The rising sun was already beating down on the village courtyard, with no shadows to hide in. The Crimson Samurai cleared his throat, his voice projected toward the closed windows.
"And by decree of the Third Heir, justice has been served. The looters have been eliminated. Order returns to this land."
There was a heavy silence. Some peasants bowed their heads in gratitude, but a woman in the back spat on the ground. "Where were you two winters ago?" she muttered. "My son won't come back with decrees."
The Samurai did not waver. He looked to the center of the square, where Afro stood, motionless as an ebony statue, holding the porcelain mask. "You," said the Samurai, pointing with his red glove. "Blind youth. What you hold in your hand is property of the Empire. A recording device. Hand it over now..." The Empire thanks you for your courage."
But the sound reached Afro's ears like the buzzing of a distant insect, Afro's mind had retreated into the shadows of the previous dawn. He saw Fume's face, bathed in moonlight.
"You're new around here, aren't you, wanderer? That porcelain face the sorcerer wore... You've never seen anyone wear it because those who wear it don't want to be seen. They are part of the Empire, and that's nothing new to anyone who has heard about the empire before, but that's the least important thing here..."
"Listen carefully: the mask records actions. Everything that happened in the forest, your every movement, every technique you used... it's all engraved inside. It's a visual scroll that never ends... Don't break it! If you break it now, the information will travel straight to the empire... they will know what you are. They will know about your 'peculiarity'. If you want to continue being a ghost, you have to find a way to extinguish it. Clear the memory before breaking the vase. How? I don't know. I'm just a demon like a part of you."
The perception of danger was now absolute. He had never heard of it before that dawn, but the logic was cruel: the mask was an information trap. If the Samurai took it, the empire would see. If Afro broke it there, the essence of his secret, his Hybrid side, would spread like smoke to the Empire.
Afro clutched the object, desperately searching for a blind spot in that system. For the first time, Afro hesitated about how to kill the three men in front of him, thinking only of how to erase the proof that he existed. He needed time. And he needed silence.
Afro, still with the echo of Fume's voice throbbing in his temples, felt the Crimson Samurai reach out his hand. His palm open, waiting for the trophy.
"I just wanted to sleep..." thought Afro, his hand gripping the mask with a force that almost cracked the porcelain. "But, apparently, I'll have to kill more."
Suddenly, the atmosphere there was cut by the stampede of hooves. The people scattered like ashes in the wind.
"MOVE AWAY IN THE NAME OF THE EMPIRE!"
Three more samurai, but these wore black, opaque armor that seemed to swallow the morning sunlight. The three red samurai reacted immediately, their hands glued to the hilts of their katanas.
"What is this?" growled the leader of the reds. "The case has already been taken over by decree of the Third Heir!"
The leader of the black samurai did not back down. He simply held out a black scroll bearing the silver seal of the capital. The Empire's bureaucracy was a snake biting its own tail. Two groups, two orders, the same hunger for information.
The black samurai advanced directly toward Afro, ignoring the red ones. One of them stretched out his arm to snatch the mask from Afro's hand, but he, in a fluid and almost imperceptible movement, dodged the hand. The porcelain passed millimeters from the black soldier's gloved fingers.
"What is this?" hissed the black samurai, his eyes shining behind his visor.
Afro saw the opening. The clash of egos in front of him was the distraction he needed to buy time and figure out how to silence the object.
"After all," said Afro, looking from one group to the other, "to whom should I hand it over?"
The question was a match in a powder keg.
"To me!" shouted the leader of the reds. "I got here first. Justice is mine!"
Afro feigned a movement to hand it over to the red, a slow gesture to attract everyone's attention. Before the red could close his fingers on the porcelain, the leader of the blacks, in a movement of brute authority, interposed himself and took the lead.
To validate their authority before the crowd and their rivals, both showed their faces. They wanted the people to see who was in charge.
First, the leader of the blacks removed his iron mask. He was about 30 years old, with angular, cold features and a scar cutting across his left eyebrow. "Mahito Ryu. Directly responsible for the children's case. The Third Heir does not trust provincial patrols to handle state secrets."
The leader of the reds, feeling humiliated before the village, also removed his helmet, revealing an older face, marked by the sun and resentment. "Fuku Toneri. And I don't take orders from dogs from the capital who arrive late for the cleanup."
Afro watched the two commanders. The tension between Mahito and Fuku was not just a disagreement; it was an invisible barrier of hatred, a tactical pressure. Afro's gaze, however, shifted away from the samurai and turned to the porcelain mask in his hands, feeling the weight of that evidence.
It was then that a sound broke his concentration: the drawn-out grumbling of an old peasant in the background. "Here they come again..." hissed the elder of that area to anyone who would listen."The time of succession must have arrived. They're at war for votes, doing everything they can to win the trust of the shogun or the emperor. It's a dogfight... each one ordering their troops to do as they please, just to show who bites harder."
Afro processed the information instantly. What appeared to be a rescue mission was, in fact, a dispute over assets. The Empire wasn't there for the children; it was there for itself. The conflict between the red and black samurai wasn't a miscommunication, it was a power struggle. With this new information, Afro's strategy changed: he no longer needed to defend himself, he just needed to expose the rift that already existed between them.
"Did you both come for justice?" Afro asked. His voice was cold, devoid of emotion.
