Mirumoto Irozu sat in a hole and pressed his hands to his face. He hung onto his cheekbones and dug his fingernails into his cheeks until blood flowed like tears. The last time the shadows had gathered around him, he had felt his face slipping away with his memory. The only sounds in all the world were his fast, panicked breaths and the gentle, soothing lapping of the lake. He knew that if he listened, the lake sounds would wash away all worry, all fear, all thought. He had fallen into that trap before. He rubbed the back of his head off the rock wall, and thought “this is stone. It is solid and real. It exists.” He felt around in the darkness for the burnt-out wooden torch Hamesu had thrown him (how long ago, he could not say). He ran his fingers over the grain of the wood. “This is wood. It is real. It exists.” He turned the torch around until he felt the sharp edges of the end he had broken. He dug them into his hand. “This is pain, and I am feeling it. I am real. I am real. I am.”

Mirumoto Irozu sat in a hole and waited for the darkness to take all that away from him again.

* * *

Goju Kaibe smiled as Hamesu checked the provisions in his horse’s saddle bags. “If we wanted to kill you, Hamesu-san, or make you one of us, we could have done so much more easily and quickly than by poisoning your food” said the self-confessed ninja.

“I am not worried about such fates, Kaibe-san,” replied Hamesu. “You need one who the Naga will not sense as a Foul to carry…it…to Shinomen, and you have no reason to poison me. I simply do not trust the culinary instinct of a man with no mouth.”

“I remember food, Hamesu. I can recall every aspect of it perfectly…it simply holds no meaning for me anymore."

“I have said the same of life. No matter. Did you receive the message you spoke of earlier?”

“Yes, Hamesu-san. The Naga are at war with the Crab, and they are losing. By the time you arrive, the southern reaches of Shinomen Forest will be awash with black blood. You will have little difficulty reaching the heartwoods.”

“Why are the Naga at war with the Crab?”

“The Naga abandoned their allies to the hordes, in order to attack your home, Hamesu. That is the chief reason for the war. Now that the Crab have triumphed at Hiruma Castle, they can send troops to win revenge on the Naga.”

“The Crab are not without their merits.” Hamesu closed the saddlebag. “I am ready to leave, Kaibe-san. Bring it up.”

* * *

The darkness pressed against him, pushed into his eyes and nose. It was choking him, throttling him. He gasped for air, but found only emptiness. His lungs were full of nothing. He felt his mind slipping away, his thoughts and memories floating away, dissolving in the infinite darkness that waits in the spaces between all things.

The memory of a dawn exploded in his mind, golden-rose light shining off the snowy peaks of the Dragon Mountains. The memory lost all colour, all meaning. Lady Sun was but a guttering candle against this Darkness. The man screamed, but no sound was heard. No sound escaped the Darkness. He savagely bit into his lip, and blood sprayed out.

Hoshi’s blood. A memory of the High House of Light. Irozu cutting into Hoshi’s wrist with a sword, the blood striking his face – my face. I am Irozu. Defeated, the darkness melted back into the darkness. Irozu wiped his bleeding lip, then carefully marked his features with blood.

“I will not lose myself,” he vowed, “I am a Dragon.”

* * *

Hamesu sat by the stables in the small courtyard. This fortress, hidden in the forested hills south-east of Ryoko Owari, had once been the refuge of a Scorpion family. Now it was a nest of darkness.

The stones were crumbling, and there was an air of decay around the structure. Despite that, there were no plants, no vermin. The forest had made no move to retake the abandoned fortress. Nothing lived within it at all.

Kaibe emerged from the castle, carrying a bundle of grey rags in his arms. Hamesu studied the bundle intently. Something dark moved within the cloths, a child of living darkness. Kaibe held it gingerly, almost as if he feared breaking it. “This, Hamesu-san, is the Little Brother. This is the weapon promised you.”

Hamesu reached eagerly for the bundle, but Kaibe slipped back, outof reach.

