PAGE 23
She stared down.
Inside, lying in state, was a man.
Appeared to be in his late twenties. Striking crimson hair. A monocle fixed over his right eye. A long, elegant red coat — underneath, a white striped shirt — both stained with old, dark patches that could only be blood. His expression was unnervingly neutral. His body perfectly preserved. No wounds. No decay. Nothing.
Silence.
With no gasp or shudder, his eyes opened.
Crimson. Same shade as his hair.
Yokushi stumbled back.
The flame on her finger extinguished instantly.
Absolute darkness.
The temperature dropped drastically.
Fswoosh.
A small flame emerged on her index finger, pushing the dark back from around her.
Her body froze completely as she processed what she was seeing.
The body was gone.
"Where is.... he?"
Slowly she began walking backwards — until she stumbled into something behind her.
Or someone.
She turned around.
He stood directly behind her.
She took one step back.
His hand shot out and closed around her neck, smacking her hard into the crates beside him.
His gaze dropped to the flame dancing on her fingertip.
"Is this the flame in your veins," he asked, voice cold and deep, "that I've been hunting for centuries?"
Yokushi clawed at his hand.
A desperate move.
It didn't shift a single inch — an unmovable force locking her completely in place.
"Take off.... your hands..." She hissed, staring into his eyes with every ounce of defiance she had left.
He seized her flame hand and pinned it against the crate beside her head.
"Prove you're more than a scared child."
A direct challenge.
"Take. Off. Your. Hand."
Bam.
A kick connected with his knee.
Then the headbutt landed straight onto his forehead.
Bam.
Both hands slipped away.
He stumbled backwards.
She locked her hand into a fist.
Bam.
The hook connected solid with his jaw.
Snapping his head to the side, sending him stumbling.
His head cracked hard against the sharp edge of the coffin.
Thud.
He collapsed to the ground.
Gasping, she scrambled back.
Her hand flew to the holster beneath her coat.
She drew the revolver and aimed it at the fallen man — shaking violently — the small flame still burning on her other hand.
"You monster.... The psychopathic murderer." She gritted her teeth. "I won't leave you..., Hanzuri."
---
PAGE 24
Hanzuri pushed himself slowly to his knees.
He reached up and touched his temple.
His fingers came away wet and dark with blood.
He looked at it.
Then at her.
Every trace of amusement left his face completely.
His eyes went flat.
"A mistake," he stated, voice devoid of all emotion. "Your last one."
She moved to pull the trigger as he stood.
She couldn't.
Her body stopped responding — a deep, creeping tightness rising from the ground upward.
She glanced down.
A black, sticky substance had swallowed her lower half entirely.
Boots. Legs. Clothes.
Tiny tendrils forming and climbing steadily upward.
She followed it back to its source.
His shadow had separated into two long, thin lines beneath both his feet, extending much farther than any shadow had a right to reach.
"Damn... it," she gritted, terrified, as he approached.
His blood dropping onto the floor between each step.
Hanzuri appeared directly in front of her.
Her flame flickered violently.
His gaze dropped to the locket at her chest — noticed the glow pulsing inside it.
He reached out.
A cold drop of his blood fell onto her skin as his fingers closed around it.
He studied the locket for a long moment.
His eyes narrowed as something registered.
"Tell me. Where did you get this?" He locked his gaze straight onto hers.
The darkness consumed her torso, climbing past her waist and swallowing her shoulders.
Only her neck and face remained in the open air.
She gazed down, eyes wide with shock.
A cold, slick hand closed around her jaw and raised her face up to meet his.
"Answer me." He squeezed harder. "Before you cease to exist."
The tendrils wound around her throat with a wet squelch, wiggling as they tightened.
The pain was immediate — like being choked from the inside out.
She coughed helplessly against it.
Stuck between life and death with nothing left to bargain with.
Then tears of pure terror welled in Yokushi's eyes.
"My father gave it to me when they attacked!" Her voice cracked. "Just kill me and take it!"
"Who attacked?"
"The empire. And monsters.... like you!"
He searched her face for a long moment.
Then he released her jaw and took one deliberate step back.
The darkness receded — sliding off her skin like ink, rushing back to pool at his feet and disappear entirely.
Yokushi's knees buckled.
