Vescrutia: Legacy

In the sky above the Feudal Continent of Edo, the twin suns, Solara and Xelphis, held court in a rare, simultaneous occupation. Their celestial union birthed a twilight unlike any other—a heavy, atmospheric haze that bathed the world in a spectrum of bruised pinks and fiery, electric oranges. To most of Edo, this light illuminated fields of ash and the glint of steel; the continent was a perpetual engine of war where daimyo fought for inches of blood-soaked earth.

But as the light hit the coastal borders of the country of Xio'Lin, the landscape shifted. Here, the scent of iron and upturned graves was replaced by something far more intoxicating.

Dunlao, the capital of Xio’Lin, rose from the earth like a coiled dragon of neon and gold. It was the "City of Commerce," the beating heart of a continent that otherwise knew only the rhythm of the march. While the rest of Edo traded in lives and territory, Dunlao operated on the currency of desire. It was a defiant monument to neutrality, a place where a man’s lineage mattered less than the weight of his purse.

The city was a vertical labyrinth. At its base lay the Low Markets, a sprawling web of stalls where the air hummed with the scent of roasted meats, expensive oils, and the sharp ozone of high-stakes energy. Traders from across the continent of Vescrutia bartered for esquist naten-infused fabrics that shimmered like liquid moonlight. Above them sat the Entertainment District, a shimmering sprawl of tea houses and gambling dens where rival generals, who would seek each other’s heads on a battlefield, shared sake under the unspoken law of the merchant: no blade is drawn within the walls, for blood on the floor is bad for business. Crowning it all was the Xio'Lin Spire, an administrative peak of white stone and crystal that regulated the flow of wealth, ensuring that while the rest of Edo burned, Dunlao prospered.

At night, the city didn't sleep; it merely transformed. Enchanted lanterns and ancient crystal-powered signs cast a kaleidoscopic glow over the cobblestones. The sound of clinking coins and the boisterous laughter of drunken, ambitious men created a constant white noise—a roar of life that masked the darker dealings happening in the counting-house shadows.

In the corner of a tavern known as the Drunken Owl, tucked away in the sprawling mid-tier of the city, sat a man who belonged to neither the gold nor the neon.

Dalazar Denkou was a ghost inhabiting a living body. To the patrons around him, he was just another broken ronin, a pauper who had managed to slip past the door to avoid the biting evening wind. His clothes, once fine silks from the Onteninet of Madiera, were now tattered rags, stained with the salt of the sea and the grime of a thousand miles. His skin was mapped with "arcane burns"—glowing, blue-green scars that pulsed faintly with the ghost of the Terravolt spell he had once cast.

Weeks ago, he had been the Emerald King. He had been a sovereign who debated philosophy with seamstresses and judged children’s art fairs. He had saved his people from the fall of the Emerald Ascension, but the cost had been absolute. To save them, he had exhausted the Arm of the Founder, burning through the spiritual echoes of the five previous kings who had once guided his every step.

Now, there was only silence.

The deafening lack of his ancestors’ voices was a void in his chest that hurt more than the hunger gnawing at his ribs. He felt like a thief with every breath he took. Why do I breathe when Myos does not? he wondered, his head lolling against the rough timber of the wall. Why do I see the twin suns when Evant’s eyes are filled with the silt of a sunken kingdom?

"Why...am I alive?"

He had fallen into a fitful sleep, his dreams a chaotic montage of emerald flames and the cold, mocking laughter of the sea. His hand twitched, reaching for a sword that was no longer there, for a power that had been spent to buy a future he couldn't bear to live in.

"Hey! Wake up, you derelict! This isn't a charity ward."

The voice was like a bucket of ice water. Dalazar’s eyes snapped open, his vision blurry. Standing over him was the owner of the Drunken Owl, a barrel-chested man with a face like a pug and a vest embroidered with golden thread. He held a heavy wooden ladle like a mace.

Dalazar blinked, his mind struggling to bridge the gap between his dreams of Madiera and the reality of Dunlao. "I... I apologize," he rasped. His Madieran accent was thick, the vowels elongated and melodic, sounding alien in the harsh, staccato environment of Edo.

