Snow clung to the bowl of the valley like an old memory—quiet, cold, sharp around the edges.
Kazuya stood at the edge of the fire's light, shoulders sunk in shadow, breath fogging against the stillness. His scarf—sun-bleached crimson and rain-stained—hung loose around his collarbones. The wind wheezed over ferns and flicked snow ash from the shrine's worn eaves. The flames crackled weakly. Nothing prayed here anymore.
Taeko sat just outside the ring of warmth, armor partially unbuckled, her sword across her lap. One leg stretched out beside her, wrapped tightly from shin to thigh. Bits of dried blood clung to the folds of her sash. She dragged a whetstone across the edge of her blade in rhythmic pulls — slow, focused, as if pain could be filed away.
"You're limping again," she said without looking.
Kazuya said nothing.
Clack-hiss. The whetstone scraped anew.
"Duel's still happening," she added. "Three more days. Can't dodge that with a limp."
She earned a glance this time — faint, flicked like a fragment of thought. He said nothing again, and she smirked at the silence.
Then the rhythm broke — the crunch of heavy boots. Not hurried. Not hesitant. Just… claiming space.
Taeko was on her feet in an instant, blade halfway out of its sheathe by reflex. But the shape emerging from the trees wasn't a bandit or a soldier. It was Okiro — the wolf-shouldered brute wearing layers of fur and weathered chainmail. His beard hung like moss over cracked armor. His left eye was a milky yellow orb ringed in scar tissue.
He didn't bow. Just tossed a folded envelope, violet-wrapped and wax-sealed, at Kazuya's boots.
"Shinjou invites you to tea," he said in a voice too flat to be respectful.
Kazuya didn't move.
"Tell him to choke on it," Taeko snapped.
But still, Kazuya just watched the envelope sway slightly in the wind.
"Not an offer you ignore," Okiro added. "Not out here. Heiji Shinjou knows your name, and he paid for it with coin and blood. Said you'd come."
Kazuya bent, picked up the paper, and turned it in his fingers.
Then he walked toward the edge of the firelight, scanning the trees ahead.
"He's going," Taeko growled, trailing after. "Of course he's going."
Kazuya didn't answer.
"I'm the one who kills you," she muttered, jaw tight.
He paused, scarf fluttering beside him. "Then don't blink."
They crossed the frozen ridgelines north of the shrine beneath a sky crushed low by clouds. The wind stung the face like ash. No torii gates this high up. No paths carved for visitors. Only animals and the ghosts of men too stubborn to stay dead.
Eventually, they came to the entrance of Shinjou's hollow—a ravine coiled with fog and torches. Smoke curled through narrow stone corridors. High above, faint figures lined the cliffs, more shadow than soldier, but clearly perched with bows in hand. Watching.
At the center of the ravine stood the tent.
Velvet-black, brushed with faint gold embroidery. Bone chimes danced in the stale breeze. The snow didn't fall here; it hovered above, like it was afraid of what laid beneath.
Heiji Shinjou stood outside the flap, robes silky and lined with fur. His hands were gaudily ringed, and his black hair was slicked flat against his scalp like oil on glass.
"My honored guest," he said, smiling as he gestured toward a mat beside the firepot, "and his—complication."
Taeko's lip curled.
Kazuya stood silently. The moment cracked, but never spilled.
Shinjou poured dark tea into small lacquered cups as if no archers were loitering above them, as if no blood had been paid to get this meeting.
"You've walked through ghosts and snow to get here," Shinjou said calmly. "I respect that. So I'll be direct — no riddles. No riddles for killers."
Kazuya shifted his weight, his sword hand lingering near his hip. Snow clung to the hem of his haori.
Shinjou lifted a small fabric pouch from beside the tea pot and let it drape in his hand. Gold coins tinkled faintly inside.
"Fifty thousand ryo," he said smoothly. "Unmarked. Counted by monks with no tongues. Yours."
He set the pouch down.
"And not just coin," he added with a smirk. "Sendai province—perhaps you've heard of it. Wind-choked wasteland in the north. It's yours. I'll have the daimyo dragged from his brothel and dumped in a ditch before the sun sets tomorrow. You take the title. The land. Command. Power."
