Chapter 95: Backstory Chapter 1: Tsurugi Arc (Entity POV) The battlefield reeked of shit and blood—mostly shit. For nine centuries, I’d watched humans die, and they always soiled themselves at the end. No matter how pretty the songs made it sound, death was messy and gross. The poets never mentioned the shit part. From my formless vantage point, I observed today’s carnage. The Ōnin War, they’d call it later. Brothers killing brothers over who received the Emperor’s blessing. Yoshimasa hiding in his fancy pavilion while Kyoto burned. Civilization’s entire spectacle fell apart, and it was all so terribly dull. The samurai below me were a disgrace. They swung their swords like angry woodsmen, all brute force and clumsy footwork. There was no art here, no harmony. It was just panicked, sweaty men trying to murder other panicked, sweaty men. It was an insult to the blade. My mind drifted, as it often did, to a time when the sword was something more. I remembered Minamoto no Yoshitsune, centuries ago, at the Battle of Dan-no-ura. He moved like flowing water even in the heat of battle, his blade a silver extension of his will. He hadn’t just fought; he had danced. And Miyamoto Musashi, that brilliant, arrogant bastard, who wrote that the way of the warrior was resolute acceptance of death. He understood. He could wield two blades as if they were one, his philosophy of strategy as sharp as his steel. Those men had respected the weapon. They had understood that mastering the sword meant mastering oneself. They spent thousands of hours practicing the same cut, until muscle memory transcended thought and the blade became part of them. But these men... were just butchers with expensive tools. ’This is boring.’ As I drifted through the field, I could feel life all around me, blooming and withering simultaneously. Each moment had its own flavor if you paid attention—fear was sharp and sour, while anger carried a fiery spice that oddly tasted somewhat sweet. By the time the sun had set and risen again, three thousand men had met their end, and I had absorbed it all. Still, there was no spark among them. Their thoughts looped: pleas to gods who didn’t care, calling out names of wives who’d never hear them, grieving for mothers who weren’t coming. The sad, repetitive song of human life, played on repeat until even death lost its edge. The sun was falling, turning everything red. Vultures circled, patient as always. Corpse scavengers would come soon, stealing anything valuable. Then monks, if any temples still stood, to collect heads for proper burial. It had been like this for centuries. I was about to leave—perhaps check that volcano in the south; lava at least has personality—when I tasted something different. A pure, focused hatred. In nine centuries of watching human deaths, I’d never felt anything like it. No fear, no regret. No pleading. Just a concentrated, beautiful rage aimed at being alive at all. It was the clean, sharp taste of a perfect, final conclusion. I narrowed my awareness and zeroed in. He lay in a bomb crater, half-submerged in muddy water stained pink with blood. Gut wound—bad. Decent armor but not exceptional. Middle-ranking samurai, one of thousands who thought this war would make him rich. But his thoughts... ’Fuck them all. Fuck Lord Yamana for sending me here. Fuck Lord Hosokawa for being there. Fuck my horse for dying. Fuck my ancestors for expecting me to care about their honor. Fuck the Buddha for making suffering seem noble. Fuck the gods for not saying anything. Fuck every poet who’ll make this shit sound glorious.’ I’d heard dying men curse before. This was different. This wasn’t the rage of someone who wanted to live. It was the anger of someone who’d finally realized life was a joke, and he was tired of the punchline. I made myself known—not visible to his naked eye, that would take work—just present enough that he felt my presence, a sudden cold spot in the humid air. "You’re dying badly." His eyes snapped open—brown and bloodshot, a face that suggested he’d smiled often before. His hand went to his sword, though we both knew he couldn’t lift it. "Who’s there?" His voice was rough; he’d probably screamed for help earlier. "Does it matter? You’ll be dead within the hour." He laughed, a wet, rattling sound that ended in a cough, spraying blood across his chin. "I think I’m hallucinating. Great. Now I’m seeing things before I die." "I’m real." "A ghost? Not very scary, then." "No. Not a ghost. An