She collapsed onto the cold floor.
The revolver slipped from her hand and skidded across the stone, coming to rest at Hanzuri's feet.
He picked it up.
Flicked the latch with his thumb.
The cylinder swung out — fresh rounds in every bore.
He studied each one carefully before closing it back with a clean snap.
"You're worth keeping alive, girl." He turned the revolver once in his hand. "For now."
---
PAGE 25
Yokushi raised her head slowly.
The world was still a tunnel.
Hazy at the edges.
Half-blind, she blinked through the blur, trying to anchor herself to something — anything — real.
A shape.
Dark.
Extended toward her.
She blinked again.
An open hand.
Extended by the monster.
Hanzuri.
Toward her. Not in threat. In compact.
Yokushi stared at it with pure, disbelieving shock.
The man who had his fingers around her throat thirty seconds ago now stood perfectly still, waiting with absolute patience for her to take what he was offering.
"Explain everything." He adjusted his monocle with his free hand. "About your journey here. Girl."
---
CHAPTER FOUR: HEARTBREAK
PAGE 26
Moonlight streamed through the near grimy window, falling across the crates in pale, broken bars.
The silhouettes of two figures sat on the wooden crates, facing each other in the dark.
Yokushi and Hanzuri.
Yokushi recounted everything.
Her father's capture.
The month of flight.
Every struggle that came in between.
Hanzuri listened, still and silent, without interrupting once.
"So," he finally said. "Benghazi took Shindoru. The kingdom you called home."
"It was our second home," Yokushi said, her voice tightening with each word. "My mother vanished in the first wars. My father and I fled then. He built a new life there. We thought we were safe."
"You weren't."
"Exactly. I escaped. He didn't."
Hanzuri studied her.
Dust motes drifted silently in the moonlight between them.
"A survivor. Four times."
A beat.
"Not luck. Will."
"And you?" His gaze was intent on her. "What do you want?"
"Resolve every issue. Rescue my father. My people." She stared at the ground. "Be the spark. But a spark is weak. It needs kindling. Wind. All I have is.... only a bit of hope."
Tears dropped onto the floor as she began to whimper, her fist resting against her upper thigh.
Hanzuri leaned forward.
The moonlight caught the edge of his monocle.
Yokushi opened her eyes.
Watched him.
His hand closed around her cheek firmly.
"A queen never cries. Remember?"
With a single swipe, he wiped the tears from her face.
"You misunderstood." His voice was low and even. "A spark is not weak. It is patience. It waits for the perfect moment — where a single touch will make everything burn."
He stood.
Gestured at the rotting room around them, then beyond it, at the world outside.
"This world is that darkness. And Benghazi?" A pause. "The rotten timber."
Silence settled between them.
"W-What.... are your intentions.....?"
Hanzuri tilted his head slightly, his eyes holding hers without flinching.
"To burn down the empire that haunts you." He took a few deliberate steps back from the moonlight.
"Why should I trust you so implicitly?" Suspicion sharpened her voice.
He exhaled slowly through his mouth.
A thin fog formed with his breath in the cold air.
"Should've asked yourself that a moment ago." His tone was calm. Utterly calm.
Her body broke into a cold sweat.
Eyes going wide.
"W-What is your design...." A pause. "For. Me?"
Silence.
"I require a flame that refuses to flicker." He raised his hand and pointed it directly at her. "That flame is you, girl. Align. With. Me."
The question hung in the dusty, cold air between them.
Yokushi stared at him — at the hand extended toward her, at the offer that was less an invitation and more a declaration of war against everything that hunted her.
She opened her mouth.
Hanzuri bolted toward her before she could react, arms wrapping fast around her head.
Boom.
The world exploded in noise and violence.
They hit the floor together with a hard thud.
Hanzuri's body rolled away from her.
Yokushi pushed herself upright, pressing her hand to her temple.
"What happened—"
She froze.
Horrified.
Throat dry.
Witnessing something she had seen before yet it was no less terrifying for it.
A dark flower bloomed at his temple.
Blood expanded rapidly, flowing down through his neck and spreading across his chest.
Dead.
---
PAGE 27
"Is she alive?" A low voice spoke from the dark outside.
A group of people stood at the entrance, oil lamp held forward, pushing the darkness back from the doorway.
