The world was quiet when Enishi awoke. Not the kind of quiet that follows peace.
But the kind that hums between heartbeats.
The air stunk of buried metal and rain. Enishi's fingers twitched against the cold surface, but his body refused to follow. For a second, he wondered if this is what dying felt like, the world still there, but too far to reach.
Then came the pain.
Slow.
A faint hum broke the silence, low, metallic.
Like someone tuning a blade. Then a voice followed, calm and almost… bored?
"Tough bastard, you were fried to the bone" the man continued, adjusting his gloves.
"Honestly, I didn't think you'd make it. Guess I was wrong" he continued, now over Enishi's body as he flickered between life and death.
The mysterious man wrapped Enishi with bandages until all his lethal wounds were carefully taken care of for the time being.
"Alright you idiot. Can you walk?" asked the strange man.
"I can barely move a muscle." Enishi responded.
"I don't care. You want to come and survive with me or wanna die out here. It's up to you." said the man.
Enishi trying his best to stand up. Then suddenly. Lightning from the clouds strikes him twice.
"BANG BANG"
Enishi yells in pain and agony for a breath. Until he passes out from the lightning strikes.
"I guess I'm dragging his ass through the mud, I should've had Tenma do this," said the mysterious man before sighing.
An hour had passed, and Enishi was being dragged from the back of his neck the entire time. He had finally awakened from the strikes. As soon as he gained consciousness, he tried getting a hold of himself.
The man could tell when Enishi had awakened while dragging him, but what he couldn't tell was his retaliation.
But would retaliation, the action to counter attack, a mere thought of not wanting to go where this man is taking him, be enough to not actually go?
Enishi, currently has every muscle in his limbs fried along with short circuited nerves, internal organs either entirely or partially unfunctional.
The only reason that he's alive is because of Inazuma's job. The electricity in his body is kick starting these organs every time they stop and burning cut veins stopping internal bleeding putting Enishi in so much pain it can't even be put into words.
"Headache kid?" the rescuer asked
After getting no response the man hauled Enishi's collar, the boy's body scraping uselessly against the ground. Enishi was barely conscious, the pain of his fried nerves pulsing through his system like electric cramps.
The man stopped abruptly at a patch of exposed, rain-soaked concrete. He dropped Enishi unceremoniously, then knelt, not with concern, but with the detached focus of an engineer studying a broken machine.
"You're a mess, kid," the man stated, adjusting his clean, gloved hand. "The electrical trauma has ruined your natural functions. We use a doctor, and you die on the table? The only medicine you respond to is the ring, and right now, it's operating on minimal power."
The man pressed two fingers, the ones wearing the gloves onto the back of Enishi's neck. A couple strange tiny metallic rods thrusted into Enishi's neck then suddenly, a hum vibrated through the air, completely distinct from the electrical static crackling around Enishi. The hum came from the rescuer's body.
"I am accelerating your vital functions," The rescuer explained, his voice low and cold. "I have to force the ring to prioritize the host's survival. This isn't healing. This is forced fusion. The Sigil's job is to protect its host at any cost, and you, unfortunately for us both, but mainly for you, are the host."
The man's touch acts like a catalyst, using what appeared to be metal manipulation to stabilize Enishi's nervous system long enough for Inazuma to activate its core function.
Enishi's vision dissolved into pinpricks of blue light. The ring pulsed a blinding, frantic white. He didn't feel the familiar searing of electricity; he felt the world around his spine snap into place. Every severed nerve was being brutally welded back together, not with finesse, but with raw electrical force.
A low, guttural scream tore from Enishi's chest as his body ached again. He was being electrocuted and healed simultaneously.
The rescuer watched, his expression unchanged. "The pain is the cost of the power you stole," he murmured. "The ring fixes the wound but punishes the wielder for the instability. You wanted to fight, kid? That's what fighting feels like from the inside."
The convulsions stopped as abruptly as they began. Enishi laid limp, sweating, but his eyes were open, wide with residual shock. The electrical charge around him was gone.
The man removed his hand. "There. Your spine is straight, your lungs work, and your limbs will move. You're usable. You're not healed. Every muscle is still tender, every short-circuited nerve is waiting to snap again. But you can run now."
He stood up, wiping his glove on his pants, already done with the investment of time. "Now, get up. The clock is ticking. Everyone's gotta see what I've found".
Enishi, having his body finally obeying him hesitantly walks with the stranger.
"So what's your name?" Enishi asks, trying to spark up some small talk.
"Matahachi….. Matahachi Hon'idon" Matahachi replies.
"WOW, Isn't that the legendary swordsmen Miyamoto Musashi's best friend's name??" Enishi asks.
Matahachi laughs.
