Far beyond the reach of rice fields and childhood footsteps, the wind changed. It carried not the scent of fire, but the memory of it—ashes from a place that no longer had a name. The rising sun caught on blades and buckles, bright flashes against the forest’s shadowed breath.

Through gaps in the canopy, shapes moved. Not one—several. They were a pack of wolves, a motley assembly of men united only by hunger: leaderless rōnin with haunted eyes, savage nobushi who knew only the law of the blade, and deserter ashigaru whose cheap armor still bore the crest of a lord long dead. Behind them, barely visible in the shadow of a valley, a village had already fallen. Its roofs still smoldered. Its silence was still wet.

One ashigaru sidled up to another, whispering, “How much they paying for this pisshole?” His eyes flicked toward the village.

The other smirked, a sliver of ginger root working in his teeth. “Enough to drink for a month—if you don’t lose it in dice first.”

The first man chuckled, clapping him on the shoulder. “Then let’s be quick. I want my share before the bastards change their minds.”

Ahead, the broadest of them raised a clenched fist. The line froze. Two nobushi jogged out of the underbrush.

“Any trouble?” the leader asked without looking away from the path ahead.

One shook his head. “Just some old man and a girl. Caught us looking around, so we handled it.” He shrugged as if swatting flies.

The leader’s gaze sharpened. “What did you do with their bodies?”

The second scout grinned, his mouth a cavern of rotted teeth and blackened gums. “Left ’em at the gate. A message.” Pride curled in his voice.

Anger flashed in the leader’s eyes. “Kusogaki…” He spat at their feet. “If you ruin this, I’ll gut you like a river ayu—skin and all.”

He gestured—two fingers toward the eastern flank, one toward the river path. The signals were silent, practiced. Blood was already crusted on his armored kote.

In the shadow of the valley below, the village waited, unaware.

The raiders moved like a tide, spreading out to encircle the sleeping homes. Their footsteps were muffled by the damp earth, the thick breath of tsuyu season. The only sound was the occasional clink of armor or the soft rustle of leather.

Feet wrapped in waraji broke the treeline—like mist crawling out from the trees.

They did not speak. They did not shout. Their cadence was a taiko rhythm played on the earth. Heavy. Ritual. Certain.

One torch. Then another. Arcing sideways in lazy, practiced circles, they found the thatch without effort.

The roofs did not burn. They inhaled.

Mud walls cracked. Rafters sighed. Smoke poured upward before the first human sound. A scream tore through the air—not from the mouth, but from the soul.

Then the crows screamed back.

A child playing with a ball in the lane stopped, looking up at the sudden orange sky. The mother, halfway to calling their name, saw the figures emerge from the smoke, and the name died in her throat.

The mother who had swallowed her child's name now acted on pure instinct. She swept the small boy into her arms, his ball dropping into a mud puddle with a thunk, and fled toward the perceived safety of her home.

She didn't make it.

A raider, built like a small bear and wielding a great iron-studded tetsubō, stepped into her path. He did not slow her, or grab her, or speak. He simply swung the club in a wide, horizontal arc, putting the weight of his shoulders behind it.

The heavy, studded iron struck the mother across the back, but its momentum carried through. The blow was so powerful it shattered her spine and crushed the child she was desperately clutching to her chest in the very same instant.

There was a single, sickening, wet crunch of breaking bone—a sound that was both hers and the boy's. They collapsed together, a single, broken heap in the mud, her last act of protection becoming their shared tomb.

The raider stepped over their tangled bodies without breaking stride, his eyes already scanning for the next flicker of movement.

The chaos found another hut. The man inside had just bolted his door when the tip of a yari punched through the wood. It was twisted brutally, and a spout of blood coughed from the man’s lips. He was pinned upright for a heartbeat, a grotesque scarecrow, before the spear was wrenched back through the splintered hole it had made. Reed, skin, and splinters of bone clung to it—glued on by blood.

The next house didn't get a scream. The door was flung wide. A child, too slow to run, was caught at the hip by a club. The body folded sideways, knees bending wrong. The raider stepped over him and toward the child’s mother, who was backing into the far wall. His blood-soaked hand grabbed her hair, and with it, her breath.

He drove her skull into the wall. Once. Twice.

The wall’s woven thatch cracked before her head did.

Eventually, it did.

The smell of smoke found Haru first, a sharp intruder in the familiar scent of his home. It was wrong. He stood in the doorway, the peace of his morning curdling into a knot of cold dread. Then came the sounds. Not the distant cawing of crows, but screams. Human screams, sharp and thin, cut short.

“Keiko,” he breathed, turning from the door.

Her face was a reflection of his own terror. She swept Aki into her arms, her heart hammering against her ribs. Her eyes flicked to the loose floorboard by the sleeping mats—the small storage pit, hidden beneath a coarse rug. A secret.

