The world returned to Kenmaru in fragments, like shattered shards of a mirror piecing themselves back together under a reluctant dawn. His eyelids fluttered open to the soft patter of rain on bamboo leaves, the air heavy with the scent of wet earth and distant pine. He y sprawled on a pebbled riverbank, the Shirakawa River’s gentle current pping at his feet. Water spshed lightly against his legs, cold and insistent, pulling him back from the nightmare. He woke in a daze, confused, light-headed—like he’d been dragged through the underworld and spat back out. Pain throbbed through him, a dull, insistent ache in his ribs, his face swollen and bruised like overripe plums, but it was muted, distant, as if his body had woven itself back together while he slept. Old blood now saturated with river water and rain stained his clothes, a grim reminder that the nightmare wasn’t just in his head. He pushed himself up on trembling arms, wincing at the sting that itched at his chest. Shaking, he checked himself, his hands fumbling over his dyed, bloodied yukata. There, a stab cut right through the fabric over his chest. He scrambled to lift his shirt, heart pounding, and there it was: the wound healed over with fresh, pink skin, a massive scar still tender to the touch, puckered in a row of knitted yers and yet still raw like it had sewn together in hours, not days.

  “Hh-hhhh-how am I alive?” Kenmaru stuttered.

  A fshback to that exact moment. The brute’s katana plunging through him, the searing agony as it pierced flesh and bone—but he remembered the rage numbing the attack, and the blood bubbling hot and metallic in his throat. How was it possible I survived? The wound should’ve killed me. But then… from the blood.

  Memories crashed over him like a tsunami. The screams of his vilge, the brute’s ughter echoing through the woods, the spray of blood on his face as he dangled helplessly. What happened to me? he thought, his young mind grasping for an expnation in the terror. I remember its nose bleeding, spraying blood across my cheeks, into my eyes, seeping into the cuts on my face.

  Kenmaru shuddered, the realization hitting that what happened was real. Tears welled anew, mixing with the rain on his cheeks. “My parents…” Their faces flooded his thoughts, so vivid it hurt. His feet buckled beneath him.

  "Mother", he whispered in his mind, remembering her gentle smile, humming lulbies as she stirred miso over the hearth, her hands always warm when she tucked him in. "Father" strong and kind, teaching him to tend the paddies, his ughter booming when he caught his first firefly. The love they shared, the simple times. Family meals under the sakura, stories by the fire… all gone in a bze of horror.

  He was teary-eyed, a broken child coping with a loss that hollowed him out, leaving only echoes where their warmth had been. He hugged himself tightly as the rain dripped from his hair in slow patterns. He watched them sptter to the ground, his mind chilling, bending the droplets to murky red hues. The vision of him using the tanto to violently stab the brute’s face repyed in his mind. The uncontrolble rage he felt in that moment, watching how every strike dug deeper into flesh and bone. Thrashing harder as the blood from each strike sprayed into the misted night air.

  What am I? Kenmaru cried inwardly, scared of the power that had torn through him.

  Kenmaru staggered to his feet, the river’s flow a mocking whisper of escape. He moved, stumbling through the wilderness, the highnds mist cloaking him like a shroud. He wandered for hours, dodging paths afraid the attackers would be on, surviving on berries and stream water, the tanto clutched like a lifeline. His clothes grew ragged, bloodstains fading to brown, but the scar burned as a reminder of that night.

  Eventually, he stumbled into a small town, Kawamizu, a cluster of thatched huts hidden away in the trees. A woman, an elderly weaver with kind eyes, spotted him staggering from the woods, a boy covered in blood and filth, his yukata torn like a beggar’s rags. “Kami’s mercy, child!” she gasped. “Are you from Shirakawa?”

  Kenmaru’s head dipped in a slight nod.

  “We’ve seen the smoke. Come with me.” She rushed him to her home. An older man welcomed them both in.

  “What’s your name, boy?” The old man looked on curiously.

  Kenmaru said nothing.

  “Oh honey, the boy’s been through enough. My name is Chiyo and this is my husband Tadao. You look starving—let me fix you some food,” her voice said softly.

  The couple took him in. They fed him rice porridge, gave him a clean yukata. They didn’t ask much, sensing the pain in his silence, but their care was a flicker of warmth in a world gone cold. He stayed for days, maybe weeks, helping with small tasks—hauling water, mending nets—to earn his keep. But in the tea houses and market stalls, Kenmaru overheard whispers that chilled him. News of the Shirakawa attack had spread, carried on the lips of merchants and wanderers. The berserkers had come out of nowhere, they said, their raids growing from whispers to a storm across the provinces. Over steaming bowls of sake, people theorized: “They’re summoned from cursed peaks to punish our sins,” a priest murmured, clutching prayer beads. “No, punished souls—warriors who defied the kami and were twisted for it,” a farmer countered, eyes wide with fear. “Or warriors from a forgotten time, raised to recim the nd,” a merchant specuted, shaking his head. The truth was dulled, shrouded in mystery, but one thing rang clear: danger was approaching, a shadow creeping over the highnds.

