[Content Warning: This story contains sensitive topics, including graphic violence, bloodshed, psychological trauma, child abuse, extreme emotional distress, and themes of war and survival. Reader discretion is strongly advised.]
As the grandmaster drifted deeper into the hallucination, the world reshaped itself.
He saw a boy.
Similar to Kōin, yet unmistakably different.
The same frame. The same presence. But there was no Ashura stench clinging to him. None of that suffocating blood-soaked weight.
His hair was black, not ash-gray.
His eyes were dark, pitch-black like a moonless night, not the ruby crimson Kōin bore now.
"This is the previous Kōin," the voice echoed softly. "Kagemiya Kōin. My former incarnation."
The scene lurched.
The boy was thrown against the floor.
Men in black formal attire stormed the house. Their clothing was strange. Silky. Structured. Foreign to the grandmaster's era, unlike anything he had seen before. Not armor. Not robes. Something colder.
Hands gripped the boy's throat.
Air vanished.
From the corner of his vision, Kagemiya saw his older sister being dragged away, her mouth covered, her eyes wide with terror.
He reached out.
His fingers twitched.
Then darkness claimed him as consciousness slipped away.
"How unpleasant…"
The grandmaster muttered it under his breath while Kōin replied.
"I wish they would just kill him…"
But death never came.
The vision dragged him forward.
Iron bars. A narrow cell reeking of rot and damp stone. The boy was thrown inside like refuse. No mercy. No questions.
The suffering began methodically.
They broke his ribs. Left him gasping until they healed just enough to break again. Over and over. Healing was never kindness. It was preparation.
Food was a mockery. Rats. Still warm. Still twitching. He learned to swallow without gagging because starvation hurt more.
They tore out his nails one by one. Slow. Deliberate. Letting the blood dry before moving to the next finger. When the nails were gone, they crushed the fingers themselves.
Then the water.
They bound him and dropped him into a flooded pit crawling with electric eels. His body convulsed as the current tore through muscle and nerve. He inhaled water. Choked. Sank.
Just as death crept close enough to feel merciful, they dragged him out.
Let him cough. Let him breathe.
Then dropped him back in.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The grandmaster felt it. The helplessness. The sickening patience of the tormentors. This was not interrogation.
This was conditioning.
This was the breaking of a human being into something usable.
"Hmmm… truly the worst of our side…"
The vision did not stop.
It dragged on until the boy was barely recognizable as human.
He was frail, skeletal, thin as an icicle left too long in the dark. His limbs trembled under their own weight. Breathing alone looked painful.
They placed a knife in his hand.
Not a blade of war. Not an assassin's tool.
A kitchen knife.
The boy's fingers shook as he lifted his head.
In front of him stood another child. No different. Same hollow eyes. Same bruises. Same knife clutched with equal uncertainty.
"…"
The grandmaster already understood what this was supposed to be. A forced duel. Kill or be killed. A test to see which corpse would still move.
But it did not happen.
The boy loosened his grip.
The knife slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor.
He raised his empty hands.
Then he looked at the other child and did nothing.
No stance. No resistance.
Just silent acceptance.
A wordless plea carved into his eyes.
Do it.
"Huh… interesting."
But the vision did not end there.
Something unprecedented unfolded.
Among the spectators stood his sister.
Bruised. Restrained. Forced to watch.
Her face was swollen, lips split, yet her eyes were fixed on him alone. Behind her head, just out of his reach, a device was raised. Cold. Mechanical. Final.
She smiled.
A small, trembling smile.
She shook her head at him.
Don't.
Though the language was foreign, the meaning was unmistakable. The grandmaster understood every word without hearing them.
"Give up… and I'll make sure your sister will be next."
The boy's breath hitched.
His eyes shattered.
He had accepted death long ago. He had welcomed it. His own end meant nothing.
But this?
This he could not accept.
Never her.
Not her.
He looked at his opponent.
The other boy was shaking just as badly.
Terror flooded those eyes.
Kōin picked the knife back up.
Fear lived in the other boy's gaze. Pure, animal fear.
But in Kōin there was something else entirely.
Despair.
Raw. Unfiltered. The kind that only exists after wars so bloody history itself refuses to count them. Not panic. Not rage. Just a hollow certainty that something precious had already died.
"Kill him," the voice hissed, amused. "Or your sister will be my next toy."
Laughter followed. Low. Wet. Enjoying every second.
"Kōin, don't," she cried, her voice cracking. "Please. Kōin, not for me. Please."
Her words stabbed deeper than any blade ever could.
