The river path was quiet at dawn, its mist curling like smoke over the still water. Daichi stood beneath a weathered pine, arms crossed, armor off, eyes fixed on the trail. His gasa hat shaded his face, unmoving like a statue carved from the war itself.

  Then—bare feet on stone.

  Raizo appeared from the fog. His steps were hesitant, but his hands were steady. Strapped across his back was a sword—not of steel, but of wood, roughly carved.

  Daichi's gaze shifted. His brows drew together, and he looked at the wooden blade with disdain.

  “Where is the sword?” he asked flatly.

  Raizo hesitated, then lowered his head, fists clenching.

  “My father took it… he probably sold it.”

  There was a pause—then, without a word, Daichi stepped forward and struck Raizo across the chest with the butt of his katana. The blow was sharp and unrelenting, knocking the boy to the ground.

  Raizo’s breath caught. He flashed back to a clenched fist, his father's rage, the fall, the dirt… the shame.

  “Look at me, boy,” Daichi said.

  He flipped the katana in his hand, then lowered it slowly, the edge now pointed at Raizo’s chin.

  “You let a coward take what you had the courage to earn,” Daichi said coldly. “Tell me… is that what you are now? A boy who bows, and waits for permission to be beaten?”

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  Raizo’s teeth clenched. That voice—like his father’s. That tone.

  The shame curdled into anger.

  Suddenly, Daichi’s eyes flickered faintly, sensing something—a shift.

  Around Raizo, the mist churned unnaturally. The spirit aura Daichi first sensed when they met—the one hidden deep in the boy’s soul—began to pulse with color. Where it once shimmered blue and soft, it now shifted into a reddish hue, its edges cracking like embers, taking on form.

  Daichi grinned—just slightly.

  “A disciple who cannot protect his blade will never protect his name,” he said. The katana pressed just enough to nick Raizo’s chin. “And a samurai without discipline becomes nothing but another blade-for-hire. Another rōnin… like the one you stood against.”

  Raizo’s eyes flared. His breath grew fast. He remembered that man—how he stood while others cowered. How he had drawn steel without fear. And how Raizo had tried to be that kind of man… only to return to dirt. Again.

  With a shout, Raizo scooped sand in his hand with a sudden burst of speed. A faint ripple of reddish lightning danced around his arm, barely visible—but real.

  He threw the sand toward Daichi’s face.

  But Daichi didn’t flinch. Instead, he tilted his gasa hat downward, letting the grains hit harmlessly against its brim. In one smooth motion, he removed the hat and threw it like a disc at Raizo’s hand—striking it clean, knocking the rest of the sand away.

  Raizo froze, eyes wide, heart pounding.

  Daichi stood straight again, calm and composed.

  “You have power,” he said. “But power without control is fire in dry grass. Learn to use what’s around you. Not out of anger—out of awareness.”

  “Think with your breath, not your temper. Be one with the spirit you carry—or it will carry you somewhere you cannot return from.”

  Raizo, still kneeling, looked down… and there, at his knees, lay Daichi’s gasa hat.

  The samurai turned away.

  “Three days,” Daichi said over his shoulder. “Come back to this place. Bring the sword. The real one.”

  He walked off, disappearing into the mist.

  Raizo remained still, staring down at the hat—its surface dusted with the very sand he had thrown.

  He reached out, slowly, and lifted it with both hands.

  The wind stirred the river, and the mist whispered as if something ancient had just begun.