I woke gasping.
The air was too thin. The light too soft. The scent of rain and smoke, distant and real, filled my lungs like I'd never breathed before. My chest heaved—fragile, small. My hands trembled. Not weathered and calloused as I remembered. Slim. Pale. A boy's hands.
I sat up slowly, dizzy, my heart thudding like a drum in a festival.
A wooden ceiling. Faded paper walls. The creak of floorboards in another room. Outside, a rooster crowed.
I was in a house. A poor one. Clean but worn.
And I was alive.
Again.
I stumbled to a basin and saw my reflection in the water.
Not my face.
Not the man I had been—grizzled, hard-eyed, scarred by years of blood and betrayal.
A boy stared back. Fifteen at most. Black hair. Pale skin. Eyes too wide to carry the weight of what I remembered.
And yet I remembered everything.
My clan.
The wars.
The shrine.
Her.
All of it.
But this boy… he was no warrior. No daimyo. No cultivator.
His body was thin. Undernourished. His arms carried no strength. His spirit… barely formed.
I had died. And yet I hadn't.
I didn't know his name.
I didn't know why I was here.
Only that I had been given a second life—and that peace, for now, cloaked this village like a fragile dream.
There were voices outside. Distant laughter. Footsteps on soil. A fire crackling in a nearby hearth.
I closed my eyes.
Not in prayer.
Just in disbelief.
The smell of smoke came before the first scream.
I knew that scent.
Not just in this life, but in the one before.
It curled in the wind like memory—acrid, bitter, heavy with the taste of death.
I stood outside the house as the sun broke over the mountains, my hands still wet from morning chores, when the wind shifted.
And I remembered.
Not clearly. Not like a soldier recalling a battle.
But like a ghost remembering the sound of its own name.
---
My name is Takayama Riku.
In another life, I had carved kingdoms from dust.
In another life, I had bent the knee only to betrayal.
In another life, I had died. Broken. Bleeding. Alone.
But now, I was fifteen.
The son of a farmer and a seamstress.
Or so I'd thought.
---
My mother, Takayama Haruka, had eyes like dawn after a storm—gentle, but unblinking.
She knew how to soothe wounds without asking their cause.
She had found me wandering the riverbank five years ago, delirious and half-dead.
She had taken me in without hesitation.
Called me hers before I could speak my name.
My father, Takayama Jirou, was a quiet man.
Strong despite his age.
The kind of strength that didn't ask to be seen.
People in the village called him Jirou-dono with respect, but never pressed about his past.
One winter night, I saw him practicing with a rusted yari behind our house—moving like someone who once danced with death and called it art.
He had once been great.
And like me… he had walked away from that life.
But greatness does not die quietly.
And the past does not sleep.
---
The raid began before the morning bell.
I saw the smoke rise from the southern road—too much, too fast.
I felt the earth tremble, not with thunder, but the march of boots.
Screams followed.
Metal.
Fire.
Despair.
I ran.
Burst into the house. My father was already armed—his old armor pulled from beneath the floorboards.
It didn't shine like legend, but it fit him like memory.
My mother stood at his side, calm, eyes wet but clear.
"You knew," I whispered.
He nodded. "The signs were there. This region is no longer safe."
My voice trembled. "We have to warn the others—"
"Too late," he said. "We've done what we could. The three of us must leave now."
I didn't argue.
---
We fled through the northern path, across the rice fields.
My father moved like a shadow, guiding us through places I hadn't known existed.
We didn't stop.
Not when we heard screams.
Not when we saw flames rise behind us.
I looked back only once—
And saw the village I had loved—this peaceful lie of a life—drowning in smoke.
---
By midday, we reached the outer woods near the next village—larger, fortified.
Safe, for now.
My father said we would begin again.
My mother held my face and whispered,
"You were never just a boy. I knew it the moment I found you."
And then, they left me to rest beneath the trees.
---
That's when I saw her.
She was sitting on a stump, back to me, humming a tune without rhythm, her voice more rasp than song. Her hair was a tangle of gray and black, thick with leaves. Her kimono was mismatched, patchwork cloth tied with vines instead of a sash.
"You're late," she said, without turning.
I froze.
"Excuse me?"
She chuckled—dry, like parchment tearing. "You're always late, daimyo. Always a step behind your fate. One kingdom falls, and you wake in another, waiting for the world to come find you."
I stepped closer, wincing at every movement. "Who are you?"
She turned slowly. Her face was cracked with age, but her eyes were ageless. Pale. Piercing. Not blind, but something else—like she could see through you.
"Names are for people who still have roots," she said. "I've long since burned mine."
"I don't have time for riddles."
She tilted her head. "You think this world's giving you time?"
I fell silent.
She stood, surprisingly tall despite the frailty in her limbs, and walked a slow circle around me. Her bare feet didn't make a sound on the ash-covered ground.
"They tried to kill you," she said. "Again. Funny, isn't it? No matter how far you fall, the earth won't take you."
"Who are you?" I asked again, voice low.
She stopped in front of me and stared, eyes boring into mine.
"You carry it still," she whispered. "The regret. The shame. The memory of a sword too proud to rust."
I felt my hands clench. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't lie." Her tone didn't change, but the air around her seemed to still. "You remember the shrine. The blood. The betrayal. You remember her."
"Amaterasu…" I spat the name.
She smiled—crooked, knowing. "The light always burns brightest before it betrays."
I stepped back.
"What are you?"
She raised a hand and tapped my chest with one brittle finger. "Not what I am. What you are. That's what matters."
I stared at her.
She continued. "You think this was a mistake. A new life. A second chance. It's not."
"Then what is it?"
She leaned in so close I could smell dirt and smoke on her breath.
"It's the long road back to the beginning. And you're walking it blind."
The words struck something in me. Like a blade scraping against old iron.
"I don't have power," I said. "I'm not a cultivator anymore. I'm a broken man with a broken past."
"Exactly," she said, eyes glowing. "You've been emptied. And now, you can be filled."
"Filled with what?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she stepped back and looked to the blackened sky. "You want to know the truth? It's not in the gods. It's not in the sword. It's not even in the blood."
She turned to me.
"It's in you."
Something shifted in the air between us. A silence heavier than before. Like the pause before a storm.
"You don't know anything about me," I said, but my voice lacked conviction.
"I know everything about you," she replied. "I know the boy who knelt in the dark, asking for strength. I know the man who rose and built a clan with fire in his veins. I know the fool who trusted the sun."
I felt cold.
She stepped closer again.
"And I know the man who will break the wheel. Not through force. But through truth."
A gust of wind stirred the trees.
"You'll find it," she said softly. "One day. When the blood is fresh and the sky is red. When the ones you love turn away, and the ones you hate stand beside you. That's when it will return to you."
"What will?"
She smiled again. "The part of you that never died."
I stared at her, unsure whether I felt fear or understanding.
Then she turned and began walking into the trees.
"Wait," I called after her. "Why tell me this?"
She didn't stop. Didn't turn.
"Because the fire hasn't started yet."
And then she was gone.
Vanished.
Just like that.
I stood there for a long time, wind whispering through the charred forest, blood crusted to my skin, the madwoman's words echoing louder than any scream.
I didn't understand them. Not fully.
But something inside me had begun to shift.
Not power.
Not rage.
Just… clarity.
Like a wound I'd stopped pretending wasn't there.
I turned back toward the village—toward what was left of it.
There would be more pain.
More loss.
But there was still breath in my lungs.
And I would not waste it.
Not this time.