The wind blew cold through the mountain passes of Sagiri, whispering through pine branches and sliding down the stone ridges like the breath of ghosts. In that wind, the mountain spoke—and Ren listened.
Night was his sanctuary.
Not by choice, but by necessity.
The pale moon watched over his every step, while the stars scattered like broken glass across the sky. During these hours, Ren trained—moving through the darkness under the guidance of the masked man who had taken him in.
Urokodaki.
A man of few words and even fewer expressions, hidden behind a red tengu mask. Yet behind that silent façade was the patience of a master, and a conviction sharp enough to cut stone. He saw something in Ren—something more than the monstrous hunger in his veins or the fire behind his amber eyes.
He saw a boy standing at the edge of two worlds.
But at first, Ren wanted to reject one of those worlds entirely.
"I don't want to use it," Ren had said, his voice rough with shame. "The demon inside me… I want to bury it."
He sat at the entrance of the cave, his arms wrapped around his knees, the faintest light of dawn creeping up the sky behind him. Urokodaki stood beside him, unmoving.
"That part of you," Urokodaki replied after a long silence, "is not something you can bury. It is something you must learn to control. Or it will control you."
Ren clenched his fists. "If I use it… won't I just become like them?"
"No," Urokodaki said. "Because you're still choosing."
And that truth sat with Ren, heavy and cold.
So he did not bury it. He faced it. Fought it. Wrestled with it in silence.
Each night, as darkness swallowed the forest, Urokodaki unleashed a gauntlet of traps—snares strung from trees, collapsing pitfalls, hidden blades that swung without warning. The old man never told Ren where or when they would be. That was the point.
The first nights were filled with blood and pain. Ren's reflexes were sharp—inhuman, even—but his instincts were raw, unshaped. Traps snagged his ankles, wires sliced his arms, hidden darts drew crimson lines along his skin. But each time he fell, he rose.
And slowly, pain became guidance. Wounds became memory. His steps grew quieter, his reactions swifter. The forest no longer felt like a maze, but a breathing thing—alive, and familiar.
In time, Ren's instincts sharpened into something deeper.
Foresight.
It began with flickers—flashes of motion before they happened, the subtle shift in the air before a trap was sprung, a sense of direction just before danger struck. Urokodaki noticed.
"This is not mere intuition," he said one night, watching Ren dodge five snares in succession without seeing them. "It's something more. Train it. Shape it."
So Ren began sparring blindfolded .A cloth tied tightly around his eyes, he faced Urokodaki beneath the trees, his breathing deep and controlled. The old man never held back. Wooden swords clashed in the moonlight, and each strike Ren dodged felt like unraveling a pattern only he could see.
But such nights were followed by hollow days.
When the sky grew bright and unforgiving, Ren disappeared into the mountains, retreating into the deepest caverns where the sun could not reach. He would sit in the dark for hours, cross-legged on cold stone, back straight, fists clenched.
There, he meditated.
But this was not quiet reflection—it was a war. A battle of will against the hunger gnawing inside him.
It howled at him. It begged. It promised.
He would not listen.
To survive, Urokodaki made a concession. Once a week, he brought a single bottle of his own blood.
Nothing more.
Ren drank it like medicine, never pleasure. Each drop was agony and relief. It kept the hunger at bay without feeding the beast too much. It allowed him to keep training—keep fighting.
He hated needing it. But he understood why.
In the black silence of the cave, he started something new.
There, with the taste of blood still fading on his tongue and the ache of his body settling, Ren began crafting something he could call his own.
He breathed differently.
Not like Water Breathing, which Urokodaki tried to teach him. He had attempted it—truly—but it didn't fit. Its elegance eluded him. Its rhythm felt foreign. He practiced the forms, mimicked the motions, but each slash felt hollow.
He told Urokodaki one morning, after another failed attempt, "I'm not water. I can't flow around pain. I carry it."
Urokodaki only nodded once. "Then carry it well."
So in the dark, he shaped his pain.
He began to breathe with his sorrow, not against it. He let grief become rhythm—every loss, every failure, every pang of hunger. It became the cadence of his lungs.
Inhale—accept the pain.
Exhale—control it.
He visualized shadow—not as absence, but as presence cloaked in silence. Shadow was not weakness. It was what survived the light. What adapted, endured, and waited.
His breath matched that stillness.
From this, a new form began to take shape. A breathing style of his own making. A reflection of his burden, his resolve, and the truth of what he had become.
Shadow breathing.
Each form was born from stillness. A blade drawn from silence. Movements swift and subtle, striking from unseen angles. A style forged not in defiance of his demonhood—but with it.
But it wasn't until he accepted it—fully, deeply—that his breathing truly connected.
It was a quiet moment.
A single night after training, he stood alone atop a cliffside, the stars glinting like scattered memories above him. The wind carried the scent of moss and distant rain.
And in that wind, he spoke to himself.
"I am a demon… but I will become a slayer."
Not in shame. Not in pride.
Just truth.
It was like something unlocked inside him. His breathing settled—not forced, not practiced. It belonged.
The next night, when Urokodaki set the traps anew, Ren didn't avoid them.
He moved through them.
Unseen. Unheard. Untouched.
When he emerged from the woods, Urokodaki said nothing. He simply handed Ren a fresh cloth, and the two began to spar.
Blindfolded.
Wood clashed against wood. Sparks lit the night like fireflies. And every strike Ren blocked, every counter he delivered, came not from instinct—but from a deeper place. A place that had once been hollow, now filled with the breath of shadow.
When the spar ended, Urokodaki stood silent for a long moment.
Then, he said, "You've stopped running from yourself."
Ren let the blindfold fall. "I had to. If I'm going to protect anyone… I have to use everything I am."
Even the part that terrified him.
Especially that part.
____________
The mountain air grew colder with the passing weeks. Snow began to cling to the trees. But Ren remained, training, breathing, surviving.
He was no longer just a creature hiding in a cave.
He was a blade forged in shadow.
And he was ready.
Not to run.
Not to hide.
But to walk forward, into the world that had tried to leave him behind.