The owner’s lip curled in immediate distaste. "A foreigner. I should have known. You’ve been sitting in that corner for three hours, ‘Your Highness,’ and you haven’t ordered so much as a cup of watered-down ale. This is a house of commerce, not a sanctuary for stray dogs."

"I have no coin," Dalazar admitted, his voice hollow. The truth was a heavy stone. In Madeira, his word was gold; here, he was less than the dust on the floorboards. "I only sought a moment of warmth."

"Warmth costs ten copper pieces a night. Information costs twenty. And your presence is currently costing me my patience," the owner growled. He grabbed Dalazar by the collar of his ruined tunic.

Despite his weakness, Dalazar felt a spark of the old lightning flicker in his nerves—the residual energy of the Terravolt—but it was a dying ember. He didn't fight back. He had no kingdom to defend, no honor left that hadn't already been traded for the lives of his refugees.

The owner hauled him up and dragged him toward the door. The other patrons—merchants in fur-lined robes and mercenaries with scarred knuckles—didn't even look up. In Dunlao, poverty was a contagion best ignored.

"Don't come back until your pockets jingle," the owner said, shoving Dalazar out into the street

Dalazar stumbled, his legs buckling beneath him. The transition from the warm, ale-scented tavern to the humid, salt-tinged air of the street was jarring. He hit the cobblestones hard, the blue-green scars on his arms flaring with a dull, pained light. The world spun. The neon signs of the Entertainment District blurred into long streaks of pink and gold, looking like the very fires that had consumed his home.

He tried to push himself up, but his muscles refused to obey. The hunger was no longer a pang; it was an all-consuming darkness, a fog that was rolling in to reclaim what was left of the Emerald King. He lay there, his cheek pressed against the cold stone, staring at a discarded shell of a crab from a nearby food stall.

He was a man who had judged the finest art in the world, and now he was dying in the gutter of a city that didn't know his name. The irony was a bitter taste in his mouth. He closed his eyes, waiting for the silence to finally take him, hoping that perhaps in the darkness, he would hear the voices of his brother or his fallen knight.

A pair of boots appeared in his field of vision. They were not the silk-toed slippers of a merchant or the iron-shod greaves of a soldier. They were simple, sturdy leather, worn but well-cared for.

Dalazar didn't look up. He didn't have the strength.

"The twin suns are cruel to the stomach," a voice said. It was a calm, steady voice, lacking the sharp greed that defined the rest of the city.

A shadow fell over Dalazar as the man knelt. A hand, calloused and warm, reached out and touched his shoulder. Slowly, Dalazar forced his eyes open.

The man didn't look like a savior. He looked like someone who had seen his own share of long nights. He reached into a woven satchel at his hip and pulled out something wrapped in a clean linen cloth. He unwrapped it, revealing a thick, heavy loaf of brown bread, still smelling of yeast and the hearth.

The man tore the loaf in half and held it out.

"In Dunlao, they say everything has a price," the stranger said softly, his eyes reflecting the kaleidoscopic glow of the city. "And they do not speak lies. Yet, here, even the most common rat may dream to become a dragon..."

Dalazar reached out, his trembling fingers closing around the warm bread. As he took a bite, the first flavor he had tasted in days, a single tear traced a path through the grime on his face. He ravaged the half loaf like a mad beast, feral and uncouth. The stranger didn't bat an eye, taking note of the green scarf tucked beneath Dalazar's chin. His weathered eyes could see the quality of the material, a form of crafting not native to Edo for sure. Yet it wasn't until Dalzar looked up, until he saw the glittering silver of his eyes, eyes that, though carrying the weight of a man no longer standing, held the faint hum of a silver corona. Something in the stranger palpated, a feeling deep within his chest that for one reason or another kept him from being able to turn his gaze from the boy. As if there was something akin to kindred between them.

"So what's it gonna b,e kid?"

He extended his hand to Dalazar.

"Rat or Dragon?"

The rain fell in sheets over Edo—cold, relentless, indifferent. It sluiced through alleyways carved between towering pagodas of iron and glass, washing filth into gutters where rats scurried like shadows fleeing the dawn.

The man offering the bread stood without pretense: cloaked in worn indigo, face lined like old parchment, one hand steady, the other tucked into his robe as if hiding a wound. His gaze was not kind. Not cruel. It simply was—unblinking, unwavering, like the stare of a predator who had long since stopped hunting for sport.