Rifles. Fine-silver bullets.
Prepared. For her.
"Someone was with her. He became our target," a man said, reloading his rifle with slow, careful hands.
Then another figure walked past the rest — a long orange dynamite in one gloved hand, a small silver lighter in the other.
He brought both together at his chest.
Click. Click. Click.
Fswoosh.
A tiny flame bloomed, kissing the long waxed fuse to life.
He held it for one moment — just one — watching the fuse catch and begin to sprinkle away the wax.
Then he threw it straight at the grimy window.
It entered cleanly.
---
PAGE 28
The dynamite landed on the wooden floor with a clatter.
Right beside Yokushi.
Traumatized.
Eyes fixed on Hanzuri's body.
She turned her head at the smell of burning sulfur — at the sharp, vivid hiss lingering beside her.
The sparkling fuse looked impossibly sharp and vivid against her blurred vision.
Her eyes snapped wide.
She looked around the room.
A closed window frame at the far wall.
Exit.
Boom.
The gunpowder and sulfur detonated.
A small smoke cloud bloomed outward.
None of it reached her.
She was already sprinting toward the window frame, avoiding the strip of moonlight on the floor, moving purely on instinct.
She reached it.
Smash!
The glass shattered and gave way completely, pieces falling with a thud against the exterior wall.
She raised her leg over the sill.
Climbed onto the wooden rail.
Her body began shaking violently as her eyes darted down to the damp, rotten mulch waiting below.
Before she could process the distance, her hand holding the rail slipped off entirely.
Her balance went with it.
The impact drove every bit of air from her lungs as gravity claimed her completely.
She rolled across the grassy ground.
Clothes immediately stained with brown earth.
Surprisingly unharmed.
She stood.
Cleaned the dust from her hair and clothes.
Turned toward the deep dark forest ahead and walked into it without looking back.
The locket lit up orange and yellow as she moved deeper, pushing light into the darkness closing in around her.
Boom.
A bullet struck the tree directly beside her.
Then another.
Then more — slicing through leaves, punching into the earth at her feet.
She didn't turn back.
Didn't slow down.
Their bullets sliced through the leaves and ground on every side.
Yet somehow, none of it found her.
As if luck itself had taken her side.
Her heart wasn't pounding from fear — it was breaking.
The path ahead narrowed, choked with dense thorn bushes.
Without thinking, she bolted directly into them.
A fatal mistake.
The sharp, woody thorns tore through her clothes and punctured skin in a dozen places simultaneously.
She gritted her teeth hard and kept moving, enduring every cut and every pull of fabric and flesh until she broke through to the other side.
She stopped.
Bent at the waist.
Hands braced on her knees.
Breathing in hard, ragged pulls.
The thorns had left severe cuts across her body, blood leaking steadily through her tattered clothes.
She spat into the dirt.
"This cannot get any worse....."
She turned back.
No pursuit.
No gunshots.
No heavy footsteps.
Just silence and dark and the distant sound of wind through the trees.
---
PAGE 29
She found a large, steady rock and lowered herself onto it.
Her hand moved to her oblique out of instinct — and found nothing there.
"Where's.... my revolver?!"
She shoved both hands frantically into the coat.
Empty.
She grabbed a fistful of her hair as the memory crashed back in.
"Idiot. Left it with him," she muttered, cursing herself quietly and thoroughly.
Before she could process it further, a high, dull thud of hoofbeats echoed behind her from nowhere.
She turned around.
A soldier in a green-blue coat, blue jeans, black boots, and a cowboy hat galloped toward her from the dark at distance, a lasso whirling steadily in his hand.
Her eyes weren't on the man.
They were fixed on the horse.
The hoofbeats reminded her of something.
Or someone.
Lucy.
"End of the line, girl. Surrender yourself."
Yokushi bolted.
Her pace dropped after two steps.
He closed the distance fast.
The lasso flew.
It snapped tight around her abdomen, pinning both arms hard against her sides.
She fell back with a bone-jarring thud as the man pulled the rope taut.
He tied it twice around the saddle horn in only a few seconds.
The horse nudged backward as the man tapped its flank.
Yokushi groaned as the rope tightened further around her body, the ground dragging beneath her as she was pulled steadily across it.
