The dog's body lies at my feet, blood mingling with rainwater.
I wipe my blade clean before resheathing it, my mind still caught in the strange trance that overcame me during both kills tonight. First Yoshimoto, now his loyal hound. Both times, the same phenomenon.
The old masters have a word for this state—zanmai, complete absorption. But what I experienced transcends even that. For those brief moments, I ceased to exist as Hiryu. I became the steel itself.
The quickening.
I've heard whispers of it—senior warriors speaking in hushed tones about a perfect unity with their weapons. A state where thought and action merge, where the blade and body become one entity.
But I've never heard of it happening to someone like me. A bastard ninja adopted into the clan, not born to it.
Rain streams down my face as I stare at Yoshimoto's tent, where a shadow still moves behind the translucent walls. The weight of what happened when my blade met Yoshimoto's neck lingers like the taste of iron on the tongue.
That moment of recognition in his eyes. As if we'd met before. As if he'd been expecting me.
And then the sensation of my consciousness flowing out of my body and into the katana. The perfect clarity that came with it. The absence of fear, hesitation, or remorse. Only purpose.
I flex my fingers, surprised to find them trembling slightly. Not from cold, though the rain has soaked through my garments. Not from fear, though the danger is far from past. But from something more primal—the body's reaction to housing a soul that has momentarily vacated it.
Is this what it means to be a true samurai? This dissolution of self, this merging with the instrument of death?
Or is it something else entirely? Something specific to me?
I've been with the Oda clan since childhood, stolen during a raid. Raised to be a weapon in their arsenal. But in all those years of harsh training, no one ever directly trained me on the quickening. It was only whispers.
Yet Naga seemed to recognize what happened. I saw it in his eyes. A calculation.
Does he fear what I might become?
The warlord is dead, his forces thrown into confusion. The Oda victory is assured.
But I'm drawn to the tent and its secrets.
As I approach, I try to recapture the sensation of the quickening. To understand what happened when my consciousness joined with my blade. It felt like dying and being reborn in the span of a single heartbeat. Like breaking through a veil and glimpsing some greater truth beyond.
And strangest of all, it felt familiar. Not like a first discovery, but like remembering something long forgotten.
The silhouette behind the canvas grows more distinct. The rain pounds harder, and thunder cracks overhead. Another flash of lightning illuminates the camp, casting long shadows of abandoned standards and bodies stripped of armor.
I pause at the entrance of the tent, one hand on my sword hilt. The quickening may have left me, but its echo remains—a heightened awareness, a readiness to slip back into that perfect unity of warrior and weapon.
Whatever waits inside, I will face it. And perhaps in facing it, I will begin to understand what has awakened within me.
What has awakened, or what has returned.