  One night, by a flickering ntern in the town square, a warrior traveler—a grizzled man with a notched katana—spoke to a gathered crowd, his voice low and grim. “I’ve seen them,” he said. “Fought them near Kuroyama. They show no fear, no pain—strength like mountains, hunger for murder in their eyes. It’s not oni, not spirits. They’re human… but something’s in their blood, twisting them into beasts. My troop called it Bloodlust—a madness that drives them to sughter.”

  His words sank into Kenmaru like a bde, the memory of the brute’s blood spray on his face burning anew. Was that what lived in me now? A Bloodlust?

  Kenmaru slipped away that night, unable to bear the thought, his path set toward solitude. He drifted through the Yamagiri Highnds, vilge to vilge, trading bor for scraps—cold rice, a night’s shelter—always keeping his head low, his spirit one step from breaking. He was convinced that unleashing the storm again would make him no better than the crimson-eyed beasts that burned his world.

  One misty autumn, he found himself in Akikage, a vilge tucked in a valley where maple leaves fell like drops of blood, staining the earth red. Kenmaru took work as a stable hand at a rundown inn, the air thick with hay and horse sweat, the stables a dim refuge of creaking wood and flickering nterns. From dawn’s first light, he mucked stalls, brushed coats, his hands blistering but steady. The innkeeper, Yoru—a grizzled man with a scowl carved like stone—paid him in cold rice balls and a pallet in the loft, his voice barking orders like a whip. “Faster, you worthless stray!” he’d snarl. “Or I’ll feed you to the wolves!” Kenmaru took it, head down, telling himself it was just another day to survive.

  But Akikage showed him its ugliness, testing his resolve in ways he wasn’t ready for. In the market square, he saw a merchant beat a beggar boy for knocking over a crate of persimmons, the child’s cries echoing unanswered as vilgers turned away, their whispers cold with fear of the berserker raids that hardened their hearts. “No room for weakness these days,” a woman muttered, clutching her kimono like a shield. By the well, he overheard young samurai-in-training mock an old farmer whose crops had failed, kicking over his water buckets, ughing as he scrambled in the mud. “Old fool—feed yourself to the beast if you can’t pay taxes!” Their cruelty burned in him, the drums stirring faintly. He wanted to scream, to act, but he turned away, hauling his buckets back to the stables. Not my fight, he told himself, choking on the bile of injustice. He stayed in the shadows after that, blending into the mist, invisible as a ghost.

  But cruelty found him anyway. One evening, as the sun sank behind the peaks and nterns flickered along the vilge paths, Kenmaru was carrying a bale of hay from the fields, his arms aching under its weight. A gang of boys—sons of artisans, a few years older, with idle hands and sharper tongues—blocked his path near the inn’s gate. Their leader, Shota, had a sneer that twisted his face like a kabuki mask. “Look at this rat,” he spat, “scuttling around. Where’d you crawl out of?”

  He kept his head down, voice low. “Just working, sirs. Let me pass.”

  But Shota shoved him hard, the bale tumbling into the dirt as he staggered. Laughter erupted, cruel and sharp. “Working? You’re a worthless nobody—probably eating off scraps!” Another kicked the hay, scattering it, and Shota grabbed his colr, smming him to the ground. Mud spshed across his yukata, the impact jarring his ribs—the same ones that brute cracked a year before.

  He y there, the cold earth pressing his back, breath shallow, tears of humiliation stinging his eyes. Beneath it, rage simmered—hot, unbidden, a fire he couldn’t let burn. He balled his fists, knuckles whitening, and the drums began, slow and deep, a taiko thrum echoing in his veins, growing louder with each heartbeat. Boom—thoom—doom—boom, boom—thoom—doom—boom. His muscles tensed, veins pulsing faintly under his skin, whispering strength, urging him to rise, to strike, to end their cruelty in a storm of fury. It would’ve been so easy to let it loose, to make them feel the pain they dealt. They had no idea what I could do to them. Their torment on me would be met with force a hundredfold. They want to be cruel to me? I’ll show them what cruelty really is. I would snap every limb like twigs on a branch, cwing and tearing at their skin like a feral wolf, enjoying watching the prey squirm in utter agony, slowly watching as I devour them whole. I’d—I’d— no, no. I can’t. I can’t let it go.

  He snapped out of it, forcing his breath to slow, unclenching his fists one trembling finger at a time. The drums faded to a whisper. Not again. I won’t become like them.

  The boy kicked at his side. Kenmaru let it hit him. He took the punishment, let it wash over him like the highnds’ endless rain. Slowly, he dusted himself off, mud caking his hands, and gathered the scattered hay, ignoring their jeers. “Pathetic,” Shota spat, but Kenmaru walked away, head low, disappearing into the stables’ shadows.

  That night, under the loft’s leaking roof, Kenmaru packed what little he had—a spare rag, the tanto wrapped in cloth—and slipped away before dawn. The vilge’s nterns faded behind him as he moved to the next pce, a nameless hamlet further in the mists. The drums always lingered, a quiet promise that one day, the storm would demand release.