As Saturu was overwhelmed, his eyes turned bright red, signaling that he was reaching his full power. Gathering his will, he leaped back from the invisible threat and raised his hand to activate his ultimate sword technique: Stardust Blade. His blade glowed with dark blue power as multiple blasts occurred simultaneously. He was about to finish off Nozashi, who was on the ground barely moving. Saturu leaped on top of him, but in that instant, a sharp pain struck his heart, causing him to spit a mouthful of blood.
"It's about time... Now to finish you off, Saturu," Nozashi said.
Nozashi looked up, unmoved. "Divine Authority: Heavenly Demon Tai Chi." A force equal to a mountain crushed Saturu.
"VWOOM-BOOM!"
An invisible, crushing force flattened the space around him. Saturu forced himself to stand, using his sword to collide with the impact.
And then, the sword shattered.
SHIIING-KRRAANNGG!
His sword, unable to withstand the chaotic surge of his runaway power, exploded in his hand. The shock of it—the sound, the feel of his last tangible connection to the clan breaking—was the final trigger.
Uncontrolled power erupted from him in a wild, expanding dome of blue chaos. It wasn't a technique; it was a seizure of energy, vaporizing the sand around him and cracking the stone foundations. The clan members screamed and fled.
Nozashi's eyes narrowed. He planted his feet, his own authority flaring brighter. The tai chi Weight pressed down, not to attack Saturu, but to contain the explosion, to crush the maelstrom back into the boy.
In that instant, Kaito took the chance to take one of Saturu's eyes. The amount of blood flooding out was too much, and the pain was too much to bear.
As he asked himself why his family was doing this to him—he had never done anything to hurt anyone—but they accused him of murder and let him be sentenced to death.
"Why...?
Why...?
Why...?
Tell me why I must suffer like this...?
Kyaaaa..!!"
As both the pain and power pressed against an unbreakable prison, Saturu screamed, the agony tearing through him. "The agony stripped away his sanity, a white-hot knife twisting in his core; he opened his mouth to scream, but the sound was trapped behind a wall of pure, blinding pain that consumed thought, breath, and being itself."
The noise was gone now.
It drained out of him with the last note, poured into the rushing water at his feet and swirled down the drain. The scream, the rage, the tiredness… it was all just… empty.
He looked at his hands. They were just hands. The face in the water was just a face. A shell. The person who wore it, the one who felt so much, was gone. He was swept away.
He was the one who tried. He put on the smile, handed it out like a gift. He waited for one in return. Just one. But they never did. They just took it and left the silence heavier than before. They left him heavier, until he couldn't carry it anymore.
But that weight was gone now. The crushing feeling was a hollow space. And in that hollow, there was only one thing. A single, cold, clear thought.
No.
He would not let fate do this to him. He would not be this broken thing, waiting for a kindness that never came.
His path leading to death was nothing against his will. His will to live, to get revenge.
All he sought now was vengeance and revenge.
As the sheer force crushed him, his body and bones broke, now bloody as blood flowed out of him.
In the deafening silence, Nozashi moved. His sword, carrying the weight of a peak, swung in a brutal, flat arc.
It connected with Saturu's chest.
In the end, no scream was heard. Blood flowed out, his eye turned grey like the dead, no breath, no sound from him. His body was full of wounds and injuries, cuts left untreated.
Nozashi stood over him. "The corruption has been purged." He sheathed his sword and marched away.
"The sacrifice has been done," Lord Kaito said, allowing a cold smile.
"Should I cut off the head now?" Nozashi asked.
"No need. If he's long dead, just throw away the body like how I did before," Lord Kaito replied.
His servants gathered Saturu's broken form and carried him away. His sword lay in pieces on the scarred earth, a fitting symbol of the bond it once represented, now utterly destroyed. His body was thrown into the nearby river.
As the body sank to the river floor..glug... gurgle... blub...both sides of Saturu merged into one. In an instant, Saturu woke up from his meditation.
"It's about time you came back," Kayon said.
Saturu looked at his body. It had evolved, with a trypan blue and purple aura forming around him and now with purple eyeshadow.
My body feels lighter.
"As he looked around damage field....What happened here?"
"You're the one to say... Containing the energy from your unconscious body took a toll on me," Kayon said as he walked away, his legs giving way.
"Just one thing are you the one who saved me? If so, thank you," Saturu said.
The memory surfaced with the clarity of a lightning strike. Kayon, had been walking along the riverbank at dusk, the water a murky slate grey under the clouded sky. His thoughts were elsewhere, on the day's failures, when a shape caught his eye a pale, broken form caught in the reeds.
It was a body.
A surge of initial annoyance, of intrusion, flashed through him. Another fool who couldn't handle the currents, he thought, a bitter taste in his mouth. He almost turned away, leaving the river to claim its prize. But something, a pull he could not name a flicker of an old, unfulfilled debt, a whisper on the wind that sounded like a friend's voice compelled him to wade into the frigid water.
His hands, initially rough with irritation, touched the cold, lifeless flesh. And in that instant, as his fingers brushed against the boy's chest, he felt it. A spark. A single, stubborn ember of power clinging to the extinguished form, a familiar signature that made his breath catch. It was then that the intrusion transformed into a command, a decree from fate itself that he could not ignore. He was not merely retrieving a corpse; he was salvaging a spark from the ashes, compelled by a force greater than his own will...the memory ended as he teleported with the body.
I regressed.
These memories… they're not mine. They belong to the previous owner of this body.
My bloodline has bled for my mistakes.
You suffered because of weakness I made never chose.
You clung to life until the moment it crushed you…
Yet this was never your war.
You were thrown into it and left to die in it.
You can now find salvation.
Your part ends here.
From this point forward, everything falls to me.
I'll rebuild the strength you never had.
I'll reclaim the throne ripped from our line.
And this time, no one will take it from me.
"Thank you for everything kayon" Saturu said.
"No please I'm just returning a favor I owe to my old friend." Kayon replied.