A Few Years Earlier...
In the austere chambers of the Moon Palace, the eldest Elder—Veramon's mother—stood bewildered, watching a scene that defied every law of decorum she knew.
A young Roeyachi was seated on the Master's lap.
This was not the calm, poised heir of the Silent Moon. This was a bundle of restless energy, a spirit more suited to chasing shadows across the training grounds than to stillness. Only the gentle, trusting smile he occasionally tilted up at her—a smile that even the Master's frozen discipline failed to resist—kept the Frost Queen from depositing him firmly onto the cold stone floor.
If the old monsters of the council saw this, the Elder thought, they would wonder why they scoured the world for divine swords and forgotten techniques… when all it took to undo the Sect Master was a child.
His small voice broke the deep quiet.
"Master, what are these?"
She glanced down. His fingers, still soft and unmarked by calluses, traced an illustration in the heavy tome he held—a detailed engraving of multifaceted gems hovering above a warrior's shoulders, thrumming with captured light.
"Beast Soul Crystals," she answered, her voice cool as a mountain stream.
"They look…" Roeyachi began, then fell silent.
A strange sensation washed over him. It wasn't curiosity. It was a dizzying, slow pull deep in his gut—less like looking at a picture and more like peering into a physical abyss. A hollow, profound hunger that wanted to reach into the page and consume.
Thud.
The book snapped shut. The sound was brutal, final. The spell shattered.
"They are not your concern."
"Why?"
"Because you will never commune with a beast's soul," she stated. Her voice left no room for doubt. It was not a punishment, but a fatal diagnosis. "Your spirit resonates on a different frequency. Your path… lies elsewhere."
---
The Present
The memory crystallized, sharp and cold as the truth it held.
Roeyachi had no core. His destiny was forged in steel, not spirit. He was a blademancer—a scavenger of scraps in a world of gods.
And as he stood in the arena, watching his Senior Brother share a silent conversation with the ancient wind-beast slumbering within that crystal, the old, buried wound tore open.
It wasn't just envy. It was the visceral, childhood understanding of a door forever closed, now flung in his face as his brother prepared to wield the very power he was forever denied.
Resolve struck, cold and deep. It sharpened his gaze to a lethal edge.
"Oh?" Veramon spoke, catching the shift in Roeyachi's aura. "Now you will take me seriously?"
Veramon opened his hand, releasing the heavy siege-axe. It didn't fall. It hung suspended in the air, buoyant on a rising updraft.
Above Veramon's left shoulder, the Wind Crystal bobbed gently. It didn't drift. It remained anchored there by an unseen force, rotating with the patient stillness of a sentinel awaiting orders. A low hum bled from its core as it tracked Roeyachi's movement with machine-like indifference.
Veramon's eyes narrowed, and the crystal obeyed with terrifying immediacy—halting its rotation dead before splitting with a sharp crack.
Roeyachi watched without blinking as the crystal collapsed inward.
It didn't explode. It imploded—compressing into a knot of raw white light that snapped outward in violent strands. The energy lashed from Veramon's shoulder and wrapped around the floating axe like binding wire.
One axe became two. Two became four. Slowly, terrifyingly, the light solidified into five identical phantom axes orbiting the original iron giant. They hummed with a discordance that vibrated in Roeyachi's teeth—a choir of executioners waiting for the conductor's hand.
Veramon grabbed the original axe from the air, the five phantoms locking into formation behind him like the spread wings of a raptor.
"One iron reality," Veramon grinned, the thrill of the hunt in his eyes. "Five phantom deaths."
The ground trembled as one of the spectral axes slithered forward, its trajectory low and vicious—a serpent's strike aimed to cripple, not to kill.
Roeyachi pivoted on his planted foot and kicked off the air itself, his body unfurling into a spinning, sideways helix that carried him just over the strike. Wind hissed through the space his legs had occupied a breath before.
"Above you, brother," Veramon called.
Roeyachi's gaze snapped upward mid-rotation. A second phantom axe plunged down, aiming to cleave him in half.
A feint.
The truth announced itself an instant later as the air beneath him detonated with pressure. The first axe had reversed course, screaming upward toward his exposed torso.
For a frozen moment, he was prey caught in the open jaws of a shark, awaiting the final, crushing bite.
Time seemed to stretch.
Qinggong could buy him distance. Distance would only delay the kill.
He glanced at Veramon. The giant was grinning, the other three phantom axes hovering like vultures waiting for a runner.
No. A chase sequence is just a longer path to the grave.
Don't run.
Break the teeth.
He snapped his arm outward, locking the blade in a rigid line with his shoulder, and poured everything into the spin.
He wasn't a man anymore; he was a living sawblade, a horizontal disc of grey steel screaming between the closing jaws of the phantom axes.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG.
It wasn't one heavy impact. It was a dozen per second.
