Chapter 9: The Final Choice
Zen aimed the rifle at Aiko and Koushirou's direction. Daiki's dull, expressionless face, hollowed from days of exhaustion, morphed into raw panic. His breath hitched. A sickening weight dropped into his stomach, dragging him toward the earth. He scrambled to his knees, struggling against the moisture of the rocky yet bumpy terrain as he slipped forward, his palms scraping across the uneven moss-slicked stones and fingers clawing into the mud.
No. No, not again. Not them.
In a heartbeat that stretched into eternity, he pushed his lithe body in between the crossfire. The shots rang out. His chest convulsed. Bullets tore into flesh and bone, each impact slamming him backwards with brutal force. It was as if time had halted. His final moments stripped bare, in the name of judgement or justice of any sort, Daiki knew that he didn't have much longer. The bullets pierced his erratic pounding heart. Daiki's breath shattered into a ragged cough; a harsh, guttural sound echoed as his hoarse voice reverberated across the terrain. Blood splattered, staining the pale sands a vivid crimson red. His natural responses of his biological defence mechanisms – the gradual coagulation of haemoglobin spreading from the wounds to other parts of his body, his bodily functions slowing down. As the pain became more excruciating, it dawned on him. That he would not last long; that the door to the netherworld is just beyond reach.
Mustering the last of his energy, he grasped his own rifle. Turning around, he fired at the squadron of enemies before him. In that moment, a ripple of recognition struck them. Shirogane and Zen felt a tinge of nostalgia. A familiarity with Daiki's abandoned past. A past they once shared. This was the man who was once the young master of the Asakura Family – the one known as the
For Daiki, the battlefield blurred. The crying faces of his beloved ones are shoved into hindsight. The outlines of Aiko and Koushirou swam before his dimming vision, their cries muffled and distorted. He saw only the smudges of their faces pressed close to his, their tears mingling with the sweat and oil on his skin. It pained his heart. His heart wrenched, splintering under a pain greater than any bullet: the knowledge that he was leaving them. That his son—barely a man—would now be left to carry the weight of survival. But his unfinished business ends here.
His bloodied palms quivered as it rose, inch by inch, toward Koushirou as he was gradually losing strength. With the last dregs of strength, Daiki cupped Koushirou's cheeks; his pale skin was stained with blood. Fear was evident in Koushirou's eyes.
Koushirou's wide eyes glistened with fear, his lips trembling. "Father…"
Daiki forced a smile, faint but resolute, even as his vision tunnelled. "You're a fine man," he rasped, his voice hoarse, breaking between shallow breaths. "Strive… for the best… and you'll find a path… truly your own. I know you can walk a road different from mine…"
Blood bubbled at the corner of his lips. He swallowed hard, his body quaking, but pressed on. The final hour was encroaching upon him, yet he showed no fear."No… I'm certain you will. With allies… comrades… confrères at your side… you'll carve a future greater than anything I ever could."
His hand slipped, growing heavy, yet his smile lingered."And with their strength… and your own… you'll do… so many great things…"
The words hung in the air, fragile and sacred, as Daiki's body slumped, his chest rising once, twice—then falling still.
Daiki paused.
The silence that followed stretched unbearably, a silence so heavy that Koushirou's heart seemed to stop in tandem with it. And in that silence, he understood. His worst fear had come true.
Those had been his father's final words.
The man who had once been as ferocious as a cornered wolf, unshakeable as a mountain, a master of his craft and leader of men—Gennichirou's legacy, the flawed yet almighty of the Asakura—was finally no more.
A sound tore through Koushirou before he could stop it. A shriek—raw, piercing, unearthly—escaped his throat. It shattered the stillness of the battlefield, cutting through the smoke and blood like a blade.
And yet, in its rawness, it was exactly what his father had longed for him to become: a son who could reach out to others, who could feel deeply, who could express the stirrings of his heart for the sake of people and country alike. On his father's deathbed, Koushirou finally did it.
The boy who had been void of emotion, who lived behind walls of silence, had found his voice.
Memories flashed before Aiko's eyes as the cry rang out. She thought of the endless worries of his childhood—the way Koushirou's blank expressions unsettled the adults around him, the way his peers mocked his silence, his inability to express thoughts or feelings, no matter how much they burnt inside. She thought of the long hours in clinics, specialists shaking their heads, offering little more than faint assurances that perhaps, with age, he might change.
