The fire crackled in the stone circle Jin had built with careful precision. Each rock placed to contain heat, reflect light, minimize smoke. His uncle had taught him proper fire-making at age seven. Now he wondered what Lord Shimura would think of the other lessons he'd learned.
Jin drew his katana across the whetstone. The steel sang—a pure note that would have pleased his ancestors. The blade itself, though. That told a different story.
Blood had etched itself into the fuller. Not deeply—good steel cleaned well—but enough to shadow the mirror finish. Mongol blood. Traitor blood. The blood of the boy driver who'd died with surrender on his lips.
𝘏𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘦𝘥.
Jin's words to Katsuo echoed in the mountain silence. True words. Honorable words. But they hadn't stopped the boy from dying.
The whetstone rasped along the blade's edge. Jin tested sharpness with his thumb, watched a thin line of red well up. Perfect. Ready for more necessary work.
He sheathed the katana, reached for his tantō. The shorter blade served different purposes. Close work. Silent work. The kind of killing that left no time for final words or dignity.
When had he started carrying it?
After the harbor raid, probably. Seven guards dead from poisoned well water, their faces blue and twisted. Not his poison—Katsuo had handled that detail. But Jin had watched them die, counted the bodies, felt satisfaction at the tactical success.
Victory through dishonor. His uncle would have preferred glorious failure.
Jin drew the tantō, examined its edge in the firelight. The blade was clean, sharp, practical. No family crest adorned the handle. No ancestral prayers blessed the steel. Just a tool for ugly necessities.
He began sharpening it anyway.
The whetstone's rhythm matched his heartbeat. Scrape and slide, scrape and slide. His hands moved automatically while his mind wandered darker paths. The techniques he'd learned from watching Katsuo. The methods that worked when honor failed.
Poison in wine cups. Throats cut in darkness. Pressure points that killed without leaving marks.
Jin paused, studied his reflection in the tantō's surface. The face looking back seemed older, harder. Still recognizably his own, but changed. Scarred by choices rather than blades.
He resumed sharpening. The steel had to be perfect.
Tomorrow would bring new moral compromises. New definitions of necessary evil. New ways to justify the unjustifiable.
The fire popped, scattered sparks into the night sky. Jin watched them rise like departing souls, then fade into darkness.
---
Three miles away, Katsuo sat cross-legged beside his own fire. No stone circle for him—just cleared earth and careful attention to wind direction. Professional habits died hard.
His katana lay across his knees, naked steel catching flame-light. The blade bore honest scars—nicks from bone, stains from use, the patina that came from regular killing. Beautiful in its own way.
Katsuo's fingers traced the ritual marks carved into his chest. Three parallel lines, burned deep by a hot iron. The price of conscience in Lord Shimizu's service. The price of trying to save those who couldn't be saved.
𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘮𝘦.
The voice came from memory, but it sounded real in the mountain darkness. Chiyo's voice, calling from Azamo village while he crouched in the trees like a coward. Eight years old, reaching toward him with trusting eyes.
He'd frozen. Watched her die. Learned the lesson her death taught.
Mercy was weakness. Hesitation was death. Good intentions killed more people than honest brutality.
Katsuo lifted his sword, tested its balance. The weapon felt perfect in his hands—extension of will, instrument of necessity. No room for doubt in its steel. No space for second thoughts.
He closed his eyes, let the memories flow.
The families he'd tried to save on the mainland. Grandmother Matsuko thanking him for attempting their rescue, even as Shimizu's other retainers cut her down. The children who'd trusted his promises, died for his idealism.
Twenty-three people. He'd counted them at the mass grave.
Then the voyage to Tsushima, seeking clean death in foreign service. Instead finding foreign invasion, familiar choices, the same fatal mercy that killed everyone he touched.
Chiyo's face superimposed over the others. Her voice joining the chorus of his failures.
𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘮𝘦?
"Because I was weak," he whispered to the darkness.
The admission felt strange on his tongue. Not because it was false—he'd known his weakness for years. Strange because it was the first time he'd spoken it aloud.
Weakness had killed them. His hesitation, his conscience, his stupid belief that there was honor in half-measures. Every dead child proved the same lesson: good men got good people killed.
Katsuo opened his eyes, found his reflection in the sword blade. The face looking back showed no weakness now. Hard eyes, scarred skin, the kind of controlled expression that stopped questions before they formed.
This face could do what needed doing. This face wouldn't hesitate when innocents depended on quick action.
Even if those innocents feared him afterward.
He drew his whetstone from his pack, began sharpening the katana's edge. Each stroke removed imperfection, brought the steel closer to ideal cutting geometry. Mathematics made manifest in metal.
Like the calculations he'd learned to make about human life. How many enemies to kill to save one ally. How much pain to inflict to extract vital intelligence. How far to go to ensure victory.
The equations were simple once you removed sentiment from the variables.
Scrape and slide went the whetstone. Scrape and slide.
Jin's face flickered through his mind—those eyes full of righteous judgment, that voice condemning practical solutions. The Ghost still believed in pretty ideals, still thought honor mattered more than results.
He'd learn. War taught everyone eventually.
Katsuo tested the blade's edge against his thumb. Perfect sharpness, ready for tomorrow's necessities. He sheathed the weapon, drew his tantō for similar attention.
The smaller blade had different purposes. Close work when honor wasn't an option. Interrogation when information mattered more than dignity. The kind of killing that left no room for last words.
His fingers found the hidden vial in his belt pouch. Concentrated extract from a particular mushroom, tasteless in sake, fatal within minutes. Insurance against capture, tool for eliminating problems.
Jin would call it dishonorable. Katsuo called it efficient.
The tantō's edge gleamed like captured starlight. Katsuo studied his distorted reflection in the curved steel—features warped but recognizable. Still his face, despite everything it had seen and done.
Still the boy who'd wanted to save everyone.
The memory of that boy felt like examining a historical artifact. Interesting for what it revealed about the past, irrelevant to present necessities.
Chiyo's voice whispered again from the darkness. 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘮𝘦.
"I tried," Katsuo told her ghost. "It killed you anyway."
He resumed sharpening the tantō. Tomorrow would bring new tactical problems, new moral flexibility, new definitions of acceptable loss.
The blade had to be perfect.
Sparks from his fire rose into the night sky, then winked out like dying hopes. Katsuo watched them fade with professional dispassion.
Everything burned eventually. The trick was controlling what remained in the ashes.
---
In their separate camps, both men worked by firelight. Steel sang against stone in different rhythms—Jin's careful, traditional strokes learned from family teachings; Katsuo's efficient, mechanical precision born from hard experience.
Each sharpened more than weapons. Each prepared for a war that would test principles neither man was certain he still possessed.
The mountains held their secrets close. Wind through pine needles sounded like whispered prayers, or maybe confessions.
Both men sharpened their blades until the steel could split falling leaves.
Neither man slept well when the work was done.