Despite the intensity of the stranger’s piercing glare, Dalazar could surmise, through the fraying strand of his senses, there was a genuine desire to aid him. This notion of hospitality was… uncommon in his experience in Edo thus far. But he supposed that even in the darkest corners, some light managed to sneak its way through.

The stranger’s words carried a weight not of ego nor pretension, but of experience—and the faint echoes of regret. A trait Dalazar recognized only because his own vice, now feeble, carried a similar tenet.

This person offering him bread understood pain.
Understood loss.

But the eighth of the man’s questions did not carry the impact he might have hoped. Though Dalazar took the bread, he did not take the hand.

“I’d rather be a rat…”

His voice cracked slightly under the pressure of his grief-saturated tongue.

“What use are the fangs of a serpent, the flame of a dragon, if it cannot protect its horde?”

He pushed himself off the ground as the stranger’s extended hand slipped back into his cloak.

“I see…”
The man shifted his weight to the right, studying Dalazar as if peeling back layers of flesh and facade to reach the marrow beneath. His eyes—burgundy, ancient—held no mockery, only assessment.

“But even a rat clings to the instinct of survival.”
A somber tone, devoid of pomposity, yet laced with a quiet scathing precision, as if his vision alone could flay the soul bare.

“Listen… I appreciate your generosity. But I’m not here for proverbs and parables…” Dalazar adjusted his tattered cloak, trying to retain the last flickers of dignity that hadn’t turned to ash. The scarf around his neck—a tapestry of Denkou ingenuity, every thread stitched with a mother’s love—felt heavy. As did the broken emerald blade at his hip: Umina, last of the Sacred Treasures. The tattered gloves, Fulgear, humming faintly with residual power. These were not weapons. They were relics. Tombstones.

“Then why are you here?”
The question landed like a blade between ribs.

Memories surged—Kilik's Mercury, sky split by divine fury, the scream that had preceded annihilation. Bones turned to pulp, districts drowned in blood and sea spray. The Emerald Dynasty—gone. His people reduced to memory. And him? Alive. The last. A failed heir who had yearned for freedom, only to have it granted through destruction.

His inheritance? A hollowed heart. A body scarred by his own impossible magic.

Why Edo?
This land—the one his ancestors had fled in shame, in secret. The soil they cursed. And yet, the tides had brought him back. As if fate spat irony in his face.

“Because… I—”
He looked down at the scarf. At Umina. At the trembling arc of his own hands.

“Because you have lost everything.”
The stranger’s voice froze him mid-step.

Dalazar stopped. Breath caught. No tears came—but his chest tightened like a fist around a dying ember.

“Everyone,” the stranger added, pressing forward. “You carry their deaths like chains. But you don’t wear them to honor. You wear them to punish.”

Dalazar inhaled sharply, startled by the accuracy, embarrassed by the truth. For a moment, he faltered. Then, with what dignity remained, he bowed—short, respectful—and turned away.

“Farewell, sir.”

The man folded his arms. “If you insist on being a rat, then so be it. But if you depend on the kindness of strangers in Edo… you will not survive.”

“I don’t care,” Dalazar replied, but the words were weaker than he intended—not dismissive, but dishonest, even to his own ears.

“And yet your eyes were grateful… for bread. For life.”

Dalazar gasped. A sharp inhale. A crack in resolve. He clenched his jaw, fists tightening at his sides as scars beneath his sleeves flared—blue-green fire dancing across sinew.

“So this is how you intend to honor the dead?” the stranger asked, almost to himself. “Skulking in sullen resolve, sinking in guilt for surviving? Is this how you pay back their lives? Your debt hasn’t been cleared. And until you face those ghosts—”

“You don’t know the first fucking thing about me!” Dalazar spun, grabbing the man’s shirt, silver eyes narrowing into slits—serpentine, burning.

“You’re right,” the stranger said, unfazed. “I don’t even know your name. And yet… I can hear the fracture in your heart. Just as I can hear the wind whispering your lament.”

Dalazar trembled. The fury shattered. The dam broke.

