The ascent was a slow, rhythmic torture. The foothills of the Black Peaks were not made of earth, but of shale and ancient, jagged stones that shifted under every footstep like the teeth of a dying beast. Behind us, the Orizu valley was swallowed by a thick, grey mist—a shroud for the graves I had dug.
Shiori walked five paces behind me. She was silent, her breathing synchronized with the clatter of her walking stick against the rocks. Every time the wind picked up, carrying the scent of pine and damp earth, I expected her to ask if we were safe. She never did. She knew that safety was a lie we had told ourselves for five years, and the truth was now strapped to my back, heavy and cold.
The *Shinketsu no Kiba* was waking up. I could feel it through the layers of oil-soaked silk. It didn't just sit there; it pulsed. It was a low-frequency vibration that traveled through my spine and settled in my jaw. It was hungry again. The three lives I had fed it in the field had been a mere appetizer.
My left arm felt numb, the fingers tingling with the phantom sensation of a thousand needles. It was the price of the 'passive' bond. To carry a Cursed Blade was to invite a parasite into your nervous system. It sharpened my senses, yes. I could hear the scuttle of a beetle fifty yards away. I could feel the heat radiating from Shiori's body. But in exchange, it was slowly drinking the warmth from my own blood.
"We rest here," I said, stopping by a natural overhang of granite.
Shiori didn't argue. She slumped against the rock, her face flushed with exhaustion. I watched her as I gathered a few dry branches. She was trying to be strong, trying to be the daughter of a farmer, but her eyes kept drifting to the bundle on my back.
"Does it ever stop humming?" she asked softly.
I paused, a branch snapping in my hand. "You can hear it?"
"I can feel it in my teeth," she said, hugging her knees to her chest. "It sounds like someone screaming underwater."
I looked away. If she could feel the resonance, the bond was deeper than I had feared. The blood of the Kurosawa line was a conductor for the curse. Seiran Kujo knew this. He didn't just want the steel; he wanted the lineage that could keep it from shattering.
I started a small fire, keeping the flames low to avoid drawing eyes. As the warmth filled the small space, I reached into my pack and pulled out a piece of dried venison. I handed it to her. She took it, but didn't eat.
"Father," she said, her voice trembling for the first time. "I can't remember the song."
A cold dread settled in my stomach. "What song?"
"The one Mother used to sing. About the horses in the clouds. I tried to hum it to myself while we were walking, but... the notes are gone. There's just a grey space where they used to be."
I felt as if the ground had vanished beneath me. The Fang had taken a memory. But I was the one holding the hilt. I was the one who had made the contract.
"The blade," I whispered, the words tasting like ash. "It didn't take it from you. It couldn't have."
"But it's gone," she insisted, a tear finally tracking through the dust on her cheek. "I remember her face, and I remember the garden, but the song is just... hollow."
I stared into the fire. The rules of the *Noroi no Ken* were supposed to be absolute. The wielder pays the price. But Shiori was part of me. In the eyes of the Divine Blood, we were one organism. By feeding it my memories, I had opened a door, and now it was reaching through me to pluck the fruit from her mind as well.
I looked at my hands. They were trembling. I was a man who had killed dozens to keep her safe, yet I was the very thing erasing her mother from her heart.
*A fair trade,* the blade hissed in the back of my mind. *What is a song compared to the power to keep her heart beating? Give me more, and I will make you a god of the mountain.*
"Shut up," I growled.
"Father?" Shiori looked at me, startled.
"Nothing," I said, forcedly softening my voice. "Eat. We have to move before dawn."
I stood up and walked to the edge of the overhang, looking out into the darkness. My sharpened senses picked up something. Not the wind. Not an animal.
Metal. The clink of a buckle. The soft, rhythmic sliding of a scabbard against leather.
They were close.
"Put out the fire," I commanded.
Shiori didn't ask why. She instantly kicked dirt over the small flame, plunging us into absolute blackness. To her, the world disappeared. To me, it shifted into a spectrum of grey and deep indigo. The curse flooded my retinas, turning the night into a playground of shadows.
Three of them. They were moving up the slope with practiced silence. Two carried *Kurogane* spears, but the one in the lead had something different. A *Elemental Seal* blade. I could see the faint, orange glow of a heat-seal pulsing in the hilt—a Fire-Cutter.
These weren't scavengers. They were mercenaries from the Southern Marches. Professionals.
"Stay behind the rock," I whispered to Shiori. I didn't wait for her response. I stepped out into the open, the silk-wrapped bundle still on my back. I didn't want to draw it. Not yet. Every time the steel saw the air, it took something I couldn't replace.
The lead mercenary stepped over a ridge, his Fire-Cutter already unsheathed. The blade shimmered with a dull, orange radiance that distorted the air around it. He was a tall man, encased in boiled leather armor, his eyes hidden behind a steel visor.
"Raigen Kurosawa," he said, his voice muffled by the metal. "The Kujo family sends their regards. And their condolences for your retirement."
"You're a long way from the South, mercenary," I said. I kept my weight centered, my hands hanging loose at my sides.