The boy's hands trembled.
His breath came short.
For a moment, just a moment, he wanted to drop the knife again. To let it end. To let himself be the only one who paid the price.
But the image burned into his mind.
Her scream.
Her blood.
Her eyes going empty.
Something inside him collapsed.
Not snapped. Collapsing was quieter. Worse.
Kōin stepped forward.
Each step felt like wading through a sea of corpses.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
The other boy sobbed.
He understood.
That made it unforgivable.
The knife rose.
Despair drowned everything else.
And in that moment, when the blade fell, something unseen was born.
Not a murderer.
Not a monster.
But a tool, taking its first breath.
The other boy lunged first.
Kōin did not stop walking.
Steel punched into his abdomen, tearing into something vital.
"KŌIN!!!"
Pain barely registered. His body had learned long ago that pain meant nothing.
Slick.
Kōin drove the knife into the right side of the boy's neck.
The other boy froze, disbelief wide in his eyes. He had thought he won.
Blood burst out hot and violent as Kōin twisted the knife.
The boy's eyes met Kōin's.
They were wrong. Too empty. Too terrified of what they were becoming.
He ripped the knife free.
The boy staggered back, choking, clawing at his throat as blood flooded his lungs.
"Stab him again," the voice urged lazily. "The more you stab, the less I touch your sister."
Kōin bit down hard, teeth sinking into his tongue until he tasted iron.
He flipped the kitchen knife in his grip.
Then he lunged.
He tackled the boy to the ground and plunged the blade into his chest.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Each impact wet. Each sound wrong.
His sister screamed as she was forced to watch her brother carve another human apart for her sake.
The boy beneath him stopped moving long before Kōin stopped stabbing.
Blood sprayed his face, warm and sticky.
Then the scream tore out of him.
"HAAAH AAAAAHHHHH HAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!"
By the time his arm finally gave out, the body was unrecognizable.
That was the first life he ever took.
Kōin stared down at the corpse.
The face was frozen in terror, mouth half open, eyes dull and empty.
His hands shook.
He turned the knife toward himself and pressed the tip against his own chest.
End it. End everything.
"A-A-Ah!" the voice laughed sharply. "Do that and you'll find out what happens to her."
A hand yanked his sister's hair back.
She cried out.
The knife slipped from Kōin's grip.
And something inside him died quietly, without ceremony.
"EAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
Kōin screamed until his throat tore.
He clawed at his face, smearing it with blood that was still warm, still alive only moments ago.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He slammed the knife's hilt into his own temple, over and over, skin splitting, blood running down his brow. He wanted the pain. Needed it. Anything to drown out what he had just done.
His heart was never meant for this.
Never meant to carry this weight.
Yet it was stained all the same, branded by cruelty so absolute it violated the soul itself.
The Grandmaster watched.
He had seen war. He had seen famine. He had seen men butcher one another for banners and pride.
But this is a child.
Not even a full-grown youth, forced to commit such an act.
His fingers curled slowly.
What kind of hell did this boy endure?
What depths of human depravity had touched him?
This was not something that could be dismissed as collateral or necessity. This was the sort of cruelty that, if brought before the righteous emperor, he would ignite a national reckoning.
An atrocity that demanded blood in return.
And this was only the beginning.
As time crawled on, silence crept into the boy's mind.
Not the calm kind.
The dead kind.
He lay there unmoving, abdomen still bleeding, warmth slowly leaking out of him. A small, selfish part of him wished it would not stop. That he would simply bleed out there and be done with it.
Hands seized him.
They dragged Kōin away as his sister screamed, her voice cracking as she shouted his name again and again. He did not resist. His body followed limply, like something already hollowed out.
They threw him back into the cell.
Like trash.
Like a broken doll.
His spine struck the wall with a sickening thud. His head snapped back, skin splitting as blood trickled down. He did not flinch. Did not gasp. Did not even blink.
He lay there.
Bleeding.
Unmoving.
Staring.
Wishing he were already dead.
His eyes fixed on the damp stone wall, its cracks burned into his vision. No thoughts followed. No fear. No anger.
Only absence.
He was broken.
Not the kind of broken that birthed madness.
This was the death of a mind.
The extinction of a heart.
As time went by, they forced him to eat.
Not mercy.
Maintenance.
When he refused to open his mouth, they pried it open. When he could not swallow, they poured it down his throat. Tubes were driven into his veins, cold fluids dripping into his body. Bandages wrapped around wounds he no longer cared to feel.
They would not let him die.
Not now. Not ever.
