Muramasa moved first.
One moment he was standing in the long grass at the bottom of the hill, the full blade held out at his side. The next he was simply in front of Jin, and the sword was already coming down.
Jin met it.
The impact rang across the whole valley. CLANG. A ring of pink petals blew outward from the two of them, scattering in every direction, and the grass around their feet flattened in a perfect circle.
Then there was no more time to think.
Muramasa's blade came in from everywhere. High and low, left and right, so fast it seemed to be in three places at once. Jin moved with it. He didn't plan. He didn't reach for anything. He just let the katana go where it needed to go, a heartbeat ahead of every cut, the way it had in Ryu's training room when he couldn't see Hanseong at all. CLANG. CLANG-CLANG. CLANG.
The sound of it filled the valley. It bounced off the mountains and came back again, so that the whole world seemed to ring with steel.
