The wind inside the cavern had changed. It no longer whispered secrets or carried the stillness of meditation—it roared with tension, sharp as drawn blades. Across from Raiyo, Master Ojiro Tenma stood poised like a storm caught mid-motion.
She had discarded her usual calm and taken on the full presence of a swordmaster—her aura dense, suffocating, her blade already half-drawn.
"Draw your katana, Raiyo,"
she said softly, though her voice was like thunder inside his chest.
Raiyo's fingers wrapped around the hilt of his blade. He could feel it pulse beneath his hand, as if responding to Ojiro's. It was not just steel anymore—it was memory, rage, and resolve forged into one.
"This fight isn't to kill,"
he said, voice low.
"No," Ojiro replied. "But if you do not fight like your life depends on it—you will not leave this cave."
He took a breath. The world beyond the cave awaited him. The truth about the Kageren. The Sable Blades. And most of all… the call of Kurosei no Tsugunai, the third and most dangerous blade of all.
Raiyo stepped forward, unsheathing his katana. The breath of steel sang.
Their battle began.
The first clash was so sudden, so violent, the stone beneath their feet cracked from the force. Raiyo moved with instinct—no sight, only sensation. The air, the shift in temperature, the vibration of movement—he could read it all through the Vexum.
But Ojiro was a storm of precision.
Her strikes came from impossible angles, her blade curving like wind dancing through death. She wasn't testing him. She was trying to break his style, to draw out what lay deeper within him.
"You hesitate,"
she said, striking low, spinning the flat of her blade toward his side.
He barely parried, and his knees buckled slightly from the force.
"You hold back the part of you that was raised by demons."
Raiyo growled.
"I am not a demon."
"No," Ojiro said, "but you were raised in their fire. And right now, you need that fire."
She drove him back with a relentless fury—slashes that blurred, footwork that left no space for thought. Raiyo's breathing quickened. His arm was nicked. Blood trickled from his ribs. She was forcing him to surrender control, to give in.
But he remembered the words of the Veilborn.
"The Third Blade does not sleep."
He closed his eyes—not that it mattered—and reached inward.
A strange, burning cold bloomed in his core. Vexum, the force he had barely understood, now surged through his veins like wildfire in the rain.
Ojiro saw it too.
His posture shifted. Not wild—controlled, yet primal. As if he had merged his training with something ancient. Something that didn't move with technique, but with inevitability.
He stepped forward—and for the first time, Ojiro faltered.
Raiyo struck.
Their blades collided in a fury of sparks and shadows. His style had changed. The sword was no longer guided by muscle memory or reflex. It was guided by sensation, distortion, and intuition beyond reason.
He ducked a horizontal slash and spun into a low arc that should've missed—but bent impossibly, as if space itself twisted with his strike.
Ojiro barely dodged, but the tip of his blade caught her sleeve, tearing it.
A silent pause followed.
She looked at him—not with pride or surprise, but concern.
"You've tasted it," she said.
"The Vexum," Raiyo whispered.
"No. Something deeper. The power beneath it—the echo of the Third Blade. It's waking up in you, Raiyo."
Suddenly, Ojiro pressed her blade against the ground and drove a surge of spiritual force into the earth. A barrier shimmered around them—sealing off the power that had begun to crackle around Raiyo.
She rushed forward, this time with the full weight of her demonic mastery. Her blade moved not as a weapon, but as a reminder of who he was. Raiyo parried, struck, and parried again, until their swords locked.
"You are not ready,"
she said between breaths.
"You can't hold me back anymore," Raiyo hissed.
"You will die if you seek the Third Blade now."
"I don't care!"
Their voices clashed harder than steel. And then, in a sudden push, Ojiro disarmed him—her blade at his throat.
Silence.
She looked into his face. His expression was not angry or broken—it was determined. The fire had not left him.
She sheathed her sword and stepped back.
"…Then you are ready," she said.
The World Beyond the Cave
The next morning, Raiyo stood at the mouth of the cave.
The light burned against his skin, sharp and bright even to someone who could not see it. He felt it in the air, the scent of soil and trees and blood in the wind. The world had changed while he trained.
He wore the black and crimson garb of the Vex Lord now—tattered, battle-worn, but marked with Ojiro's crest at the back.
She stood beside him.
"Where will you go?" she asked.
"To the ruins of Enzoku," he replied. "That's where the Kageren operate, right?"
Ojiro nodded. "It's also where your mother was last seen."
Raiyo didn't speak. He simply stepped forward—and descended the mountain.
Below, fate stirred.
And in the farthest depths of the world, sealed beneath forgotten stone—
Kurosei no Tsugunai pulsed once.