I can still smell the smoke— the nauseating smell of burnt flesh, it clings onto me wrapping around my senses as I walk through the heavily blood-soaked mud where our courtyard once stood. As I look around, I see nothing but the soil of my fallen kin— I see it all. The faces I once knew, faces I loved— twisted in the face of death, staring blankly into the darkness.
As I walk around I found myself gripping my katana, though there's nothing left to strike. The hilt digs into my palms, a sharp pain that pushes me into this hell further. This pain is nothing compared to the flame inside me. As I stand among the dead of my fallen kin, my chest tightens as reality settles in like a blade across one's heart. All my fallen kinship, I failed them.
As I walk further throughout what used to be… Ryoma's Manor— I hear the rattling of what remains of the clan's banner, A torn scrap of red and black, flapping like ones dying breath. The echoes of their screams, the flashes as our blade connects with each other— it all resonates within me. My mind replays every moment It remembers over and over: the laughter of the killers, the faces of those who I'll never forgot till my last heartbeat. Cowards. They think they've silenced us, wiped our names from history. I live to remember. I live to seek vengeance on the ones who devoured the ones I cherish and love.
I drop to one knee beside my father body, his armor torched, with a sword impaled in his upper chest. His hand still clutching the sword he vowed he would protect us with. "Father, I swear to yo- NO I vow to not lose my life until they're all dead." I say loudly as I get up to bow in respect to my late father. "I will hunt them down, one by one, until there is nothing left but ash and memory."
The words burn like a torch searing my soul. The life I once had is no longer my own. It now belongs to this vow— this unbreakable promise forged in fire and blood. Hatori Ryoma, the son, the brother, the friend, is no more. There is only vengeance, one that only my blade can deliver.
I will rise upon every pillar of obstacle, I will ascend to the heavens if I have to. My blade will strike everyone of those mongrals. Filthy trash.
I adjust my sheathe, turning away from the manor that was once my home. I look back once more, clenching my jaw and hilt as I won't ever turn back again. There's nothing left for me here but shadows. The world beyond waits, filled with those that need to pay, those who deserve to feel the weight of what they've done. They don't know it yet, but I'm coming— and I won't stop until each and every one of them is dead.
The moon hangs cold and distant as the night sky breezes onto my body, walking a path… alone with nothing but a rage that's simmering beneath my skin. The path I walk won't end until the enemies lie as lifeless as the ones I had to bury today.