The fires in Kurohime burned for two days straight.

  Not from fighting—there was none after Yorinaga’s defeat—but from the purging. Moldy grain, contaminated water stores, broken weapons, and the bodies of the sick. Kazuki ordered them all incinerated.

  “We can’t build on rot,” he said. “Clean it all. Start over.”

  The townspeople obeyed, though they watched him with a mix of awe and fear. He wasn’t their lord, and yet, no one questioned his commands.

  Toma oversaw the rationing, keeping order among the civilians. Mira drilled the surviving archers and scouted the woods. Kazuki spent most of his time on the walls, watching the roads like a hawk.

  Kurohime Fortress now bore a new banner—a white sash tied around a broken spear. No crest. No clan symbol. Just defiance.

  “You planning to pick a name for your rebellion?” Mira asked one night, joining him at the rampart.

  “It’s not a rebellion.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Kazuki didn’t answer. He was staring eastward.

  Smoke.

  A thin column rising in the far distance.

  Not wildfires. Not farms. A signal fire.

  “They know,” he muttered.

  “The Duke?”

  “No. Bigger.”

  Far beyond the forest, in the capital of the Eastern Domain, Duke Tenma stood at the foot of a great obsidian tower. Messenger hawks flitted above his shoulder. Courtiers whispered and shifted behind his back, afraid to speak.

  Yorinaga—his son—stood silent, bruised, and half-broken, but alive. Word had already spread of his humiliating defeat. A fortress lost. A peasant army rising. Ghosts of war returning.

  The Duke’s hand fell slowly on the hilt of his ancestral blade.

  “He fights like a tactician,” Tenma said, voice like dry leaves. “But he poisons rivers. Uses fire traps. Terror tactics.”

  “He calls himself the Ghost General,” an advisor said. “But his true name is unknown.”

  “He will be,” Tenma replied. “And the whole continent will learn it.”

  Back in Kurohime, Kazuki was meeting with his inner circle. They had no throne room, just a gutted dining hall turned into a command post.

  Maps, stolen documents, enemy troop placements, and scattered reports from peasants—they built a war from scraps.

  “The Eastern Duke is preparing a punitive force,” Kazuki said, pointing to the map. “They’ll march within two weeks. We don’t have the numbers to face them head-on.”

  “So we run?” Toma asked.

  “No. We bleed them.”

  He circled three towns to the north—supply hubs, all under light garrisons.

  “We hit their stomach first. No food. No rest. No safe roads. We burn their hay, poison their wells, steal their maps.”

  “Guerrilla warfare,” Mira muttered.

  “Exactly. Then, once they’re tired and disoriented…”

  He pointed to a valley near the old trade route.

  “We set the killing field there.”

  They moved like ghosts through the woods.

  Kazuki’s forces—barely one hundred strong—split into five units. No banners. No drums. Just silence and speed. Most were farmers, former conscripts, or criminals fleeing execution. But after Kurohime, they followed Kazuki like zealots.

  Each squad had one mission: destabilize the Duke’s rear line.

  Sabotage became scripture. Poisoned streams, collapsed bridges, burned supply caravans. No full battles—only ambushes and traps. And each time the Eastern Army adjusted, Kazuki shifted like smoke.

  In a border town called Shimokawa, a Duke’s convoy arrived to resupply the garrison. The guards barely had time to unload the grain before the fires started.

  Kazuki’s raiders sealed the exits and set the storehouses ablaze. Archers fired into panicked soldiers. The commander tried to rally—till Mira put an arrow through his throat.

  “Leave two alive,” she said as her squad combed the wreckage. “They’ll tell the next town who came.”

  The survivors fled on broken legs, screaming about the Ghost General.

  By the third week, the Duke’s vanguard halted. Not from orders, but fear.

  Kazuki’s name had become a curse among the rank-and-file. Rumors swirled—some said he was a demon reborn, a failed son of the Emperor, or the war god Bishamon himself.

  Yorinaga, stripped of command, watched from afar as his father’s legions stumbled into paranoia.

  “He isn’t fighting us. He’s breaking us,” he murmured.

  “Then why not strike back?” hissed a noble. “Why let peasants humiliate us?”