At their wits' end, she had once caught Daiki staring at their son with a look so heavy it had broken her heart. He had blamed himself. He had called it his punishment—the price of defying his father's orders, of abandoning the Asakusa name, of all the sins staining his past. This is what I've passed on to him, he had said once, voice thick with regret.
Koushirou had given them endless worry in his youth. His apathy had led him into trouble, into danger. Once, he had even been kidnapped, his impassive face so unsettling to his captors that they had called him "hollow." And yet, even after all of that, he had not broken free of his silence.
Until now.
Now, with Daiki's body growing cold before him, the dam had shattered. His voice had finally erupted, jagged, desperate, and alive.
Aiko clutched at her son, tears streaking her bloodied cheeks. For the first time in years, she felt something change in him—raw grief, but also the spark of the man he was meant to become.
Aiko froze at the sound of her son's scream. It was raw, jagged, almost animalistic. It was nothing like the quiet boy who had shadowed her side all his life. For a heartbeat, she almost didn't recognise it as his. But when her trembling gaze fell upon Koushirou, doubled over in grief, she understood.
Her tears came harder. She pulled him close, wrapping her arms around him, her bloodied hands tangling in his hair as though to shield him from the weight of the world. "Koushirou…" she whispered, her voice breaking. It was both a plea and a prayer. She felt his body convulse against her, and for the first time, she held not the silent, unreadable child she had worried over—but her son, raw and alive, crying like any other boy his age.
Zen stood apart, his rifle lowering slowly. The shriek echoed in his ears, unsettling something deep within. He had watched Koushirou grow from a distance, had thought of him as a boy bound to his father's shadow, fragile and voiceless. But now, hearing that cry—it shook him. It was a cry that tore through pride, through silence, through the chains Daiki's past had wrapped around them all.
He looked at the boy differently now. Not as Daiki's son. Not as the weak link in this brutal game. But as someone standing at the threshold of change.
Shirogane said nothing, though his lips pressed into a tight line. He was not one to be moved easily, yet even he could not deny the sound had cut through him. It was a reminder of what Daiki had always sought to protect—family, bonds, a future untarnished by the sins of the past. And though Shirogane's face remained cold, his hand tightened imperceptibly on the hilt at his side, as if holding in something he could not name.
The battlefield grew still again. The echo of Koushirou's shriek faded into the horizon, but its weight lingered, heavier than gunfire.
Aiko's sobs softened into trembling breaths. Koushirou's voice cracked as he whispered again, this time not as a cry but as a vow, the words falling like fragile glass into the silence:
"… I'll carry it. Father… I swear I'll carry your words."
The world did not answer. But in the stillness, it was as if Daiki himself lingered, unseen yet present, watching over the son who had at last found his voice.
The Asakusa forces ceased fire as their target breathed his final moments. Their first milestone since the gears of fate had begun to turn almost twenty years ago.
The battlefield fell into an uncanny stillness. Smoke curled upward from the barrels of rifles, drifting into the grey sky. The sharp crack of gunfire, which had dominated the air only moments ago, was gone—swallowed by a silence heavy enough to press on every chest.
Men who had come to kill him now watched in uneasy quiet, their weapons lowered, as though instinctively recognising that the fight had ended. Daiki Asakura, the wolf who had once stood unyielding against them all, lay crumpled on the earth. Blood seeped into the soil beneath him, the crimson spreading like roots into the sand and stone.
For a heartbeat, even the Asakusa soldiers felt it—that indescribable shift when a figure larger than life finally falls. He had been their enemy, their target, their prey. But in the end, he was also something else: a man who had defied fate until the very last breath.
Aiko's broken sobs carried faintly across the field, raw against the unnatural quiet. Koushirou's cry still lingered like an echo in their ears, too human, too visceral to ignore. Even the wind seemed hesitant, brushing gently against the bloodstained ground as though unwilling to disturb the scene.
Zen's hands tightened around his rifle. Shirogane's gaze flickered once, unreadable. And across the Asakusa line, shoulders slackened, and breaths were caught, as if the weight of Daiki's fall reverberated through friend and foe alike.