"Yes," they replied, almost in unison, their hands firmly on the hilts of their swords.
"Then why are you arguing over who gets the mask?" Afro tilted his head. "If justice is your goal, the fate of the object should be irrelevant, as long as the truth is achieved."
"We work for different heirs," growled Fuku Toneri, the red one. "The glory of the capture belongs to my lord."
"But do not your heirs both work for the same Empire?" Afro fired the question like an arrow. "One of you wants to hide something from the other. It is the only logical conclusion. We all here know what porcelain masks do. They do not hold glory; they hold evidence."
The murmurs in the square grew like a tide. The people began to close in, tightening the circle around the horses.
"If there is nothing to hide," Afro proposed, lifting his mask, "let us break the object here and now. Let the information leak out impartially."
SCHWING!
Fuku Toneri's steel sprang from its sheath. The glint of the blade was a warning cry. Mahito Ryu, the black man, drew his own blade immediately, but pointed it at Fuku, not Afro.
"I think we already know who wants to hide something," hissed Mahito. "That's why you came so early, Toneri. You were in a hurry."
"Early?" Afro interrupted, catching the word in midair. "Are you admitting that there's a set time for saving lives in danger? That your justice has a timer that only goes off when it suits you?"
The square exploded. Afro's comment was the trigger that was missing.
"Twelve children have disappeared in two winters!" shouted a carpenter at the front of the line. "You only show up now because it's election time! Because your Heir wants to look like a saint!"
"Get out of here!" shouted a mother, throwing a rock that hit Mahito's armor. "Take the children who were saved to their villages!"
The samurai, caught in a trap of logic and popular fury, found themselves powerless. If they killed the people there, the news would reach the capital and destroy their heirs' chances. Humiliated by their own rhetoric, Mahito and Fuku gave the order to retreat. The pounding of the fleeing horses' hooves was the sweetest sound the village had heard in years.
"I will take this mask," announced Afro, his voice cutting through the murmur of the crowd. "But I will not hand it over to hands that tremble with ambition. I myself will go to the capital. I will deliver the mask and explain the situation directly to those in charge. I will say that the justice of the province cannot be bought with votes."
"Yes!" shouted the grumbling elder, his chest now puffed out. "He speaks for us! If the samurai are no good, let the blind man go and tell the truth to the Heir!"
The approval was unanimous. In a spontaneous gesture, the villagers began to approach him. Hands calloused from the fields and labor reached out to him. Not to attack him, but to offer. "Here, wanderer," said a woman, placing a handful of coins in Afro's bag.
Afro let out a long sigh, feeling the weight of the last 24 hours fall from his shoulders. The mask was still in his hand, silent, but he knew that the danger of "extinguishing" it was still there. But for now, immediate danger had been overcome by philosophy.
"Phew..." Afro muttered to himself as he turned to walk back to the inn. "Finally... I can go to sleep."
The inn in that area of the village, once a place of whispers and fear, now overflowed with the sound of clinking clay mugs and loud laughter. Afro sat in a corner, the shadows protecting his weariness. He had drunk heavily on the house's tab. The alcohol was not a pleasure, it was an attempt to drown out the frequency of the mask that still throbbed in his bag.
The bartender from the night before approached him. She brought a new jug, but her gaze lingered on Afro longer than necessary. She saw in him the mystery that had saved the village, "the man who faced steel with philosophy."
"I've never seen anyone silence a Samurai with just philosophy," she said, serving him and letting her hand brush lightly against his shoulder. "The village wants to celebrate you, wanderer. I do too... if you want a quieter place to rest."
The rejection was immediate and dry. "My rest is not found in soft beds," said Afro, his voice hoarse. "Save your kindness for those who still believe in peace."
The girl took a step back, surprise and wounded pride painted on her face.
Afro looked at Himari, who was eating serenely and happy beside him. "However," Afro continued, softening his tone for a brief second, "I ask you a favor.
"Sleep with Himari tonight. In your room. I have something to do."
The waitress nodded, realizing that Afro's protection extended beyond dialectical logic. She took the girl to the upper rooms, leaving Afro alone with his mug and his "porcelain scroll."
The inn finally fell silent. The fire in the fireplace was just a pile of dying embers. Afro went up to his room, the silence so thick that he could hear his own blood pounding. He sat on the floor, his posture rigid, his hands crossed over his chest. The porcelain mask lay on the floor.
"How am I going to extinguish this information?" murmured Afro, his voice laden with a stress that rarely showed.
He sighed deeply, a long, heavy sound, as he picked up the object. The weight of the porcelain was greater now. Afro raised the mask to his eyes, feeling the grooves that resembled those of an Oni mask.
"If I remember correctly, this is also an Oni mask..." Afro narrowed his eyes, a dangerous thought crossing his mind. "What if I, by chance, wore it?"
He didn't have time to finish the thought.
CRASH!
The window glass exploded in a shower of shards that sparkled like diamonds in the moonlight. A black silhouette, swift as a shadow, crossed the opening. The entity landed silently and, in one continuous motion, pointed the cold steel of the katana directly at Afro's throat.
The intruder did not speak. The glint of the blade reflected the porcelain mask Afro still held.
Afro did not retreat. He did not even tighten his grip on his sword. Instead, a slow, imperceptible smile spread across his lips. He was not surprised.
"I knew you would come," said Afro, his voice low and deadly calm.