  Yorinaga turned to him, eyes dark.

  “Because we’re not fighting peasants. We’re fighting a man who already won once—and learned from the loss.”

  Kazuki regrouped his squads in a highland temple, abandoned long ago. The monks had left behind broken statues, shattered bells, and a dry well. The valley below was perfect for his trap.

  “This is where we finish it,” Kazuki told his captains.

  “You mean start it,” Mira corrected.

  Kazuki’s smirk was dry.

  “No. We’re not building an empire. Not yet. First, we bury a message.”

  He knelt and used his dagger to draw crude lines into the dust—flanks, kill zones, fallback trenches. His knowledge of modern warfare, from the other world, mixed with ancient tactics like brushfires and elevation control.

  “If they march down the valley, we collapse the slope.”

  “And if they don’t?” Toma asked.

  “Then they’re smarter than they look. In which case…”

  He pointed to the inner ridge.

  “We set the mountain on fire.”

  Mira approached him that night, long after the war map had been cleared. She sat beside him on a fallen column, nursing her bowstring.

  “You always this cold?” she asked.

  “You mean focused.”

  “No. I mean cold.”

  Kazuki didn't respond immediately. His gaze was fixed on the stars.

  “In my world, war is fought by machines. We kill from kilometers away. Push a button, and a city dies. Nobody sees their enemies anymore.”

  “But you… do.”

  “I’ve seen enough. And I’ll keep seeing it until this ends.”

  She let the silence stretch before replying.

  “You carry too much.”

  “Better me than them.”

  At dawn, a scout arrived, breathless.

  “They’ve entered the valley. Two thousand strong. They’re not slowing down.”

  Kazuki stood and gave the signal.

  “Everyone to position. Let’s end this.”

  The first horns echoed through the valley like a challenge to the gods.

  Kazuki knelt behind a tangle of thornbrush and broken logs, eyes fixed on the eastern pass. The Eastern Domain’s punitive force was arriving right on schedule.

  Two thousand soldiers. Armored footmen, horse archers, even a few low-ranking mages—each marked by red lacquered cuirasses and the Duke’s dragonfly crest.

  “They’re not even hiding their pride,” Mira whispered beside him.

  Kazuki gave a small, mirthless smile.

  “Good. It’ll make the fall hurt more.”

  From above, the valley looked like a natural funnel—wide at the mouth, narrowing with steep slopes and uneven rock paths. Old hunting trails webbed the cliffs, and Kazuki had used every one of them.

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  Boulders were primed to roll. Ditches were camouflaged. Tar pots hidden beneath moss. A dozen hidden traps buried like bones waiting to be unearthed.

  The Duke’s general—a man named Aoto, known for crushing mountain clans—led the center formation with confidence.

  His scouts had reported some traps, a few raids, but no standing army. He assumed this would be a symbolic crushing of rebels. He assumed wrong.

  “Advance. Standard wedge,” Aoto barked.

  The vanguard pressed forward.

  Then the screaming started.

  A soldier stepped into a trench masked with bamboo. He dropped out of sight—and the dirt beneath his feet exploded in a cloud of shrapnel and smoke. Screams. Blood. Chaos.

  And then came the fire.

  Flaming arrows rained from the ridge, igniting dry brush soaked in oil. Flames burst up like dragons waking from slumber. Soldiers broke rank, some running into traps, others straight into Kazuki’s waiting skirmishers.

  Kazuki charged with his forward unit, wearing makeshift armor scavenged from fallen foes. No crest. No banner. Just fury.

  “Cut the legs first!” he shouted.

  Their spears slammed into the disoriented rear of the vanguard. Horses reared. Arrows whistled down. Kazuki rolled beneath a swinging blade, came up behind the man, and slammed his dagger into the gap under the helmet.

  One kill. Then another. No wasted movement. He wasn’t just leading—he was executing.

  “Mira, left flank!”

  “Already on it!”

  Her archers emerged from hidden gullies, loosing a deadly volley. Flaming arrows pierced the tar pots along the ridge. The path below erupted, and boiling pitch poured down the slope.

  Aoto screamed for order. “Form ranks! Pull back—PULL BACK!”

