The wind howled like a dying monk's chant.
Raiyo stood at the edge of the Ashen Fields, his cloak fluttering in the storm of dust and burnt grass. In the distance, obscured by red mist and fractured stone, stood the Hollow Monastery—a crumbling titan of obsidian and bone-white marble, perched like a vulture upon the jagged hills of forgotten time.
It was once a sacred sanctuary of the Kageren, where fate was rewritten, where katana were not forged—but born. Now, it was haunted. No living soul had walked its paths in a century.
But Raiyo wasn't looking for the living.
He was searching for his mother.
As Raiyo stepped into the outer courtyards, memories surged like waves—memories that did not belong to him. The deeper he moved into the Monastery, the more his senses were flooded with visions—sword chants echoing, monks whispering the "Laws of the Unseen Blade," and once, a woman's voice, calling out:
"Do not follow me, Keal. The curse runs through my blood."
The walls here bled with ancient Vexum.
Statues of blindfolded swordsmen knelt beside broken fountains. Cracked bells rang in silence, echoing in a realm between life and death.
Raiyo unsheathed his katana, Kurozai, the Void-Forged Blade Master Ojiro had entrusted to him. It hummed as if sensing a familiar sorrow—an echo of Ayaka Nozomi, his mother, bound somewhere beneath these ruined halls.
He reached the inner sanctum after crossing a series of collapsing bridges and decaying halls. As he stepped beneath the great archway of bone, he heard the scrape of metal.
Then came the sound of footsteps—measured, heavy, and inhuman.
Three Monks stood before him, draped in veils of shadow, their hands bound in chains, their faces hidden beneath porcelain masks cracked by time.
They bore no visible weapons—but from their chains, blades emerged—as if the steel grew from their very bones.
"You do not belong here, child of the curse," one intoned.
"Turn back, or be buried with the sins of your bloodline."
Raiyo's heart pounded. He did not want to draw blood here. But the Vexum crackling in the air left no room for peace.
"I came for Ayaka Nozomi," he said. "If she's alive… let me see her."
The monks lifted their arms. Chains writhed.
"Then face our blades, Vex Lord."
The battle that followed felt like a storm.
The first monk struck like lightning—his blade curved, invisible, a weapon that seemed to cut between time. Raiyo bent backward, using the Sightless Sword technique, his body moving in perfect intuition, guided by the energy flows of the chamber.
The second monk spun into the fray, unleashing arcs of spiritual flame—an ancient Kageren fire kata known as "Yurei no Kasai" —Ghostfire.
The third moved slower, but each step sent cracks through the floor, dragging Raiyo's perception into a state of delirium. He was fighting not just their blades, but the Monastery's will itself.
But Raiyo was no longer the boy from the cave.
He was a blade of his own.
He moved like wind over water, dodging the ghostfire, parrying the time-cuts, and answering the third monk with a devastating slash that shattered the floor beneath them.
One by one, the monks fell.
But not dead.
Only… released.
As the final monk knelt, his porcelain mask split and fell. Beneath was the face of a man long dead, whispering, "Go to her… and remember. She is not the woman you think."
The last door was unlike any Raiyo had seen. Forged of blackstone and etched with golden blade-runes that shimmered with each of his footsteps. The symbol of the Third Final Blade, Kurosei no Tsugunai, glowed at its center.
He reached forward—and the door vanished into mist.
Inside was a single platform surrounded by empty sky.
And upon it… floated a coffin of glass and obsidian.
Inside it lay a woman.
Ayaka Nozomi.
Her hair, silver and untouched by time. Her face calm, unaged. Her hands crossed over her chest, one of them gripping a shard of broken steel—perhaps the last piece of the Third Final Blade.
The air buzzed with unstable Vexum.
As Raiyo stepped closer, a circle of glyphs activated around the coffin.
Then—she opened her eyes.
Golden. Sharp. Otherworldly.
"Raiyo…" she whispered.
He stepped forward, breathless.
But her gaze was distant… pained.
"Why have you come here?" she asked, voice echoing in every direction. "You should not have awakened me."
"I need to know why," Raiyo said. "Why you left. Why you sealed yourself."
Her hand tightened around the steel shard.
"The blade… is inside me. And it hungers."
Ayaka stood slowly, her feet hovering inches above the platform.
She no longer looked like a mother. She looked like a goddess cursed by fate and fire.
"The Kurosei no Tsugunai cannot be wielded without sacrifice," she said. "I sealed it in my body to stop your father from using it."
She touched her heart. "But now that you've come… it stirs. It remembers your blood."
"You're still yourself," Raiyo whispered.
"Not for long."
Suddenly, the room shook.
A crack split the sky around them.
"The seal is breaking," she said. "And the Third Blade… will awaken with me."
End of Chapter Cliffhanger
Ayaka raised her hand—and with a burst of black and gold light, shattered the platform.
Raiyo fell.
The last thing he saw was her form breaking apart into shadows and flame… as the piece of the Third Blade floated in the air between them.
Somewhere in the shadows of the Hollow Monastery, a voice whispered:
"The Vex Lord rises… and so begins the fracture of fate."