The old man's grip on his wrist was iron and perfectly still, and for a moment the two of them existed in that locked position — Nathan's wrist caught, Kyomei arrested mid-arc, the forest holding its breath around them.
Then Nathan let the blade's cursed power breathe.
It came up slowly— the dark aura rising from Kyomei's edge like heat from a forge, except cold rather than warm, filling the space between the trees with that particular wrongness that the blade carried in its core. The shadows around them shifted almost imperceptibly, bodies adjusting their weight, something moving through the assembled shinobis that wasn't quite fear but was adjacent to it, the instinct of people who understood dangerous things recognizing one.
The old man released his wrist and stepped back. Smoothly, without conceding anything, but he stepped back.
Nathan lowered Kyomei and looked around.
