The Sword of Kaigen

by M.L. Wang

But here, high in the obscuring mists of Takayubi, where nothing seemed to have changed for a thousand years, it

was easy to believe the fantasy of a stable world.

“I said you’re cannon fodder.” Kwang’s voice was even. “The Emperor will give you guys any made-up story if it means you’ll stay put and die for him. You may think you’re great warriors with some noble purpose, but as far as the capital is concerned, you’re just game pieces.”

was a doll—stiff, unfeeling, incapable of producing life because she was not really alive. There were horror stories of Tsusano puppet masters, manipulating the blood in the bodies of others—dead and living—making them dance like dolls. Sometimes Misaki wondered if she had subconsciously become one of them, puppeting her own gutted body through each

You learn over time that the world isn’t broken. It’s just… got more pieces to it than you thought. They all fit together, just maybe not the way you pictured when you were young.”

That wind that had darkened the sky and roared like a god… the heart of it had been human.

After all, a lady wouldn’t have been able to slice a man’s legs out from under him and then plunge a blade into his mouth when he opened it to scream. A mother wouldn’t have been able to cut a young woman’s head from her shoulders. A human being wouldn’t have been able to turn from their dismembered corpses without a single pang of guilt. Thank the Gods she was a monster.

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.

People always said the Ranganese were demons of a different breed from

the Kaigenese, but their blood seemed to be the same color, now that they lay still, letting it run together. They had all come out of the same ocean, hadn’t they? At the beginning of the world?

Because we don’t matter, Misaki thought numbly. The only thing the Empire cares about is stopping the Ranganese here. It doesn’t matter how many of us get caught in the crossfire.

Her fighter who preserved life. Her theonite who kissed like an adyn. Her tajaka who drank the cold like it could sustain him.

“A life of dangerous adventures might seem

worth it now, when you are young and seemingly invincible, but one day, you will have children, and you will not want that life for them.”

The next breath that came out of her was more of a scream than a sob, and the pain it sent through her lungs was so pitifully small next to the sheer absence beneath her hands. She would let a fonyaka pull her life from her mouth, she would give her soul a thousand times over, if she could just bring Mamoru’s back.

“It is enough that, even for a moment, I had a son like you. It is enough that Hiroshi, Nagasa, and Izumo will have a brother like you to look up to as they become young men themselves.