No one raised their weapon. No one dared.
The battle, for now, was over.
The period of bereavement stretched on, heavy and unyielding. For Aiko, it was not only the loss of her husband but also the burden of preserving his dignity in death. Drawing upon her lineage as the daughter of a renowned martial arts school and temple, she took it upon herself to arrange Daiki's funeral with the greatest honour she could muster.
It was held at the largest funeral home in Atami, a place of solemn grandeur where incense thickened the air and the lanterns burnt through the night. Word of Daiki's passing spread quickly, reaching even those who had long severed ties with him. One by one, lost connections resurfaced—old acquaintances, distant relatives, men and women who had once walked the edges of his tumultuous past.
The priests sang in low, resonant voices, their chants filling the chamber like waves against the shore. They spoke not only of Daiki's spirit but also of the bloodline he had joined through Aiko. With reverence, they praised her parents—Koushirou's maternal grandparents—pillars of discipline, faith, and tradition. Their words became both comfort and reminder: that even in grief, the Asakura name was bound now to something steadier, older, and enduring.
Condolences came in murmurs, in deep bows, in offerings of flowers and incense. But beneath the formalities lingered a current of unease, for everyone present knew the truth—that Daiki's death was not merely a personal tragedy but a ripple across a web of histories and obligations yet unresolved.
Koushirou stood stiffly at the edge of the altar, his black robe heavy against his skin. The room swam with incense, its sweet smoke catching in his throat, making his chest ache as if the grief itself were trying to suffocate him.
He did not cry—not in the way his mother did, silent tears streaking down her face, nor in the way mourners wept openly into their sleeves. Instead, his hands clenched tightly at his sides, the nails digging crescents into his palms. His heart throbbed painfully, but his face refused to move.
People came to him in waves. Old men with lined faces bowed deeply, calling him "Daiki's son." Women he did not know pressed cold hands to his shoulders and whispered platitudes he could barely hear. Some stared too long, as though searching for his father in the lines of his jaw or the silence in his eyes.
When the priests spoke of his maternal grandparents—praising their legacy of discipline and honour—Koushirou lowered his gaze. Their names felt distant, foreign even, compared to the image of his father gasping for breath in his final moments. Everyone here spoke of tradition, of ancestry, of pride. But none of them had been there to see the blood. None of them had heard Daiki's last words tremble out like a final prayer meant only for him.
Aiko's hand brushed his sleeve, light but steady, reminding him that he was not alone. Still, the thought gnawed at him: the mantle of his father's will, the unspoken expectations of two families now entwined, all pressing down onto his shoulders.
For the first time, Koushirou realised that grief was not only sorrow. It was also a responsibility. And responsibility was far heavier than loss.
The ceremony carried on solemnly. On the third day, the prayers were interrupted with a loud crash. All eyes turned to the source of the sound—a pair of lacquered doors at the back of the hall, flung open with such force that the hinges rattled. Gasps rippled through the mourners. Incense smoke wavered in the sudden draft, curling and breaking apart like restless spirits disturbed from their path.
A group of men stepped inside, their black coats stark against the pale lantern light. Their presence was deliberate, heavy, and unmistakably hostile. None bowed. None removed their shoes.
Koushirou's stomach tightened as he recognised the insignia stitched into their sleeves: the Kamishiro Clan. Rivals. Enemies. And now intruders were at his father's funeral.
The head priest faltered, his chanting breaking into an uneasy silence. The hall, moments ago echoing with the rhythm of sutras, now pulsed with a single, fragile tension—like a taut string ready to snap.
Aiko rose instinctively, stepping between the newcomers and her son, her grief-hardened gaze meeting theirs with fire. But before she could speak, the leader of the group stepped forward, his polished shoes thudding softly against the tatami mats, a thin smile curling across his face.
Aiko immediately knew who he was. Donning the dark silk kimono with silver-threaded cranes, he carried himself with the quiet arrogance of a man accustomed to commanding entire rooms without raising his voice. With an obsidian tuft arranged neatly and divine blue irises as sharp as a piercing knife, his eyes gleamed with an unsettling mixture of nostalgia and contempt.
This man shared similar features with her late husband and her treasured son, Koushirou. The sharpness of the jawline, the set of the eyes, even the faint curl of the lips—it was as though fate itself had carved him from the same stone.
