The Sword of Kaigen

by M.L. Wang

You need a spine to lead.

His sword wasn’t made of ice or metal. It was his soul.

A decade later, a fifteen-year-old Hiroshi would become known as the youngest swordsman ever to master the Whispering Blade. What the world would never know, was that he was the second youngest.

This is where Ranga started, she realized. With a breath held too long, with a people who couldn’t bear to answer to men like this any longer.

She seemed to have decided that she was going to get back at the Ranganese by living with a vengeance.

“Look. Maybe you’re not at fault for everything that’s happened up until now. Maybe I can’t hold you responsible for the decisions of your father and brother, but you are responsible for what happens next.” As was she. She understood that now, and she wouldn’t fail. Not again.

“What are you?” Takeru whispered. Something bigger than myself, she realized.

Matsuda Takeru buckled.

What sort of a man closed his eyes to the world and called it clarity?

For his whole life, Takeru had been certain that he was right to cast his pain off on the mountain, that it was the only way—because how could one possibly hold so much suffering in something as small as a human form?

Yet here was this woman who held everything inside a little body of flesh and blood without breaking.

Mamoru hadn’t inherited his strength from his father. It had come from her.

The Daybreak jaseliwu always said a man was more malleable when his head was swelled with praise.

A dragon knew when he was looking at worms and snakes.

“There was no way you could

have understood. You can’t until it’s you. I know that.” “That doesn’t make it right.” “No, but that’s what humans are like.

a person’s tragedy doesn’t define them or cancel all the good in their life.

Wholeness, she had learned, was not the absence of pain but the ability to hold it.

Love no matter the pain.