They tended him meticulously.
Too meticulously.
IV after IV.
Needles replacing hunger.
Hands repairing what they themselves had ruined.
Bit by bit, his body was remade.
The skeletal frame slowly filled. Bones hid beneath returning flesh. Muscle was rebuilt through suffering rather than will. Weeks turned into months. A month. Then another.
All of it forced.
Every swallow stolen from him.
Every breath borrowed.
Every heartbeat demanded.
They restored his body, but never his mind.
By the end, he no longer looked like a corpse.
He only felt like one.
They dragged him to the arena again.
The same place.
The same stench.
A kitchen knife was shoved into his palm.
Rust flaked from its edge, stained dark by someone else's blood. Dried. Old. Never cleaned.
Kōin lifted his head.
There she was.
His sister.
Makeup smeared across her face like a cruel joke. Bite marks bloomed along her neck and shoulders. Bandages wrapped parts of her body that should never need bandages. Clothing hung on her wrong, torn and chosen to humiliate rather than cover.
She was shaking.
Still, she reached out.
"Kōin…"
No response.
Those eyes were empty. Not numb. Not angry.
Gone.
She knew it the moment she met his gaze.
There was no Kōin left to call.
Her knees buckled as sobs tore out of her throat. She clutched her chest, teeth biting down to keep herself from screaming. The brother she loved was standing there, breathing, staring at her, and already dead.
A voice laughed from above.
"You know this already. You know the deal."
Kōin did not react.
He stood there, knife loose in his grip, blood pressure steady, heartbeat calm. Not resignation. Not fear.
Obedience.
Then he noticed something different.
His opponent stepped forward.
A girl.
Young. Too young.
Her hands trembled as she held her own knife. Her eyes darted to the crowd, to the chains, to the bloodstained wall, then back to him. She looked exactly like he once did.
The same terror.
The same understanding.
The same certainty.
Only one of them would leave.
"Kill her and I won't touch your sister for five days."
Lies.
Empty promises spoken so often they had lost even the pretense of weight. Words meant only to keep the corpse standing.
Kōin did not think about it.
Did not measure risk.
Did not weigh consequence.
There was nothing left inside him that cared.
The girl squealed when he took a single step forward.
Her grip shook so badly the knife rattled against her teeth. She looked left. Right. Up. Down. Chains. Walls. Faces hungry for blood. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
"P-Please… stay back!" she cried, voice cracking. "I-I warn you!"
She raised the knife with both hands, arms trembling, blade pointed at him like it could stop fate itself.
It did not.
Kōin kept walking.
One step.
Another.
Each footfall echoed like a verdict.
Her breathing spiraled into panicked gasps. Tears streamed down her face, blurring her vision. She screamed again, louder this time, desperate.
"Don't come closer! Please! I don't want to die!"
No response.
His eyes did not change. No hatred. No rage. Not even hunger.
Just absence.
She lunged first.
A sloppy thrust, born from terror rather than intent. The blade scraped his ribs, shallow, meaningless. Pain registered somewhere far away, like pressure against skin that no longer belonged to him.
Kōin did not flinch.
He stepped inside her reach.
Too close.
Her pupils shrank as she realized it. Her mouth opened to scream.
Slick.
The knife slid under her ribs, angled up, practiced despite being learned through hell. He twisted. Pulled.
Blood burst from her mouth in a wet cough. Hot. Metallic. She gagged, eyes bulging as her lungs failed her.
He did not stop.
He drove her backward, slammed her to the ground, mounted her weightless body. The blade rose and fell. Again. Again. Again.
Squelch.
Crunch.
Wet tearing sounds as flesh gave way.
Her screams broke into choking sobs, then into nothing but bubbling gurgles. Blood soaked her clothes, pooled beneath her head, sprayed across his face.
Her hands clawed weakly at his arms. Then slowed. Then slipped.
Her eyes stared past him.
Dead.
Kōin froze.
The knife hovered midair, dripping.
For a fraction of a second something inside him cracked. A tremor. A faint echo of nausea. Of horror.
Then the voice laughed.
"Good. Very good."
His sister screamed.
Kōin did not hear it.
He only stared at the corpse beneath him, blood coating his hands, seeping into his skin.
That was the second life he took.
Kōin gagged.
The world lurched sideways as bile surged up his throat. He retched violently, empty stomach convulsing, dry heaving until his chest burned. Nothing came out. There was nothing left inside him to give.
The corpse was still there.
Still warm.
Still ruined by his hands.
