Morning crept over the forgotten city, though here in its rotting alleys dawn was little more than a pale fog pressing against broken rooftops. The main streets stirred faintly with life—distant footsteps, the creak of wheels, the coughing of chimneys—but in the lower layers of the city, where the stone was cracked and the air stank of coal dust and damp rot, silence reigned.
Tucked into one of these alleys, half-swallowed by shadows, was a blacksmith's workshop. It was easy to miss. Only those who stumbled directly into the narrow passage could even see the place, and even then, it looked less like a shop and more like a scar on the city's wall.
Its entrance was nothing more than a warped wooden door. The surface was pitted with years of strikes and scratches, its edges swollen from damp. Each time it moved, it gave a groan that seemed less like wood and more like some weary animal begging to be left alone.
Inside, the air was stagnant. Heavy. Every breath clung to the throat like soot. The smell of ash and old metal drowned the space, layered over with something else—something rancid that no fire could burn away.
The workshop itself looked as though it had been built from scraps of the city's ruins. The walls were patched together from uneven blocks of cement and crooked planks of wood, scars of a building repaired too many times and never well. Above, the ceiling was raw cement, hardened into jagged fangs where wet mixture had once dripped down and dried sharp, as though the entire ceiling was the maw of some slumbering beast hanging overhead.
No windows broke the gloom. The only light came from weak oil lamps, their flames too small to banish the dark. Even the forge in the corner offered nothing—it was long cold, choked with ash and scraps of half-burnt charcoal.
The floor was plain cement, gray and cracked, with smooth stones pressed into it in a half-hearted attempt at design. Time had dulled them into dirt. At the room's center stood the anvil, squat and battered, its surface scarred from years of strikes that no one cared to remember. Against one wall hung the tools: hammers, tongs, chisels. They dangled from rusted nails, their edges dulled, their handles splintered, as if every blow they had once struck had already been wasted.
Nearby stood a crooked wooden workbench, its drawers swollen from damp, its surface scarred with burns and stains. A plain chair leaned against it, so thin and warped it looked ready to collapse beneath the weight of a shadow.
In the farthest corner, wooden boxes were piled high. Some overflowed with charcoal, black dust spilling across the floor like a stain that refused to stay contained. Others held gems—dimly glowing, their light more like the last flicker of a dying ember than any true flame. And scattered among them were worse things. Scales from creatures that stank of rot. Bones, brittle and yellow, that clattered if touched. One box, sealed poorly, gave off the sour stink of rubbery skin left to fester. The smell had sunk into the walls, into the stone itself, until the whole workshop reeked less of metal and fire and more of a carcass rotting in secret.
At the left side, the floor rose into warped wooden planks, creaking at every step. A bed sat there—if it could still be called a bed. Its sheets were torn, fabric eaten through by time and stained dark with patches of mildew and rot. It looked less like a place for sleep than a nest for disease.
On the opposite side of the room, a crooked bookshelf leaned against the wall. Its frame was split and splintered, its shelves nearly bare. A handful of worn books sat across it, scattered without care, as though even their knowledge had been forgotten.
And in the far right corner, pressed beneath the shadow of the wall, stood a desk. Its edges were chipped, its surface scarred by ink and fire. Across it lay stacks of paper, smudged with black fingerprints, illegible scribbles, and ink that had long since bled into gray stains. Beside them stood bottles of glass, their surfaces greasy, each filled with liquid black or red or green, and each etched with labels in an ancient tongue. To those who could read it, the word was clear: toxin.
Before this desk sat a chair, plain, worn, and cracked. And upon it, sprawled like discarded waste, was a man.
His body sagged forward, one arm limp at his side, the other hanging across the desk. His clothes were simple—black pants dulled with dust, leather boots cracked from years of wear, a white shirt stained with sweat and grime until it had become a patchwork of filth. His head hung low, black hair matted and damp, strands falling across his face. His chest did not rise. His skin was waxen, drained.
At first glance, he looked no different than a corpse left too long in its chair. And perhaps that was true. This was the body of the blacksmith—broken by debt, rotted by failure, driven by despair into a silence that have ended him. The vessel chosen not by his will, but by the gaze of something far greater.
But this was no ordinary corpse.
The silence of the room seemed to hold its breath. The air grew heavier, as though time itself hesitated. Something unseen pressed against the body, invisible yet undeniable, like a hand reaching into the flesh from beneath.
Then, slowly—so slowly it could have been imagined—the blacksmith's chest rose. A shallow breath rattled into his lungs, dry and painful, dragging the stale air into a body that had no right to breathe.