Centrifugal force turned his blade into a battering wheel, chewing into the compressed wind again and again, shredding the spell's structure through sheer rotational violence.
The phantom axes shuddered under the barrage. They couldn't complete the bite. The rapid-fire impacts destabilized their form, turning the lethal wind back into harmless, chaotic air.
SHATTER.
The two axes disintegrated into sparks of light, shredded by the storm.
Roeyachi broke the spin as his momentum finally died. He landed in a crouch, sliding backward, his blade smoking from the friction.
"Brute force?" Veramon laughed, eyes wide. "With a sword?"
"Physics," Roeyachi corrected, breath coming in hot gasps. "Centrifugal force exceeds static pressure."
"Cute trick!" Veramon roared, not even pausing to admire the math.
The Sentinel Crystal hovering above his shoulder flared blindingly bright. Veramon swept his hand forward, and the remaining three phantoms locked onto Roeyachi.
Roeyachi didn't wait. He charged.
He met them head-on, his blade blurring as he batted the wind constructs aside. Clang. Clang. Clang. He tore through the magical formation, ignoring the numbness in his arm, his eyes locked on the giant's throat. He arrived in Veramon's guard, blade raised, scanning for the opening to end it.
Veramon didn't block. He smirked.
Fwump.
Veramon didn't swing the axe. He kicked the dirt.
A cloud of red dust exploded into Roeyachi's face, blinding him instantly. Instinct screamed retreat, but the air was already displacing to his left. He brought the sword up in a blind, desperate guard.
CLANG.
The impact wasn't steel on steel; it was a shoulder check that hit with the force of a battering ram.
Roeyachi flew backward, boots skidding on the gravel until he slammed into the rusted iron pillar at the arena's edge. Oxygen abandoned his lungs. He slid to one knee, coughing, eyes watering from the sting as he fought to blink the grit away.
"Dead," Veramon said.
The giant stood five paces away, the axe resting casually on his shoulder. He wasn't even winded.
"A bandit doesn't care about your stance," Veramon lectured, kicking a loose stone. "He throws sand. He spits. He bites. While you were looking for an opening, I was looking for a distraction."
Roeyachi wiped his eyes with his sleeve, the sting turning into a cold clarity.
He's right.
The Master taught perfection. The world practiced chaos.
"Again," Roeyachi rasped.
He stood up. This time, he didn't assume the formal stance. He let his shoulders slump. He loosened his grip on the hilt. He matched Veramon's jagged rhythm.
Veramon grinned, a savage baring of teeth. "Better."
The giant charged.
The axe swept low, a scythe meant to take the legs. Roeyachi didn't retreat; he surged forward into the guard. He stepped on the axe head as it passed beneath him, using the momentum to vault upward.
"The same trick?"
Veramon released the handle with one hand to backhand the air—a swat meant to crush—but Roeyachi smirked and twisted mid-air, tucking his knees to let the fist pass harmlessly below.
He landed on Veramon's shoulders.
The giant roared, reaching up to grab, but Roeyachi drove the pommel of the short sword down.
Thud.
He struck the nerve cluster at the base of the neck. Not enough to kill, but enough to numb. Veramon's arm went limp. Roeyachi flipped off his back, landing softly in the dust, and spun.
The blade stopped.
The cold steel rested gently against the back of Veramon's knee. A hamstring cut. A crippler.
"You're not the only one who can aim low."
Silence settled over the arena.
Veramon blinked, testing his numb arm. Then, a low rumble started in his chest, erupting into a laugh that shook the walls.
"Hah! You vicious little monkey!"
He turned, ignoring the blade at his leg to clap a heavy hand on Roeyachi's shoulder. "Using me as a stepping stone? Going for the nerves? You fight dirty!"
"I had a good teacher," Roeyachi said, sheathing the blade.
"You'll survive," the Senior Sister called from the ledge, standing up and brushing dust from her lap. "But don't get cocky. Bandits bleed, but they travel in packs."
Veramon retrieved his axe, his expression turning solemn for a brief flicker—the mask of the brother slipping to reveal the protector underneath.
"Keep the sword," Veramon said, nodding at the weapon at Roeyachi's hip. "Kunai run out. Steel doesn't."
Roeyachi touched the hilt. The One Iron Blade. It felt heavy, not with weight, but with the expectation placed upon it.
"I will return it when I get back."
"You better," Veramon grinned, the sadness gone as quickly as it came. "Or I'll come down there and drag you back by your ankles."
Roeyachi looked at them—the giant leaning on his axe, the sister watching from the high ground. The only family he had left in a world that wanted him dead.
"I'll be back," he promised.
He turned and walked toward the exit tunnel, the darkness swallowing him one step at a time. He didn't look back. If he had, he might have seen the way their smiles faded the moment he was gone, replaced by the quiet, terrifying look of soldiers watching a comrade walk into no-man's-land.
The mountain was behind him.
The alley waited ahead.