“How… then… how do I honor them,” he whispered, voice cracking, “if I have no honor to speak of? No purpose without them?”

The man didn’t flinch. He placed a hand on Dalazar’s shoulder—firm, anchoring.

“You live, kid. You live.”

The words were simple. But in that moment, they were the only truth that mattered.

“If you wait for the world to unfurl a red carpet before you, leading you to answers… you’ll always remain stuck in that same spot.”

Over the man’s shoulder, Dalazar saw Edo—not as a city of rejection, but as a spiral of light and ascent. Towers climbing toward the storm, bridges weaving through clouds like veins. A place of danger, yes. But also a possibility.

“Forge your own path. With your own hands.”

The man extended his hand again.

Dalazar hesitated. Then, slowly, his serpentine gaze softened—not into submission, but into something fragile: hope. Curiosity. Connection.

“…Who are you?” he asked.

“Jiro Kageyama. Known in Edo… as The Rat King.”

Dalazar grasped the hand—firm, real.

“Dalazar… Dalazar Denkou.”

The moment their palms met, the air shivered. Raindrops hung suspended. The world dimmed. And then—

—a vision.

An owl, feathered in starlight, utop it's head a burning moon, a beryl sun? It was nestled within the coiled grasp of a serpent woven from radiant light. Its scales shimmered like molten amber and silver, eyes vast and ancient, watching. The owl did not struggle. It closed its wings, trusting.

No words came. No explanation. But Dalazar felt it—a resonance in his blood, in his scarred nerves, in the ghost of Umina at his side.

The vision faded. The rain resumed. The city breathed again.

Rain stitched silver lines through the night as Dunlao exhaled itself back into existence.

“This boy…there’s no mistaking it.”

The thought struck Jiro Kageyama with the weight of a remembered wound as sensation returned to him—the chill of wet stone beneath his sandals, the distant laughter of drunkards, the hiss of lantern flames fighting the drizzle. The vision had vanished as abruptly as it came: an owl nestled within the wrappings of a serpent made of living light. Serene. Intimate. Unsettling.

Across from him stood the boy.

Not a boy, Jiro corrected. A man who had been hollowed out and kept walking.

Dalazar said nothing. Neither did Jiro. The silence between them swelled, thick with recognition neither could name. It felt as though they were standing on opposite ends of a fault line, both sensing the tremor beneath their feet and pretending not to.

“Well, no use in standing out here in the rain,” Jiro said at last, voice casual, almost lazy. “Let’s go inside, yeah? Get you something a little more filling than bread.”

Dalazar’s amber eyes narrowed, not in suspicion, but in calculation. He did not believe in coincidence. Never had. What he had seen in that vision—the serpent, Zincara of Light —should have been impossible. He had not felt her warmth, her hymn, since the night his kingdom burned and the B’halian banners swallowed the sky. Since he woke half-drowned on Edo’s shores.

And yet she had appeared.

Why now? Why here?

The owl made even less sense.

Still, rain or not, answers would not come from the street. Dalazar inclined his head and followed Jiro back into the tavern he’d been thrown from moments earlier. The Drunken Owl greeted them with heat, grease, and the low roar of nighttime commerce. Snickers rose and died when patrons recognized Jiro. Eyes slid away. Spines straightened.

Power, Dalazar noted. Not the loud kind. The kind that had already proven itself.

“What, huh?” barked the owner from behind the counter. “Hey, kid, didn’t I tell you not to darken my doorstep till you got some coin?”

“Relax, Iyaku,” Jiro said easily. “The boy’s with me.”

Iyaku squinted. “Oh. It’s you, Jiro. Not like you to keep street rats by your side. Or anyone without a fat-coin purse..”

Jiro smirked. “What can I say? You got me. But this kid here is my new protégé. Might not look like much now…”

He placed a hand on Dalazar’s shoulder, firm but not possessive.

“But underneath the grime and that lackluster attitude is a gem ready to shine.”

Iyaku grunted, already reaching for a glass. “Hmph. Managed to get the word of the Rat King himself, huh? Fine. What’re you having?”

“Crispy frankenlamb chop,” Jiro said. “Bring the kid the same.”

Dalazar watched the exchange like a man studying a foreign battlefield.