She whispered, “Listen to me, little sparrow,” her voice trembling as she fumbled at the edge of the board. “You must be quieter than a mouse. Do not make a sound until I come for you. Do you understand? Until I come for you.”

The board lifted with a low groan, revealing the dark space below. She slid Aki inside, tucking a quilt around her small, trembling body.

A kiss to her forehead. A whispered, “Mama loves you.”

Then the panel dropped shut. Nearly seamless.

Keiko stood, smoothed her kosode, turning to face the doorway just as a shadow crossed it.

The raider was already there. His hand, slick with blood, tangled in her hair, yanking her forward. With his other hand, he drew a tantō. Fabric tore as he cut and wrenched, baring her breast — not in ritual, but in a violent mockery of offering.

Keiko struck him, nails raking down his face. Skin split, blood springing in a jagged line. She cried out — a sound of pain and defiance that shattered something inside Haru.

He charged. Not a warrior. A farmer. His fists were a blind, desperate fury. He slammed into the raider, driving him sideways into the sunken irori. Embers burst in a hiss of sparks, the iron pot clattering to the floor. For a moment, Keiko was free, collapsing to her knees on the packed earth.

Then another raider stepped through the reed-framed doorway. Heavier. Deliberate. The tetsubō rose.

And when it fell, it found her skull.

The sound was not a crack. It was a wet, final thump, like a heavy melon dropped on stone. Her body collapsed—a dead weight—directly onto the loose floorboard, pinning it shut. Her last act of love had become her daughter’s cage.

Her eyes stayed open as her body twitched, the windows to her soul already shattered. Blood sprayed across the floor—and onto Haru.

The spasms slowed. The spray became a seep, dark and steady, finding the cracks in the wood. Below, a single drop fell onto the quilt in the hollow. A slow, dark tear. Yomi’s stain.

Before he could even scream, a third raider seized him from behind. Haru’s head slammed into a heavy clay kame—once, then again. The pot shattered, dark, pungent miso erupting like a burst dam, mixing with Keiko’s blood on the floor.

He hit the ground hard. His hand closed around a jagged shard. Pain flared as it sliced his palm, the world was spinning, his thoughts breaking into fragments. He lashed out blindly.

Something tore beneath the shard’s edge. Cloth—or flesh—he couldn’t tell.

A tantō flashed. Shank-like stabs—rushed, messy—slashed at his side. One sliced shallowly across his ribs, another caught just beneath his arm. Pain flared, a white-hot fire. A front kick followed, sending him stumbling backward out the main doorway and into the burning, collapsing wreckage of the neighboring home.

He lay there, coughing, blinking red. Through the rising smoke, he could still see into his own hut. He watched as the raider who had attacked him first now stared down at Keiko’s body, the last tremors fading from her limbs.The man began to fumble with the knot of his obi.

“Leave her,” the second raider grunted from the doorway. “She’s already dead.”

The first man grunted in frustration, turning away from the body. They both walked out into the chaos, leaving Haru in the embers.

He rolled onto his back, head turned to the side, gaze fixed on the treeline far beyond the flames. A desperate, final thought flickered—Kaoru. Still out there. By the river.

Among the shifting shadows, a cluster of yellow wildflowers trembled in the heat.

He offered no words. Just a breath toward the trees. A prayer carried by smoke.

Tears welled, then slipped into the soot-stained dirt. And then, all faded to black.

The monk was still inside, kneeling over the second body. He placed the bloody yellow wildflower upon it before pulling the cloth tight around the legs and tucking it beneath the knees.

He paused as he stood slowly and turned to stepped through the archway.

The sky pulsed orange—not with the promise of sunrise, but with the roar of something closer, hungrier.

From the ridge, he saw them.

Silhouettes cast by fire.

Raiders.

Crawling up through what remained of the village.
Through smoke. Through ash. Through what used to be people.
And they were coming toward him.

The caw of the crows forced the monk to look up, a tightening in his chest signaling dread.
They circled overhead now—not as omen, but confirmation.
The wind brought the village's burning breath to the temple gate, a grim precursor to the raiders.
The monk stood alone, robes dark with ash, hands still stained with the blood of those he had tried to prepare.
Behind him, the temple doors remained open.
No wind stirred the banners.
No bells rang.
The raiders did not shout.
They walked slowly—up the path, through smoke, through silence—like men who knew nothing could stop them.
He did not run, kneel, or speak—he only watched them approach. A single tremor raked through his chest as the last sacred breath was wrenched from the mountain and expelled from his lungs, leaving only the hollow echo of what once was.
The crows were the only witness to the desecration of holy ground.

Two crows settled on the rim of the cracked water basin, their claws clicking against the stone. The scent of blood rode the ash-laden wind. One leaned forward, black eyes fixed on the dark stain where a body should have been. The other hopped from the basin into the house, talons scratching at the packed earth, its head tilting toward the woman’s still form. Then it lowered its beak.