She flailed violently.
Trying to find grip in the grass beneath her hands.
Nothing worked against the sheer weight and pull of the horse.
The rope bound her arms too tightly.
Sharp stones beneath her tore through her clothes and into her skin.
The rope itself grew wet with blood.
Tears fell from her eyes.
She couldn't scream.
Couldn't run.
Could only tolerate and suffer through every second of it.
---
PAGE 30
The man dismounted as Yokushi was dragged to a stop.
"Fantastic work, Samuel," a voice said from the darkness ahead.
Yokushi turned her head slowly.
She froze in extreme shock.
The tramp of heavy boots grew louder.
A group of men approached from the dark, an oil lamp swinging forward and revealing them one by one.
Faces half-hidden beneath black leather hats.
Blue-green coats.
Blue-striped shirts underneath.
Standard jeans.
Brown boots.
Double-barrel shotguns resting in their arms.
Benghazi soldiers.
Walking ahead of all of them was a tall, muscular figure.
A scar patched across his nose.
Brown hair and a squared box beard hidden beneath his hat.
Empty hands.
He walked past every one of his men without slowing.
Jamikuro.
A heavy grin on his face.
"You were always gonna end up in chains, girlie," a soldier beside Jamikuro sniggered, voice low.
She looked up at the sky and watched her hope shatter like glass into a sea of silence.
Her vision slowly blurred as clouds rolled in and blocked the moon completely.
Samuel approached her.
Keeping the rope pulled tight between both hands.
Yokushi's nerve kicked in.
Her leg twitched upward.
Bam.
A fast, brutal kick connected directly with Samuel's groin.
He took several stumbling steps backward before collapsing onto the jagged earth, both hands driven hard between his legs, thighs pressing together.
Mourning in extreme pain.
The rope slipped from his hands.
She forced her body up to her knees.
Clothes torn.
Skin covered in blood.
Every rifle in the group snapped up and aimed at the center of her forehead simultaneously, fingers tensing toward their triggers.
Except Jamikuro's.
He simply stared at Yokushi.
The grin was gone.
Yokushi stared back.
Teeth gritted.
One eye twitching.
Jamikuro raised one hand slowly.
Without a word or question, every barrel behind him lowered toward the ground.
He walked forward at a deliberate pace, boots tramping steadily on the wet grass.
He stopped beside the groaning Samuel.
Crouched down facing him.
His hand extended and pulled free a small, rectangular orange tattered badge carved with two stars from Samuel's shirt.
"Be ashamed of yourself." The badge was crushed slowly under Jamikuro's fist. "You had only one task."
He stood.
Threw the badge behind him without looking.
Turned to face Yokushi and walked toward her steadily.
Both their gazes held as he came closer.
Splat.
Yokushi's spit landed on Jamikuro's cheek.
"Worth every drop on your ugly face," Yokushi hissed.
Jamikuro didn't react.
Didn't flinch.
Instead the heavy, terrifying grin returned to his face slowly.
"Didn't brush your teeth often, huh?" He wiped the spit with the back of his hand. "Your breath stinks."
"Release me." A cough tore through her. "Before I burn every single one of you into ashes."
Jamikuro gazed back at his men slowly.
Then back at Yokushi.
He began to chuckle.
Low and deep.
He pulled his hat forward over his eyes.
"What's. So funny....."
He let the chuckle run for a few seconds before answering.
"Someone's gonna cry."
Before she could process the words, Jamikuro turned behind him, twisting at the waist.
He drew the revolver from his coat in a single clean motion.
Boom.
The bullet struck Lucy's skull.
Straight on her forehead.
Between her eyes.
Thud.
Her legs buckled all at once and she collapsed hard onto the ground.
Yokushi froze completely.
The soldiers froze in their positions.
Every heart in the clearing pounded with something that wasn't courage.
The forest went absolutely silent.
Cold and dangerous and final.
Lucy's leg twitched once, slightly.
Then stopped forever.
Yokushi blinked once.
Then twice.
A single tear fell from her eye.
Jamikuro turned back.
He raised the revolver and pointed it directly at her forehead.
"So." A long pause. "Any. Last. Words."
She closed her eyes.
This was it.
The end of the spark.
Or was it.....