  But it was too late.

  The second trap was psychological.

  Kazuki’s forces used drums from stolen garrisons, pounding them deep in the forest. Ghost sounds. War chants in a dozen dialects. Echoes that made it seem like the rebels numbered thousands.

  “They’re surrounding us!” a soldier cried.

  “We’re being herded!” another shouted.

  Panic spread like fire in dry leaves.

  Toma’s unit struck next—burly farmers with makeshift clubs and axes, ambushing isolated pockets. They didn’t fight like soldiers. They fought like desperate men who’d lost everything and had nothing left to lose.

  “Kill them! Kill their gods!” one shouted.

  They did.

  In the chaos, Aoto spotted Kazuki—just for a moment. A figure wrapped in black, blade dripping, eyes blazing with something inhuman.

  “You…” Aoto snarled. “You’re no peasant.”

  He charged.

  Kazuki met him head-on.

  The two clashed near the burning tar line. Aoto had reach and formal training, but Kazuki was faster. He dodged a thrust, countered with a strike to the ribs, then drove a knee into the general’s chest.

  “You brought two thousand men to kill a ghost,” Kazuki said coldly. “You should’ve brought three.”

  With a savage upward slash, he opened Aoto from gut to sternum.

  The general fell. The command line broke.

  Kazuki looked to the slopes. His men lit the final signal—three flares. That meant it was time.

  “Collapse the ridge!” he roared.

  Hidden teams shoved the last wooden struts out from under the rock shelf above the valley.

  It gave way with a thunderous crack.

  Boulders the size of wagons thundered down. Entire lines of enemy infantry were buried in seconds. Horses screamed. Dust choked the sky.

  And then silence.

  Kazuki stood amid the ruins, sword lowered, blood soaking his clothes.

  Toma emerged from the smoke, limping, arm bleeding.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  “No,” Kazuki corrected, eyes scanning the battlefield. “Now it begins.”

  Mira joined them, face streaked with ash.

  “What now?”

  Kazuki took a deep breath. In the distance, other fires began to rise—villages signaling. News was spreading.

  “Now we make them afraid of what comes next.”

  The smoke hadn’t even cleared when the crows began to arrive.

  They circled above the valley in black spirals, drawn by the stench of blood and fire. The battlefield below was littered with corpses—red armor shattered, limbs sprawled in unnatural angles, faces frozen in the last breath of terror.

  Kazuki didn’t look away.

  He stood atop a rock at the edge of the slope, watching the wind carry ashes through the ravine. His left shoulder bled slowly through his makeshift armor, but he didn’t flinch.

  “We’ll need to burn the rest,” he said. “Can’t let them rot.”

  Toma exhaled beside him, spitting blood.

  “Burning two thousand bodies? That’ll take days.”

  “Then we start now.”

  Mira joined them, carrying a broken banner—red silk, frayed and torn down the middle. The Duke’s dragonfly crest had been slashed beyond recognition.

  “We send this to the capital,” she said.

  “Wrapped around Aoto’s head,” Toma added with a dry grin.

  Kazuki shook his head.

  “No. We send his sword. His head belongs to the mountain.”

  He turned, walking past the wounded and the living dead. His troops—if they could even be called that—sat against trees and boulders, eyes wide, some trembling, others silent. These weren’t soldiers. These were survivors.

  But they had done the impossible.

  And now, the world would hear about it.

  Two days later, a courier—barefoot, bloodied, eyes swollen from smoke—arrived at the outskirts of Kaigai, the Eastern Domain’s fortified port capital.

  He didn’t wait for guards.

  He ran into the courtyard of the central tower and threw the blood-soaked sword onto the marble floor of the war chamber. Nobles screamed. Servants dropped trays. The clatter echoed like a gunshot.

  The Duke’s advisors surrounded the weapon, hesitant to touch it.

  “Whose is it?” one asked.

  “The general’s,” another whispered.

  A black tag hung from the hilt.

  One word was scratched into the lacquer in dried pitch:

  Return.

  In the capital, word spread like wildfire.

