Windmill Village slept.
A blanket of quiet settled over its rooftops, broken only by the creak of swaying docks and the occasional snore drifting out from an open window. Peace hung in the air—fragile, precious, almost holy.
And Jin hated it.
He sat on the dojo's worn porch, elbows braced on his knees, staring into the thick night. Beside him, his sword leaned against the wall, unsheathed and freshly oiled. The polished blade caught the faint starlight, a thin scar of silver across the dark.
Kuma was inside, snoring loud enough to rattle the beams, a half-chewed rice cracker still clutched in his paw. Kuina had retreated to the back room hours ago, her breathing steady and calm in sleep. Resting. Healing.
But Jin couldn't.
Every nerve in his body was alive, humming. Too quiet. Too soft. Too… wrong.
It wasn't paranoia.
It was survival.
He'd lived long enough with blades at his back to know this kind of silence didn't mean victory. It meant the storm hadn't reached you yet. It meant something was already moving in the dark.
By dawn, the restlessness had driven him to walk the village perimeter. The horizon glowed faintly, streaks of orange spilling across the tide.
Makino spotted him from the tavern's back door, wiping her hands on her apron. She lifted one in a wave.
Jin didn't wave back.
Not because he wanted to be cold. But because if he raised his hand, he wasn't sure if it would be a lie.
She saw enough anyway. Her eyes were sharp, kinder than he deserved. She recognized the look in his posture, the set of his jaw. Something was coming. She didn't need words to know.
Back at the dojo yard, Kuina was already awake, arms folded, waiting.
"You're leaving again," she said flatly.
He didn't bother with excuses. "Got a lead."
"Dangerous?"
He shrugged once. "Always."
For a moment, she studied him without blinking. Then she stepped closer, her face still as stone. "I'm not going to stop you."
"I know."
"But don't expect me to like it either."
The corner of his mouth curved. "You're starting to sound like an old friend."
"An old friend?"
He looked past her, toward the rising sun. "Someone who never let me forget what I was risking."
A beat of silence stretched between them, then Kuina's voice dropped quieter. "Do you ever stop?"
Jin looked at her—really looked. Not as a student, not as a fighter beside him, not even as a shadow of her father's legacy.
As someone he was terrified of growing attached to.
"No," he said finally. "But sometimes… I slow down. For the right people."
Her eyes flickered—something unspoken crossing her face—before she turned away.
He packed light. Sword. Cloak. A pouch of dried rations. And the small black pouch he'd taken from Langatt—a few gems still glinting inside. Blood money. Payment for sins that never stopped weighing on him.
Kuma met him at the forest's edge, a satchel of dried meat slung awkwardly around his neck.
"I'm coming too!" Kuma declared, puffing his chest.
"No, you're not." Jin's answer was immediate.
"But I—"
"You're not," Jin cut him off. "I need someone here. If things go sideways, someone has to hold the line."
Kuma's shoulders sagged. "…So I'm just on babysitting duty again?"
"Exactly." Jin placed a hand on the bear's massive head. "And I trust you to keep this place standing."
"…So you do care," Kuma muttered.
"Don't make me regret it."
The trees swallowed him as he left the village behind. The docks, the tavern, the dojo—they all faded until the only sound was the rustle of leaves and the crunch of dirt underfoot.
That hum in his gut hadn't left. If anything, it coiled tighter. This wasn't just another drunk bandit or two-bit thug waiting to be cut down. The whispers he'd caught in the last week—the black market movements, the sudden flow of weapons through the East Blue, villages bleeding coin into shadows—none of it was small.
Someone was pulling strings. Someone organized.
And the name tied to it all, spoken in the darkest corners?
Karika.
Jin's hand brushed the hilt of his blade.
He didn't know who this Karika was yet. But he knew the type. Men who built empires in the dark while the world pretended to sleep. Men who thrived on silence.
The kind of silence that hung over Windmill Village last night.
The kind that never lasted.
He pulled his hood up as the sun bled over the horizon. His lips curved into a humorless smirk.
"Alright," he murmured. "Let's go drag this bastard out into the light."
And then he walked on, deeper into the forest, where the calm no longer reached.