Kyoko Rin’s hands were never still.

  Even at rest, her fingers traced the phantom arcs of strikes—kesa-giri, shōmen, tsuki—over and over, as if the air itself owed her cuts. The habit drove the other disciples mad.

  “Rin,” the Sword Saint had chided once, “a blade unused is still sharper than one swung without thought.”

  She’d bowed. Apologized.

  And kept practicing in secret.

  Morning mist clung to the stones of the Shigure Dojo as Kyoko knelt in the courtyard, her wooden bokken laid across her lap. Around her, disciples scrubbed the flagstones, their whispers darting like minnows in her periphery.

  “She’s twelve.”

  “The Saint’s favourite.”

  “They say she’s—”

  She exhaled, slow and deliberate, and the voices dissolved.

  The Sword Saint’s dojo was a place of order. Of control. Every movement prescribed, every strike measured. Here, even the wind seemed to pause before disturbing the gravel.

  Kyoko loved it.

  And hated it.

  The first time she’d drawn blood, she’d been nine.

  A visiting noble’s son, twice her size, had mocked the dojo’s forms. “Dancing,” he’d sneered. “Not fighting.”

  Kyoko had broken his nose with her bare hands.

  Afterward, the Sword Saint had made her kneel in the rain for three hours. “Violence without purpose is shameful,” he’d said.

  She’d nodded, throat tight.

  (She can’t deny she liked the crack of bone under her knuckles.)

  “Rin.”

  The Sword Saint stood at the courtyard’s edge, his silhouette cutting through the mist. No title, no honorific—just her name, sharp as a whetstone.

  She rose in one motion, her bokken already angled for the first stance.

  “Spar with Hayate,” he said.

  A murmur rippled through the disciples. Hayate was seventeen, a head taller, his shoulders broad from years of training.

  Kyoko bowed.

  Hayate smirked.

  The match began without signal.

  Hayate struck first—a perfect jōdan slash, his bokken whistling downward like a falling branch. Kyoko flowed aside, her own blade rising to kiss his ribs.

  Point.

  The disciples inhaled as one. Hayate’s smirk faltered.

  He attacked again, faster this time. She deflected with a flick of her wrist, then pivoted, her bokken tapping the back of his knee.

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  Point.

  A third strike. A fourth. Each time, her wood found flesh before his could graze her sleeve.

  The courtyard held its breath.

  Then—

  Hayate broke form.

  His fifth swing wasn’t a dojo technique. It was raw force, his bokken arcing sideways toward her temple.

  Kyoko’s pulse leapt.

  Finally.

  She met it with steel-calm precision.

  Her parry rang through the courtyard, crisp as a bell. Hayate’s arms shuddered from the impact, his stance buckling. Before he could recover, she stepped inside his guard—close enough to see the sweat on his brow—and pressed her bokken to his throat.

  Checkmate.

  Silence.

  Then, the Sword Saint’s voice:

  “Again.”

  Afterward, the Sword Saint regarded her in silence.

  The disciples had dragged Hayate away. The mist had burned off, leaving the dojo exposed in the harsh noon light.

  “You could have ended it in three moves,” he said.

  Kyoko kept her eyes on the ground. “Yes, Master.”

  “You enjoy combat too much” he sighed.

  Her fingers twitched toward another imaginary cut.

  The Sword Saint sighed. “The God of Blades chose well.”

  She froze.

  He tossed her a cloth for her bleeding lip. “Clean up. The temple messengers arrived while you were playing. They’ve confirmed it.”

  Kyoko’s chest burned. Not from pain.

  From joy.

  A Champion.

  Meaning there was a real fight waiting somewhere.

  She bowed, hiding her smile.

  (It was the same smile she’d worn at nine, knuckles split, and rain soaked.)

  Kyoko Rin was not supposed to eat like this.

  The Sword Saint’s teachings were clear: A warrior’s body is a temple. Discipline in all things—training, rest, even food.

  Kyoko bowed to those principles.

  (And then, the moment she was out of sight, she devoured three bowls of pork ramen in twelve minutes.)

  The noodle shop’s owner, a grizzled old man with a scar across his nose, slid a fourth bowl toward her with a chuckle. “Where do you put it all, kid?”

  Kyoko wiped her mouth with her sleeve—another habit the Sword Saint would have scolded her for—and grinned. “Bottomless pit.”

  She wasn’t lying. Since the temple’s confirmation this morning, her stomach had become a yawning chasm. Maybe it was the thrill. Maybe it was the God of Blades whispering in her veins: You’ll need the fuel.

  Or maybe she just really, really liked fried dumplings.

  She stabbed her chopsticks into the next bowl.

  The ambush came as she turned down a narrow alley, licking soy sauce off her fingers.

  Three men—two with clubs, one with a knife—blocked the exit. The tallest, a brute with a broken nose, grinned. “Well, well. Fancy little dojo brat all alone.”

  Kyoko sighed.

  She wasn’t afraid.

  She was annoyed.

  The first thug lunged.

  Kyoko moved.

  Not with the measured grace of the dojo, but with something wilder, sharper—like a blade finally unsheathed.

  She let the club graze her shoulder, just so she could slam her elbow into his throat. As he gagged, she snatched his wrist, twisted, and yanked. His arm popped out of its socket with a wet crunch.

  The second thug swung. She ducked, hooked a foot behind his knee, and dropped him face-first onto the cobblestones. Before he could rise, she stomped on the back of his knee. Something gave.

  The third man, the one with the knife, froze.

  Kyoko smiled.

  “Run,” she suggested.

  He ran.

  Kyoko watched him go for exactly two seconds before sighing.

  "Pathetic."

  She kicked a loose stone. It cracked against the back of his knee, sending him sprawling face-first into the mud. Before he could rise, she was on him—one foot planted between his shoulder blades, her voice dripping with disgust.

  "You don’t turn your back on a fight. That’s how people die."

  He twisted, eyes wide. "Y-you told me to—!"

  "And you listened?" She leaned down, grinning. "Even worse."

  What followed wasn’t a fight.

  It was a lesson.

  She broke his knife hand first—two fingers at the joint, precise as a surgeon. When he screamed, she drove a knee into his ribs to silence him.

  "Breathe through it."

  A kick to the hip sent him rolling.

  "Get up."

  He didn’t. So, she hauled him upright by his collar and slapped him, once, twice—not hard enough to knock him out, just hard enough to taste blood.

  "I said up**."

  When she finally let him collapse, he wasn’t unconscious. Just broken in that quiet, shuddering way of men who’d learned their place.

  Kyoko wiped her hands on her hakama and stared at all three of them—the whimpering pile of bad decisions at her feet.

  "Next time," she said calmly, "pick a softer target."

  Then she stepped over them, plucked an untouched meat bun from the tallest one’s pocket, and strolled away, chewing.