Boom.
The gunshot cracked through the silence.
Deafening at that range.
A few drops of blood landed on her face.
Warm and immediate.
Thud.
She opened her eyes slowly.
Jamikuro lay sprawled face-down in the dirt.
A dark, neat hole in his temple.
The scent of burnt gunpowder and copper curled up from his blood spreading across the ground beneath him.
She looked beside her.
Standing ten paces away, at the exact treeline where the moonlight met the shadow —
Hanzuri Kamado.
Alive.
And in his hand, held with casual, complete familiarity, was Yokushi's golden revolver.
A fresh, ugly bullet wound marred his temple, weeping one single trail of blood down the side of his face.
And in the dark center of that wound — for one single, horrifying heartbeat — a faint ghostly luminescence pulsed beneath the skin before it faded back into the bloody dark.
For one second there was only silence and cold.
Then panic.
"He was never.... dead?" A soldier stammered, his rifle trembling in both hands.
"You fools, shoot him!" Another shouted, swinging his barrel directly toward Hanzuri's head.
The rest followed the command without hesitation.
Every barrel pointed at Hanzuri.
Every hand trembling violently around its rifle.
Big mistake.
Hanzuri didn't move.
Didn't flinch.
His shadow did.
Dancing underneath his feet like it was a separate, living anomaly.
Their index fingers brushed the cold metal of their triggers.
Shhhhhhhwip.
Hanzuri's shadow shot forward — separating into long, thick, elastic spikes that extended toward them in a matter of milliseconds before a single finger could complete its pull.
Squelch.
Blood splattered across the ground in every direction.
Their rifles slipped from their hands with a collective thud.
The shadow spikes went straight through — clothes, flesh, and the vital part beneath.
The hearts.
The soldiers were lifted into the air.
Their bodies and uniforms soaked through with their own blood.
Their blood streamed cold and red down the surface of the shadow beneath them.
Their legs twitched and kicked uselessly in the open air.
Their arms flailed at nothing.
Not a single scream was uttered — the shadows stole their breath first.
One soldier coughed blood once before freezing completely in the air.
"This is..... Him," Samuel stammered from the ground, watching his men die in front of him one by one.
The darkness crept steadily up their bodies, swallowing everything without exception.
Uniforms. Blood. Skin.
All of it consumed into the darkness until there was nothing left to see.
The shadows retracted back into Hanzuri's shape, slithering to his feet and melting away as though nothing had ever occupied that space.
The forest fell silent again.
---
PAGE 31
"I don't wanna die!"
Samuel scrambled desperately across the dirt toward Jamikuro's fallen revolver.
He reached his arm out.
He was only a couple of inches from the grip.
Snatch.
Something cold and tight closed around his ankle and dragged him backward hard.
He clawed at the grass beneath him.
Failed completely.
His body scraped and rubbed along the fine brown soil, rolling forward eight, nine times before the grip released him.
He coughed dirt from his lungs.
Clothes dirty and shredded.
Eyes blurred as he forced them open.
A figure approached through the wind that had started to rise between the trees.
Samuel blinked once.
Twice.
Froze where he was.
Hanzuri stood tall directly in front of him.
Overshadowing everything beneath him.
Samuel crawled backward.
Hanzuri reached down.
Caught him by the neck in one motion.
Lifted him into the air.
The cold, slick hand locked tighter than anything Samuel had ever felt close around him.
Samuel's feet kicked hard.
His hands tore uselessly at the arm holding him.
His groaning echoed out through the trees.
Swallowed quickly by the dark.
"The mistake," Hanzuri narrowed his eyes. "For shattering her heart."
Snap.
Bones settled.
Samuel's movement stopped.
No groaning.
No kicking.
Nothing at all.
Hanzuri dropped him.
The body rolled twice across the ground and came to rest with the mark of four fingers pressed deep into the neck, the skin around them already beginning to turn pale blue.
Hanzuri stood over him for a long moment, gaze resting on the stillness beneath him.
Then he turned.
And saw what he had been ignoring entirely.
---
PAGE 32
Lucy's head rested in Yokushi's lap.
Yokushi's clothes were soaked through with the blood still flowing from the wound between Lucy's eyes.
Lucy's tongue rested outside her mouth.
