Ren didn’t sleep that night.

  The gilded sheets were soft, the mattress was the most expensive he’d ever laid on, and yet... the weight of it all pressed down on his chest like wet stone. The kind you bury the dead beneath.

  He stood by the balcony, eyes scanning the flame-lit rooftops of the Rengoku stronghold, one hand absentmindedly touching the burn scar on his left shoulder.

  Mae approached from behind. No words. Just her presence—quiet, steady.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked eventually.

  He didn’t turn to her. “I remember the first time I saw one of those banners.” He nodded toward the crimson flags dancing in the wind, golden flame sigils stitched into the cloth like sacred scripture. “I was six. Kaede was still a baby. My mother... she got caught in a riot outside a Rengoku tax office. A yokai had attacked a noble caravan nearby, so the enforcers cracked down. Hard. On everyone.”

  Mae watched him, softening. “You were there?”

  “I saw them beat her. She was holding Kaede the whole time. She kept whispering for me not to scream. So I didn’t.” He looked down at his hands, flexed them. “That’s when the scar happened. A torch got dropped in the chaos. Lit my shoulder up like paper.”

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  “Ren…” Mae started, but his voice cut through the stillness, sharp and steady.

  “I watched them walk away like nothing happened. Left her there. And a week later, she died from the infection. No help. No food. No apologies.” His jaw tightened. “That’s the first time I ever felt powerless.”

  A heavy silence bloomed between them. One not even the crackling torches below could fill.

  “That’s why you became a Shikari,” Mae realized. “Not to kill monsters. But to survive the system that breeds them.”

  Ren nodded once, eyes never leaving the city below. “I promised Kaede she’d never see the same world I did. And every time I see a family pushed aside, every time a rich noble smiles with blood on his hands... I feel that fire crawl back into my veins.”

  Mae looked away, her own past shadowed in silence. But then she said, quietly, “You know this isn’t going to end with just exposing them, right? If we go through with this—if we challenge the Rengoku Clan—we won’t just be Shikari. We’ll be fugitives.”

  “I don’t care.” Ren’s voice was low but absolute. “Truth doesn’t survive in silence. If I have to tear this whole place apart to protect what’s left of her... then I’ll do it.”

  A gust of wind whipped past them, lifting the Rengoku banner high into the night. For a moment, the flame sigil looked less like gold, and more like blood.

  Behind them, Jin stirred from where he’d been fake-sleeping on the couch. Isamu, of course, was still up—meditating in the corner, one eye half-open, listening.

  They all knew it now.

  This mission wasn’t about an Elder Yokai.

  It was about the people hiding behind masks of honor, wielding fire to blind the world to their crimes.

  And Ren? He was done being blinded.

  He was going to burn them with it.