The world was a blur of rustling leaves and the frantic, desperate pounding of his own heart against his ribs. Raito ran, his feet finding a familiar rhythm on the packed earth of the jungle path, a path he had walked a hundred times in quiet contentment. Now, it was a race track, and the finish line was a home he feared was no longer a sanctuary. The letter, a single piece of stiff parchment, was clutched in his hand, its sharp edges digging into his palm, the crinkle of the paper a constant, sharp reminder of the dread that spurred him onward.
“Raito, wait!”
Yukari’s voice, a breathless, worried cry, cut through the humid air behind him. She was fast, her movements a fluid, practiced grace even in her confusion, but his panicked, adrenaline-fueled sprint kept him just ahead. She didn’t know what he had read, what could have possibly wiped the quiet, newfound confidence from his face and replaced it with a raw, primal fear she hadn’t seen since the darkest days of their escape. All she knew was that he was running towards the one place they were supposed to be safe, and that single, illogical fact sent a cold dread coiling in her own stomach.
He didn’t stop until the familiar, gentle slope of the path opened up, revealing the small, quiet farmhouse nestled in its clearing. Their home. He stumbled to a halt in front of the ransacked frame of their front door, his chest heaving, his hands braced against his knees as he gasped for air.
Yukari caught up a moment later, her own breath coming in ragged pants, her silver eyes wide with a thousand unspoken questions. “Raito… what is it?” she asked, her voice a sharp, urgent thing that cut through his labored breathing. “What’s going on? What did that letter say?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The words were a knot of ice and fear in his throat. Instead, he straightened up slowly, his hand trembling as he held the letter out to her.
She took it, her brow furrowed with a deep, worried concern. The parchment was heavy, expensive, a world away from the cheap paper used in Hanyuun’s markets. But it was the contents that made her blood run cold.
There were only a few words, scrawled in a crude, aggressive script that seemed to have been carved into the paper with pure, unrestrained rage.
I know where you are. You can’t escape. Fight me, boy.
Beneath the threat, a photograph had been tucked into the fold. It was a picture of them. A candid, stolen moment, taken from a distance, of the two of them laughing in their own backyard, the familiar lines of their farmhouse a clear, undeniable backdrop. A chilling violation of their peace.
“Who…?” Yukari’s voice was a raw, incredulous whisper that was barely audible over the sudden, deafening roar in her own ears. “Who would do this?”
Raito finally found his voice, though it was a strained, hollow thing. “My first thought… Jinlun,” he said, shaking his head, the motion slow and weary. “The Monarch… Councilor Feng.” He let out a short, humorless laugh. “But the writing is too crude. Too… personal. This isn’t the work of a kingdom’s spies. This is a grudge.”
He reached out, his finger tracing a small, almost unnoticeable mark pressed into the crimson wax that had sealed the letter, a sigil that had been burned into his memory.
“Look,” he said, his voice a low, grim whisper.
It was the rough, unmistakable outline of a single, powerful horn. A rhino’s horn.
The memory hit them both at the same time, a vivid, violent flash of a chaotic battlefield. The hulking, one-horned Sacred warrior. His obsessive, roaring questions about an old sword style. The scarred, empty stump on his head where a second horn should have been.
“Ao,” Yukari breathed, the name a cold, heavy stone in the pit of her stomach.
Raito nodded, his expression hardening into a mask of grim, terrible certainty. The man who had chased him across a battlefield, the man who had called him a successor to his nemesis, the man they thought they had left behind in the chaos of a forgotten war…
He had found them.
“But when?” Yukari’s voice was a sharp whisper, her tactical mind instinctively grasping for purchase in the swirling chaos of her fear. She looked from the photograph to the ransacked farmhouse and back again. “When did he take this picture? And from where?”
“I don’t know,” Raito admitted, the words a bitter taste in his mouth. “And that’s the scary part. We only came back here a week ago. And based on what that fox sacred said…” He trailed off, the timeline clicking into place with a chilling, terrible clarity. “It could only have been a few days between Ao’s desertion and this letter.”
A cold dread, heavier than the humid Hanyuun air, settled over them.
“Does that mean he came straight here?” Yukari asked, her voice a low murmur of disbelief. “But how did he know we live here? He barely knows us.”
“That’s what I don’t get,” Raito said, ruffling his hair in a gesture of pure, frustrated confusion. The fear that had propelled him here was slowly being replaced by a gnawing, illogical bewilderment. “I only met him once. You, twice. Why does he seem to hold such a deep grudge against me?”
Yukari’s gaze sharpened, her mind racing back to the chaotic battle on the edge of Hakurou Island. She remembered the obsessive look in Ao’s eyes, the way he had ignored every other threat on the battlefield to focus solely on the boy with the strange wooden sword. “The horn…” she murmured, her gaze drifting to Raito. “The nemesis. Maybe it has something to do with the nemesis he kept talking about. About you being some kind of successor.”