One of Yokushi's hands lay beneath the horse's jaw, cradling the full weight of her head.
The other moved slowly back and forth, brushing along her muzzle in long, careful strokes.
"How.... why...?"
The words broke apart before they could fully form.
She was whimpering so deep inside herself that speech barely made it out.
A single drop of rain fell on Lucy's eye.
Then another.
And quickly the rain began to fall in earnest, washing the blood in thin red rivers down through Lucy's white coat.
Yokushi's tears fell into it and were washed away with everything else.
She pressed her forehead down against Lucy's jaw and held it there.
A flashback ignited.
She was eight years old.
Her father bringing a horse to her — patient and smiling as he always was.
She had wanted to ride it before she had even touched it and had named it Lucy without a second thought.
She had been afraid and laughing at the same time, her father's hand steady on her back in the saddle as they rode together through Pizoma — the city of Shindoru — until the sun had finally gone all the way down.
Seems like you made a strong, palpable bond with her.
The line burned through from her memories like a brand.
"Yokushi....."
Hanzuri's voice.
Calm and deep and close.
The past shattered.
She raised her head slowly.
He stood before her in the falling rain, holding something in one hand that she recognized immediately and had not expected to see again.
A red, tattered, bloodstained scarf.
"On her eyes, Yokushi," Hanzuri said quietly.
Trembling, Yokushi pulled her hand out from beneath Lucy's jaw.
She extended both hands toward him — shaking, covered in blood.
She took the scarf.
Looked at it.
Looked at Lucy.
Then at the scarf again.
She whimpered louder and squeezed her eyes shut, the cloth balled and pressed tightly between both hands.
The tears and mucus streamed down freely from her eyes and nose together, carried away by the rain.
Hanzuri crouched beside her without a word.
He removed his coat from his own shoulders and placed it carefully around hers.
Then he took the scarf gently from her hands.
He raised Lucy's head with both hands.
Laid the cloth across her eyes slowly and knotted it down firmly until it held without slipping.
Yokushi collapsed against Hanzuri's shoulder, unable to hold herself upright any longer.
He placed one arm around her neck.
One hand over her closed eyes.
Another resting on her cheek, patting gently.
"Everything will be fine," he murmured.
Slowly, both of them rose from their places and stepped back together, standing side by side in the rain.
His gaze rested straight on the dead horse.
Yokushi's state was something that couldn't be put into words.
"Goodbye, warrior." A pause. "Rest in peace tonight."
Swallowed by the sound of rain drumming down all around them.
A single drop of tear fell from Hanzuri's eye.
---
EPILOGUE
Rain drummed hard against the old rooftop.
The oil lamps flickered low inside the room, their light thin and unsteady.
The scent of jasmine and white lilies filled every corner.
The walls were layered thick with newspapers and bounty posters, stacked and overlapping from floor to ceiling.
A woman sat before a shattered mirror, combing her brown hair slowly and humming to herself in a low, unhurried tone.
The mirror was missing pieces in several places — certain reflections simply absent where the glass had gone.
She wore a dirt-stained vest and a long dark skirt.
On the old wooden table beside her: a British flat cap, a pack of lipstick, and a dull knife.
She opened the drawer.
Set the comb inside.
Closed it with a firm thud.
Her hand moved to the knife.
Thwack.
It cut clean through the air and buried itself deep into a poster on the wall.
She crossed the room toward it, her footsteps echoing clearly across the floorboards.
She stopped before the poster.
Observed it briefly.
Pulled the knife free.
YOKUSHI KIZUMOTO.
Fire Element — Mahabuta.
XXXX — Dragon Level.
Bounty: 55,000,000 Keith.
Catch her if you can.
"Knew who you were."
The images came without invitation.
Yokushi pulling out the revolver in the shop.
Working the crowd entirely to her side without appearing to try.
Humbling her completely without even knowing she was there to be humbled.
She tore the poster from the wall.
A ghost of white paper remained behind, still clinging to the wood where it had hung.
She crumpled it slowly into a tight ball between both hands.
"Because of them, you were saved." She threw the ball into the darkness at the far end of the room. "From me. To end there."
Her hand closed into a fist at her side.
"We'll meet soon. Yokushi. Kizumoto."
---
— END —