observer." "Most beg for salvation," he rasped, trying to shift his weight and failing. "For what? Salvation from who? You? Are you death? Because if so, you’re late." "Death has a purpose. I’m just—an observer." He tried to focus where my voice came from, then gave up, his head lolling back in the mud. "Watching. Must be nice." "It was. For the first few centuries." "And now?" "Now I’m bored." Kurō managed a bitter smile. "Bored. An eternal being is bored and amused by me dying in the mud. The gods have a shit sense of humor." "The gods have nothing to do with this. This is all humans—killing each other for territory, greed, satisfaction." "You’re not human." It wasn’t a question. "No." "Demon?" "Older. Much older." "And you’re talking to me because..." "You’re the first interesting thing I’ve seen today." Kurō’s gaze found the sunset, a final, bloody smear on the horizon. "I’m dying badly in a pointless war after my lord left me to cover his retreat. What’s interesting about that?" I condensed, just enough that the air shimmered where I hovered. "What if I offered you something else?" "Instead of death?" "Instead of dying as Horikoshi Kurō, forgotten samurai in a worthless war." His eyes sharpened, a flicker of something other than pain in them. "What’s the catch? There’s always a catch." "The catch is you cease to exist. Completely." "Just... dead?" "Gone. The thing that is Horikoshi Kurō ends, and something else wears his shape." "And you’ll do... what? With my body?" "Whatever I want." "Will you avenge me? Kill Lord Yamana?" "If it seems interesting." "That’s it? No grand purpose? No saving the world?" "Purpose is your problem, not mine." He closed his eyes. I thought perhaps he’d died, but his thoughts lingered, a faint, fading ember. When he opened them again, something had settled into his face. A deep, weary calm. "Do you know what’s funny?" "Tell me." "I trained for twenty years. Learned three ways of swordfighting. Memorized the code. All to die abandoned in mud." He coughed, a spray of dark blood. "Now some—thing—wants to wear my failed life like a fancy kimono. My ancestors would be horrified." "Does that bother you?" "I’m amused." He tried to reach for his sword and failed, his arm flopping uselessly in the mud. "Take it. Take this shitty body and this shitty life. But do me one favor." "Which is?" "When you walk away, don’t look back. Whatever you do with my body, walk forward. I’m so tired of looking back." It wasn’t a hard price—I’d no plans to dwell on his past—but the request had a small grace to it. "Deal." "Then what are you waiting for?" What indeed. I’d decided the moment I tasted his hatred. But taking form—becoming human—was permanent in ways I didn’t fully understand. I poured myself into him. Pain came first. The gut wound was a hot, searing fire, goring intestines and rending liver. Internal bleeding that should have killed him long before flooded the cavity. Only pure hatred had kept him breathing. Cold followed. The shock of the muddy water, the chill of the night air, the blood loss—the body shivered violently, as if the cold could be wrung out of it. Then came the weight of flesh: muscle, bone, organs, all slack and heavy under the relentless pull of gravity. Breathing became a desperate, burning necessity. A heartbeat started, a constant, heavy metronome in the chest. The body demanded a thousand small maintenance actions I had never performed, a chorus of aches, hungers, and itches. Fascinating. Kurō lingered in my new mind as a fading echo. *It’s yours now. Try not to die right away.* Then he was gone. Horikoshi Kurō ended, and I was alone in his flesh. Standing took three tries. The gut wound closed at my will—flesh knitting, blood pulling back into veins with a sickening, wet pulling sensation. The body rebuilt itself: Kurō’s basic shape, improved. When I finally steadied, the sun had set. The smell hit hard: shit and blood, but also grass, mud, night air, and something cooking in a distant camp. My stomach—this stomach—clenched with a sudden, urgent hunger. When did Kurō last eat? I looked down. Average height, thin from hunger, hands rough from a sword, scars like a map of a life I hadn’t lived. The armor was usable, though blood-smeared. The blade: nothing special, decent balance, handle worn to fit these hands. I tested a basic sword pattern. The muscles remembered even if the mind did not. Fascinating—the flesh held memory separate from consciousness. "Who’s there?"