  An entire punitive force, gone. A rebel army, rumored to be led by a phantom swordsman with no name, was now carving a path through the mountains. No fortress had sighted him. No scouts had returned. Some claimed he was a vengeful spirit. Others whispered his eyes glowed like wolffire.

  The nobles didn’t believe the reports—until the second messenger arrived.

  A trader caravan out of Yomi Pass claimed they saw a village of ash. Aoto’s crest had been nailed to the shrine gate upside-down. Inside the shrine? An altar made of helmets and severed spears.

  There were no survivors.

  Back in the mountains, Kazuki walked the edges of a refugee camp built from salvaged tents and broken beams. The people were exhausted—hundreds of them. Farmers. Blacksmiths. Runaway soldiers. Mothers and children. All drawn to the myth.

  Drawn to him.

  “You’ve become a symbol,” Mira said as they surveyed the growing encampment.

  Kazuki didn’t answer.

  “The sword you sent… the nobles will see that as a declaration of war.”

  “Good,” he said. “Let them. Now they’ll know I don’t bluff.”

  Toma leaned on a crutch nearby.

  “They’ll send more than Aoto next time. Maybe even a prince.”

  Kazuki’s eyes narrowed.

  “Then we’ll kill a prince.”

  That night, under a sky dark with soot, Kazuki sat alone at the cliff’s edge, sharpening his blade.

  He remembered the way the general fell. The wet sound of steel splitting armor. The eyes dimming like a lantern flickering out.

  He should’ve felt victory.

  Instead, all he felt was the weight.

  “You keep staring like the mountains will speak,” Mira said, walking over.

  “They already have,” he said. “They screamed during the avalanche. I heard them.”

  Mira sat beside him, watching the stars flicker through the smoke.

  “Do you think you can win this? All the way to the capital?”

  “Doesn’t matter if I can,” he said. “I have to.”

  She studied him for a moment.

  “You still haven’t told us what they did to you. Before you fell from the sky. Before… all this.”

  He was silent.

  Then he said:

  “They abandoned me.”

  Mira blinked.

  “Who?”

  Kazuki didn’t look at her.

  “Everyone. My nation. My commanders. My world. I was a weapon until I wasn’t useful anymore. Then they left me to rot.”

  Mira didn’t press.

  She just nodded.

  “Then let’s burn every last thing they love.”

  At dawn, Kazuki called the camp together.

  Men and women lined the clearing, many of them wounded, weary, some clutching weapons barely worthy of the name. A few children peered from tents. Silence fell.

  Kazuki stood atop a tree stump, sword in hand.

  “You don’t owe me your loyalty,” he said, voice loud and clear. “You don’t owe me anything. But if you want vengeance, if you want to break the chains they’ve kept on your necks—walk with me.”

  “We’ll burn their fortresses. We’ll take their grain. We’ll show them that no noble blood will shield them from justice.”

  He raised his blade.

  “I’m not your king. I’m not your god. I’m just the shadow of the sword they cast aside.”

  “But I will make them bleed.”

  One by one, they raised their weapons—swords, pitchforks, hammers, bows.

  A roar spread through the camp like wildfire.

  Rebellion had become revolution.

  They marched before sunrise.

  Not a trumpet blew. Not a drumbeat thudded. Just the crunch of boots on cold dirt and the rasp of blades being drawn across whetstones.

  The rebel force—once scattered farmers and broken soldiers—was now a shadow army moving like blood through the forest veins. Their armor was mismatched, their banners hand-stitched. But their eyes… their eyes burned with purpose.

  Kazuki stood at the front, black cloak whipping in the wind. His sword was strapped across his back, and a new sigil flapped above him: a torn white banner dyed black with ash, the symbol of a scorched nation.

  Beside him, Mira adjusted the reins of her stolen warhorse.

  “We won’t be able to take the southern garrison with numbers alone.”

  “We won’t need to,” Kazuki said. “Just fear.”

  Toma laughed from behind a scarred shield.

  “You’re getting good at this warlord thing.”

  Kazuki didn’t respond. He was already thinking three moves ahead.

  He had sent word days ago—messages wrapped in torn imperial decrees, delivered to every province bordering the Eastern Dukedom. Not asking for help. Just daring them to act.