“They – the Naga – are moving. The shining union – what they call the Akasha – it is changing. There is a great change coming, a great change. Release the Little Brother when He comes, Hamesu. Release it when the Moon descends from the sky.”

Kaibe stepped forward and placed the bundle in Hamesu’s arms. It squirmed like a baby, but it was colder than ice, and Hamesu’s fingers were drained of colour and feeling where he touched it. He quickly changed his grip, careful to keep the rags between his skin and…it. He mounted his horse with Kaibe’s help. Four Scorpion samurai emerged from the ruined keep, and saddled the other horses waiting in the stables. They arranged themselves around Hamesu like an honour guard.

Kaibe smiled. “Hamesu-san, I do not need to remind you of the consequences of betrayal. There are those who would wish to know the secrets of Little Brother. There are those who, in their unreason, fear the Darkness. If you deliver it into their hands…your companion, Mirumoto Irozu, will die. If you succeed, the pits in the shadow chamber will be emptied.” Having spoken, Kaibe stepped back into the deep shadows of the doorway.

Hamesu looked back at the castle as he rode down the forest road. The place seemed as deserted as the sky between the stars.

* * *

Memories are nothing

…a monk sat in a temple, speaking to him. His rain-soaked clothing drying by an open fire. Incense. The Temple of Osano-Wo…the monk had revealed great truths to him….but he could not remember the words. The monk’s mouth opened and closed, but the sounds were lost to him…

Thoughts are nothing

…he tried to fight the invasion, the sea of blackness that drowned him, but there were no weapons, no defences. It simply flooded over him. The mountain of his soul was covered in the deluge of the shadow….

You are nothing

…the cold of shadow pierced his heart. His skin crawled, then the feeling was transmuted, as if the very nature of feeling had been changed…and try as he might, he could not recall how it used to be…

Then he tasted the blood that stained his face, and it sustained him for a time.

* * *

The dappled green shadows of the forest were restful to Hamesu’s eyes. After his search for Irozu in the black cavern beneath the stronghold, he was not used to bright lights, and the sunlight pained him. His escorts rode along the narrow path as if born to the saddle, as if they and their steeds shared a common bond. Hamesu’s own horse, though Unicorn-bred, was skittish, and it took all his meagre skill to control it….and so it was that he was taken by surprise when the cloaked man stepped out onto the path.

The other riders turned from the path and fled into the shadows of the trees, vanishing from sight. Hamesu was suddenly left alone in the forest with the stranger.

The stranger cast off his cloak to reveal the brightly patterned skin of an ise zumi, a tattooed man. He carried a bulky sack on hisback.

“Hamesu-san!” he called, “we meet again in strange circumstances.”

Hamesu studied the unfamiliar features of the other Dragon. “I am a trained student of the Kitsuki school, and I recall the features of every man I have ever seen – and I have never met you.”

“Do you remember the face you wore before you were born, Hamesu-san? Do you know the face of your soul?”

“I have no time for riddles, grandfather. I have an errand that will not wait.”

“Hai. You ride to war, Hamesu. I pray you have chosen the right side, and that the casualties of your war are few.”

“There are always casualties in war. All life is war. All life is therefore death.”

“Death is a feather. Duty is a mountain.”

“I do my duty to the ancestors, old man. They must be avenged. The Naga razed Kyuden Mirumoto. They slaughtered the Kitsuki. The Sleeping Mountain ran red with Dragon blood, and the High House of Light was broken open. I know my duty.”

“Do you, Hamesu? Do you truly know your duty, when you reject daimyo and bushido? I know my duty – it is to give you a message.”

“What message? And from whom?”

“The message is from Hoshi, Champion of the Dragon. The message is this: he has already sent you three messages. Prophecies exist only in retrospect. Until we fulfil them, they are merely warnings.”

“I do not…or, rather, I am not sure if I understand. I heard three prophecies from the monks of the Temple of Thunder; firstly, that words of truth will be spoken three times; secondly, that a great doom will occur if a murder is committed within sight of the temple; thirdly, that either I will kill Irozu or he will kill me. Can you clarify these riddles?”