“I remember vaguely about that,” Raito said, his brow furrowed as he tried to recall the hulking warrior’s roaring accusations. “He mentioned a hermit.” A sudden, impossible thought struck him, so absurd he almost laughed. But the pieces fit. The sword style. The impossible strength. The quiet, ancient wisdom. “It has to be Grandpa Sun Yoon, right? This nemesis he’s so obsessed with.” He looked at Yukari, his eyes wide with a dawning, horrified realization. “But why would he go so far? What could someone possibly do to the Storm Lord to earn that kind of hatred?”
The question hung between them, unanswered and unanswerable. The quiet, carefree life they had fought so hard to build had been violated, their sanctuary exposed. And now, a monster born from a history they didn’t understand was waiting for them, somewhere in the shadows of their own home.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Yukari said, her voice a low, dangerous whisper that cut through the silence. She drew a single, elegant dagger, its steel glinting in the afternoon sun.
Raito nodded, his own expression hardening. He unslung his heavy wooden sword, its familiar, impossible weight a comforting, solid presence in his hands. Together, they turned to face the dark, gaping maw of their farmhouse, and with a shared, silent breath, they stepped inside.
The interior of the farmhouse was a scene of quiet, deliberate violation. There were no signs of a struggle, no obvious signs of forced entry. It was just… empty. Wrong. They moved through the small space with a tense, practiced silence, their weapons held at the ready, their eyes scanning every shadow, every corner. They checked the kitchen, the living room, even the small crawl space under the floorboards. Nothing. No missing items. No hidden traps. Just a profound, unsettling sense that they were being watched, that their home was no longer their own.
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“Hey, Raito.” Yukari’s voice was a low, steady thing that cut through the heavy silence. She sheathed her daggers, her tactical scan of the room complete. “Another letter.”
He walked over to the small wooden dinner table, his heart sinking. There, placed perfectly in the center of the table where they had shared so many meals, was a second letter, identical to the first, sealed with the same arrogant, crimson wax sigil of a rhino’s horn.
With a shared, silent nod, Raito took the letter and broke the seal. He unfolded it carefully, his hands steady despite the tremor of dread that ran through him. Inside was not a threat, but a map. A detailed, hand-drawn chart of Hanyuun, its islands rendered with a surprising, almost obsessive precision. A single location had been circled in blood-red ink: a small, uninhabited island just north of Biyuu.
And at the bottom of the map, a simple, chilling note.
Come here tonight. Bring your master, boy.
“Yeah…” Raito’s voice was a dry, humorless whisper. “This smells like a trap.” He looked at Yukari, his earlier bravado completely gone, replaced by a quiet, gnawing dread. “You think we should go?”
“Why would you even want to go when you know it’s a trap?” Yukari countered, her voice sharp with a frustration. “Maybe we can just ignore it.”
“But he knows where we live, Yukari,” Raito said, the words a quiet, terrible truth. “He’ll just find us again. And next time… he might not just leave a letter.”
“But he’s also alone,” Yukari argued, though her voice lacked conviction. “And very strong.” The memory of the battle on Hakurou Island outskirts flashed through her mind—the way Ao had simply flexed, the raw, physical power of his muscles shattering the ice she had tried to bind him with, as if it were nothing more than a thin sheet of glass. A Coreless warrior, one who could not be exploited by the usual drawbacks of fatigue. A monster of pure, unadulterated strength.
Raito looked at her, a desperate, pleading hope in his eyes. “Can’t you… you know… use your new powers to fight him?”
Yukari scratched her cheek, her gaze darting away as a sheepish, almost guilty expression crossed her face. “I… uh…” she began, her voice a low, awkward murmur. “I might have used up all the charges from our little display in the backyard earlier.” She forced an awkward laugh that sounded more like a choked sob.
Raito could only stare at her, his jaw slack with a mixture of disbelief and pure, unadulterated despair.
“Now what do we do?” he groaned, the last of his strength seeming to leave him. He knew they couldn’t call the rebels. It would be a bloodbath, a massacre. Their newfound army was no match for a warrior of Ao’s caliber.
A flicker of an idea, a last, desperate hope, ignited in Yukari’s mind. “Can we call Grandpa?” she asked, her voice a hushed, urgent whisper. “See if he has any answers? He’s the hermit Ao is looking for, right?”
“You don’t think I’ve tried?” Raito’s voice was a low, defeated thing. He had been calling out to the old hermit, in his own quiet way, since the moment he had read the first letter. “He’s not at his house. And no matter how many times I’ve called since we got here, he won’t show up.” He slumped to the floor, the heavy wooden sword clattering beside him.
“Let me try,” Yukari said, her own voice now laced with a desperate urgency. She walked to the center of the room, took a deep breath, and shouted at the empty ceiling. “Grandpa! Where are you? We need you!”
Her voice echoed in the small, ransacked farmhouse, met only by a profound, deafening silence. Not a single breeze stirred. Not a single leaf rustled outside. He was gone.
