companion. Predictable. Manageable.
Voices drifted between the trees.
"…swear I saw him head east—" "Keep your eyes open. Seventy million doesn't walk itself—" "Dead or alive, remember—"
Torchlight flickered ahead.
Tomora slowed, pressing into shadow as if it might swallow him whole. He leaned against a tree thick enough to hide his silhouette. Its bark was rough, splintered beneath his fingers.
That's when he saw them.
Paper nailed to wood. To stone. To anything that stood still long enough.
WANTED.
The word screamed in red ink, smeared like it had been written in a hurry—or anger.
Below it, his face stared back at him.
Not quite right. The artist had softened his jaw, exaggerated the shadows beneath his eyes, but the scar was unmistakable. Even crude lines couldn't hide them. Three jagged slashes. A mark meant to be remembered.
70,000,000 GOLD COINS
DEAD OR ALIVE
The paper fluttered softly in the wind.
A villager whispered behind him. Another answered, fear thick in their voice. He caught fragments—monster, elemental, curse.
Tomora turned away before his hands could crush the bark beneath his grip.
A branch snapped.
The forest exploded into motion.
A weighted net dropped from above, slamming into his shoulders and wrenching him to the ground. Cold mud splashed across his face. Ropes tightened, biting into muscle.
"Got him!"
Steel flashed. A spear tip drove toward his throat.
Water surged.
It burst from the ground, not summoned gently but torn free, ripping moisture from soil and air alike. It coiled around him in a violent spiral, shredding the net into ribbons. Darkness bled into the current, sharpening it, hardening its edge.
Tomora twisted to his feet.
The first hunter didn't even scream. A blade of water curved through the air and cut clean through his armor, through flesh, through sound itself. The second raised a shield—too slow. Shadow wrapped around his arm, crushed bone, pulled him forward into a rising arc of liquid steel.
Torches fell. Fire hissed as water devoured it.
Arrows whistled from the dark. Tomora moved between heartbeats, vanishing and reappearing where the shadows were thickest. Each step left frost behind. Each strike was precise. Economical.
When it ended, the forest was quiet again.
Bodies lay scattered among the roots, steam rising faintly from cooling armor. Blood soaked into the earth, dark and anonymous.
Tomora stood at the center of it, chest heaving.
The world tilted.
His knees buckled.
He caught himself on a tree trunk, leaving a smear of red across the bark. His vision blurred. The forest swayed like it was breathing.
Not now.
He forced himself upright. Took one step. Then another.
Behind him, the wanted posters fluttered in the wind, multiplying with every village, every road, every fearful whisper.
Seventy million gold coins wasn't a bounty.
It was permission.
By the time dawn threatened the horizon, Tomora had vanished back into the mountains, leaving only silence and rumor behind.
—
The cave returned.
Tomora opened his eye.
The mountain wind carried snow into the cave mouth, scattering it across stone like ash. He rose slowly, joints stiff, scar pulling tight against his skin.
Outside, the world waited—beautiful and merciless, vast and cruel.
He stepped forward, toward the cold, toward the war his name had already started.
The darkness stirred.