The dirt was harder to move when it was soaked in blood. It became a heavy, clinging muck that fouled the spade and weighed down my spirit. I didn't give them proper graves. I didn't pray. I simply dragged the pieces of the men into a shallow trench at the edge of the black wheat and covered them with the earth they had hoped to steal.
By the time I finished, the moon was a silver sliver hanging over the jagged peaks of the valley. My hands were stained dark, the iron-scent of the field now inseparable from the iron-scent of the dead.
I looked at the hut. A single candle flickered in the window. Shiori was inside, waiting.
I looked down at my right hand. The skin felt tight, buzzing with a residual heat that wouldn't fade. I tried to conjure the image of that burnt rice porridge again—the memory I had fed to the Fang. I knew it had happened. I knew there had been a morning of laughter and smoke in the kitchen. But the laughter had no sound. The smoke had no smell. It was like looking at a page in a book where the ink had been washed away by rain. I knew the story was there, but I could no longer read it.
The void in my mind was physical. It was a cold, smooth stone sitting where a warm thought should be.
"Father?"
Shiori stood on the porch. She had changed into her travel cloak—a heavy wool garment I'd bought her for the winter. She carried a small bundle of supplies. She didn't ask if we were staying. She knew. She had seen the way the sky turned bruised and angry when the Fang was drawn.
"Wash your hands," she said, her voice small but steady. "The blood will dry and crack your skin."
I walked to the well, the pulley groaning in the silence. I scrubbed my hands until they were raw, but the shadow under my fingernails remained. It wasn't just dirt. It was a stain on the soul.
"We leave for the village of Orizu first," I said, not looking at her. "I need to see Sato."
"Sato is dead, isn't he?" she asked.
I paused, the cold water dripping from my elbows. "The man said they 'checked' the village. If they did, they didn't leave witnesses."
"Then why go?"
"Because if I leave him there to rot, the crows will tell everyone who lived here. I owe him a burial. And I need to see if they left anything behind."
We walked in silence. The valley, once a sanctuary, now felt like a trap. Every rustle of the black wheat was a footstep; every owl's cry was a signal. Shiori kept close to my shadow, her hand occasionally brushing against the silk-wrapped bundle strapped to my back. She flinched every time she touched it. She could feel the hunger of the steel, even through the layers of oil and cloth.
The village was a two-mile trek through the lowlands. Normally, the path was lit by the lanterns of farmers coming home late from the irrigation ditches. Tonight, it was a guttering charcoal smudge against the horizon.
The smell hit us before the sight did. Smoke and copper.
Orizu was a cluster of twenty houses built around a communal granary. Half of them were now skeletal remains, the thatch roofs consumed by a fire that had been deliberate and cruel. There were no screams. The screaming had finished hours ago.
I drew a small *Kurogane* knife—a simple tool, not a cursed thing—and gestured for Shiori to stay behind a stone grain-crusher.
"Don't move. Don't speak. If you hear me whistle twice, run back to the forest. Don't look back."
She nodded, her face pale in the moonlight. She looked like a ghost among the ruins of a world she thought was safe.
I moved through the village square. The bodies were scattered like discarded rags. Sato was near the well. They had tied him to the central post. The leader of the scavengers hadn't lied; they had been thorough. His hands were a red ruin, and his throat had been opened with a jagged, impatient stroke. His eyes were wide, fixed on the sky as if asking the stars why the peace had ended.
I knelt beside him. He had been my friend. He was the one who taught me how to tell when the black wheat was ready for harvest by the way it hummed in the wind. He was the one who gave Shiori her first wooden doll.
I reached out to close his eyes, but my hand trembled.
The heat in my arm flared. The *Shinketsu no Kiba* on my back pulsed, a rhythmic throb that matched my heartbeat. It liked this place. It liked the despair.
*He died because of you,* the blade whispered in the depths of my consciousness. *His pain is your strength. Draw me. Let me drink the lingering sorrow in this air.*
"Shut up," I hissed through gritted teeth.
I didn't draw the sword. I used my hands to dig a grave in the center of the square. It was a message to whoever came next: *The farmer is gone. The wolf has returned.*
As I threw the last shovelful of earth over Sato, a shadow shifted near the granary.
It wasn't the heavy, clumsy movement of a scavenger. It was fluid, like a ribbon of smoke caught in a draft. I dropped the shovel and went for the knife at my belt, my body tensing for a killing spring.
"A bit late for a funeral, Raigen. The soul left the body when the sun was still high."
The voice was melodic, shifting between masculine and feminine tones with an unsettling ease. A figure stepped out of the shadows of the burning granary. They wore a porcelain mask—a blank, smiling face with narrow slits for eyes. Their clothes were a patchwork of different styles: a merchant's silk vest, a soldier's greaves, a monk's prayer beads.
Jin Park.