“I have no time for riddles. I too have an errand that will not wait.”

The ise zumi stepped out of Hamesu’s path. Without warning, Hamesu’s horse broke into a gallop, racing out of the forest as if charging into battle. The ise zumi drew his cloak around him, and continued upthe path.

In the shadows of the trees, four deeper shadows watched the two Dragons. Two shadows unfolded like red and black origami into the forms of a pair of mounted Scorpion bushi, and rode of in pursuit of Hamesu. The other two became things with teeth and claws of steel darkness, and followed the ise zumi’s trail.

* * *

The mountains of the Dragon are the tallest in all the world. They tower above the plains of the Empire, and their peaks touch the heavens, lifting a small piece of the mortal realm into the divine.

Once, Irozu remembered, he had watched a storm break upon the mountainsides, and the thunder had filled the valleys like the echoes of the roaring Dragon. Then the rains had come, rains such as were seen once a lifetime. The skies had opened, and a torrent loosed upon the mountain – and it had endured as if the storm were nothing more than a spring mist.

Now, as the darkness came for him again, Mirumoto Irozu stood and resolved to be the mountain.

* * *

The two Scorpions stopped at the bank of Kawa no Kin. The narrow bridge arced out over the sparkling waters. One Scorpion turned to Hamesu and seemed to search inside himself for a voice. When he found it, it was hoarse and unsteady. “We can go no further, Dragon. Take the Little Brother to the Shinomen, to the heartwoods.”

Hamesu nodded, and patted the bundle tied to his saddle. “Our bargain stands. Farewell.”

The ninja raised his head, and underneath the mempo Hamesu glimpsed a smooth, featureless face. He waited for it to speak, but then he faintly heard a far-off kiai shout, and a high, wordless shriek of inhuman pain. The ninja whirled their horses around and dashed back into the forest. Hamesu watched the shadows moving in the trees for a few minutes, then turned.

The sound of his horse on the covered wooden bridge was like summer thunder.

* * *

...nothing...

* * *

The two ninja shed their shapes, and ran through the forest like black wolves. When they turned from the path and the way became choked with brambles, they became birds flittering between branches, racing the wind. They flew with impossible speed, devouring the miles between the riverbank and the source of the shout with the insatiable hunger of the Nothing. They were not fast enough.

In a burnt clearing in the forest, they found scraps of empty red armour, torn black cloth, and ground stained dark with some liquid other than blood. A single set of bare footprints led off towards the castle in the forest.

* * *

The road on the banks of Kawa-No-Kin leads north, to the famed (or infamous) city of Ryoko Owari. In that city, one can acquire anything from companionship to opium to a thousand hired swords – but the wise know that secrets are the greatest commodity to be found in the shadow of the temples and towers of the City of Lies. Hamesu looked upon the welcoming lights of the city from atop a small hill.

With Irozu held hostage by Kaibe, Hamesu would need protection as he travelled west, to Shinomen. His money-pouch was empty, and hiring a ronin yojimbo was far beyond his means.

He reached into another pocket and drew out the Imperial Travel Papers he had been given by Otomo Yasho. Such documents, which granted the bearer free passage over the entire Empire, would fetch enough money to hire a small host of soldiers, as well as food and supplies for the trek to Shinomen. He spurred his horse, and rode down towards the city. His spirits rose within him as he smelled the smoke of cooking fires, and he began to murmur the words of a poem that was old when the world was young.

* * *

...nothing...

* * *

Kaibe hurled the Go board at the intruder, only to see it burn and melt in the wrath of the Dragon’s breath. The ise zumi pushed his way into the room, glancing at the ornate yet decaying furniture of the castle.

“You cannot destroy against this Darkness, Dragon!” hissed the ninja, “this is an ancient place of power, a stronghold since Shosuro’s time. It shall not fall while the moon rises.”

