Blood. The scent of it lingered like a phantom, iron-rich and sharp, clinging to the air even though the battlefield had long gone still. It wasn't his blood. Not anymore.
Arase Kaito opened his eyes to a sky he did not recognize.
The air was thick, not just with ash but with something more ancient—like sorrow woven into the wind. Every gust brought whispers, not loud enough to decipher, but close enough to haunt. His ears rang with a pressure that made his chest feel hollow, like the sky itself had forgotten how to breathe.
The trees around him didn't sway. They stood stiff and scorched, bark peeled and limbs contorted, as if frozen mid-scream. Something had died here. Not just life—but time, memory, god.
The ground cracked beneath his shifting weight, revealing roots like veins, twisted and charred, clutching the earth as if refusing to let go.
He wasn't sure if he had landed in a graveyard or had become part of one.
Above him, clouds boiled in bruised tones—purple, black, rust. Ash drifted down like cursed snowflakes, carried on the wails of wind that whispered names he had never heard. The ground beneath him was scorched earth, spattered with old blood and burnt leaves. Trees rose like skeletons, their bark blackened, limbs clawing at the sky.
He sat up with a strangled breath.
Pain. Not sharp. Dull. Deep. It lived in his bones, nestled under his ribs like a long-time tenant.
He looked down.
His hands were wrong. Smaller. Calloused in places his former life never touched. The lines on his palms etched different stories. His body felt lighter, younger—but tense, trained. Hardened.
There was a coiled readiness in his limbs, a subtle twitch in the tendons of his neck, like a blade always half-drawn. He flexed his fingers. They responded instantly, like they'd been honed for war.
But that wasn't his body. Not the one he remembered. That one bore the indulgence of whiskey, tailored suits, late-night gun smoke, and aching knuckles from negotiations that ended with blood on velvet carpets.
This one... this one felt like it belonged to a wolf raised in silence. Each breath felt too smooth. Each heartbeat, too calm.
His spine straightened without thought. His balance shifted with barely a flex. Muscle memory he never earned moved under his skin like a stranger's shadow.
It unnerved him.
Like he was borrowing someone else's fate.
He tried to speak. The voice that came out was hoarse, cracking against the dry air.
"Where... am I?"
No answer. Just the groan of the wind and the fluttering hiss of something in the dirt before him.
A blade.
Half-buried in black soil, the katana lay waiting. Its scabbard was cracked and burnt; the hilt wrapped in tattered silk, stained a darkened red. But even in its ruined state, it throbbed with presence. Like a slumbering beast, old and angry.
There was something cruelly familiar in the way it waited. Like another katana had, once. Another edge that ended a life, and began something worse.
His gaze lingered on it.
He didn't want to touch it.
But the blade looked at him—if a weapon could do such a thing. Not with sight, but with presence. A calling. As if it knew him, or had once belonged to him in another cycle.
He remembered the weight of steel. The finality of its arc. The silence it left behind.
Yet this one was different.
It didn't whisper promises.
It waited.
Patient. Expectant.
Kaito's breath hitched. Something in his chest ached—not the pain of injury, but of inevitability. Like everything that had unravelled in the garden, with Reina and the blood and the rain, had led to this moment.
And so, against reason—against memory—he reached for it.
Fingers wrapped around the tsuka.
The world fractured.
-----------
Lightning.
Rain on a stone rooftop.
A girl with silver hair crying into bloodied silk.
A mask—a half-mask, cracked and falling from a face.
A voice, cold as snow:
'You are not him. And yet you are. How curious...'
-----------
Kaito gasped and fell to his knees.
His breath came in ragged draws, fire searing his lungs. His heart pounded, wild and confused.
Then, from the edge of his mind—a sound. Not voice. Not music. Something between the two.
A blade's whisper.
[ BLADEBOUND CONTRACT: INITIATED ]
[ Soul Anchor Recognized: Shuurai, Tempest Whisper ]
[ Memory Fragmentation: Partial Host Sync: 42% ]
Kaito blinked.
He understood none of it.
His head throbbed. Not just from the memory, but from presence—a second consciousness brushing up against his own like static.
Words hovered at the edge of his thoughts: Soul Anchor, Host Sync, Shuurai. Foreign, yet familiar. They left imprints in his mind like wet footprints on polished wood.
And then the sound. That sounds again. Not a voice, not quite—but it knew him. Or thought it did.
He pressed a palm to his temple. Was he dreaming? Drugged? Cursed? Was this some kind of yakuza hell, twisted to punish him with borrowed flesh and cryptic riddles?
His breathing became shallow. The sky tilted.
He dug his fingers into the earth to anchor himself—soil crumbled beneath his nails.
Focus.
That was always the rule. Focus when everything else falls apart.
He stood. Slowly. Steadily.
Whatever this place was, it wouldn't wait for him to recover.
But one thing was clear.
He wasn't in Tokyo anymore. He wasn't even on Earth, maybe.
He was someone else. In someone else's body. And something—someone—had brought him here.
Panic bubbled beneath his skin. Not the sharp fear of dying—but the unfamiliar dread of living again, in a body that wasn't his. Was this karma? Penance? Or something crueller?
