"Before swords bore souls, before men wielded flame, the world trembled under the shadow of beasts."—Tales of the Sealed Ten, Volume I
1,000 Years Ago – The Great Sealing War (封印戦争, Fūin Sensō)
The sky was a scarlet wound.
Storms clashed over the great plain of Yominokahara, a cursed stretch of land where the five great Kegai—beasts born of elemental chaos—raged like gods unbound. They had names that no human should dare speak:
Kagutsuchi – The Inferno Flame
Suijinmaru – The Ocean Tyrant
Fujinraikō – The Tempest-Twin
Daichikyō – The Colossus of Stone
Raijin'en – Thunder Sovereign
And above them all, hidden in the abyss of the world, lay the Kegai-no-Ō—The King of Beasts, whose very presence warped time and memory.
Humanity had all but been driven to extinction. Kingdoms fell. Rivers turned to magma. Even the sun itself dimmed behind walls of stormfire.
But hope came not from armies or gods—it came from ten warriors who were neither mortal nor divine.
They were called the Jūninkei (十人系) — The Sealed Ten.
Swordsmen and shrine maidens, assassins and monks, each one a master of their element. But to stop the Kegai, they did what no soul had done before:
They sealed the beasts within their own flesh.
The Ritual of Soul-Binding
They forged blades of spiritsteel and elemental ore in the ancient forge of Yorokobari, cooled in dragon blood and bathed in moonfire. These swords were called:
Kenkon (剣魂) — The Sword-Soul Blades.
One by one, the warriors challenged the beasts—not to slay them, but to trap them within the infinite maze of their soul. The price was immense: some lost their memories, some their names, some even their humanity.
But they succeeded.
The beasts were chained. The world quieted. And the Jūninkei, mortally wounded and forever cursed, vanished into legend.
Some say their bodies became the sacred mountains. Others believe they still walk the earth, reborn in every generation.
Whispers of Return
Now, a millennium later, the seal weakens.
A cult known only as Shikkoku no Hana (漆黒の華 – The Black Bloom) gathers shards of broken sealing stones. Villages vanish. Beasts once believed extinct reawaken in corrupted forms.
The Tsuranuki Clan, direct descendants of the Jūninkei, continue the soul-sealing tradition—but their numbers dwindle. The burden of wielding a Kenkon blade has grown heavier.
And somewhere, deep beneath Tenka, the Kegai-no-Ō stirs.
Its name is forgotten.Its hunger is not.And in the distant province of Hi-no-Kuni, a boy with fire in his blood is about to awaken something that should have never been touched.
Proverb of the Flame
"To wield the sword is to burn yourself.But to seal the beast…is to let it burn you from within."