The wind had changed again.
It no longer carried sorrow — it carried silence. The kind that follows a storm. The kind that waits for something new to rise from the ashes.
Ayane and Momiji stood at the edge of the battlefield, the ruins of the Hollow Sanctum behind them, the future ahead. Their bodies bore the scars of war, but their eyes burned with something stronger than pain.
Conviction.
Ryu was gone.
Not dead. Not alive.
Transcended.
His sacrifice had shattered Kurozume, but the curse hadn't died with the demon. It had scattered — fragments of regret drifting across the world, waiting to be reborn.
Ayane touched the hilt of her blade. "He gave us time."
Momiji nodded. "We have to use it."
The world hadn't healed.
The mother and child Ryu saved had returned to their village, but the shadows lingered. The government still hunted what it didn't understand. The remnants of the Black Spider Clan stirred in secret. The blood Ryu spilled had bought peace — but only for a moment.
Ayane and Momiji knew this.
They didn't mourn.
They prepared.
Far in the east, beyond the mountains where the sky never smiled, a new figure emerged.
Not a demon.
Not a god.
A warrior.
Young. Unforgiving. Born in the aftermath of Ryu's war, raised in the silence of his legacy. He didn't wear the Dragon Sword. He didn't speak of honor. He carried something else — a blade forged from the remnants of the Grip of Murder.
He didn't want peace.
He wanted truth.
And he would burn the world to find it.
Ayane found it days later — carved into the stone beneath the ruins, hidden in the shadow of the Sanctum's collapse.
A message.
Not written in ink.
Written in blood.
"The path continues."
"Protect the innocent."
"But never forget the cost."
She didn't cry.
She smiled.
Momiji lit a flame at the shrine, her hands steady, her heart quiet. She didn't pray for Ryu's return. She prayed for strength. For the next warrior. For the next war.
Ayane stood beside her, blades ready.
The world was changing.
And somewhere, in the silence between battles, a new legend was waiting to be written.