"Your gonna realize how ironic that is in a second kid"
Enishi followed Matahachi through the quiet rain that dulled even further to mere soft whispers against the world that had just flipped upside down in Enishi's mind.
Each step he took left a faint trail of blue crackles in the puddles.
The two didn't speak much after that.
Matahachi walked ahead, coat dragging through the dirty puddles, carrying the scent of metal and gunpowder. Enishi stumbled behind, his nerves still twitching from time to time.
Hours passed before they stopped.
A mountain with a path hidden behind dozens of trees.
Matahachi held out his right wrist, black metal rods coming out of his skin to chop the trees down revealing the path up the mountain.
Following the path gave Enishi shivers down his spine, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, but still determined by something deep in his heart he pushed to follow matahachi.
The paths walls of mist folded away to reveal an enormous compound, traditional, yet sharp its geometry, black tiles, red wood. Hundreds of stone lanterns, still burning despite the rain
The emblem etched into the main gate read: Hoshinori
Enishi froze. His breath hitched, his eyes wide.
"That's.. My last name?" Enishi whispered to matahachi
"Yea, if you have any questions or anything like that. You'll get it in this estate." Matahachi said pridefully.
They both walked in side by side.
Inside, the estate was quiet, too quiet, for a place that massive.
The walls hummed faintly with a soft resonance, like wind brushing through glass chimes. The lights weren't on fire... They were pure white spheres floating in metal frames, unbothered by the rain at all.
They glowed with intent.
Enishi's eyes darted between each one, the faintest static hum building under his skin.
"These lights… are reacting to me," Enishi said, mesmerised.
Matahachi let out a short laugh "Of course they do. Your grandmother was the one who helped fix this place up back in the day. These lights are a part of her bloodline's legacy. Its all those bastards would allow her to leave behind" he said clenching his fist.
The words hit him harder than the lightning ever did
"My.. Grandma?" Enishi said in confusion. "Which one?"
"Your mothers side of course. That lady was a visionary"
Enishi's breath hitched. His heart thudded unevenly against his chest, the word grandmother lingering like an echo he couldn't place.
He followed Matahachi deeper into the compound, the faint hum of the floating lights guiding them through the narrow corridors lined with old calligraphy and swords hung on lacquered walls.
Then they came across it.
A mural, faded, but unmistakably beautiful.
A woman standing beneath a storm brush in one hand, blade in the other. Her eyes burned blue, just like his. Around her lightning curved into shapes of dragons and lotus petals.
His throat tightened.
"Thats her, isn't it?" he asked quietly.
Matahachi paused beside him, the usual smirk fading from his face. "Yea, Aya Shinmen. Your grandmother, a master painter and philosopher…..
And the woman who married into the Shinmen bloodline. Your standing in what use to be her halls"
Enishi blinked. The words hit so hard his head was spinning.
"So she was a descendant to the takezo"
"Half " Matahachi said, stepping past him, "Just like you. Hoshinori blood from your fathers side. Shinmen blood from your mothers. Two clans that should never have mixed since you and your mother, yet somehow the unwanted off spring was meant to surpass his ancestor, Takezo Shinmen," he stopped, glancing back at Enishi, eyes sharp,
"Is you, Enishi Hoshinori. The Tainted heir"
Enishi, finally taking his eyes off the mural, looked down to collect his thoughts.
"Who are you to decide my fate? You think I wanted to live this life? To have everyone I ever cared about slaughtered right in front of me?" looking up now at Matahachi
Clenching his fists in anger
Matahachi looked at him, eye to eye and saw how truly frustrated Enishi was, how powerless to control who he wanted to be, stepping into a life that has no exits other than death.
The same life he chose for his own malicious gain
"Kid, the life we live as the people we are stays the same for the rest of our natural life. Change isn't real, what's real is shifting. You don't stop being who you are, you just wear new scars so people can't see the debt underneath. You think redemption's some shiny thing you can cash in later? No. You learn how to bleed quieter, kill cleaner, and smile through the guilt long enough to fool the ledgers."
He produced a cigarette; the ember painted hollows under his eyes like coinlight.
"Shift long enough and you start believing the mask you're wearing. But deep down," he exhaled slowly, smoke threading the rafters, "you're still the same thing clawing for more, more meaning, more power, more anything to fill the hole."
He gave Enishi a crooked grin that wasn't cruel so much as possessive.
"The world doesn't hand out second chances, kid. It audits you. It waits to see how you rot. So when you ask who decided how you live… the truth is, you signed the contract the second you slid that ring on."
Enishi's hands went white; his knuckles cracked.
"You sound like you already sold your soul," he said, stepping forward. "Maybe you gave up on redemption, don't make me wear your debts. I'm not you."
Matahachi's smirk widened, eyes sharpening. "You will be."
