The dust kicked up by the horses' hooves created a thick fog that divided the village exit into two opposite directions. The samurai left in a rage, the silence among the soldiers like a rope about to snap under the humiliation they had suffered in the square.
Red Side. Fuku Toneri stopped his horse abruptly in the heart of the forest, where the treetops blocked the light. Sweat boiled under his crimson armor. He turned to his most loyal subordinate, his gaze fixed on the way back.
"Take the report to the Third Heir," Fuku ordered. "If I know that scoundrel well, he will not accept defeat at the hands of a blind man and a revolting mob. But do not wait for orders... tonight, we return. That mask must burn or be ours."
Dark Side. Mahito Ryu stopped his band in a dark ravine. He sent no messengers. He stood in silence, staring at the blade of his katana. For him, the retreat had been merely a maneuver.
"Tonight, whatever the cost," Mahito hissed. "The image of the Second Leader depends on that porcelain. If we deliver it to the Emperor, we prove the First Heir's rottenness and clear the path for succession. The wanderer is a detail; the mask is the crown."
At night when the moon reached its zenith, the metal skin fell away. The samurai removed their armor, revealing black suits of dense thread, garments of murder. They kept only the porcelain masks, the "eyes" of the Empire. Fuku and his subordinate moved first. They leaped between treetops like specters, the red captain's mind calculating the profit of blood. "If I find Mahito killing the blind man, the game ends there," Fuku thought. "It will be another point for the Third Heir. We kill the black captain, eliminate the witness, and leave with the evidence. Two birds with one stone."
They located Afro at the inn. Through the window, Fuku saw the wanderer sitting, motionless, staring at the mask as if he were about to merge with it. Nervousness rose in his throat. "A blind peasant using imperial technology? Never." Fuku didn't wait. He left immediately, leaving his subordinate as a sentry on top of the inn's roof.
Meanwhile, Mahito's strain was already probing the perimeter. The sound of shattering glass alerted the blacks, who slid across the rooftops with inhuman speed. At the top, Mahito spotted Fuku's sentry the moment he was seen. The red guard tried to open his mouth, but Mahito was not a captain by chance.
"Sword Art: Kaatsu: first movement." Mahito thought without hesitation. He leaped across the gap between the buildings like a shadow cast by the moonlight. Fuku's sentry barely had time to expand his lungs to scream. In a draw and re-sheath movement that lasted less than a heartbeat, Mahito executed the Flow Set: Kaatsu (pressurization).
The blade didn't just cut; it pressurized the air. The steel wire pierced the guard's neck with such speed that it created an instant vacuum behind the blade. This vacuum forced the head to remain in its original position as the metal passed through, "gluing" the severed tissues together by the simple difference in atmospheric pressure.
The sentry remained standing, motionless, his head perfectly aligned, but technically dead. The blood was trapped in his windpipe by the compression of the air.
In the bedroom, Fuku already had the steel embedded in Afro's throat when the blacks invaded. The first lackey entered with the Art of Lightning, a blind horizontal cut. Fuku, in a perfect spin, dodged the body and delivered a back kick to the back of the attacker's neck. The man flew like a projectile against Afro, who just leaned his body to the side, letting the invader break the door with his own skull.
Mahito's second lackey threw a chain, trapping Fuku's leg. The red captain planted his foot on the ground, pulled the attacker into his range of action, and gave him a brutal headbutt to the face. Behind him, Afro moved like smoke, dodging the last lackey. Afro did not attack; he saw the glint of the porcelain masks and knew that every blow he struck would be stored by the Empire.
Agilely, Fuku used his enemy's own chain to hang him. Afro took advantage of the moment of bloody distraction, climbed the wall to the roof, where Mahito waited for him with the mask of his dead subordinate in his hand.
"You're done for," thought Mahito.
He launched into a lightning attack. Afro took a side step forward. Mahito's katana pierced the skull of his own subordinate who was climbing behind Afro. Mahito did not hesitate; he withdrew the steel from the bone and did two backflips as the roof below him exploded. Fuku emerged from the depths of the inn, destroying the structure where he sensed his rival's presence.
Afro tried to run, but the siege closed in. Ahead, Fuku quickly appeared with his blade at the ready. Behind, Mahito blocked his escape. The rivalry gave way to a cruel consensus: first they would kill the blind man who had humiliated them, then they would decide, over his corpse, who would take the porcelain.
Fuku stopped in front of Afro, his body flexed in the samurai's basic stance, the tip of his katana level with the wanderer's chest. Behind Afro, Mahito closed the angle, his blade unsheathed, the air around him already beginning to vibrate with the static of the Lightning. The siege was absolute.
"Give up, blind youth," growled Fuku, his voice muffled by the material of his mask. "You still have too much to live for to die for a piece of crockery."
"Give it to me," Mahito interjected, his tone cold and calculating. "I will guarantee a reward that no village in this Empire could pay."