Kazuya didn't move.
Shinjou leaned in, letting his voice drop to something more intimate. Disgustingly so.
"And… Fowler. Abijah Fowler. The foreign wretch who nests behind eight levels of walls, loyal dogs, double agents, chakra-sealed vaults, storm-wrought stone. You want him dead? I can get you to his bedside."
At that, Kazuya's fingers flexed by a half-inch, like a note struck lightly in his bones. Taeko narrowed her eyes.
"You know how?" Shinjou asked, grinning wider now. "He gets deliveries. Not just furniture, or meat. He likes women. Low caste. Cheap sake. I move it all."
He tapped a nearby sake barrel with one knuckle.
"You ride in as cargo. The guards look the other way. I even clear the route with fog witches from the dispersed Kiri clans. Smooth passage. One chance."
Then he stood back and raised one finger.
"I ask only one proof of trust. A drop of assurance."
He pointed, slowly, straight at Kazuya's dominant hand.
"Your thumb. Right hand. Your blade's soul."
Silence collapsed across the ravine.
Then:
Kazuya stepped forward, eyes unreadable.
Shinjou grinned—but it cracked at the edges.
Kazuya said nothing—only reached for the hilt.
Then steel whispered. Brief, blistering, bright.
And Shinjou's right forearm dropped to the snow like meat off a spit. His rings clattered as they bounced along the ice.
Before the scream echoed off the cliffs—arrows flew.
Everything unravelled.
The first volley punched holes around them. Kazuya grabbed the massive iron kettle lid and slammed it forward as a shield, shoving Taeko behind him.
Snow shattered. Wood broke. Arrows struck the metal like rainborn bells.
Two. Three. Four.
"Count it!" she yelled into his ear.
"Four seconds reload!" he barked.
They ran—dragging the lid, dodging stray shafts, slipping over stone.
One buried itself into Taeko's shoulder. She didn't stop. Blood poured straight down her arm, over her knuckles.
Kazuya dropped an enemy fighter from the side with a single throw of a blade caught in fallen ice—punctured straight through the temple. Another rushed from above—a curved sickle in hand.
Kazuya spun, redirected the man's momentum—and sliced through his gut with one draw.
Taeko was on her third opponent—brass-plated fists smashing bone, her blade carving a line across a woman's cheek before the other screamed and toppled backward into a pit.
They wheezed into cover, bloodied, wind-lashed, pinned at the ravine mouth.
A trader—old, hunched, cloaked in mossy shawls—stepped out from between the branches where the frost thickened like breath. He looked up at Kazuya with mismatched eyes.
"I thought you'd be taller," he said casually. "Never thought the Hidden Leaf's shadow could crawl this far north."
Kazuya's expression faltered for a split second.
Just one breath, hitched.
Behind the amber lenses, ice stirred.
The man tapped his wooden pipe.
"They say the son of the Yellow Flash died ages ago. But snow keeps turning up with footprints where none should be."
Kazuya turned his back. Walked on.
The battle wasn't over yet.
They reached the forest sometime past midnight.
Taeko collapsed beside a half-frozen stream. She pulled the arrow from her shoulder with a wince, her vision swimming. Kazuya said nothing—just broke off the shaft, burned the wound shut, then turned away to clean his sword.
"You saved my worthless ass," she muttered raggedly, watching his back.
He paused.
"You're not worth a monument," he said without turning, "but you're not the worst thing I've brought through fire."
They sat in silence.
The wind howled above the trees. Taeko tilted her head against a root.
She didn't see him move. Only felt it—the hard blow to the side of her neck, fast, precise. Unconsciousness swept in like a tide.
Kazuya laid her against the moss, wrapped her scarf loosely around her neck, and tucked a folded parchment into the crook of her hand.
Second of Autumn.
No distractions.
Come ready to bleed, not talk.
He drew his hood close and turned toward the mountains. The sky had started to clear. Moonlight touched the blade at his hip, whispering echoes of the men still left to kill.
He didn't look back.
And beneath the watchful frost, the path narrowed again.
Fewer footprints.
Fewer names.
But a fixed number of cuts left to make.