The ise zumi smiled. “I am not here to destroy this darkness. I am here to save a soul.”

Kaibe’s featureless face blossomed into a smile. “Then, honoured guest, you may descend the stairs to the cavern beneath. We shall not meet again.”

“Indeed.” The ise zumi reached into his pack and threw a small pouch at Kaibe. It exploded into a shower of crystal fragments. A divine wind took hold of the flying fragments and spun them into a glittering whirlwind, which shredded Kaibe as if he were made of wet paper.

“I am not here to destroy this darkness…only part of it.”

* * *

...nothing...

* * *

They departed Ryoko Owari in the midmorning. The rumours of war in the west, between the Crab and the Naga, had attracted many ronin and mercenaries. Wave Men who had been left drifting and directionless when Uji’s rebellion had disintegrated were now looking for ways to go west, in the hope of the Crab hiring more swords. Hamesu’s search for bodyguards and guides had proved easy, for he was essentially paying them to go where they were heading anyway. Surrounded by six stout warriors, Hamesu rode to the west.

Hours later, on the road outside Ryoko Owari, they stopped by an inn. Hamesu looked at the shining roofs and red walls of the waystation.

He and Irozu had stayed in that inn for some time.

“Do you wish to stop here, Dragon-sama?” asked Fuzake, the leader of the ronin. Hamesu looked to where Shinomen shimmered like a green haze on the horizon. Pillars of black smoke rose from the southern end of the forest.

“No. We ride on. Through the darkness.”

* * *

...light…

…warm hands grasped him, pulling him up, lifting him from the blackpit.

…slung over the bloodied and scarred back of his rescuer…

As Irozu was carried out of the caverns beneath the castle, he saw for the first time the vast lake of liquid shadow that the ninja guarded. A dozen firebrands marked the path from Irozu’s prison to the narrow staircase. As Irozu watched, the firebrand nearest the lake spluttered out – no, it was choked out, the tendrils of darkness closing around the light of the fire and murdering it.

The darkness was restful to his eyes. He found himself gathering strength, and preparing to reach out and snap the neck of the man who carried him.

They ascended the staircase into impossible light. It seared Irozu’s skin, the force of the sunlight shattered his bones more surely than an iron hammer wielded by Hida. It was agony beyond endurance. He tried to scream, but no sound came.

“Be calm, Mirumoto Irozu” said the man who carried him. “You are not lost to us yet.” The castle courtyard bobbed by. Irozu’s agony subsided into an all-over ache. The man carried him along the path to the shore of the dark lake in the shadows of the trees, then set him down carefully in the reeds. The old man stood and stretched, wincing as his many wounds began to bleed again. Irozu stared as the old man’s blood ran in rivulets over his colourful tattoes.

“Irozu-san, I am Togashi Ishiyama. Hoshi sent me to find you.” The ise zumi reached out a scarred hand, and touched Irozu’s face. He brushed the dried blood, the blood of Irozu, the blood of Hoshi’s that Irozu had swallowed long ago. “We do not have much time.”

The ise zumi reached into his pack, and began to lay out his tools on a smooth rock.

* * *

Shinomen Forest. A great island sea of green, a world of trees and tangled creepers. Not even the Kami who fell from heaven were able to penetrate the heart of the forest and learn its secrets. For a thousand years, Shinomen has rested unknown and inviolate, a vast verdant mystery of the wild in a precisely ordered Empire ofhumanity.

Kaiu Kenso wiped the soot from his brow. From the eastern horizon to the west, the forest was afire. The stench of burning wood and flesh filled the fiery glade as thickly as the rich black smoke. Kenso smiled. After twenty years spent staring at the grey wastes of the Shadowlands, it was a pleasant change to be assigned a new task. The traitorous Naga had stolen the body of Hida Yakamo, the greatest hero of the Crab. When the foul serpents would not return the corpse and atone for their misdeed, O-Ushi-tono had declared war upon the Naga. When the Naga had refused to meet the Crab in open battle, she had ordered that the snakes be smoked out.