Afro did not respond. He just "looked" in their direction. The signal was given. The two captains set off in an absurd dash, two blurs of speed converging on the center. It was katana everywhere; steel cut through the air at impossible angles, but Afro moved as if he could read their intentions before they even became nervous impulses. He dodged with minimal movements, forcing Fuku and Mahito's trajectories to collide.
CLANG!
The two samurai's katanas clashed with such violence that the impact reverberated throughout the inn's ceiling, shaking the beams to their foundations. In the neighborhood, the silence of the night was replaced by the clang of steel and fear. Inside the inn, the clerk trembled, wrapping Himari in her arms in a desperate embrace. But Himari remained motionless, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, feeling the vibration of the boards.
"Why all the drama?" murmured the girl, with a serenity that chilled the woman's blood. "He'll be fine. Trust me."
On the roof, astonishment paralyzed the samurai. At the exact moment of impact, Afro had jumped. But it wasn't an ordinary jump; it was a vertical explosion. Fuku and Mahito exchanged glances for a millisecond: as someone who was blind and emitted no Dao frequency, no detectable spiritual signature, how could he dodge their blows and achieve a jump of that height?
Afro didn't stop in midair. He stomped down hard on Fuku's forehead. The red captain looked up, eyes wide, as Afro used his skull as a platform to gain a second boost and leave that radius of action. The "stomp" was so violent that Fuku's porcelain mask cracked immediately.
Fuku staggered backward, off balance. Mahito, seeing the opening and unable to contain his instinct to eliminate his rival, did not hesitate. He executed a spinning back kick, imbued with the Art of Lightning. The blow hit Fuku squarely in the face.
The mask exploded in a dazzling flash of shards. The seal was broken. The information, proof of the failure and fratricidal conflict, traveled instantly, straight to the heart of the Empire.
While Afro ran on the neighboring roof, Mahito entered a tactical trance. The air around him contracted.
"Sword Art, Kaatsu: First Movement (incomplete)."
It was an incomplete strike, but sufficient. Mahito did not run; he slid through the vacuum his own technique created, becoming a blur of atmospheric pressure. When he reached the spot where Afro stood, the steel did not even seem to touch flesh. Afro's arm, still clutching the mask, was severed cleanly, pressurized.
Afro plummeted from the roof, falling into a muddy, dark alley. The impact was dry. He brought his remaining hand to the wound, trying in vain to stem the flow of life that was ebbing away. Mahito jumped right behind him. With a gesture of contempt, the samurai ripped off his own mask and threw it aside; he wanted Afro to see the face of his executioner, even in that twilight of death.
"I warned you," Mahito hissed.
In one final movement, he pierced Afro's throat. The sound of steel piercing the windpipe echoed off the walls of the alley. Mahito retrieved the porcelain mask from the ground and headed for the village gate, leaving the corpse behind. In the houses that formed that corridor of shadows, the residents heard the horrendous sound of Afro choking on his own blood.
"There's nothing we can do against the Empire and its dogfight," whispered an old man at the table, lowering his eyes before his children. "Hope has just died in the mud."
At the village gate, Mahito was intercepted by Fuku. The hatred between the two exploded. The clash of powers, Lightning against Wind, began to reduce the village entrance to splinters and flames. It was an obscene display of brute force.
Meanwhile, in the alley. His lungs were no longer working, but his mind was clear.
"When was the last time I looked at the stars?..." thought Afro without opening his eyes.
He took one last breath of blood, and then stopped holding back.
Afro stood up. He shook his clothes as if he had just stumbled. The wound in his throat closed with a sound of fibers weaving at high speed; the tissue regenerated, eliminating any trace of the katana's hole. He let out a sigh of relief. His only fear was that the masks were watching. Now that the samurai were fighting without them, he could finally release what was contained.
Afro watched the fight from afar. And for the first time, he opened his eyes completely.
Three seconds of black and white world.
An overwhelming spiritual wave swept through the area. It wasn't Dao; it was something older, denser. Fuku and Mahito's katanas began to glow with a frantic, sickly light, a warning sign of Demonic Activity. The two captains stopped fighting immediately. Terror froze their spines as they stared at the dark alley from which Mahito had just emerged.
"What is that...?" asked Fuku, his voice failing.
Two golden globes, incandescent like dying suns, appeared in the darkness. Afro emerged from the shadows. His mutilated forearm was still dripping blood that evaporated in midair, turning into thick, black smoke before it even touched the ground. It was a violent reaction of physics itself: that substance was Forbidden. Reality tried to purge the presence of a Hybrid of that magnitude, but Afro's body imposed its will on the void. The heat emanating from the wound made the air ripple, distorting the image of the samurai in front of him.
"You guys gave me a hard time," said Afro, his voice now resonating with authority.
"It can't be!" Mahito shouted, recoiling, his face pale. "That's the man I killed! That's..."
"By the way," Afro interrupted, staring at the two predators who now looked like prey. "My name is AFRO."