The village vanished behind them like a sigh lost in fog.
The smoke, the ruin, the shackled Ka'ro that clung to its shrines—all of it melted into the trees and the distant hush of wind once the group began to move. It was Mazanka who led, one arm slung lazily behind his head, the other resting at his side, posture casual but eyes sharp. He said nothing, not at first. His gaze tracked something unseen—an instinct, not a trail—while the rest of them followed in a rhythm both tense and unspoken.
Rakan walked beside Teruko, his brows furrowed, the Ka'ro in his veins simmering like a nervous current. Tanzeki and Nishira kept to the rear, quiet but attentive, the weight of their exhaustion still clinging to them in flickers of uneven footing.
And then there was Shugoh.
Who somehow managed to skip.
"You know," he said, waving a stick like it was a conductor's baton, "I once followed a trail of exploding birds into a spirit den. This feels remarkably similar."
"Exploding birds?" Rakan said, horrified.
"They exploded with passion."
"That's not what birds do," Teruko said, not looking back.
"Depends on the bird," Mazanka murmured. "And the passion."
The land changed.
It began subtly—a slant in the ground, a strange rhythm in the wind—but then the real signs came, and they came fast.
The first was the tree.
Not snapped.
Not burned.
But cleanly sliced. Top to bottom. At a slant. The cut still smoked. Ka'ro residue fluttered in the air like ash trying to become music.
Tanzeki halted beside it and ran his hand over the scar.
"This was Sazuri," he muttered. "No doubt."
"What gave it away?" Mazanka asked. "The surgical precision, or the dramatic overkill?"
"The fact that it's the third tree in a row that looks like it's been in therapy for months," Nishira added.
"He always did say trees were too smug," Shugoh offered.
"Great," Teruko muttered. "Another utterly insane Kenshiki."
"He's free," Shugoh corrected, as if that explained anything.
It began with a crack.
Not a loud one.
A subtle, patient split in the air, like the sound of something ancient peeling away from silence.
Not red.
Not fire.
But Ka'ro.
Warped, stretched, bent sideways into echoes of battle long past—but not long enough. The ground itself shimmered in waves where Ka'ro still whispered like smoke curling off scorched paper.
"He went that way," Shugoh said confidently, pointing toward the hills where the earth looked like it had been punched by an angry god with no regard for subtlety.
"How do you know?" Rakan asked, already half-moving.
"Because the ground is still screaming," Teruko muttered, eyes narrowing.
Mazanka, leaning against a half-crushed wall, let out a long sigh.
"So dramatic," he mused. "But yes, that's definitely a Ka'ro fracture up there. Deep too. Probably didn't even stretch beforehand."
Tanzeki grunted.
"He doesn't stretch. Says it 'softens his intent.'"
"And we all know intent must be sharpened like a murder stick," Mazanka nodded solemnly.
"He's insufferable," Nishira said, arms crossed.
"He's misunderstood!" Shugoh cried, bounding over the cracked stones ahead. "Like a misunderstood earthquake!"
They followed the signs—half-reluctantly, half-drawn.
The path was a carved hymn of violence.
A crater in the shape of an inverted crescent. Glyphs melted into tree bark. A stone stele, once bearing a prayer, now shattered into six pieces—each still humming with Sazuri's distinct Ka'ro signature: tight, surgical, seething.
"He was angry," Teruko murmured, fingers brushing the scorched edge of a broken wall.
"He always is," Tanzeki replied. "But this…"
His voice faltered.
In front of them, a slope had collapsed entirely, the ridge pulverized as if a boulder had been flung through it like a skipping stone. The foliage had aged wrong here—leaves wilted, flowers bloomed then died in the same moment, the scent of ozone lingering like static across a stormless sky.
"He's chasing someone," Mazanka said.
"Or being chased," Rakan offered.
They all looked at each other.
No one said it out loud.
What if both?
The terrain got worse.
The deeper they went, the more surreal the damage became.
There was a boulder, split perfectly in half—not with a blade, but with precision Ka'ro, like Sazuri had been carving the world itself.
There was a tree—massive, centuries-old—that had been burned from the inside out. It still stood, but its bark glowed faintly, humming with pulses like a dying heartbeat.
And then—
There was the Ka'ro sigil floating mid-air.
It spun lazily. Incomplete. Unstable.
"A resonance trap," Mazanka warned, holding up a hand.
"He left a trap for the thing following him," Nishira said, voice tight.
"That means we're now the ones walking into it," Teruko added.
"I got this!" Shugoh declared, running straight ahead.
"No—!"
Too late.
The trap pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then it popped—like a soap bubble made of glass and thunder.
A shockwave blasted outward in concentric ripples. Ka'ro bloomed from every direction—dense, shimmering, impossibly hot for a second and then gone—and when the wave cleared, they were all standing in different places, scattered across the clearing.
"What was that?" Rakan coughed, picking himself up from a ditch.
"A poorly behaved spell," Mazanka replied, upside down in a bush.
"I lost my stick!" Shugoh yelled from the top of a tree.
"How did you get up there?" Teruko shouted.
"My Ka'ro respects verticality!"
"Shut up!"
Tanzeki brushed dust from his arms, gritting his teeth.
"He's toying with whatever he's fighting. That's what all this is."
Nishira nodded grimly.
"It's not just destruction. It's testing. He's gauging power."
"Like a beast cornering another," Mazanka muttered, finally rolling out of the bush.
They stood together again, hearts pounding, eyes wary.
And ahead?
A sigil—large, burned into the earth like a brand. This one bore no signature.
Just a phrase, spiraled outward in old Kenshiki script:
"I WILL NOT FALL BEFORE A SHADOW."
Rakan's stomach twisted.
"Who the hell is he fighting?"
Mazanka's eyes narrowed.
"Someone who knows how to draw him out."
And then came the sound.
Distant.
Dull.
But rhythmic.
Like breathing.
Or maybe… marching.
Something moved in the mist ahead—shadows pulling back from the hills.
But it wasn't Sazuri.
It was something else.
And they were following his trail too.
And quietly, without knowing why—
Shugoh touched his wrist.
Where the glyph from Yori still sometimes pulsed.
And felt it thrum.
Once.