He gritted his teeth and stood. The blade, Shuurai, pulsed in his grip like a living heart.
Before he could begin to make sense of it, he heard voices.
Men.
Three of them.
Approaching.
Kaito ducked low, his body reacting faster than his mind. He slipped behind a fallen tree, peering over its charred trunk.
The men were armed in patchwork iron, faces hidden behind makeshift masks. They laughed. One kicked at a burnt corpse, checking for valuables.
"This one's fresh," said the tallest, nudging a limp figure nearby. "He's still breathing."
They moved closer. Kaito felt the tension in his shoulders coil like a spring.
His grip tightened around the hilt of the katana. Its cold aura soothed him. Focused on him.
He had killed before.
But this body... it knew how to kill.
They moved like predators, but poorly trained. Greedy, not disciplined. Still, they had numbers. Weapons. Familiarity with this terrain.
Kaito didn't have any of those advantages.
But he did have instinct.
The tall one leaned over a corpse—careless. The axe wielder was glancing around, distracted. The third—nervous, gripping his sword too tightly.
Kaito crouched lower. His breathing slowed. The blade in his hand felt lighter than air.
He hadn't fought with a katana in years.
This body, though... it welcomed the weapon like an old lover.
He waited.
Closer.
Closer.
One of them turned.
Kaito stepped forward—not rushed, not panicked. Clean.
A spear thrust.
Too late.
But his body moved before he thought.
He twisted to the side, dropping low. The spear grazed his shoulder, tearing fabric, not flesh. He rolled, came up with Shuurai in hand.
A blur.
A step.
Steel sang.
The first man's throat opened. A fan of blood arced in the dying light.
The second came screaming with a rusted axe.
Kaito ducked, sidestepped, drove his blade upward through a gap in the armour—straight into the man's heart.
He fell, gurgling.
The third ran.
Kaito did not follow.
Shuurai vibrated with hunger.
'Do not chase. Let fear do the work of blades.'
He obeyed. Not because of submission. But because he agreed.
He stood still for a moment, staring at the corpses. Blood pooled at his feet, glinting darkly under the amber sky.
Then he looked at his hands.
Hands that had once held ink pens, glass tumblers of whisky, the warmth of a woman's trembling fingers.
Now they held death.
They always had, hadn't they?
-----------
Night fell like a burial shroud.
He found a ruined shrine tucked beneath a crumbling cliff. Its roof had caved in, and the god-statue inside lay decapitated, neck blackened by fire.
Kaito lit a fire from damp wood and broken prayer tags. Smoke curled toward the stars.
The scent of burnt wood and soaked parchment filled the air. The prayer tags hissed in the flames like dying insects. He shifted closer to the warmth, body trembling—not from cold, but from the weight of memory.
The statue at the altar had once been beautiful, perhaps. A goddess of mercy, her hands once extended in blessing. Now those hands were gone, shattered. Her face had caved in from some blow, expressionless in oblivion.
He reached out and touched the base of the statue.
Still warm.
Perhaps others had sought refuge here before him.
Perhaps they had died here too.
It felt fitting.
He stared into the flames.
And he remembered.
-----------
That day.
Tokyo. Rain-slicked rooftops and neon lights blurred through taxi windows. He had stood in the garden behind their mansion, sword in hand, breathing heavily.
The last of her enemies lay dead behind him.
She stood before him. Reina. The woman he had married to protect. The woman he had never touched since that day he saved her, five years ago.
She trembled, katana raised. Rain dripping down her cheeks, or maybe those were tears. Her hands were clenched so tightly that the blade shivered.
"You're free now," he said, quietly.
Silence.
Then—
A sudden thrust.
He felt the steel sink through muscle, between ribs, cold and absolute.
His legs faltered.
He gasped, not in pain—but in mourning. Not for himself.
For her.
Because her face—God, her face—was shattered. She didn't want this.
He turned, hand bloodied, and saw her eyes.
Terror.
Shock.
Grief.
"Why... why didn't you dodge...?"
Because it was never a question of survival.
He had died long ago, the moment he chose to protect her.
He lifted his hand, brushing her silver hair back behind her ear. Her breath caught.
He patted her head gently.
"I hope you live a peaceful life. I arranged everything for you. So don't worry..."
She dropped the blade.
But too late.
"This... this isn't what I wanted... I..."
She stepped forward.
Into his arms.
And into the blade.
It passed through him, and into her.
Blood. Hers. His.
One.
-----------
The fire crackled.
Tears slid down Kaito's cheeks, unnoticed.
He didn't cry then.
Not in that life.
But this one... this body had space for sorrow.
For rage.
For unfinished things.
Shuurai's voice returned, softer now.
'You carry a wound deeper than steel. That is... useful.'
Kaito chuckled bitterly.
"You're a real bastard, aren't you?"
'I am a blade. That is all.'
Kaito lay back against the shrine's broken wall, staring through a hole in the roof.
Stars burned cold and unfamiliar above.
And he wondered if Reina had lived.
If she had wept.
If she had forgiven herself.
He had.
Because love wasn't a transaction.
It was a choice. A final one.
And his had been made.