Aiko's breath caught. She had heard the name countless times, whispered with both reverence and dread in Daiki's stories. The man who stood before her was no stranger. He was the one Daiki had spoken of in those rare moments of candour—sometimes with admiration, other times with bitterness, always with a shadow in his voice.
The man who now came to claim what was promised to him.
The current sovereign of the Asakusa Family—
Kamishirou Gennichirou.
The name alone was enough to still the entire hall. Priests faltered mid-prayer, mourners stiffened in their seats, incense smoke curled and stuttered as though choking on the weight of it.
Gennichirou's gaze swept over the hall, over Aiko, finally settling on Koushirou. There was no cruelty in his expression—only an unnerving certainty, as if he had already decided the boy's future long before this meeting.
"You look like him," Gennichirou said at last, his voice low, almost gentle. But there was steel beneath it, enough to make Koushirou's stomach tighten. "Daiki's eyes… but perhaps, if fate allows, not his weakness."
Koushirou felt every gaze pressing on him, suffocating, demanding. He wanted to shout, to push back—but his throat closed tight, his chest constricted. His silence felt like weakness, like a verdict already passed.
"Forgive the intrusion," Gennichirou went on, his tone cutting clean through the hushed hall. "But it seemed only fitting to pay respects… to a man who once abandoned his blood, and now leaves behind a boy who must decide what he truly is." His words dripped like poison, sinking deep into the mourners' hearts. Some averted their eyes; others clenched their fists, but none dared move.
The sovereign's smirk curved wider, as though he drank in Koushirou's struggle. Then, with a slow, mocking bow toward Daiki's coffin, he murmured, "An end for the father. A beginning for the son."
Aiko's voice cracked through the silence, sharp and unyielding. "What are you here for?"
Gennichirou did not immediately answer. Instead, he lifted his gaze from the coffin to Aiko, studying her with the calm intensity of a hawk circling prey. The silence stretched, suffocating, until the faint rustle of robes and the flicker of incense fire seemed deafening.
"What am I here for?" he repeated softly, as though tasting the words. His smile thinned into something colder, calculated. "I am here, Lady Aiko, for what rightfully belongs to us. To the Asakusa name. To me."
His eyes slid back to Koushirou, pinning the boy in place as surely as chains.
"The boy carries Daiki's blood. No matter how far his father ran, no matter how deep he tried to bury himself in obscurity… Lineage does not disappear. It calls. And now, it answers."
A low murmur rippled through the mourners, fear and outrage mingling in equal measure. Some priests instinctively began chanting under their breath, as though to ward off the ill-omened presence, while Aiko stood unflinching.
"You dare," she hissed, voice sharp with restrained fury. "You come here, into my husband's funeral, and speak of claims? Koushirou is not yours to take. He is my son."
Gennichirou tilted his head, amusement flickering in his eyes. "Yours, yes. But not only yours. Blood is a river, Lady Aiko. And rivers… always return to the sea." His smile deepened, cruel as winter.
Gennichirou turned at last, his expression flattening into cold command. With a flick of his hand, he addressed the men at his back.
"Take him."
The words fell like a blade.
The Asakusa men moved as one, black-clad shadows surging forward with mechanical precision. Their footsteps thudded against the tatami, breaking the hush of the funeral with a violence that made the mourners flinch and recoil.
Aiko stepped forward instantly, her sleeve brushing against Koushirou's shoulder as if to shield him with her very body. Grief sharpened into defiance, and her voice cracked like a whip.
"Don't you dare."
The room trembled with the force of it. Not a breath dared to break the silence until, at last, the priest resumed his chanting—voice trembling but louder now, as if trying to drive away the stain of their intrusion. Even the priests faltered in their chanting. For a heartbeat, the men hesitated—not out of mercy, but from the sheer will that radiated from her stance. Koushirou, frozen, felt the weight of a thousand eyes on him. His heart hammered, his throat dry. He wanted to scream, to run, to fight—but his body betrayed him, locked in silence.
And still, Gennichirou watched, calm as the sea before a storm, as though Aiko's fury and the boy's paralysis were already part of the script he had written.
