"What the fire consumes, it remembers. And from those memories, embers rise." – Sayings of the Crimson Veil
The journey home should have brought peace. The forest path winding toward the Crimson Veil compound was one Ayanami had walked a hundred times—barefoot as a child in training, bloodied as a disciple on trial, and now cloaked in midnight silence as a master of her craft. She knew every turn of the stone path, every gnarled tree whose branches reached like old friends. But tonight, the air tasted different.
The rain had stopped, yet the clouds lingered, bloated with threat. A mist clung low to the earth, shrouding the land in an eerie hush, as if the forest itself mourned something unspeakable.
Ayanami's pace slowed when she noticed the absence of life. The woodland was usually alive with the nocturnal rhythms of owls and cicadas, but tonight it was dead. Even the foxfire—a common flicker among the stones and shrines—was absent. An unease stirred in her chest. Her senses, honed to detect the faintest shift, screamed of wrongness.
She paused at the torii gate marking the sacred border of the compound. Its once-vivid red lacquer was peeling, and blood stained its base. Not old blood—fresh. Still wet. Still warm.
Her breath caught.
Withdrawing her blade from the fold of her sash, she moved forward. Each step was a whisper across the moss-covered stones. The training grounds were silent. No soft thud of footsteps, no laughter, no commands barked from elder instructors. Just wind and shadow.
And blood.
It coated the courtyard in smeared patterns—some drawn with the efficiency of a clean kill, others violently scattered as if the victims had fought to their last breath. The wooden dummies used for striking drills had been split open like flesh. The main hall's paper lanterns had been extinguished, their casings torn. Ash drifted through the air. The scent of it mingled with copper and incense.
Ayanami's heart beat faster, not in fear, but in fury.
The great hall stood open. Its shoji doors—painted with the clan's crest of twin cranes and a crimson veil—had been slashed. Torn banners hung like corpses from the rafters. Shadows loomed inside.
She stepped over the threshold. Silence greeted her.
And then—
A cough. Wet. Gurgling. Struggling to live.
She spun toward the inner shrine and found him—Master Yugiri—her teacher, her guide, the man who had raised her from the brokenness of childhood and molded her into the clan's finest blade. He lay crumpled at the base of the sacred flame brazier, blood soaking his robes. One arm clutched his chest; the other stretched toward a blade broken in two.
Ayanami dropped to her knees beside him. "Master—!"
His eyes fluttered open, pale with death's advance but sharp. "You live," he rasped, a ghost of a smile trembling on cracked lips. "Good… It means they failed… all of them…"
"I will find who did this," she said. "I swear it."
Yugiri shook his head with a faint grimace. "Too late… Too deep…"
She steadied his hand. "Who, Master? Who betrayed us?"
He coughed again, and blood flecked his chin. His breath rattled. Still, he lifted a hand with terrible effort and pressed a scroll into her palm.
"Not who… but why." His fingers trembled. "Kagutsuchi's Mirror…"
Ayanami froze. "The artifact?"
"It was never myth… The Mirror exists. It reveals all—truth, loyalty, fear… corruption. Many feared it would be used… against them." His voice faded for a heartbeat, then surged back in a final surge of clarity. "Someone from the inside wanted it… killed for it."
"Where is it?"
"Hidden… beyond the Silver Peak. You must reach her—Lady Sayuri. She holds the path."
Her mentor's eyes found hers one final time, the old fire briefly rekindled. "You are the last blade of the Veil. The fire does not die—it hides… until it returns to consume."
Then silence.
The weight of the words struck harder than the loss.
Yugiri's hand fell. His body stilled.
The sacred flame beside him flickered as if mourning, then dimmed.
---
Ayanami buried him beneath the willow grove behind the sanctuary—a place he had often taken her for meditation. With trembling hands, she etched his name into a weathered stone. As she finished, she caught movement among the ruins.
A figure—a girl no older than sixteen—limped into view from the direction of the archives, clothes torn and face smeared with soot. Her name was Kiri, an apprentice Ayanami had sparred with months ago.
"Kiri," Ayanami called.
The girl flinched, eyes wild. Then recognition softened her terror. She collapsed into Ayanami's arms.
"They came from within," she whispered. "Not ronin… not foreign. Us."
Ayanami's stomach twisted.
"They wore the mark… but it was wrong. A crimson veil over black flames."
That wasn't the Crimson Veil. It was something else. A splinter faction? Or something worse?
"What did they take?" Ayanami asked.
"The archive scrolls… and the old map chamber beneath the shrine."
Yugiri's last words echoed: Beyond the Silver Peak.
A deeper game was unfolding. A power struggle within the order, and at the center, a relic that could unveil any heart's truth.
She turned back toward the ruins of the main hall. Its ashes still smoldered. The bodies of her sisters—some burned, others struck down with cruel precision—were now part of the soil they once defended.
But one thing they had not taken was her resolve.
Ayanami led Kiri to the secluded healing quarters on the edge of the compound. The old apothecary's hut still stood, untouched by the flames. She prepared salves, dressed the girl's wounds, and left her under the care of an elder who had survived by sheer luck. The few who remained would tend the dead, and rebuild what they could.
She could not stay.
---
Before dawn, Ayanami knelt in the Hall of Blades, where the order's weapons had been kept for centuries. Many were gone—stolen or burned. But one remained untouched.
Yugiri's blade.
She took it.
It was not her own—it was heavier, slower. But it bore his spirit. It would strike in his memory.
Before leaving the compound, she climbed the southern ridge and looked back at the place that had been her world. Smoke curled into the sky, a silent eulogy.
Then she descended the mountain, following a path known only to the inner circle: eastward, toward the Silver Peak. Toward Lady Sayuri. Toward truth.
And vengeance.