"Then I'll die before that happens." The words were sharp and trembling, not from fear, but from pure, raw defiance. "If the world's gonna watch me rot, then I'll burn it down first. At least then it'll remember my name."
Matahachi chuckled, low and fond, as if amused. "Heh. That's what every ghost says before they fade."
Enishi's glare didn't waver; his voice dropped, steady as a hammer.
"Then I'll be the one ghost they can't forget."
Matahachi thought Enishi's words through, really letting them sink in before making a tough decision, one that he wouldn't benefit from for a long long time before locking in his next action.
"Alright kid, you wanna be someone this world can't break? How are you gonna do that when your own humanity breaks every time you choose to defend it?" Matahachi asked mockingly
"Ill be the one who figures that out, because this is my life. Just because you saved me doesn't mean you get to choose my life" Enishi yelled to Matahachi
Matahachi threw his cigarette to his foot, stomping it out and continued walking, Enishi following soon after calming down
They walked until the path ended at a metal-plated gate so thick it looked like it belonged on a warship.
"How're you gonna get us through that?" Enishi asked.
"Simple." Matahachi lifted a hand and slammed his palm into the steel. For a breathless second, the metal shivered, then split like glass beneath a hammer. Enishi felt the shock crawl up his arm.
When they stepped through, the gate folded itself back into place as if nothing had happened.
Beyond it lay a vault of arms: rows and rows of weapons from every corner of Asia, from lacquered spears to ornate katanas, bows with bone inlay, and hulking foreign blades. It smelled like oil, iron, and old promises.
Matahachi dropped onto the floor and stretched out, like a man settling into his fortune. "Alright, kid. Pick something that suits you."
Enishi blinked. Pick a weapon? He wandered past the walls, fingers trailing over hilts, trying to feel something, anything that fit. He pulled one long-edged katana from its rack, swung it experimentally. The blade was heavier than it looked; his arms screamed to hold it steady.
He held the stance. The ring hummed at his finger.
"Wrong," Inazuma whispered, coldly
Blue veins crawled along the katana from guard to tip, and the metal sang like an over-stretched wire. Then the blade shattered. Shards sprayed everywhere: some nicked Enishi's forearm, some embedded into the concrete, a few pinged off Matahachi's chest.
"Hey! Chill out, bastard!" Matahachi barked, giving a half-laugh as he brushed metal dust from his coat.
"Shut up and go back to sleep," Enishi snapped, clutching the bleeding cut at his wrist. He couldn't figure it out. He hadn't even activated anything, so why would the ring reject the weapon? Was it the blade, the weight, the balance? Was the destruction necessary?
He grabbed an axe next. Inazuma's voice again: "Wrong." The axe's head exploded into a storm of iron, spraying wood and metal into the air. A jagged shard etched a line across Matahachi's cheek.
"God damn it kid, respect!" Matahachi swore, rubbing the blood away like it was an inconvenience.
"Shut up! I'm trying to get this right!" Enishi shot back, breath quick, fingers raw.
He moved through the room like a man haunted: polearms, greatswords, daggers, bows. Each time the ring judged him and every time the weapon cracked, splintered, or blew apart: "Wrong." Broken piles grew into mountains at his feet.
Dozens became dozens more. He lost count somewhere around fifty; by the sixty-seventh try, his knuckles were bleeding and his body had more cuts then he could count. Frustration turned hot and sharp, in it he heaved the latest ruined hilt across the room into a heap of broken or dulled out blades.
Something about that heap called to him. He crawled through the wreckage and his fingers closed on a nicely sheathed blade that looked too good to be put aside with this trash.
He unsheathed it to find all the pieces of the blade falling out of it. It was already broken,
For a second it felt like another waste. Then the ring thrummed, a different sound this time, curious and small, not the flat refusal he'd heard all night.
"Inazuma?" he breathed.
"Correct," Inazuma replied, its tone calm and final.
Enishi blinked, confusion twisting his expression. "Correct? What, how could a broken blade be right?" he muttered. His frustration boiled over. "You're telling me this crappy, scratched up hilt passes your test but all those high-end blades didn't? What am I missing here?"
He dumped out the remaining shards from the sheath, piecing them together like a puzzle. After some effort, the fragments formed what looked like a Tang Dao, elegant, old-world Chinese steel. For a second, it actually held together… until Enishi shifted his hand. The entire thing collapsed again, clattering across the floor.
"God damn it!" he yelled, electricity flaring around him like a tantrum of light. Sparks danced across the shards, crawling along the ground, and that's when he noticed it.
The lightning didn't just arc aimlessly; it connected each fragment, thread by thread in glowing blue lines, almost like the blade was being rewired together through sheer willpower.
Enishi blinked. Then grinned.
He cut the current. The shards fell.
He sparked it again. The blade reformed, glowing and alive.