At his daimyo’s command, Kaiu Kenso had set fire to the world.

He glanced at his map. There was a river to the north, wide enough to halt the forest fires. Another fire would have to be started across the river. He had the concoctions of the Kuni alchemists, and a crew of three dozen men. “More than enough”, he murmured. “Ho! Hida Fuhato! Lead your bushi north along the course of that little stream. My team will follow you.”

Hida Fuhato, former bushi in the Imperial Legions and now a gunso on the northern front of the Crab, bowed to the senior Engineer, then snapped out his tessen and waved at his scattered troops. They began to form up into small squads. They lacked the discipline of the Legions, but Fuhato knew his men were hardened warriors, used to fighting against the nightmarish legions of the Shadowlands. They did not form themselves into pretty rows and patterns, but they were harder than iron. His eyes narrowed, and he held the tessen to shield his face from the smoke. There was another small group of samurai out there. Seven weary men. One of them Fuhato recognised – Kitsuki Hamesu. The Dragon Magistrate had cleared Fuhato of an accusation of murder months before, in the Dragon mountains. Fuhato smiled broadly, and ran to greet Hamesu.

The fabric of the world was torn, shredded. Silver scars in the air disgorged writhing Naga and whistling arrows. Fuhato caught an arrow with his tessen, then dodged behind a scorched and blackened stump. A host of Naga had used their cursed pearl magics to appear from nowhere. In this smoke-filled chaos, the heat of battle would be made a thousand times worse by the heat of the burning forests. Fuhato unslung his tetsubo, and ran into the smoke.

* * *

The old man worked quickly, but precisely, as if some other force guided his hands. As he worked, he murmured an old poem. The needles wove in and out of Mirumoto Irozu’s skin, blending colour and shape with the dried blood. The ise zumi closed his eyes and let the strength bleed out of him into Irozu. The words of the poem and the movement of his hands became the Riddle, drawing him onwards, in the Riddle’s eternal dance of contradiction weaving a more beautiful pattern than he could conceive of, a tattoo on the skin of the future.

The needles slipped from nerveless hands. The work was done.

Irozu rose and walked to the waterside. For the first time since being rescued from the ninja castle, he looked into the water to see his own reflection.

He had no facial features. His eyes, mouth, nose, hair – all had melted away, leaving a smooth and unbroken mask of flesh instead of a face. Tattooed with Hoshi’s blood on that mask, though, were the snarling jaws, flowing moustaches and fiery eyes of the Dragon. Irozu looked through the Dragon’s eyes – his eyes – and his tattooed mouth roared the Dragon’s roar. “I swear I will see you dead, Kitsuki Hamesu!”

“You…should not have said that, Irozu” said Togashi Ishiyama.

The Dragon-faced man turned. The older ise zumi was dying, his skin was covered in a sheen of bloodied sweat, and his eyes were clouded. A line of drool ran down his chin and dripped into the lake. “You said that…twice before.” Irozu remembered desperation on Sleeping Mountain…and betrayal in the castle. “Words…of truth…shall be spoken three times,” said Ishiyama, “that’s two of Lord Hoshi’ s…warnings…fulfilled. Now there is only the third.”

Irozu drew a katana from Ishiyama’s pack. “Hai. One of us…will kill the other.”

* * *

Two of the yojimbo died within a heartbeat, black arrows sprouting from their chests. The others shouting war-cries and charging into the Naga ranks. The lead samurai slashing his katana across the flank of a coiling snake-man, cutting the beast in two. Another Naga turned smoothly and fired a single arrow, which caught the samurai in the eye. The Naga which had been sliced in two had held onto life long enough to guide his kinsman’s aim.

Hamesu drew his katana, but skirted the edge of the fight. The Naga attack was precise and co-ordinated. The forest had been their home for centuries, and they knew how to fight there. Green beasts slipped through the undergrowth, twined around the tree trunks. The Crabs blundered and crashed through the trees, the Naga were at one with the forest. Arrows and spears spilled oceans of Crab blood into thehungry soil.