“Hmph,” he muttered. “Quite the name. Rat King.”

“Local moniker,” Jiro replied. “Citizens have a way of naming what keeps them alive.”

“So what are you?” Dalazar asked. “Some famous criminal?”

“I am a hunter.”

“A killer for hire then?” Dalazar pressed, eyes sharpening.

“A hand of the realm.”

Dalazar scoffed. To which Jiro sharply responded. “Spare me the righteous chivalry. Not sure how things worked where you’re from, but here, in Edo, the righteous are gullible. The meek are cattle. You don’t survive by standing tall. You survive by knowing when to be the wolf… and when to look like the sheep.”

Jiro’s expression didn’t change. He folded his hands on the table. “If you plan on staying here, you’ll need coin. Food, shelter, information—they all bleed silver.”

“I suppose you’ll suggest I become a hand of this realm like you,” Dalazar said coolly.

“No.”

The word landed heavier than expected.

“I’m not here to persuade you,” Jiro continued. “I told you to live. How you do that is your vice, not mine. But I’ll equip you with options.”

Dalazar leaned back. “Forge my path myself, then?”

A flicker of approval crossed Jiro’s face. “So you do listen.”

The food arrived, steam curling between them. As Dalazar ate, Jiro spoke.

Juro reached into his coat and placed a small, leather-bound book on the table between them. It was unassuming, yet it pulsed faintly, a subtle rhythm like a sleeping heart. Scarlet script, the colour of old blood, glimmered on the cover: Knights Index.

“This,” Jiro said, his finger tapping the cover with a soft thump, “is your future.”

Dalazar frowned. The book hummed under his mentor’s touch, a low thrum he could feel in his teeth. “It looks like a ledger.”

“It’s more than that. It’s law. Magic. Fate.”

Jiro opened it. The pages were not paper, but something like vellum, soft and strangely alive. Faces stared back—a gallery of the damned and the dangerous. Men with cruel smiles, women with eyes like shards of ice, things that were only vaguely humanoid, their forms shifting unsettlingly on the page. Each was marked with a stark, black symbol: Rat, Viper, Terror, Phantom, Nightmare.

“The Bingo Book,” Jiro explained, his voice low and even. “The Knights listed within are the only thing keeping Edo from collapsing into anarchy. No gods answer prayers here. No armies keep order. Just people bound by the Oath of the Sanguine Seal. We don’t fight for glory. We fight for balance.”

Dalazar scoffed, the sound raw in his throat. “Balance? You mean payment.”

“Yes,” Jiro admitted without a hint of shame. “We’re not knights in shining armor. We’re blades for hire. But there’s a code. A seal. When you take the oath, your blood is fused with the Bound Ethics woven into this book. Break them—hunt a man not listed here, fail to deliver proof of the hunt—and your body rebels. Blood leaks from your pores. Your limbs lock. The seal enforces the law. It is merciless.”

Dalazar ran a hand through his damp, tangled hair. The concept was barbaric. And yet, it was the most honest system he’d heard of since his world ended. “And proof?”

“A sample of fresh blood. Or an object stained with it—a weapon, a garment, a token. You bring it to the Midlight Bedlam. They verify it against the Index. Then you get paid.”

“So anyone can join?” Dalazar asked, though he already sensed the answer.

“No.” Jiro’s gaze was unwavering. “Only those who survive the ritual. The book... tests you. It judges your will to live. Your resolve to kill.” He leaned forward, the lantern light carving deep shadows into his face. His gaze ran over Dalazar as if reading every page of his story, yet only highlighting the passages that spoke of his ability to cull. “But I think you have a shot.”

“In Edo,” Jiro concluded, sitting back, “justice is a luxury for the rich and the dead. The Bingo Knights are a necessity. We are the cullers. We keep the monsters eating each other instead of the cities.”

“And you,” Dalazar said slowly, his eyes tracing the symbols, “hunt Rats.”

Jiro nodded. “The small evils. The vermin. The ones that multiply in the shadows if ignored. A single Rat is a nuisance. A thousand are a plague. They are the most dangerous because they are so easily overlooked.”

