The Blade Beneath the Snow
The wind howled softly through the white forest.
Snow fell like shards of memory slow, heavy, and endless.
"How long have I been here…?"
Yakosobi Uma whispered to himself, his breath fading into the cold mist.
Age twenty-five.
A man who once held a blade sharper than truth itself… now worked quietly at a small mountain school.
Each day felt like a dream he couldn't wake from.
Each snowflake that touched his skin felt like a reminder of something he had lost.
Freedom.
Purpose.
Perhaps even his name.
He tightened his scarf and carried on through the snow, a basket of wood balanced against his shoulder. The village of Ikinoku lay ahead one of the smallest, most forgotten places in the Northern Province. Hidden deep between mountains and ancient bamboo groves, Ikinoku was a village swallowed by silence.
Yakosobi's boots pressed into the snow with a steady rhythm.
Crunch… crunch…
Then another sound.
Footsteps.
Fast. Desperate.
Two of them.
He stopped. The wind grew sharper, whispering warnings through the bamboo.
"Someone's running…"
He didn't turn around not yet.
Instead, he listened.
Branches snapped. Breath gasped. The sound of chains clinking against ice.
Suddenly, from the edge of the forest, a girl burst through the snow, collapsing onto the frozen path before him. Her hair shimmered white as crystal, glowing faintly beneath the gray sky. Chains bound her ankles and neck, their metal stained with frost and rust.
Her eyes desperate, clear as ice met his for an instant.
Behind her, a huge man emerged, his shoulders wide as trees, a massive butcher's blade in hand. His breath steamed with rage. Fat and muscle rippled beneath his torn furs.
"Don't move!" he roared, voice echoing through the valley.
Yakosobi didn't answer.
He stepped forward instead calm, slow, as if walking into memory itself.
The man's blade came down with a roar of wind.
Steel struck not flesh, but the basket of wood. Logs scattered across the snow.
In a single motion, Yakosobi pulled the girl close, twisting his body away as the blade bit the earth beside them. Snow exploded into the air.
The huge man snarled, lifting his weapon again.
But Yakosobi's eyes had changed.
For the first time in years…
the look of a swordsman the one who once lived by the blade returned to his face.
Cold. Silent. Focused.
"If you value your life," Yakosobi murmured,
"turn back now."
The wind howled once more, swirling snow between them
and in that frozen breath between violence and mercy,
the old self Yakosobi thought he buried…
began to awaken.
The Name Called Kiden
There's a reason… why I became what I am.
Why I became Kiden.
All my life, I have carried the weight of the blade.
I have worked in silence, walked among others as an ordinary man, an associate at the village school pretending to live.
I thought that if I buried my sword deep enough, I could live far from blood and lies.
But fate never forgets its own children.
Now, death stands before me smiling.
A monster of a man, two blades gleaming in his hands.
Behind him, the white-haired girl trembles, her chains clinking softly in the wind.
Should I save her… or leave her to die?
The question never finishes forming.
Before his mind can decide, Yakosobi's body moves faster than thought, faster than memory.
He snatches a length of wood from the snow and sprints forward.
The rhythm. The stance.
He knows this motion this step, this instinct.
The old self.
The swordsman.
The killer once known as Kiden.
The man swings his massive blade, roaring like thunder.
Steel screams through the air.
Yakosobi slides aside, snow bursting beneath his feet.
Why am I moving? I said I'd never fight again…
But his body doesn't listen. It remembers what his heart denies.
Each strike, each breath, each dodge a forgotten melody played by muscle and pain.
The huge man laughs.
"The way you move… you've killed before, haven't you?!"
Yakosobi freezes for a heartbeat eyes wide, breath white in the air.
Then he moves again.
The man charges, wild and reckless.
One of his blades slips from his hand, cutting across the snow.
Yakosobi pivots, the fallen blade slicing its own master as momentum betrays him.
A sound half roar, half gasp and then silence.
The giant falls.
His blood melts the snow.
Yakosobi stands still, staring at his trembling hands.
Even after all these years… I still remember how to kill.
He doesn't wait.
He picks up the scattered wood, the broken basket.
Without a word, he turns away leaving the girl in the snow, the mountain wind swallowing her faint whisper.
The snow falls again, quietly, endlessly.
And in that silence, the name he once buried begins to echo once more
Kiden.]