SAI SHINU
"You ready?" he asked.
"I didn't wait for you to be," I replied.
He lunged.
He held a sword; behind him the others mirrored his intent. Ten men in total. I'd been right—cowards hiding in numbers.
I spun, building momentum, then activated Shadow Step. In an instant I was behind them. One swing of Azure Valley and three heads hit the dirt before they even registered the move.
They all carried the same blade—cheap, angry things. They turned as one, and I fed fire into my sword. The slash widened, the flame doubling the reach of the steel. There is a strange, terrible joy in the certainty of a kill—the clean arc, the way fate answers when you push it.
Only one of them ever deserved what he'd get. In the end, it didn't matter. Everyone paid.
My Flame Slash tore through four of them; three remained—him and two others who looked like brothers. Pale faces, trembling hands. I let the fire die back and stood before the three. Their fear was worn like a second skin; anger still flared in their eyes, the stubbornness of men who thought violence made them whole.
I didn't want to show everything I had. I couldn't expose too much—not yet. So I smiled, soft, and whispered, "Astral Gate — Act Two."
The ground around us swallowed light. Darkness pooled at our feet while the sky above bleached to white. I'd seen Act One before, but Act Two had a different edge to it. Whatever I pulled here didn't just move me; it dragged things with me. When my gaze landed on those men I understood the difference: two of them—those twins—were not simply present because they were with me. Act Two had dragged their echoes into the space with us.
If I'd triggered Act Three, he would have come too. The thought made me laugh, low and cold. This ability kept getting better.
They stared at me like trapped animals. You don't get yanked into another dimension every day; terror distorts a face quickly. I shadow-stepped again, slipped behind them, and drove my blade through both their necks. The Crimson Rift answered by itself: small fragments of their heads began to unmake, disintegrating into petals—purple roses—before collapsing into the void. Blood spattered the white floor.
When the Astral Gate began to fade and time pressed back into its ordinary rhythm, one man remained on his knees, useless and hollow. His eyes were fixed on me, wide with a fear that tasted like vomit in my mouth.
"You—what did you do to them?" he croaked.
"Oh, you want to know where they are?" I breathed, and my whisper was a blade. "Astral Gate — Act One."
The world folded. We were in that vast, empty universe for only a breath—long enough for me to wish I could leave them to suffer there forever—but that kind of cruelty isn't mine to keep. The gate closed; the white sky, the endless floor, the roses—all winked out. Reality snapped back.
He didn't speak. He couldn't. I put the tip of my blade to his throat and felt the tremor of his breath.
"If you suffer in all your lifetimes," I told him, and then I drove the blade through his neck.
The head fell clean. Crimson ran, and I sheared the blood from the blade with a practiced sweep, sliding Azure Valley back into its sheath at my lower back. The crimson pooled at my boots and darkened the dust, then washed into the earth as the last echoes of the gate faded.
I scanned the street—no witnesses, no patrols. The city hummed on, blind to the edge it had skirted. I put my hands in my pockets for a moment, letting the heat drain from my palms, and then walked back toward the market, toward the small tavern where the boy waited.