Dalazar stared at the open page. His eyes were no longer seeing the arcane magic or the grim system. They were fixed on a single entry. A Rat-class bounty—a smuggler, wanted for trafficking black-market relics that drained the life from children. The face that stared back was gaunt, with hollow, desperate eyes. Beneath it, a number: 500 Crown Shards.

It was an obscene amount of money. Enough to eat for a month. To sleep under a solid roof. To not die forgotten in a rain-soaked gutter.

His kingdom was ash. His crown a memory he could barely feel the weight of anymore. His family were portraits etched in smoke. Redemption was a word for men who still had something left to save, some untainted piece of their soul to reclaim. Dalazar had nothing but the ache of failure and the animal need to see the next sunrise.

“I don’t care about making Edo better,” Dalazar said at last, the words tasting like ash.

Jiro didn’t flinch. “Most of us don’t. We care about surviving. The city getting better is just a fortunate side effect.”

Dalazar’s hand, calloused and scarred, reached for the book. His fingers hovered just above the page, and he could feel a faint warmth, a pull.

“I failed my kingdom,” he whispered, not to Jiro, but to the ghost of himself that still believed in honor. “I watched it burn. I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save anything.” His fists clenched on the sticky table, the knuckles white. “But I can save myself. And that’s enough for now.”

Jiro nodded slowly, a flicker of something that might have been understanding in his hard eyes. “Then hunt. Not for honor. Not for redemption. Hunt for coin. Forge your own path.” A dry, humorless smile touched his lips. “That’s what I did.”

Dalazar looked up. In that moment, their gazes locked, and Dalazar could see it, the depth of what connected them—not camaraderie, not friendship, but a shared, fundamental understanding. It was the loss that seemed to ebb in sync, a common wound that had scabbed over into something hard and sharp and useful. They were both men who had run out of graves to mourn at.

A silence settled between them—thick, unspoken, heavy with the weight of a decision made. Outside, the relentless rain softened to a gentle patter. The city breathed its foul, familiar breath.

Dalazar closed the Bingo Book. The scarlet script seemed to weep on the cover. He pushed it back across the table.

"I'll...take the oath."

Jiro raised an eyebrow. “Just like that?”

“I need money. And this book,” he said, tapping the leather cover, “is the only map I have left.”

Jiro’s grin was a swift, sharp thing. He raised his cup of untouched tea in a mock salute. “Welcome to the hunt, Rookie.”

Dalazar didn’t smile. His face was still a mask of stone and sorrow. But for the first time since the fall, since the ashes had chilled, he felt something stir in the frozen waste of his chest. It wasn’t hope. It wasn’t peace.

It was purpose. A dark, bloody, undeniable purpose. Not to save the world. Not to reclaim a throne.

Just to survive.

And in Edo, that was enough.

-The Following Day-

Just before the breach of dawn pierced the night sky, Dalazar could be found tossing and turning in the room Jiro had rented for him. His body was clad in cold sweat, muttering the names of those lost to him—names that tasted like ash on his tongue. Within the expanse of his dream realm, he saw flashes of their faces, smiling, before an overwhelming black tide wreaked havoc upon his kingdom, taking with it everything.

This tide would shift shapes, becoming a massive black serpent whose open maw reflected an endless cosmos, an inner nebula of consumed stars and shattered asteroid belts. Its glare lingered on him, the maw-winded poised to consume him, when from his chest a serpent of light burst forth. Its scales were mirrors of crystal with stars captured within their reflections. It oscillated around the black serpent; the two began chasing each other, one trying to subsume the other, becoming a spinning ouroboros before they exploded into a great plume of light and dark.

The shock of which forced Dalazar awake.

His breaths were heavy, heaving gasps. A dream, he knew it had to be, and yet the heat from the black serpent’s breath felt so real on his skin. He recognized Zincara, the God Serpent of Light and Order. Another vision, yet the fear festering in his chest made it feel like an omen of things yet to come. But what?

"What... is happening to me?"

Dalazar said as he tore the covers from over him. He leaned over the edge of the bed, his feet touching the cool wood of the floorboard. Before he could get too lost in his thoughts, a sharp, stern knock at the door.

"Breakfast is ready for you, Your Majesty."

