Chapter 35: The Red Voice

  (Perspective of the Blind)

  It is said: "He who leaves his family to burn and flees is no man."

  And I... in that moment, was neither a man nor a child. I was merely afraid.

  One of the servants grabbed me by the waist, his hand trembling and sweating, trying to drag me away from the heat that had begun to devour the air.

  "Young master! We must go!" he screamed in my ear.

  But his voice awakened something within me. An absolute refusal.

  I kicked the air violently until the Samurai let me go.

  I fell onto the scorching ground, then stood up and ran.

  I didn't run to escape. I ran back toward the life I had betrayed. Toward the place where I thought that voice was.

  I wanted to tell that "Voice of Kindness" that I wanted him to live. That, perhaps, I had forgiven his weakness. That I needed his voice to guide me in this darkness.

  I stumbled. I fell. I crawled on my limbs.

  The air was heavy, suffocating, carrying the bitter taste of ash. The heat scorched my face like the tongues of starving beasts.

  Then... I stopped.

  The scent changed.

  The smell of burning wood vanished for a moment, replaced by the scent of rust, salt, and warm moisture. The stench of copious blood.

  I crawled slowly. My hand touched something wet and viscous on the floor. Silk fabric, drenched in warm liquid.

  "Father...?" I whispered, my voice lost in the crackling flames.

  No one answered me.

  I reached my hand out further, touching a chest. It was rising and falling incredibly slowly, with extreme difficulty, accompanied by a wet, terrifying rattle escaping his chest with every breath. Krrr... krrr...

  "Father!" I screamed, feeling his face. It was cold and pale beneath my bloodstained fingers.

  I tried to close the wound on his chest with my hands, worn from training, but the blood flowed between my fingers, hot and abundant, a life escaping me that I could not hold on to.

  "I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." I cried, my tears falling onto his face and mixing with his blood. "It's my fault! I caused this! I will fix it! I swear to you I will fix it!"

  I felt his hand, that hand that was always hesitant, rising with immense slowness and weight.

  It touched my cheek. It was a feeble touch, lighter than a feather, but it carried everything left of his soul.

  I brought my ear close to his mouth.

  "I... love you..." The voice came out like a fragile thread about to snap at any second. "...my dear... son."

  Then... his hand fell from my face. It hit the floor with a faint thud.

  The chest stopped moving.

  The rattling ceased.

  Absolute silence fell, heavier than mountains.

  "Haaaaaaa..."

  I began with a small scream, which grew and swelled until it became a howl tearing at my throat.

  "Father! Father! Don't leave me!"

  I shook his body. I struck his chest. But he had become a thing; he was no longer a person.

  Suddenly... I felt it.

  The air pressure in the burning room changed. An icy chill crawled up my spine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  I heard breathing. Not my father's breathing.

  Heavy, rhythmic, deep breaths. The sound of air entering and exiting giant lungs.

  He was standing over me.

  I smelled his scent. It wasn't the scent of a forest or rain. It was the scent of ancient power, the smell of a mountain of muscle and old blood. The scent of Shuten Doji. The Lord of Demons.

  He was not a gentle fox. He was not as they are described.

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  He raised his hand. I heard the air tear as he prepared his strike.

  "I will kill you, demon!" I screamed, spitting toward the sound, like a rat defying a dragon.

  But the strike never landed.

  Something slammed into Shuten Doji.

  I heard a crash, and the sound of rapid, familiar panting.

  The "Voice of the Frog". Inka.

  He came to protect the guilty blind boy.

  "Let me go!!" I screamed, kicking and clinging to my father's corpse. "I'll kill that bastard! Let me die with him!"

  He didn't listen to me. He carried me forcefully, his arm pressing against my chest, and started running.

  We ran, and I heard the sounds fading behind us.

  But... I heard other voices stepping up to block the demon's path.

  The sound of swords being drawn. The sound of feet planting firmly into the earth.

  The voices of the Samurai who insulted me every day in the training courtyard.

  "Run! Protect the young master!" one of them yelled, his voice trembling with fear, but he did not back down. "We will delay him!"

  I heard the sound of metal shattering, flesh tearing, and their final screams.

  They died.

  They died protecting me. I, who hated them. I, who had sworn to kill them.

  Why?!

  Don't you hate me? Don't you despise my weakness? Then why are you sacrificing your lives for me now? Why are you making me indebted to you?

  We gained distance. The sound of the battle became a whisper, then faded completely.

  Inka threw me roughly onto the back of a waiting horse.

  "Run!" he shouted, and struck the horse.

  The horse bolted with me. I clung to its neck, my body broken.

  We galloped into the darkness; I didn't know where.

  Just me, the horse's breath, and the wind slapping my face.

  And in this relentless sprint, my mind began to melt.

  The pain mutated into something else.

  My father's voice... "I love you."

  The voice of the woman I called mother... "You are not my son."

  The sound of Shuten Doji's cold breaths.