“Yeah… you’re right, we are so screwed.” Yukari whispered, her own strength finally giving out. She slumped to the floor beside Raito, her head coming to rest on his shoulder. The weight of it all—the missing armies, Ao’s challenge, brought in a storm of emotions which they have barely experienced before.
Night approached with an unnerving speed, the gentle pastels of the Hanyuun sunset bleeding into a deep, starless indigo that pressed in on their small farmhouse. Inside, the silence was thick with a nervous, frantic energy. Raito paced back and forth across the small living room, the floorboards groaning under the restless rhythm of his steps.
“Okay… it’s almost time,” he said, his voice a tense, jittery thing as he glanced at the hourglass on the clock. “And I really don’t want to see that massive, intimidating guy when he’s angry. Are we going or not?”
“Don’t look at me, Mr. Successor,” Yukari countered from the floor, where she was still slumped against his shoulder, her voice laced with a weary sarcasm.
“Well, Ms. ‘I-Used-Up-All-My-Charges-in-the-Backyard,’” he shot back, stopping his pacing to glare at her. “We would’ve been fine if you didn’t do that.”
Yukari shot up to her feet, her own exhaustion forgotten in a flash of pure, unadulterated irritation. She marched over and pinched his cheek, hard. “You’re the one who asked me how this new Core works!”
Raito yelped, his own hand flying up to pinch her cheek in retaliation. “I only wanted a simple explanation, not a giant ice tower!”
They stood there for a long, silent moment, locked in a ridiculous, childish stalemate, their faces inches apart, pinching each other’s cheeks with a grim determination born of pure, high-stakes stress.
Finally, with a shared, simultaneous sigh, they both let go.
“Let’s just go,” Raito said, his voice a low, defeated thing.
“Yeah,” Yukari agreed, her own anger deflating just as quickly. “Let’s go.”
“No arguments?” he asked, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.
“Too tired,” she admitted with a shrug. “And a part of me wants to believe that guy can be reasoned with.”
“Same here,” Raito said, a fragile, desperate hope in his own voice. “Hopefully, he’ll just leave if we explain the situation.” He looked at her, a new, almost naive idea dawning. “Maybe… maybe we reveal that Grandpa is the Storm Lord? That should be enough to scare him off, right?”
Yukari just nodded, too weary to point out the flaws in that particular plan.
With a shared look of grim resolve, they left the violated sanctuary of their home and headed for the docks. The small rowboat they had borrowed from Isao bobbed gently in the dark water, a fragile, lonely vessel against the vast, inky expanse of the sea.
The journey was short, only a few minutes of rhythmic oar strokes that cut through the silent, black water. The island Ao had chosen was a desolate, unwelcoming silhouette against the night sky. It was a place for a duel, not for life—a small, barren spit of land, its shores a mixture of pale sand and jagged, black rock, with no sign of vegetation beyond a few skeletal, salt-stunted trees.
As the bottom of their small boat scraped against the sand, they both saw him.
He was sitting in the center of the beach, a hulking, mountainous figure silhouetted against the faint starlight. He was perfectly still, his massive form a silent, patient statue of impending violence, waiting for them.
The sand crunched under their boots as they stepped out of the rowboat, the sound unnaturally loud in the heavy, waiting silence. They moved slowly, cautiously, their weapons drawn, their hearts a frantic, desperate drum against their ribs.
“Uh… Mr. Ao,” Raito began, his voice, when it finally came, a thin, shaky thing that the sea breeze seemed to swallow. “Can we… talk?”
The hulking figure unfolded from his seated position, rising to his full, terrifying height. He was a mountain of muscle and scars, and his shadow, long and menacing in the faint starlight, fell over them like a shroud. He walked closer, each step a heavy, deliberate thud on the packed sand.
“You two lovebirds really are inseparable,” he said, his voice a deep, booming rumble that seemed to shake the very air around them. He stopped just a few feet away, his gaze fixed solely on Raito. “Where is the hermit?”
“Uh… he can’t come,” Raito managed, his eyes darting from the hulking man to the dark sea and back again, anywhere but at the intense, burning gaze that was boring into him.
“Why not?” Ao’s voice dropped, a low, dangerous growl that promised violence. “Don’t lie to me, boy. Unless you want to sleep with the fishes.”
“I’m not lying!” Raito insisted, his own voice cracking with a fear he could no longer hide. He took a breath, ready to plead, to explain, to offer up the only name he knew. At the exact same instant, Ao, his patience worn to a thread, issued his final, non-negotiable demand.
The words left their mouths at the exact same instant, a strange, dissonant duet that hung in the cold night air.
“You have to believe me, Grandpa Sun Yoon—” Raito pleaded.
“Bring me Ittou Mitsurugi—” Ao roared.
The two names, spoken in the same breath but a world apart, hung in the cold night air, followed by a profound, baffled silence. Raito stared at Ao, Ao stared back at Raito, and Yukari just looked between the two of them, her mind a whirlwind of confusion. The air, which moments before had been thick with the promise of a deadly confrontation, was now filled with a single, shared, and utterly bewildered thought.
Who?