It was Iyaku’s voice, hearty, less heavy than before. The coin really determined the guy’s mood. The night before, after Dalazar agreed to join the Bingo Knights, Jiro had set him up with a night’s lodging at the Drunken Owl. Seems he went the extra mile and made sure he had breakfast as well. Despite the Rat King’s reclusive, even aloofly dismissive demeanor, he was a man who cared. And even in the face of such consideration, Dalazar still found him to be a paradox.

Dalazar made his way downstairs to find the tavern alive and well. Iyaku was cleaning a glass when he noticed Dalazar and nodded to the table to the left, where a meal awaited him.

"Where's Jiro?"

"He left just before dawn, left money for your breakfast and a message."

"A message?"

"Said for you to meet him in a clearing in the woods east of the city, about half a mile out."

"Did he say why?"

"No, but he said to bring that resolve of yours."

Dalazar finished his breakfast before bowing and thanking Iyaku. His mind tried to theorize the many reasons why Jiro would make such a request. But he resolved to ask the man himself. He did as instructed, remembering the layout of the city from a map he saw of the area. He eventually found Jiro in the clearing, his jacket resting on a stump next to him.

"You're late. Got you beauty sleep?" Jiro said, adjusting his sleeves.

"Is this where we take the oath?" Dalazar asked.

"No." Jiro’s voice dropped an octave, stripping away the casual warmth of the morning. "You don’t take it yet. Before I drag you to bind your blood to a book that will kill you if you disobey it, I need to know something."

Dalazar frowned. "What?"

"If you're worth the trouble."

The words were casual. The weight behind them was not.

Dalazar exhaled, steadying himself. "You said you thought I had a shot."

"I do," Jiro said. "But potential doesn't mean survival." He stepped into the clearing, bare feet sinking slightly into damp soil. "Show me what you can do. Fist. Steel. Anything."

A cold knot of hesitation tightened in Dalazar’s gut. He hadn’t consciously called upon his naten since the fall. Since the green, jagged scars had etched themselves into his forearms, a permanent reminder of his kingdom’s death rattle. To reach for that power now was to touch the heart of his failure.

“As you wish,” he said, his voice hardening. In one fluid motion, he drew his sword. The polished steel caught a beam of sunlight, gleaming.

The change in Jiro was instantaneous and terrifying. The languid slouch vanished. His posture coiled, not with tension, but with a predatory readiness. He didn’t adopt a stance; he simply existed as a weapon.

Dalazar went for a lash of his sword, a strike that had cleaved through armor and bone in the past. Jiro side-stepped with little effort, a movement so minimal it was almost insulting, barely rustling the morning dew from the grass. Placing himself on the ball of his feet, Dalazar went for a follow-up strike, a horizontal slash aimed at Jiro’s neck. Jiro didn't dodge this time. He used the back of his wrist to parry the hand with which Dalazar wielded his sword.

It wasn't a block; it was a dismissal. The impact sent a jarring shock up Dalazar’s arm.

"Tuh... this can't be all you're capable of," Jiro taunted.

Dalazar gritted his teeth. He tried to call on his naten, to bring his lightning magic out, but the building energy sputtered like an engine with no gas. It churned in his gut, restless and wild, but refused to ignite. He tried to counterattack with another strike of his sword, but Jiro stopped his blade. Not with one of his own, but with his bare hands.

Dalazar felt like he was striking a mountain with a tuning fork. The vibration went through the steel, through his hand, and rattled his very bones, almost making his knees buckle. A small ripple in the air between his blade and Jiro's hand was the only sign.

"Hmp. If this is all you have to offer. It's no wonder you failed to protect anything," Jiro said callously.

Dalazar felt a heat rise in his chest, not of magic, but of pure, unadulterated fury.

"At this rate, Edo will chew you up and spit you next to your fallen loved ones," Jiro continued.

That was the trigger. Dalazar’s eyes were flowing with rage, power bursting through him. A spark of something akin to lightning flickered around him as his eyes became like a silver serpent.

"There it is again... those eyes," Jiro thought to himself.