  The sound of the frog carrying me.

  The sound of the Samurai dying.

  The voices blended in my head, spiraling and colliding until they birthed a new sound.

  A single voice that drowned out everything else.

  I understood what the "Voice of Truth" was.

  It is not kindness. Kindness is weakness, and weakness is death.

  It is not tenderness. Tenderness is betrayal.

  It is the sound of my burning heart! The sound of the blood boiling in my veins! The sound of my wrath!

  "I will kill them..." I muttered, my words lost in the wind. "One by one. I will bring the fires of my heart down upon their souls. I will kill their gods, violate the women who birthed such monsters, and burn their forests until not a single green branch draws breath. I swear to you, I will have my revenge!"

  I started screaming. It wasn't a scream of fear, but a scream of madness.

  I began to strike the horse.

  The horse had done nothing wrong. It was running to save me. But I needed to hit something. I needed to vent this blackness.

  I struck its neck with my hardened fists. I kicked its flanks.

  "Faster! Faster toward hell!"

  I was crying, but my tears had dried up, and I began to feel a warm, heavy liquid trailing from my eyes. I was weeping blood.

  The horse tired. It stumbled.

  We crashed together onto the hard ground.

  I rolled, and it rolled. I heard the sound of its leg snapping, and its agonized groans.

  I crawled to it.

  I felt for its head, and began to beat it.

  I beat it, and beat it, and beat it.

  I was beating the world that took everything from me. Beating my own impotence. Beating the darkness in my eyes.

  The horse stopped moving. It died under my fists.

  But I didn't stop. I kept striking the dead fur, thick blood coating my hands, the stench of iron rising into my nose.

  "Get up! Get up and take me to my revenge!" I screamed at the corpse.

  Then, I stopped.

  I sat atop the lifeless body of the horse, alone under a starry night I couldn't see, panting, blood covering my face, hands, and clothes.

  Are they hunting me? Of course. They won't rest until they eradicate the last trace of our bloodline.

  I'm sure those demons are drinking the blood of the Samurai right now and laughing!

  Laughing at me. At the blind boy who ran away.

  "But time is all that stands between us." I raised my blood-smeared face to the unseeing sky. "I will slaughter gods and dragons until I reach every single one of you! And I will reach you, you traitor."

  And at the peak of this despair, of this malice... something answered.

  From the womb of my screaming. From the depths of the blackness in my soul.

  A voice emerged.

  It sprouted inside my skull like a toxic fungus. Yehehehehe...

  The sound of laughter. Loud, manic, euphoric laughter, like two rocks grinding together at the bottom of a well.

  "Finally..." the voice whispered.

  Suddenly, what I was standing on changed. It was no longer dirt.

  I felt like I was flying. Floating in a viscous, heavy void.

  I heard laughter surrounding me from all sides. Laughing and laughing until my bones vibrated.

  Then it spoke, its voice like the hiss of a massive serpent wrapping around my throat:

  "Chosen one in a world of chosen ones... I am Danhash, a demon of the 34th rank. I have waited a long time for a heart as scorched as yours." Yehehehehe...

  "I have chosen you to be my Yorishiro. The vessel that will bear my wrath."

  I felt a metallic chill touch my hand.

  "Wield my sword, Pandora. And unleash whatever wrath you desire upon this world."

  "Do you agree, Yorishiro, to offer your soul as a sacrifice for vengeance? To burn for eternity in exchange for retribution?"

  "Raise your head and say yes."

  I couldn't speak. I felt my mouth go silent, stitched shut by invisible threads of pain.

  I raised my head, seeing nothing but a blackness deeper than my blindness, but my heart was still burning, burning.

  I gathered all my hatred, all my pain, all my betrayal.

  I opened my silent mouth, and my soul screamed with everything it had:

  "I swear I will kill every single one of them!! YES!!"

  Yehehehehe...

  "As expected of a Yorishiro."

  Then I felt something pierce my chest.

  It wasn't a cold iron blade. It was a claw made of burning ice.

  A stab that didn't spill my blood, but injected me with something else.

  I felt the cold poison coursing through my veins, crawling beneath my skin, fusing with my hot blood, transmuting it into something heavier, darker, stronger.

  It was a stab that fueled the fire of my heart into an eternal inferno, yet it granted me the power to stand.

  Then... I woke up.

  I was standing, alone in the dark forest.

  But my right hand was not empty. It was gripping something tightly.

  The hilt was as cold as the skin of a dead snake, and rough to the touch like ancient bone.

  I couldn't see, but I felt the aura.

  A heavy, nauseating pulse radiated from the blade, a toxic purple aura polluting the pure air around me, smelling of sulfur and stale blood.

  And the sword... Pandora... was vibrating in my grip.

  Small, rapid vibrations transferring from my arm straight to my skull.

  It wasn't a metallic ring.

  It was laughter. Yehehehehe...

  And at the same time, the voice of my furious heart screamed alongside its laughter.