“Take my wagon and my goods,” the Nomad pleaded.

  “But spare my son.”

  They always begged in their final moments. Bargaining was a reflex, a futile attempt to cling to hope.

  The bandits took the wagon and the goods.

  Then they shot the Nomad and his son.

  As the Nomad lay dying, blood pooling beneath him, he looked at their leader with hollow, unwavering eyes.

  “Karakura will come for you,” he rasped.

  The bandit leader laughed, dismissing the words as the desperate curse of a dying man. For days, he didn’t think of the Nomad or his son at all.

  But the dreams came.

  Each night, he saw the boy. The child’s face was pale, streaked with tears, his voice trembling with terror.

  “Baba…” the boy sobbed, reaching for someone who would never come.

  Then the Nomad appeared. Always the same. His bloodied hands reached out, his broken voice pleading. “Why didn’t you spare him?”

  Each night, the bandit awoke with a scream lodged in his throat, his heart pounding as if trying to escape his chest. He told himself it was just guilt, nothing more. But the shadows in his room seemed to stretch farther, linger longer.

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  He began to fear sleep, but the body always surrenders. The more he fought it, the harder it came for him.

  And then, one night, he saw it.

  A shape hovered in the corner of his room, just beyond the reach of the flickering candlelight. A shadow darker than darkness itself, curling and twisting like smoke trapped in a jar.

  Its presence pressed against him, suffocating and cold.

  “Who are you?” he whispered, his voice cracking under the weight of his own fear.

  The shape stirred, and a voice, guttural and echoing, filled the room.

  “Karakuraaaa…”

  It stretched the name like a dirge, like the groan of wood splintering under strain.

  “Karakuraaaa…”

  The shadow moved closer, its form shifting and stretching, its shape unclear but undeniably menacing.

  “Karakuraaaa…”

  The bandit couldn’t breathe. The walls of the room seemed to close in, the air thick with dread. He reached for his knife, but his hand trembled too much to hold it.

  The shadow loomed over him now, a formless entity that felt ancient, vengeful.

  “Karakura…” it whispered one last time, the word dripping with finality.

  The bandit opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

  By dawn, the room was silent. When his men found him, his eyes were wide open, fixed on the ceiling, his face frozen in a mask of terror.

  And in the shadows, just for a moment, something shifted.

  Karakura had claimed him.