The howl tore through the mountain silence like a rusted blade.
Kaito Hinode didn't flinch. He'd been waiting for it. Kneeling on the frost-rimed rock of the outcrop, his breath plumed in the predawn air, each exhalation a controlled, measured stream. He watched the grey light bleed into the eastern sky, painting the snow-capped peaks in shades of iron and blood. Below, nestled in the valley's stubborn grip, the thatched roofs of his village, Emberfall, smoked lazily. A picture of peace. A lie.
Another howl, closer. This one was layered with a wet, guttural clicking that spoke of a malformed throat. Ashen Fiend. Low-level, mostly beast, but with just enough cruel intelligence to make it dangerous. It had taken three goats from Old Man Sato's pen two nights ago. It wouldn't take a fourth.
Kaito rose, his joints protesting the cold and the long watch. He was seventeen, with a leanness born of mountain life and a stillness that seemed at odds with the fire in his eyes—eyes the color of banked coals, holding a heat that never quite went out. He wore patched trousers, a worn woolen jacket, and tabi boots that were nearly silent on the stone. Slung across his back was his sword. Not a masterpiece, but a tool. A straight, single-edged blade in a plain wooden sheath, its handle wrapped in faded, sweat-darkened cord.
He dropped from the outcrop, landing in a soft crouch on the pine-needle floor of the forest. The air here was thick with the scent of damp earth, pine, and something else—a cloying, sour odor of decay. Ash-rot. The Fiend's trail.
He moved without sound, a shadow among the deep morning shadows. His father had taught him that, before he'd left. "The hunt begins long before you draw your blade, Kaito. It begins in your feet, in your breath, in the silence you carry." His father's face was a blur now, softened by a decade of absence, but the lessons were etched in bone-deep habit.
He found the creature at the base of a lightning-split cedar. It was hunched, its form a grotesque mockery of a wolf. Twice the size, with patchy, greyish hide stretched taut over jutting bones. Its muzzle was elongated, dripping viscous saliva that sizzled where it hit the ground. Ash-rot. Its eyes were the worst—not the feral yellow of a wolf, but a sickly, intelligent green, glowing with a malice that was purely demonic.
It was gnawing on the stripped leg bone of a goat.
Kaito didn't announce himself. He drew his sword. The rasp of steel was the only sound.
The Ashen Fiend's head snapped up. It saw him, and its lips peeled back from needle-like teeth in a silent snarl. It didn't howl. This close, it preferred the quiet of the kill.
It launched itself, a blur of matted fur and extended claws, moving faster than anything its size should.
Kaito's body moved before his mind could command it. He sidestepped, the claws whistling past his chest. The stench of the thing washed over him—old blood and opened graves. He pivoted, his sword arm swinging in a tight, horizontal arc aimed at its flank.
The blade bit, but not deep. The Fiend's hide was tough, leathery. It yelped, more in rage than pain, and spun, its tail—a barbed, bony whip—lashing out.
Kaito dropped flat, the tail passing over him. He rolled to his feet, breathing hard now. Not from exertion, but from focus. The world narrowed to the creature, the tree, the rhythm of his own heart.
Breathe.
He inhaled, deep and long, feeling the cold air flood his lungs. But within him, something else stirred. A furnace, banked low in his core, began to pulse. He focused on it, on the memory of his father's words, whispered during childhood training sessions that felt more like dreams. "The fire is not in the sword, boy. It's in the breath. It's in the blood. You are the conduit."
He exhaled.
A visible plume of steam erupted from his lips, hotter than normal breath, shimmering in the cold air. Along the length of his plain blade, a faint, rippling haze appeared, as if the steel were wavering over a bed of coals.
Searing Sun Breathing. First Ember: Kindling.
The Ashen Fiend paused, those sickly green eyes narrowing. It sensed the change. The shift from prey to something else.
It charged again, this time with a ferocious, bounding gait meant to overwhelm.
Kaito didn't retreat. He stepped into the charge. As the beast reared up, claws poised to rend him, he dropped his center of gravity and thrust his sword upward, not at the body, but at the exposed throat.
"Strike where the ember glows brightest," his father's voice echoed.
The haze around his blade ignited.
It wasn't a torrent of flame, not a dramatic fireball. It was a concentrated burst of superheated energy, channeled along the edge of the steel. A searing line of orange-white light.
The sword pierced the Fiend's throat. The heat did the rest.
There was a choked, wet gurgle, a smell of burnt meat and ozone. The green light in the Fiend's eyes flared, then winked out. It collapsed, a heavy, lifeless sack of flesh and malice, at Kaito's feet. Wisps of acrid smoke rose from the cauterized wound in its neck.
Kaito stood over it, his sword still extended. The faint heat haze faded from the blade. His breath came in controlled, steady pulls, slowly banking the inner fire back down. He felt the familiar, hollow ache in his muscles—the cost of channeling even that small amount of power. It was crude. Wasteful, a proper swordsman would say. But it was his. It was the only thing his father had left him that truly mattered.
He cleaned his blade on a clean patch of moss and sheathed it. The practical part of his mind noted he should salvage a fang or a claw. Proof for the village elders. Bounty. But the word felt sour. This wasn't about zen. It was about clearing. One less piece of darkness. One step closer to… what?
He looked east, past the dead Fiend, past the silent trees, towards the immense, brooding wall of mountains known as the Shadowveil Peaks. They were perpetually shrouded in purple-grey clouds, even on the clearest day. The source. The place his father had looked towards on that last morning, a decade ago.
Kaito had been seven. He'd clung to his father's leg in the doorway of this very forest's edge.
"Where are you going?"
His father, Kenshin Hinode, had been a tall man, worn lean by the wilds. He'd knelt, placing a calloused hand on Kaito's head. His eyes, the same shade as Kaito's, held a light Kaito didn't understand—a mix of deep sorrow and unbreakable resolve. On his back were the two swords, their hilts crossed. One red, one pale. They had always fascinated Kaito.
"There's a sickness in the world, Kaito," he'd said, his voice a low rumble. "It breeds in the shadows of those peaks. It takes good people and makes them into… things like that." He'd nodded towards the forest, as if he could already sense the Ashen Fiends to come. "I'm going to help clear it. To cut out the rot."
"When will you be back?"
His father had smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "When the job is done. Be strong. Tend the fire. Protect the village."
He'd stood, turned, and walked into the trees. The last thing Kaito saw was the glint of the twin sword hilts over his father's shoulder, disappearing into the green gloom.
He never returned.
A sudden rustle in the undergrowth snapped Kaito back to the present. He spun, hand on his hilt, but it was only a snow hare, darting away from the scent of death.
The hollow ache in his chest had nothing to do with his breathing technique. He turned his back on the dead Fiend and the looming Shadowveil. The job here was done. He began the long walk back to Emberfall, the memory of his father's promise a cold, constant ember in his heart, burning alongside the physical one.
Clear the evil.
It was the only vow he had. The only thing that gave the fire inside him any purpose at all. He just didn't know yet how deeply that vow would cut, or what price it would demand. That lesson was waiting for him, just down the mountain path.