"The pay was enough to cover the travel," he replied. He gestured to his two companions, who fanned out to my flanks. "The girl comes with us. The sword stays with you... until we take your head back to Seiran."
"You talk too much," I said.
The man on the left lunged with his spear. He was fast, but to my cursed eyes, he was moving through water. I saw the muscles in his shoulder bunch a full second before the strike. I stepped aside, the spear-tip whistling past my ribs, and caught the shaft with my bare hand.
I yanked. The mercenary, caught off balance, stumbled forward. I drove my elbow into his temple. The sound of his skull cracking was loud in the silence of the hills. He collapsed without a sound.
The leader roared, his Fire-Cutter erupting into a localized blaze. He swung the blade in a wide, horizontal arc. The heat was immense, scorching the hair on my arms even from five feet away. I dived forward, rolling under the flame, and came up behind the second spearman.
I didn't have a weapon in my hand, but the Fang on my back was screaming. It wanted out. It was vibrating so violently that my entire torso was shaking.
*Let me see!* it shrieked. *Let me drink!*
The second spearman turned, panicked, and thrust blindly. I grabbed the spear-head, ignoring the way the steel sliced into my palm. The blood—my blood—ran down the wood.
The moment my blood touched the wood, the *Shinketsu no Kiba* on my back erupted. It didn't need me to draw it. A spike of dark, crimson energy shot through the silk wrapping, piercing the mercenary's chest like a phantom lance. He gasped, his eyes rolling back as the life-force was literally sucked out of him through the spear-shaft.
He withered. In three seconds, he was a husk of skin and bone, his essence consumed by the sword that was still strapped to my spine.
The leader froze. The flames of his Fire-Cutter flickered and died, suppressed by the sheer, oppressive weight of the Divine Blood's aura.
"You're... you're a monster," he stammered, his bravado vanishing. "The stories... they said you controlled it."
"Nobody controls this," I said, my voice sounding hollow and distant, even to me.
I reached back and gripped the hilt. The silk was already smoking, charred by the energy of the blade. As I pulled the *Shinketsu no Kiba* from its sheath, the night seemed to groan. The darkness gathered around the blade, a swirling vortex of shadow and blood-red mist.
*A memory,* the blade whispered. *A big one this time. Give it to me, and I will burn him for you.*
I felt a cold hand reach into the center of my being. I tried to resist, but the mercenary was raising his sword again, desperation in his eyes. He was going to strike, and if I didn't have the Fang's speed, he would take my head.
I let go. I felt a memory slide away—the first time I had held Shiori in my arms. The weight of her, the smell of the newborn's skin, the overwhelming sense of purpose that had redefined my life.
It vanished.
In its place, a cold, crystalline clarity. I didn't see a man in front of me. I saw a collection of weak points. Joints, arteries, breath.
I moved. I was no longer a human. I was a blur of crimson light.
I didn't even feel the impact. I was through him before he could blink. I stood ten paces behind him, the Fang held out to the side, its edge dripping with a thick, glowing fluid that wasn't quite blood.
The mercenary stood still for a moment. Then, his Fire-Cutter snapped in half. His armor split down the middle. His body followed, two neat halves falling away from each other as if he had been made of paper.
I stood there, my chest heaving. The silence returned to the mountains, but it was a different kind of silence now. It was the silence of a void.
I looked at Shiori. She was standing by the rock, her eyes wide with a terror that broke what was left of my heart. She wasn't looking at the dead men. She was looking at me.
"Father?" she whispered.
I tried to say her name. I knew her name. *Shiori.* But as I looked at her, the connection was frayed. I knew she was my daughter. I knew I had to protect her. But the *feeling* of being her father—that raw, instinctive bond—felt like a story I had heard a long time ago about someone else.
I was becoming a ghost in my own body.
"We have to go," I said, my voice flat.
I wiped the blade on the grass, but the blood wouldn't come off. It just soaked into the steel, making the weeping-eye guard glow a faint, sickly red. I wrapped it back in the charred silk and turned toward the north.
"Where are we going?" she asked, her voice trembling.
"To the Three Rivers," I replied. "To find the others."
"Will they help us?"
"They'll help us kill," I said. "That's all they know how to do."
As we walked away from the clearing, I tried to find the memory of her as a baby again. I searched every corner of my mind, desperate to find even a fragment of that first embrace.
Nothing. Just a grey, silent room.
I looked at the blackened coin Jin Park had given me. Seven days. Seven days to reach the crossing. Seven days to gather the monsters of my past to fight the monsters of my present.
The moon was high now, casting long, skeletal shadows across the Black Peaks. Far below, in the distance, I could see the flickers of torches. Seiran Kujo's Iron Guard was on the move. They weren't just following us; they were hunting.
I gripped Shiori's hand. She flinched, but she didn't pull away.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, so low she couldn't hear.
I wasn't sure what I was apologizing for—the blood on the ground, or the fact that I was slowly forgetting why I was shedding it.
The Fang hummed on my back, a satisfied predator settling in for a nap. It was full. For now.