"We're not merely objects at your disposal!" Aiko's voice cracked like a whip, and in the same breath, her body moved. She surged forward, past her son, her movements as fluid as they were furious. Her palm lashed upward with bone-jarring force, snapping against the nearest man's wrist. A twist of her hips, a pivot born from years of discipline and fury, sent two more crashing into the tatami. The offering table shuddered under the impact, incense burners toppling, candles scattering fire across the mats. Smoke and sparks coiled into the air, mingling with the gasps of horrified mourners.
Koushirou stood frozen, his breath caught in his throat. He could not name what boiled inside him—rage, grief, terror, despair—all of it collided, too vast to contain, too raw to be put into words.
"Stop it!" His cry split the chaos, shattering something deep within.
In that instant, the air warped around him. From the marrow of his being, fire erupted—not red, not gold, but a searing blue. The flames licked up his arms, coiling around his body with unnatural grace, divine and terrible.
Gasps turned into screams as the hall was bathed in cerulean light. The heat was not merely physical; it seared the spirit, forcing even the boldest to stagger back.
It was unmistakable. The divine flames of Hotenmaru—the devil whispered of in old legends, the one who ensnared archangels themselves before rising toward enlightenment. A power both cursed and sacred, now reborn in Daiki's son.
And Koushirou, trembling at the centre of it all, felt the weight of fate clamp down on him like iron chains.
"Daiki's fire," Gennichirou murmured at last. His gaze flicked briefly to Aiko, but his words carried to the boy. The faint smile that touched his lips was neither admiration nor respect—it was dismissal, as though he were witnessing a tool finally unwrapped from its sheath. "Perhaps you've inherited more than just Daiki's eyes after all."
But your fire is still immature.
The priests recoiled in horror, clutching their sutras tighter, their chants growing louder in a desperate attempt to smother the unholy reverberations. The mourners clutched their sleeves to their faces, some fleeing toward the doors, others frozen in a paralysis of fear.
The fire surged outward, spilling across the tatami, swallowing the overturned incense and shattered offerings. Yet where the mourners recoiled, covering their faces against the heat, Gennichirou stepped forward.
The blue flames licked at his robes, devoured the air between them—yet he did not burn. He walked through the inferno as though it were no more than mist, his shadow stretching long and monstrous against the walls. His smile deepened, not with fear, but with something far more unsettling: recognition.
The Asakusa Clan has been waiting for this moment. Hotenmaru's blood has reemerged. The divine blue flames coiling off Koushirou's body blazed brighter, casting jagged shadows against the temple walls. It was more than a spectacle—it was proof, undeniable and damning. Evidence that the boy bore Hotenmaru's blood, the legacy Daiki had tried so desperately to bury.
Koushirou's body trembled—not just from the searing flames, but from the crushing weight of the expectation now shackled to him. His heart pounded like a drum in his chest. He wanted to deny it, to tear the destiny from his skin. But the fire would not obey—it burnt brighter, as though mocking his resistance.
Gennichirou's lips curled into a smirk.
"Embrace your rightful destiny, boy. For you are Asakusa's vessel, the one who inherited our clan's divine power."
The words hung heavy, sinking into the incense-thick air like a curse. Around them, silence reigned—broken only by the hiss and crackle of divine fire. Mourners lowered their gazes, some in reverence, others in fear, as though the temple itself dared not defy the truth revealed before it.
Aiko's breath caught, her nails digging into her palms until blood beaded. The words fell like an oath carved in stone. The hall seemed to bow to them, the mourners shrinking back, eyes cast down in fear of what had awakened. Even the priests, their chants faltering, found no prayer strong enough to eclipse the truth that burnt before them.
Aiko's hands shook, hidden within her sleeves. Rage, grief, and terror warred within her, but beneath it all lay a single, unyielding vow: they would not take him. Her son's face—pale, trembling, yet haloed in fire—was no longer just hers to protect. Fate had branded him before her very eyes. Not while she still breathed.
And as the last ember at Daiki's coffin died into ash, the temple no longer felt like a place of mourning but the threshold of something far darker. The fears that Daiki feared, the divine flames returning to its rightful place, at the disposal of the Asakusa Family.
The boy's fire had risen—immortal, unrelenting—and destiny had come to claim him. In that moment, Koushirou realised. He was something far greater—and far more dangerous.