The laughter grew louder, echoing from every direction, layered, distorted, delighted. It crawled into his ears, scraped against his skull.
He was in hell.
Not a place beneath the earth.
Not fire or chains.
Hell was repetition.
Hell was being forced to live with open eyes.
Kōin dropped the knife.
Clatter.
The sound was too sharp. Too real.
He covered his face with both hands, palms slick with blood that refused to dry. His shoulders shook, breath coming in short, frantic bursts. He did not scream. There was no strength left for that.
He hyperventilated, chest hitching, vision tunneling as he stared through his fingers at the corpse.
"I'm sorry…"
His voice cracked.
"I'm so sorry…"
The words were small. Powerless. They dissolved the moment they left his mouth.
He pressed his forehead to the ground, blood smearing across his skin, mixing with tears he did not remember shedding. His fingers dug into his own hair as if he could rip the memory out by force.
God.
What sin had this child committed?
What crime warranted ribs broken and mended just to be broken again?
What law demanded a boy be turned into a weapon, then punished for bleeding?
No god answered.
Only laughter.
Only the smell of blood.
Only the slow, irreversible realization that even when sanity returned, even when he remembered what he had done…
It never stayed.
And every time it left again, it took a little more of him with it.
They did it again.
The next time.
And the next.
Sometimes a month apart.
Sometimes a week.
Never predictable. Never merciful.
With every forced fight, something was carved into him.
From one victim, he learned how fear telegraphed movement.
From another, how desperation sharpened strength beyond the body's limit.
Some taught him how to dodge without thinking.
Some taught him how to crush without hesitation.
Some died screaming strategies they never had the chance to use.
Each kill left something behind.
Pain bled into his bones.
Fear lodged itself behind his eyes.
Regret fermented into instinct.
They weren't lessons he chose.
They were lessons beaten into him.
The more he killed, the less human he became.
Not because he enjoyed it.
But because his mind adapted.
Adaptation was survival.
Survival was betrayal.
Years passed like this.
The child became a teenager.
Lean.
Wiry.
Scarred.
Muscle layered onto him not by training, but by necessity.
A body honed by slaughter, never by choice.
Every life he took erased another fragment of the boy he once was.
The more he killed,
the more the boy died.
Then one day—
Another opponent.
However, this opponent is special as they promised him it would be the last.
The opponent?
A girl.
About his age.
Her stance was different.
Not trembling.
Not desperate.
Not broken before the fight even began.
She was battle-hardened.
Her eyes locked onto him.
And froze.
Recognition.
She knew him.
Not his name.
Not his story.
But the rumor.
The shape of him.
The thing that walked out of the arena every time.
She took her stance immediately.
Measured.
Controlled.
Ready.
For the first time in years—
Kōin hesitated.
For the first time—
He wondered.
Would this be the day he lost?
Or would this be the day
there was nothing left of him to lose at all.
Kōin raised the rusted knife and pointed it at her.
The girl stiffened.
She knew him.
Infamously.
The one who never rushed.
The one who never wasted motion.
The one who always walked away.
Her hand flashed to her belt.
A throwing knife flew.
Kōin stepped aside.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Just… not there.
Her eyes widened. She lunged forward, blade slashing toward where he should have been.
Slick.
Pain bloomed across her abdomen.
She gasped, stumbling back.
Her strike had never landed.
She looked down.
Blood seeped through fabric.
Then she looked up.
Kōin stood behind her.
Already there.
His long black hair veiled his eyes, shadowing that dead stare that never reflected panic, never reflected triumph. Just awareness.
She staggered, confused. Terrified.
He hadn't chased her.
He hadn't countered.
He had simply moved.
Kōin's gaze drifted past her.
To the stands.
To his sister.
She was still there.
Still chained.
Still pleading.
Her body was worse now.
Her abdomen was swollen, unmistakably round. A child growing inside her. Bruises layered over old bruises, fresh marks blooming beside week-old wounds. Bandages soaked through. Her hands trembled as she clutched her stomach, shielding it even as she begged.
She had never given up on him.
Even when they broke her bones.
Even when they broke her body.
Even when they tried to break her spirit.
Because her spirit lived inside him.
Kōin's grip tightened.
How easy it would be to just die.
To fall.
To let the blade slip.
To stop moving.
But this place did not accept death as an excuse.
Death was not release here.
Only continuation.
The girl gritted her teeth.
She did not scream.
She did not beg.
Because there was someone waiting for her too.
Just like him.
Kōin knew that look.
He had seen it in every face he ever cut down.
Mothers who wanted to return home.
