Kirin Edo's Perspective.
The portals shimmered for a moment longer and then vanished.
Leaving me behind as the one and only Kirin Edo who stood alone.
My gaze fixed on the empty space where the girls had stood.
A flicker of pride and a shadow of concern crossed my artificially young features.
Then my face crumpled.
"I wish my daughter was still alive." I muttered.
Thinking about my wife made me sad.
Thinking about my daughter forced me to break for just a moment.
Was what I was doing worth it?
Have I gone too far?
"I miss you, Anna. The girl with your name will hopefully be up to helping them both. They'll help each other. This time it will be a trio who fights them and not just me.I wont replace my daughter in my heart, but I hope you won't hate me for doting on someone who is so much like you."
I took in a deep breath and shoved the confident facade back in place.
I shoved the memories of what I was before all this into the same deep and dark pit it belonged.
"The Prime devourer has to lose this time."
I'd make sure of it.
After all, we have plenty of time.
I'll break what I need to break.
---
Darren's Perspective.
I stood in the abandoned ruins of my childhood home, surrounded by the ghosts of laughter and the echoes of dreams that I had for the future but were now long shattered.
Why was I here?
The familiar scent of the carpenter's woodsmoke and the faint whisper of wind through the crumbling walls was clearly some kind of sign.
The hollowness that gnawed at my soul, maybe?
Was this all just a figment of my fractured mind desperately clinging to fragments of a reality that no longer existed?
My fingers tightened around the hilt of the katana.
"Again!" he commanded as his voice became a gravelly echo that reverberated through the ruins. "Precision. Control. Let the blade become an extension of your will."
Wait? Didn't I just go to sleep after sneaking around the city?
I adjusted my stance, my muscles screaming in protest as I forced my body to comply. The katana sang through the air, a mournful cry that mirrored the despair clawing at my heart.
"No!" Kirin's voice cracked like a whip, snapping me out of my reverie. "Your form is sloppy, your movements hesitant. You fight like a drunken peasant and not a warrior destined to challenge a god of hunger and evil! You need to swing with your heart in your blade!"
I had no idea what that meant, but I continued.
I grit my teeth as the taste of blood filled my mouth.
I pushed back the exhaustion that threatened to consume me.
Again and again I swung the blade.
Hours bled into an eternity as I repeated the same movements but my body burned.
Kirin's voice continued to be a relentless torrent of instruction and reprimand as I pushed myself beyond my limits.
Time bent.
When did I start training?
My arms continue to swing the daito-katana perfectly.
The sword felt wrong, but why would I know that?
"The idiocy of our former world," he spat, his voice laced with venom. "Japan! To forbid the very essence of a warrior's spirit! It matters not a single bit to me if they rule, I will carve the way of the sword into your very soul, whether my former country wills it or not! Nobles like you used to be need to be strong! Now you need to be strong! especially here!"
I swung.
I vaguely remember teaching him that part of history...
I don't remember when, though.
---
"When I was but a boy," Kirin's voice softened while he seemed to reminisce in nostalgia seeping through his gruff exterior, "I trained under the watchful eye of my grandfather, a master swordsman who had witnessed the very dawn of the samurai era. He taught me the ancient ways. He showed me the forgotten dances of steel that had once defined a nation."
I listened with half an ear as my body kept moving on autopilot, the rhythm of the swings a hypnotic mantra that drowned out the whispers of doubt that threatened to consume me.
"And so," Kirin continued with a small smile visible from the corner of my eye that turned as sharp as the voice that could cut a man in two, "I will ensure that you, my successor, will inherit this legacy. Soon you will learn more than just Iaido. The art of drawing and striking in a singular and fluid motion is not enough. This dance of death that contains one single step where one slash decides the fate of two souls- It can only be refined! In a world where one slash can almost always fail, only one slash must be the beginning! The dance must begin anew with another until a stream of perfect slashes that do not even need to enter the scabbard must be learned! You should know these truths already after seeing how people with a katana fight and comparing it to the strength of people here, but my country betrayed us both. So you learn it here! You learn it now!"
He smirked with a brightly glowing and predatory gleam in his golden eyes. "It is a path of no return. If you aren't ready to embrace it, I'll make it so you are."
I swung the katana as it sang its deadly song through the air.
I felt as my heart pounded and beat in my chest like a war drum.
I felt like it would burst out of my chest.
"Enough," Kirin declared with a voice full of a hint of approval. "Your speed needs work, but 2600 correct swings is a respectable start. The sun rises, and your new day begins. Go now and enlist. Prove your worth in the crucible of battle."
Then he smirked. "Don't be a dumbass about it either."