The sky over Karushi no Chi was the color of a bruised lung.
In this desolate corner of the Valgarde Empire, the wind didn't blow; it wheezed, carrying the metallic tang of dried blood and the fine, gray dust of pulverized gravestones. This was the "Land of Silent Blood," a graveyard of a thousand failed rebellions, where the soil was so saturated with ancient iron that no edible crop could take root.
Raigen Kurosawa stood outside his makeshift hut, his boots sinking into the ashen permafrost. He was a mountain of a man, his shoulders broad but slumped as if carrying an invisible sky. His hair, once coal-black, was now shot through with the white of a premature winter.
In his hands, he held a wooden doll—a crudely carved thing with a fraying red ribbon.
"Hikari," he whispered.
The name felt like a smooth stone in his mouth, but when he tried to visualize the face associated with it, he found only a blur of sunlight and golden wheat. He knew she was his daughter. He knew he loved her more than his own life. But the *why* was beginning to leak out of his mind, drained by the hungry steel strapped to his waist.
The silence of the wasteland was broken by a high-pitched, mechanical whine.
Raigen didn't look up. He didn't need to. His senses, honed by decades of slaughter, picked up the vibration of magitek engines long before they appeared on the horizon.
Three "Extraction Units" from the Astra Dominion crested the nearby ridge. They were sleek, multi-legged walkers, looking like predatory insects made of chrome and glass. Behind them marched a squad of "Recoverers"—mercenaries wearing pressurized suits and carrying pulse-rifles, their faces hidden behind the emotionless visors of the Dominion.
They weren't here for conquest. They were here for the scrap.
"Scavengers," Raigen spat, the word thick with bile.
Astra needed the "Cursed Iron" found in Karushi. The remnants of the swords shattered during the Great Purge were the primary ingredient for the Black Neuroshards. To the Dominion, the history of Valgarde was just raw material for their digital drugs.
The lead walker hissed to a halt ten yards from Raigen's shack. A loudspeaker crackled to life, the voice synthesized and patronizing.
"Inhabitant of Sector 4-G. You are occupying a high-resonance mineral zone. This area has been designated for Astra Dominion extraction. Vacate the premises immediately. Resistance will be met with terminal causal correction."
Raigen didn't move. He tucked the wooden doll into his belt and placed his hand on the hilt of Shinketsu no Kiba. The sword didn't hum; it pulsed, a slow, thumping rhythm that matched his own heart.
"This is a grave," Raigen said, his voice a low growl that seemed to vibrate the very air. "You don't dig in a grave."
The mercenaries didn't reply with words. The squad leader raised a hand, and the pulse-rifles whined as they began to cycle.
"Target identified as a non-citizen combatant," the synthesized voice announced. "Commencing extraction."
Raigen sighed. He hated the modern world. He hated how they turned killing into an administrative task.
He gripped the hilt.
*Don't do it,* a small, fading voice in the back of his mind pleaded. *Every time you draw it, a piece of her dies.*
"I know," Raigen whispered back. "But if I don't, there will be no one left to remember her at all."
He drew the blade.
The air around the shack didn't just turn cold; it turned heavy, as if the oxygen had been replaced by liquid lead. Shinketsu no Kiba—the Divine Blood Fang—slipped from its sheath, a jagged, crimson-edged slab of iron that looked more like a frozen scream than a sword. The violet runes etched into the flat of the blade flared with a sickening light.
The mercenaries fired.
Cyan bolts of concentrated causal energy tore through the air, designed to unmake the physical structure of anything they hit.
Raigen didn't dodge. He swung the sword in a wide, horizontal arc.
The "Ketsueki no Kabe"—The Wall of Blood.
The incoming bolts didn't hit him; they hit the invisible pressure wave generated by the sword. The causal energy was absorbed, turning the violet runes into a brilliant, blinding white.
Raigen moved.
He didn't run. He leaped, a blur of gray and steel that defied his age. He landed on the cockpit of the lead walker. The reinforced glass, designed to withstand atmospheric pressure, shattered instantly under the weight of his intent.
He thrust the blade downward.
The walker didn't just break; it *withered*. The metal turned to rust in seconds as the sword drank the kinetic energy of the machine. The pilot inside didn't even have time to scream before his life-force was siphoned into the runes.
Raigen kicked off the dying machine, spinning in mid-air.
"Inga: Danzetsu!" (Causality: Severance!)
He brought the sword down toward the ground. He didn't hit the mercenaries. He hit the *concept* of their safety. The earth split open in a jagged fissure, a shockwave of raw, cursed energy tearing through the squad.
The pressurized suits offered no protection. The men inside didn't die from wounds; they died because their hearts simply forgot how to beat. Their causal threads were snapped by the overwhelming weight of the sword's curse.
The two remaining walkers tried to retreat, their legs scuttling frantically.
Raigen stood in the center of the carnage, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His eyes were no longer gray; they were glowing with a feral, violet light.
"Run," he croaked. "Tell your masters that the Fangs still have teeth."
The machines vanished over the ridge, leaving behind only the smoking remains of their companion and the silent bodies of the mercenaries.
The silence returned to Karushi, but it was a different kind of silence. It was the silence of a debt being collected.
Raigen felt a sudden, sharp pain in his temples. He collapsed to one knee, using the sword as a crutch. His vision blurred. He felt something sliding away from him, like sand through a sieve.
He reached for his belt, his fingers fumbling for the wooden doll.
He pulled it out and stared at it.
He saw the frayed red ribbon. He saw the crude carvings.
"Beautiful," he whispered. "A fine piece of work."
He paused.
"I wonder… who gave this to me?"
The memory of the golden wheat field was gone. The sound of a little girl's laughter was replaced by a hollow, whistling wind. He knew the doll was important. He knew it was the reason he lived in this hell. But the name—the name he had whispered only minutes ago—was a blank space in his mind.
"Hikari?" he tried.
Nothing. The name meant nothing. It was just a collection of syllables.
He sat in the ash, the Divine Blood Fang resting across his lap. The sword was silent now, sated by the lives it had just consumed.
Raigen looked at the dead mercenaries. He looked at the high-tech ruins of the Astra walker. He saw the contrast between his old, rusted world and their cold, bright future.
He realized then that the Dominion wouldn't stop. They didn't just want the iron; they wanted to erase the past so they could own the future. They wanted everyone to be like him—men without memories, spirits without a home, living only for the next moment of survival.
"Astra," Raigen muttered, a new kind of fire beginning to smolder in his chest. It wasn't the fire of protection anymore. It was the fire of vengeance. "You took my past. I think I'll take your future."
He stood up, sheathing the sword with a decisive *clack*.
He didn't go back into his shack. He began to walk north, toward the border of the Astra Dominion.
In Nexa City, Ryo Kanzaki was finishing a chapter about a man who couldn't remember his own sins.
In a village in Hwarin, Rai was watching the water flow and wondering if he had the strength to hold back the tide.
And in the wasteland of Valgarde, a man with no name and a hungry sword began his march toward the lights of civilization.
The manuscript was writing itself now, and the ink was turning into a flood.