Fathers who promised they would survive.
Children who swore they would endure one more day.
Lovers who whispered names as they bled.
Everyone he killed had a reason to live.
A person.
A place.
A future.
And he took all of it.
That was why he was infamous.
Not because he was cruel.
Not because he was efficient.
But because when Kōin walked away, there was nothing left.
No chance.
No miracle.
No tomorrow.
The girl steadied her stance, blood dripping onto the dirt.
Her eyes burned.
Not with hatred.
With refusal.
Kōin lowered his blade slightly.
He understood.
There was no freedom in this hell.
Not for her.
Not for him.
Not for anyone dragged into this pit.
Kōin had learned that long ago.
He had stopped hoping long ago.
He had accepted it long before this girl ever set foot in the arena.
That survival here was not about justice.
Not about mercy.
Not even about strength.
It was about who was left standing when hope finally bled dry.
And Kōin already knew how this would end.
Because hell did not allow two people to walk away.
As always.
And always.
Only one.
Kōin stood there, waiting for her to move.
She did not.
Of course she could not.
Fear had rooted her feet to the earth. Her body refused to listen, refused to obey, refused to believe that reacting would change anything.
The girl trembled, thoughts spiraling out of control.
Would she see her brother again?
Her little brother, left behind. Alone. Waiting.
Her chest tightened.
But Kōin had someone too.
Someone who wished for him to live even when he himself did not.
That was why this hell was cruel.
It never chose only one side.
Kōin took a step forward.
Panic shattered her composure.
This was his tactic.
Everyone knew it.
He did not rush. He walked.
The rumors said the waiting killed you first. That your mind collapsed before your body. That by the time he reached you, you were already—
Slick!
Her breath caught.
A wet sound escaped her throat.
She coughed.
Blood spilled from her lips as she realized the blade was already buried in her neck.
She had not seen it move.
She had not felt it enter.
Her legs gave out.
But she did not fall.
Kōin caught her.
He held her as her strength faded, pulling her close as her body slumped against his chest. His arm locked her gently in place, firm enough to keep her upright, careful enough not to worsen the wound.
Her blood soaked into his clothes.
Her hands clawed weakly at his arms, fingers slipping, smearing red.
Kōin did not let go.
His face twisted, pain carving deep lines into it. Tears fell freely, dripping onto her hair, onto her cheek, mixing with her blood.
His heart beat steadily against her ear.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Slow. Strong. Relentless.
The rhythm carried her.
Her choking eased. The pain dulled, softened, drowned beneath the warmth of his body and the sound of a living heart.
She sagged fully against him.
And for her final moments, death did not feel like terror.
It felt like being held.
Like being allowed to rest.
Applause erupted.
Hands clapped.
Laughter followed.
Cheers rang out as if they had just witnessed a performance worth remembering.
To them, this was art.
Cinema.
A masterpiece staged with real blood.
To them, Kōin was not a person.
He was entertainment.
Kōin closed his eyes.
The illusion shattered.
Darkness swallowed the arena whole, peeling it away layer by layer until only silence remained.
...
...
...
Then—
Blood.
A shallow sea spread beneath his feet, barely covering his ankles. Warm. Sticky. Endless.
The grandmaster knew.
This was only the beginning.
It would rise.
Drip.
A single drop fell, rippling the surface.
The grandmaster stood across from Kōin, watching him within this blood-soaked mirage.
Kōin moved.
He walked forward, deeper into the crimson tide where the blood thickened, where every step dragged with weight and memory.
He knelt.
The sea receded.
The blood drained away like it had never been there.
And what remained was worse.
There stood the masked man.
Beside him, his sister.
Her body thin. Bruised. Broken.
Her arms wrapped protectively around a child not yet old enough to understand the world he had been born into.
She would not look at her brother.
She could not.
Unable to face what her precious little brother had become.
A tool.
A perfect killing machine.
Standing by for command.
Kōin's eyes stared back at them.
Empty.
Not cold.
Not furious.
Vacant.
There was no hesitation.
No grief left to surface.
No scream waiting to escape.
Not a single shred of humanity remained within those eyes.
As the masked man opened his mouth, the grandmaster felt it.
A surge.
His Ashura stirred violently, screaming to tear the man's throat out, to revel in his death, to drown him in the blood he so casually demanded from children.
If this were real—
If this man stood before him—
He would have let Ashura feast.
But this was a recollection.
An imagination given form.
And imagination had to be endured.
Kōin lifted his head.
"Blade, the task will be—"
The world lurched.