His own eyes glinted, a subtle shift in the light. He was using the Seishin Me technique, allowing him to observe Dalazar’s naten not as a visual spectacle, but as a flow of energy. The world bled away into gales of flowing energy. The trees were pillars of slow, green life. The earth was a deep, brown pulse. And Dalazar… Dalazar's life force was a maelstrom. Storm trying to create lightning but lacks the...spark. His naten was a torrent of blinding, silver-white power, a hurricane contained within the fragile vessel of a man. But the vessel was bruised. Jiro saw the fractures clearly—jagged, pulsing green fault lines running through the brilliant energy, disrupting its flow, damning it into stagnant pools and chaotic, uncontrolled geysers. But beneath the chaos, Jiro saw the sheer density of it. It was a reservoir of power that dwarfed most beings he had encountered. An Emerald Ocean...lament. Powerful, refusing to let go.

Dalazar, fueled by humiliation and grief, lunged again. He put everything into a downward cleave, aiming to split Jiro in two.

Jiro didn't move his feet. He didn't raise his hands to block. Instead, he exhaled, and the air around him changed.

"Seishin Atsuryoku."

He said softly to himself. It was the projection of raw spiritual essence. To Dalazar, it felt as though he had run face-first into an invisible wall. The force didn't just stop his blade; it pressed against his entire body, a heavy, suffocating pressure that made it hard to breathe. It was like being deep underwater, the weight of the ocean crushing him. It was...triggering. Bringing back the terror of withstanding Kilik's god-crushing force.

Dalazar struggled against the invisible field, his muscles straining. "What... is this?"

Jiro stepped forward, entering the crushing radius of his own aura without issue. He moved with a fluidity that defied physics, his body light and responsive. This was Seishin Kadara. By focusing his aura through his physical form, he had increased his speed and durability to superhuman levels, but more importantly, he had tuned his body to the frequency of his own spirit, making the crushing aura an extension of his own skin. It was how he blocked Dalazar's earlier blade strike.

Jiro struck. It wasn't a punch, but a palm strike to Dalazar’s chest.

The impact was devastating. Dalazar was thrown backward, skidding across the dirt and grass, his sword flying from his grip. He gasped for air, his vision blurring. He tried to stand, but his body screamed in protest.

He looked up to see Jiro standing over him, the oppressive aura vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

Jiro looked down, his expression unreadable. "You are a mess, Dalazar."

Dalazar coughed, wiping dirt from his lip. "I... I couldn't move."

"Your Naten network is in total disarray," Jiro continued, his voice devoid of judgment, only blunt assessment.

"It's like looking at a shattered stained-glass window. The light is still there, immense and vibrant, but it cannot shine through clearly. It's beautiful, yet useless in its current state."

He took another step closer, his eyes returning to their normal hue, but the intensity lingered.

"You possess a power I've rarely seen, an innate wellspring that has incredible potential. But Edo's shadows are growing, and they prey on weakness, on hesitation, on fractured resolve."

He stood up, offering a hand. Dalazar hesitated, then took it, allowing Jiro to pull him to his feet.

"As you are now," Jiro said, his voice devoid of mockery, "you won't last two seconds as a Bingo Knight. Edo and the others would tear you apart before you could even lift your sword. Potential means nothing if you can't control it."

Dalazar looked at his hands, at the green scars that seemed to pulse with a dull ache. He felt the truth in Jiro’s words settle heavily in his gut. He was broken.

"So, that's it then?" Dalazar asked, his voice hollow. "I'm useless to you."

"No," Jiro said, turning his back to him and walking toward his jacket on the stump. He picked it up and shrugged it on. "It just means we have to fix you before we can use you."

Dalazar blinked. "Fix me?"

Jiro turned back, a rare, serious glint in his eye. "Before we can move forward with the Oath, I am going to take you to my people. The Kagayama."

"The Kagayama?" Dalazar asked, stepping forward. "Who are they?"

"They...are masters of the spirit..." Jiro said, gesturing for Dalazar to follow him out of the clearing. "They don't just use naten; they breathe it. They can teach you to mend the fractures in your soul, to turn that hurricane into a focused storm. But I should warn you ... they are not gentle teachers. The process... could kill you."

Dalazar looked at the path ahead, the woods thickening into a dense canopy. For the first time since the fall of his kingdom, he wasn't just running toward vengeance. He was running toward repair.

"I'm ready," Dalazar said.

Jiro smirked, glancing back over his shoulder. "We'll see about that. Keep up."