His fingers twitched against the wood of the chair, faint, then stronger. His head rolled, hair shifting just enough to reveal a glimpse of his face—pale, hollow, and yet not entirely dead.
The body moved.
It was not the blacksmith who stirred, but something else. Something that had not belonged here until now.
Deep within the husk of flesh, the soul of Aoshi Minamoto had taken root.
The man who had died nameless on another world now lived again, buried in the failing body of a stranger. His heart gave a slow, stubborn beat. His lungs filled once more.
Life, unwilling and unnatural, clawed its way back into the blacksmith's corpse.
And with that breath, the wager began.
________________________
Aoshi drifted.
His consciousness floated in a place beyond anything he had ever known—a void with no sound, no warmth, no shape. A cold emptiness that stretched forever.
So this is death, he thought. Nothing.
The realization pressed down on him like stone. No light. No body. No future. Just the silence he had carried all his life, now made eternal.
He tried to scream, but no sound left him. He tried to weep, but no tears formed. He was a shadow without voice, without flesh.
Jealousy clawed at him in the dark. Sadness burned deep inside his hollowed chest. Why did others get warmth—families, laughter, second chances? Why had his life been nothing but sickness, isolation, chains that never loosened?
It was unfair.
He had done nothing wrong. Nothing to deserve the curse of a body that betrayed him. Yet he had suffered.
Resentment boiled. In the silence he cursed his parents. He cursed them for birthing him into a world without care, for leaving him to rot in loneliness.
But slowly, even fury dimmed. The darkness devoured it, one ember at a time, until only a dull ache remained.
Maybe this was how it ended. Maybe this was all his life was ever meant to be—an unfinished sentence cut short, forgotten by everyone.
And yet.
From that hollow resignation came a spark. Small. Pathetic. Desperate. A wish.
Please, he thought. Just once. Let me live again.
He did not care if he was weak. He did not care if he was powerless. He wanted only to breathe again, to walk again, to mend what had been broken and fight against the regrets that strangled him.
Aoshi wished.
And the void answered.
Light.
Blinding, merciless, searing into every corner of the blackness. It was not warmth—it was fire. It swallowed him whole. Aoshi thought he was being burned away, his soul erased, but then—
Blink.
His eyelids dragged open.
Above him stretched a ceiling of rough cement, jagged with sharp teeth of hardened stone, stalactites frozen mid-drip. His body felt wrong. Heavy. Tired. Every limb chained by lead. His chest rose and fell only with effort.
Too heavy.
The fatigue pulled him back under, dragging him into unconsciousness again.
Time slipped.
When his eyes opened once more, the weight was lighter. His head lolled to the side, muscles groaning. A loud crack of bone echoed as his neck stretched from the unnatural angle it had hung in. His vision sharpened, colors bleeding into focus.
The first thing he saw was a desk. Papers scattered, black smudges bleeding across their surfaces. Glass bottles lined its edge, some filled with red liquid, others with green, all marked with strange etchings.
The symbols tugged at his memory. His lips formed a single word in silence.
…Toxin.
A chill crept through him. His gaze lowered. His body.
Black pants dulled with dust. Leather boots cracked with age. A tight shirt clinging with grime and sweat. None of it was his. Not the body. Not the clothes.
His breath caught.
He turned his head slowly. His eyes fell across the room—an unlit forge. Rusted tools. A battered anvil. Crates stacked in corners, reeking of rot.
Unfamiliar. All of it. Old. Worn. Broken.
Where am I?
The question rang in his skull like a hammer against iron. How did I end up here?
Dream? Hallucination?
He searched his memory. He remembered the sickness. The slow suffocation of his body collapsing in that lonely room. He remembered death's embrace. The darkness.
Had he not already died?
The answer whispered back to him, cold and unreal.
Reincarnation.
The thought sliced him open, sharp and wild. Ridiculous. Impossible. Yet… here he was. His fingers twitched. His lungs filled. His eyes moved. This body was not his, yet it lived.
Shock flooded him. Panic followed. Questions slammed into him, one after another, until his skull felt as though it would split from the noise.
But before he could steady himself, before he could clutch hold of the truth, the silence shattered.
BANG.
The old wooden door rattled under the strike.
BANG. BANG.
The sound echoed through the suffocating room, shaking dust from the ceiling.
Then came the voice. Rough, sharp, dripping venom through the cracks.
"You fucker. Open up."
The words carried no patience, no hesitation. Only promise of violence.
Aoshi froze, breath catching in his throat.
The blacksmith's life had not even begun again, and already the world was knocking.