"...Hah," he exhaled, smirking. "So when the lightning's on, the blade holds… meaning it's made of fragments of something that reacts to my energy."
He swung it, the lightning rope stretched, flexible like a whip. It cracked through the air, leaving streaks of blue in its wake. The impact rattled the walls.
"Okay, this is cool," he admitted, watching the glowing shards pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat. "But it's not practical. A weapon's gotta defend and attack. This thing's only offense. If I can shorten the lightning rope…" He paused, thinking aloud. "Maybe it can become a sword again."
He closed his eyes, holding the hilt to his chest. Lightning sparked from his fingertips, dancing down the handle. He focused, controlling the current, compressing the distance between each fragment, tightening the arc until the blade started forming again, solid and whole.
It worked for about three seconds. Then it exploded.
Shards tore through the air, ricocheting off the walls, whizzing past his ears. But this time Enishi didn't flinch. He just laughed, a low, wild laugh that echoed through the armory.
The blue glow reflected off his grin, eyes sharp and alive. "Guess I'm getting closer," he said under his breath, lightning still dancing around him and the handle
Matahachi cracked one eye open from where he was lying, the air still humming with static. The entire armory smelled like burnt metal and ozone. He exhaled a slow, smoky breath through his nose.
"Look at you," he muttered, half-grinning. "Bleeding, shaking, smiling like you just found God in a lightning bolt."
Enishi didn't even look at him. He was still staring at the floating shards, electricity jumping between them like veins.
"This isn't about finding God," Enishi said quietly. "It's about control. If I can make this work, then maybe… maybe I'm not just cursed by this thing."
Matahachi laughed softly, sitting up. "Control, huh? That's how it starts. You tell yourself you're mastering the power, but really, you're just feeding it. Bit by bit, piece by piece." He got to his feet, brushing dust off his coat. "One day you wake up and realize the power's been eating you this whole time."
He walked closer, stopping just a few feet from Enishi. The glow from the lightning danced across Matahachi's scarred face, highlighting that cruel sort of admiration in his eyes.
"You felt it, didn't you?" he asked. "That rush when the blade obeyed you, when it listened. That's greed, kid. The moment you want more of that feeling, you're already mine."
Enishi turned his head, the smirk returning. "Then I'll take it," he said flatly. "If being greedy means never being powerless again, then maybe I'll wear that sin better than you ever did."
For the first time, Matahachi's grin faltered, not in anger, but almost respect. He looked at the shards levitating in the air, then back at Enishi.
"Heh. Careful, Hoshinori. The line between mastering something and being consumed by it… that line burns the same color as your lightning."
He started walking away, his voice fading as he stretched out on the ground again.
"Let's see how long before you can't tell the difference."
The lightning flickered, reflecting off Enishi's eyes. He said nothing, but that grin was still there.
He looked down at his hands. They were cut, shaking, burnt around the fingers, but he didn't care. Somewhere under the exhaustion, there was a pulse. Not just his heartbeat, something deeper. It was Inazuma, resonating with him, waiting.
"Alright," he muttered, wiping the blood from his palm onto his pants. "No more overthinking it. No more forcing."
He closed his eyes and let his breath slow. The lightning around his arms softened, from chaotic sparks to steady waves. The shards on the ground began to stir, one by one, rising from the floor like they recognized their place in something greater.
"Inazuma," he whispered. "Discharge."
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the ring pulsed once, a heartbeat that wasn't his. The lightning burst outward, but instead of exploding like before, it spiraled inward, wrapping around him in a storm of light. Every shard of the Tang Dao shot toward the center, fusing together not by metal, but by current, blue veins of energy forming the edges, glowing like living steel.
Matahachi turned back, eyes narrowing. The glow from Enishi's blade was brighter than before, cleaner, steadier, and terrifyingly alive.
Enishi opened his eyes. They reflected the same lightning blue. When he swung the blade this time, it didn't crackle or whip, it sang. The energy folded perfectly, forming a solid, humming blade that vibrated with power.
He grinned , not out of arrogance, but realization. "So that's it… you don't want control," he said quietly. "You want harmony."
The lightning around him faded, leaving the sword whole for the first time. Inazuma's voice flickered in his head, softer now, almost approving.
"Right. You finally listened."
Matahachi watched him for a long moment, smoke curling from his half-burned cigarette he'd just lit up. Then he gave a low whistle.
"Congrats, kid. You finally put down your sigil"
Enishi rested the Tang Dao against his shoulder, smirking. "Nah. I just stopped fighting it."
Matahachi chuckled, shaking his head. "Heh. That's what they all say… right before the sigil starts fighting back."
Enishi didn't reply. He just looked at the glowing blue veins on the blade, the blue light reflecting in his eyes like fire, and smiled wider.