  And now, the first test stood ahead:

  Senka Fortress.

  The garrison commander of Senka was a seasoned officer—Kagetora, once praised for his brutal efficiency during the Border Riots. He stood atop the battlements now, flanked by professional guards, laughing at the sight of the rebel line.

  “What’s that? A farmer militia? Look at them! Half of them aren’t even wearing boots.”

  His lieutenant squinted through a spyglass.

  “Sir… that banner. I’ve never seen it.”

  “Probably made by some backwater tailor drunk on piss-wine.”

  But then the watchman screamed:

  “They’re lighting something!”

  Below, Kazuki lifted a torch.

  A mound of bodies—Imperial scouts taken in the last ambush—sat in a wagon, soaked in oil. Kazuki set it ablaze.

  As the flames roared skyward, he raised his sword and shouted only two words:

  “No Mercy.”

  The rebel line surged forward with a scream that shook the trees.

  Senka was supposed to hold for weeks.

  It fell in less than four hours.

  Kazuki didn’t order a siege. He broke the gates with blackpowder barrels scavenged from an old smuggler route. Then he led the charge himself, kicking down doors, dragging officers from their hiding holes, and showing the people that fear had changed sides.

  Kagetora tried to flee on horseback.

  Kazuki caught him in the courtyard, dragged him off the saddle, and beat him into the stone with the flat of his blade.

  “Wait! Wait—” the commander cried, spitting teeth and blood.

  “You sent men to burn villages,” Kazuki growled, eyes flaring. “You forced boys to kneel in mud and thank you before you slit their fathers’ throats.”

  Kagetora whimpered, blood pooling beneath his nose.

  “Orders… I-I just followed orders—”

  “So did I,” Kazuki said.

  Then he shoved the commander’s own spear through his chest and left the body hanging from the rampart.

  By nightfall, the rebels controlled the fort.

  They didn’t celebrate.

  They transformed it.

  The gates were reinforced. The storerooms were stocked. Blacksmiths went to work melting old crests, forging new weapons. The wounded were treated, and the dead buried with salt and honor.

  Above the main hall, Kazuki personally nailed the black banner in place—his symbol now burned into the heart of enemy land.

  Mira stepped beside him as wind howled through the broken battlements.

  “What now?”

  “Now we wait.”

  “For what?”

  Kazuki turned to her, gaze like tempered steel.

  “For them to realize they’ve already lost.”

  Three nights later, a high council convened in the Imperial capital.

  The Emperor’s youngest son stood red-faced, slamming his fist into the armrest of the jade throne.

  “This man is not a rebel—he is a cancer! We should send the entire eastern fleet. Burn the mountains to ash!”

  But Lord Chancellor Kirei, old and veiled, only raised a hand.

  “And if he’s not alone?”

  “What?”

  “If other provinces start falling under his shadow. If what we’re seeing isn’t rebellion—but a reckoning.”

  Silence filled the room.

  An advisor unrolled the latest map. Senka was blackened. Trade routes cut. Smaller fortresses abandoned. Then another whispered news from the west:

  “The River Clans have stopped answering summons. They may be watching.”

  “And the Iron Guilds?” Kirei asked.

  “Silent.”

  The Emperor’s son hissed.

  “Who is this man?! Where did he come from?”

  Kirei finally answered.

  “They say he fell from the sky. A ghost of war. A sword left behind by the gods.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  The Chancellor stared at the burning mark on the report.

  “I believe the people do.”

  Back in Senka, Kazuki stood before a table covered in ink-stained maps and blood-marked reports.

  Mira entered.

  “You should sleep.”

  “Can’t. Not yet.”

  “You’ve done what no man has in twenty years. You gave the people hope.”

  Kazuki didn’t look up.

  “Hope isn’t enough. I need them to know it’s real. I need them to see that the Empire can be bled.”

  Outside, the rebel army trained under torchlight, their shadows dancing on fortress walls.

  In the center square, a young soldier began painting the black banner across his shield.

  And across the mountains, peasants, ronin, exiled nobles, and silent assassins turned their eyes eastward.

  The spark had become a blaze.

  Kazuki had not just started a rebellion.

  He had declared the end of an age.