I was reborn beneath an overcast sky. No thunder. No fire. No great awakening.
Just pain.
And the smell of fish.
The air was thick with it—salt and rot, mud and ash. I opened my eyes to see a thatched roof. Shadows danced across its straw threads from a flickering hearth. My body ached—no wounds, just exhaustion. Muscles soft. Stomach rumbling. Fingers callused but clumsy.
Alive. Again.
A woman leaned over me—wrinkled, kind-eyed, smelling of clay and saltwater.
> "Easy, boy," she whispered. "You took a hard fall by the river."
Boy?
I sat up with a gasp, heart thundering.
Not my voice. Not my body.
But the memories were intact. All of them.
The shrine. The blade. The gods. The journey across the bridge of bones. The sword in the lake. The curse I hurled into the heavens.
Akatsuki—the Daimyō. Dead.
And yet… here I was.
> "Izanami," I whispered.
The old woman blinked.
> "No, dear. I'm Tamayo. You've been out two days."
---
The village had no name.
Or rather, the people had stopped saying it long ago.
A few dozen huts sat between a struggling rice field and a hungry river. Men fished. Women tilled. Children coughed in their sleep. No warriors. No guards. No temple. Just the thin hope of survival and a shrine made from driftwood where no god answered.
They called me Ren. A quiet man, found bleeding by the river during storm season. They assumed I was a runaway or a fallen merchant. I let them believe it.
What else could I say?
That I was once a clan leader who bathed in divine blood and cursed the sun?
No.
I buried my name like I buried my pride.
---
I spent my days mending nets, splitting fish, hauling stones.
The work humbled me. Cut my hands. Bent my back.
At night, I sat alone by the water, staring at my reflection.
Not noble.
Not feared.
Just another villager scraping to live one more day.
I heard the gods sometimes. In dreams. In flickers.
Amaterasu never came.
But Izanami watched.
Always watching.
---
Then came the raids.
The first time, I hid like the rest.
The second time, I fought. A broom handle in my hands, rage in my blood. I cracked it across a bandit's skull and got a knife to the ribs for my trouble.
They took our rice. Our salt. Our dignity.
Three children died. One woman didn't come back.
The villagers wept. Then they worked again. As if sorrow was another chore to complete.
---
By the third raid, I could no longer watch.
"Let me fight," I said.
> "You're not a warrior," Tamayo replied.
"I used to be."
> "You used to be a lot of things. But here, you're just Ren."
I hated how right she was.
But I still sharpened a sickle, tied it to a stick, and called it a weapon.
---
The raiders came with torches.
Eight men. Half-drunk. Armed with rust and hate.
Only five of us stood to meet them. Farmers with hammers. A boy with a rake. Me, holding my makeshift glaive and the weight of two lives.
We didn't even slow them down.
They laughed as we charged.
They mocked us as they killed us.
I killed one. Maybe two.
And then something shattered in my leg.
I fell.
Fell like I had before—knees to ground, weapon broken, blood everywhere.
Not glorious. Not honorable.
Just another corpse in the mud.
As my vision dimmed, I whispered,
> "Not again…"
---
When I awoke, she was there.
Izanami.
Sitting upon a throne of lotus petals and ash.
Behind her, the great veil of souls stirred—an ocean of memory. The same place where she'd once told me my sins. The place between endings and beginnings.
She looked at me with no surprise.
> "Was that enough pain for you?"
"I'm not amused."
> "Good. You were never meant to be."
"What was the point of that life? That village? I was nothing!"
> "You were powerless," she said. "You tasted helplessness. Like your people once did under your reign."
I clenched my fists.
> "So that was a lesson?"
> "It was a reminder," she said. "That strength untempered by humility is simply cruelty in waiting."
I looked down. Blood still soaked my hands. I could still feel the sickle splinter in my grip. Still hear the boy's death rattle beside me.
"Why give me the memories if I was meant to die as nothing?"
> "Because nothing dies unnoticed here."
She stood. Her presence filled the space with a cold wind.
> "You were reborn once. That was mercy. You were slain again. That was consequence. But now…"
She stepped toward me.
> "Now you are ready."
"For what?"
> "To choose."
A fire lit behind her—violet, like the soul-forged sword from before.
And from the smoke stepped a figure.
Not a man. Not a god.
But me.
The true Akatsuki.
Clad in broken armor, eyes glowing with ancient fury, scars like ink written across his chest.
> "You will face yourself," Izanami whispered.
> "And if I lose?"
> "Then this is your end."
> "And if I win?"
> "Then this world will tremble beneath your return."