"I thought you were in the Western Isles," I said, my grip on the knife tightening. "Dressing up as a prince or a beggar."
"The Isles got boring. Too much salt, not enough blood," Jin said, tilting their masked head. "And word travels fast in the underworld, old friend. When the 'Ashen Fangs' disbanded, we all went our separate ways, but some of us kept our ears to the ground. The Kujo family is putting a king's ransom on your head. Or rather, on the tooth in your mouth."
Jin looked at the wrapped bundle on my back. Even behind the mask, I could feel the intensity of their gaze.
"You should have burned it, Raigen. Or drowned it in the Deep Trench. You tried to play house in a valley of shadows. Did you really think they'd let you grow old?"
"How did you find me?"
"I didn't find you. I found the men Seiran sent to find you. I followed them. I watched them peel the old man back there. I was curious to see if the great Raigen Kurosawa would actually let his daughter die for a piece of land."
My vision blurred with a sudden, violent rage. I was across the square in three strides, the knife leveled at Jin's throat. They didn't flinch. They didn't even reach for their weapon—the *Uso no Ken*, the Blade of Illusions, which hung invisible and lethal at their side.
"You watched?" I growled, the tip of my knife nicking the edge of the porcelain mask. "You let them do that to him?"
"I am an observer, Raigen. That was the deal. I provide the eyes; you provide the edge. Besides," Jin stepped back, the movement so fast it looked like they had simply blinked out of existence and reappeared a yard away. "If I had intervened, I wouldn't have seen the Fang wake up. It's gotten darker, hasn't it? It's eating you from the inside out."
I lowered the knife. Jin was right. Anger was a luxury I couldn't afford.
"Seiran Kujo is coming," Jin continued, their voice turning serious. "Not just scouts. Not just Snatchers. He's moving the Iron Guard. He wants the blade to stabilize his own Mythos weapon. He thinks the Divine Blood can heal the cracks in his soul."
"I'm not going to his palace," I said. "I'm taking Shiori to the Black Peaks."
Jin laughed—a hollow, mocking sound. "The Peaks? The monks there will kill you just for carrying that curse. No, Raigen. You're not running to a sanctuary. You're going to war. And you're going to need the Fangs."
"The Fangs are gone. Morvan is insane, Akiyo is a drunk, and the rest... I don't even know if they're alive."
"Akiyo isn't a drunk. He's a 'prophet' now in the South. And Morvan... well, Morvan is still Morvan. But they'll come. If you call, they'll come. Not for you, perhaps. But for the chaos the Fang promises."
Jin reached into their vest and pulled out a small, blackened coin. They tossed it to me. I caught it; it was cold, stamped with the image of a snarling wolf.
"I'll find Lyra. She's been looking for an excuse to burn something meaningful. Meet us at the Crossing of the Three Rivers in seven days. If you're not there, I'll assume you've forgotten your own name."
Jin turned to leave, then paused. "One more thing. The girl. Shiori. She saw you kill those men, didn't she?"
"Yes."
"She didn't look away, Raigen. I was watching her. She didn't cry. She watched the spray. She watched the way the steel bit. You think you're protecting her, but you're just showing her the shape of the monster she's destined to become."
With a flick of their wrist, Jin vanished into the smoke.
I stood in the ruins of Orizu, the blackened coin heavy in my palm. The silence of the village was absolute now. The fires were dying, leaving only the smell of ash and the cold weight of the night.
I walked back to the grain-crusher. Shiori was sitting exactly where I'd left her. She looked up as I approached, her eyes searching mine.
"Is it done?" she asked.
"It's done," I said.
I reached out to touch her shoulder, but I hesitated. My hand was the hand that had snapped a man's arm and opened a dozen throats. It was the hand that held the Divine Blood Fang.
She saw my hesitation. She stood up and took my hand in hers. Her grip was small, but it was firm.
"We have to go to the Three Rivers," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "The farm... we can't go back."
"I know," she said.
She looked toward the mountains. "Father, when the sword takes a memory... does it hurt?"
The question caught in my throat. I thought of the rice porridge. I thought of the hollow stone in my head.
"No," I lied. "It doesn't hurt at all. You just... you just feel lighter."
She looked at me, and I knew she didn't believe me. She was 25 years younger than me, but in that moment, she looked older than the ruins around us.
We turned away from Orizu and began the long climb out of the valley. Behind us, the black wheat fields were a dark stain on the earth, a paradise lost to the hunger of a cursed father's blade.
As we walked, I tried to remember the color of Shiori's mother's eyes. I knew they were beautiful. I knew I had loved them. But as I reached for the memory, the Fang on my back hummed, and the image dissolved into a blur of grey mist.
I gripped the strap of the sword tighter.
I would save her. Even if, by the end of it, I was a man with no past, walking into a future of fire.
The first day of our journey had begun, and the air already tasted of iron.