Through a sudden gap in the smoke, Hamesu spied a trio of Naga on the north edge of the battle. The centre was surely a shugenja, running chains of pearls through his hands. If those Naga were slain, Hamesu realised, the others would be without leadership. In thinking this, his decision was made. He shouted an order to his remaining yojimbo and charged.

An arrow flew by on either side of him. A man fell dead on eitherside of him.

Hamesu skidded to a halt. Both the yojimbo were dead. The two Naga guards uncoiled and raised their spears. The beasts were gigantic serpents, towering ten feet high. Hamesu raised his katana, a tiny sliver of silver light in the midst of a chaos of green and black and red. In doing so, he dislodged his burden slightly, and a ragged cloth was caught in the hot wind and blew away.

Little Brother sensed the presence of the Akasha.

For the first time in Kitsuki Hamesu’s life, he saw fear in the face of a Naga. The two guards hissed in terror, and froze. Hamesu’s katana flashed twice. The two guards collapsed. The shugenja raised his pearls, but Hamesu was quicker. A single over-head strike cut through the Naga’s head and chest.

Behind Hamesu, the Naga were thrown into momentary chaos. The Crabs, always ready to exploit any advantage, threw themselves into the battle with renewed vigour. Iron tetsubo and Kaiu-forged steel found Naga flesh and drew black blood. Little Brother writhed and twisted against Hamesu’s back, feeling the flow of souls in the Akasha.

* * *

The stableboy at the Scorpion’s Sting Inn knelt, terrified to be addressed by a masked and armoured samurai.

“Did you see another Dragon pass this road recently?” asked the armoured man.

“Hai, hai, Lord. He was a guest here in the Inn before, he is called Hamesu-sama. He passed the inn road three days ago.” The samurai turned away.

The stableboy shouted. “Lord – will I tell Hituro-sama that you wish a bed for the night.”

The samurai mounted his horse. “This night, a God walks the world. There will be no sleep for any mortal man.”

* * *

Hida Fuhato bowed to Hamesu.

“Hamesu-sama, you are far from home, but welcome nonetheless. Twice you have saved my life. I am most deeply indebted to you.”

Hamesu stared into the Crab’s eyes for a moment, then his gaze flickered to look up the six heaped bodies of his yojimbo.

“Do you command here, Fuhato-san?”

“After the death of Kenro-sama…yes. I am in command.”

“I require an escort. Gather your troops.”

* * *

It is said that the world turns on the axis of a virtuous man. In this, integrity is chief of the virtues, for it is can be lost so easily, consumed in fire and shadow.

Mirumoto Irozu chases west with the speed of storms. Death and vengeance is in his heart.

In the north, Shinjo, the Ki-Rin herself, gathers an army and prepares to assault Otosan Uchi. The blood of her kin is on her hands, and she inspires her followers with divine lust for vengeance.

In the heart of the forest, the Akasha draws in on itself. For the first time, a new soul will join the Unity. Hida Sukune walks the edge of Jigoku, guarding his brother’s soul. The Daini watches the ceremony, his face unreadable. The forest burns with the Crab’s desire for vengeance.

In a cold and strangely empty castle, Hoshi, newly acclaimed Daimyo of the Dragon, contemplates his actions. He remembers the surety of his father, and he wishes that he had Togashi’s virtues.

On a mountain that touches the Heavens, Hitomi shouts a challenge to the Moon. He answers. A God walks the mortal world. Onnotangu’s revenge is at hand.

Kitsuki Hamesu enters the heart of Shinomen, walking where only a single human has walked before. No Naga, no barrier, nothing can stop him, for he knows his vengeance is righteous. The souls of the ancestors shout in his ears, telling him what he already knows.

And Little Brother, the Shadow of Souls, knows nothing of vengeance or virtue. It knows only integrity, and the death of integrity. And it hungers.