The vision fractured.
Kōin stood before a man covered in tattoos, panic flooding his face.
"Wait! Wait—let me tell you—"
Squeltch!
The sound was wet. Final.
Blood sprayed.
The scene snapped back.
Kōin stood once more before his master.
"Blade, the target—"
Slick.
A clean arc.
Blood splattered across the air like rain.
"Blade—"
A woman screamed.
The sound cut short as red coated Kōin's face.
"There is—"
"KYAAAA—!"
Szrrrkkk!
Silence.
"There will be—"
The scene collapsed again.
A banquet hall.
Laughter. Wine. Silk robes. Politics dressed as civility.
Kōin crashed through them like a storm.
"HELP US—AH—!"
Screams drowned beneath steel.
Tables overturned. Bodies fell. Heads rolled. Blood flooded the floor, staining gold and white into the same color.
Not one survived.
Not a single voice remained to tell the tale.
The vision shuddered.
Kōin's body trembled.
The sea of blood rose.
"…"
"Blade."
Splat!
"Blade!"
Grch!
BANG! BANG!
Gunfire tore through the air.
The sun flashed at the muzzle—
And Kōin was already there.
Faster than the thought of aiming.
Jleb!
"Blade—"
WOOSH!!
"BLADE!!!"
CRACK!
Bone shattered.
Silhouettes collapsed.
Shadows moved, killed, vanished.
The sea of blood climbed higher.
Past his ankles.
Past his calves.
To his knees.
And still—
More movement.
More shadows.
More lives erased without pause, without breath, without end.
The word echoed endlessly through the red tide.
"Blade."
Not a name.
Not a command.
A function.
There Kōin stood.
Voices clawed at him from beneath the blood.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Hands formed from crimson liquid reached for his legs, his arms, his throat. Faces surfaced only long enough to scream before being dragged back under. Their mouths opened, but the blood swallowed their words.
He looked up.
"Blade, there is a price for—"
The sentence never finished.
The scene skipped.
Cut.
Another death.
The sea rose again.
Higher.
To his waist.
He lifted his head toward the crimson sky, thick and unmoving, like a wound that refused to close.
Blood stung his eyes.
Too much had splashed there. Too much had dried, crusted, blurred his vision. He blinked, but the world only grew darker, cloudier.
His sight began to fail.
It did not matter.
It never did.
Blindness did not slow his hand.
Pain did not dull his precision.
Fear did not soften his victims.
If anything, it made it worse.
He no longer needed to see them.
He was a tool.
Their greatest tool.
They pointed him, named a target, and blood followed.
If they hated a group, he erased it.
If they feared witnesses, he left none.
If they wanted silence, not even a ghost remained to tell the dead man's tale.
There were no mistakes.
No mercy.
No hesitation.
Perfect.
A machine that learned.
A blade that adapted.
A weapon that never broke.
Not a man.
Not even a monster.
A ghost trapped inside a shell, moving only because it was told to.
And as the sea of blood swallowed him higher, inch by inch—
Kōin did not scream.
He had already drowned long ago.
As the blood finally closed over him—
Drowning him whole—
The grandmaster raised his hand sharply.
"Enough… I've seen enough."
The crimson haze shattered.
The sea of blood collapsed inward, vanishing like mist beneath sunlight.
The grandmaster shook his head slowly.
"I see you've been through a lot… No."
He corrected himself.
"You've been through something no one should ever endure."
His voice was low now. Heavy.
This young man's heart was never meant for a bloodstained life.
That much was clear.
Those visions were not fabrications.
Not exaggerations.
Not illusions born from madness.
They were far too detailed.
Far too painful.
Far too emotional.
Too human.
False memories could not carry that kind of weight. They could not scream like that. They could not rot inside the soul.
The grandmaster understood.
The boy's sins did not remain behind.
The killings followed him.
They bled into the next incarnation because the guilt was unresolved, untreated, festering. It crossed the boundary of death itself.
This was not Ashura born from indulgence.
This was worse.
Far worse.
This Ashura was not addiction.
It was erosion.
A slow, inevitable consumption.
The death of the original self.
Not a mind lost to bloodlust—
But an identity being assimilated piece by piece.
Memories overwritten.
Emotions hollowed out.
Humanity peeled away until only function remained.
This was not the Ashura of history.
This was something else.
Something perfected.
Ashuramaru.
The Ashura that does not lust.
The Ashura that is patience.
The Ashura that replaces the soul quietly, patiently—
Until nothing remains but a blade that believes it was never anything else.