The darkness around him seemed endless. One moment, Mark had been speaking with the cloaked figure who called himself the god of death and reincarnation, and the next… he blinked.
Wood.
The first thing he noticed was the scent of it—aged timber, faintly damp, mixed with the smoky residue of something burned long ago. He blinked again, and this time he realized he was sitting upright in a narrow wooden room. The walls creaked with every movement of the wind. A paper screen stood half open, letting in a sliver of pale light.
Mark's heart pounded. No—not Mark. The name felt foreign already, like it belonged to someone who had died in another world.
Slowly, shakily, he rose to his feet. His legs trembled beneath him, unfamiliar with movement. He was no longer frail, but his body felt… different. Stronger, yet untested. Every step was strange, like walking for the first time.
Curiosity pushed him forward. He slid the paper screen wider and stepped into the daylight.
And then—
Bang!
The sound was wet, sharp, and final. A man's head—just meters away—erupted in a spray of crimson. One instant he was standing, the next his body crumpled to the earth like a puppet with its strings cut. Warm blood misted the air, droplets splattering the ground and the wooden porch.
Mark froze, his stomach twisting violently. He had never seen death—not like this. Not raw, not immediate. The iron stench of blood hit him instantly. His hands shook. His throat tightened, refusing to swallow.
Before he could even scream, someone grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him back inside the room.
"Get inside, Ichi!" the man barked, slamming the door shut with such force the wooden frame rattled.
"Ichi?" Mark whispered. The name echoed strangely in his ears.
But before he could question it, his vision swam. His knees buckled. Everything went black.
---
When he awoke again, the world was silent. The wooden house around him was no longer whole—it was broken, shattered as if a storm had ripped through it. Splintered beams jutted from the floor. Tatami mats were shredded and soaked in something dark. The air was thick, suffocating, heavy with the coppery tang of blood.
Mark—or perhaps Ichi now—staggered to his feet. His head throbbed.
"My name… is Ichi," he muttered. The words left his lips unbidden, as though the body itself remembered even when his soul did not.
He looked around. The house was empty. Silent. Broken. He pushed aside the broken doorframe and stepped outside.
What he saw would haunt him forever.
The village was gone. Not just destroyed—slaughtered.
Bodies littered the ground in every direction, more than he could count at first glance. Some were slumped against ruined walls, their faces pale and lifeless. Others lay sprawled in the dirt, eyes wide open, mouths frozen in silent screams.
Ichi's breath caught. His body trembled as he forced himself forward, step by agonizing step, his eyes darting across the devastation.
Over five thousand people—men, women, even children—lay motionless. He could see it all. The elderly, clutching walking sticks even in death. Mothers curled protectively over their children, their backs pierced by kunai and shuriken. Warriors with blades still in hand, their blood pooling around their corpses.
The ground itself was painted red. Streams of blood ran through the dirt streets like veins, converging into thick puddles where bodies overlapped. The stench was overwhelming—sweat, charred flesh, and the sickly-sweet rot of blood. Flies buzzed madly, swarming over open wounds and hollow sockets where eyes had once been.
Some bodies were torn apart entirely. Heads crushed, limbs severed, organs spilled across the ground. The violence had been merciless, efficient, inhuman.
Ichi gagged and fell to his knees, his hands digging into the blood-soaked dirt. His mind screamed to look away, but his eyes couldn't. He had lived his whole life surrounded by the sterile, clean halls of a hospital. He thought he had known pain, but this… this was suffering on a scale he couldn't have imagined.
"Why… why is this happening?" he whispered, voice trembling.
And then he heard it.
A voice—calm, almost casual, drifting through the silence.
"Boss, I have wiped out the Forgotten Village. The blood weavers are no more. Nothing to worry about now."
Ichi's head snapped up.
Two figures stood at the far end of the ruined street, their silhouettes framed by the fading light of dusk. Cloaked in shadow, they carried themselves like predators, unhurried, confident. With a single leap, they rose into the air, their bodies cutting across the sky before vanishing into the distance.
Ninja.
Ichi's heart hammered in his chest. He wanted to chase them, to scream, to demand why—but his legs refused to move. His body was still weak, trembling. His mind swirled with panic and rage.
He looked again at the devastation around him, at the rivers of blood seeping into the soil, at the thousands of corpses.
The words echoed in his head—
Blood weavers.
Wiped out.
Was this the legacy the god had spoken of? A clan tied to blood itself? And if so… why had they been annihilated so mercilessly?
Ichi clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms until blood dripped down his fingers. His chest burned with something he had never felt before—an anger so deep it swallowed his fear.
He had asked for life. He had begged for freedom. But in this new world, life was crueler than he had ever imagined.
The god had given him a gift. Blood manipulation. Blood creation. A legacy tied to slaughter. And now, standing in the ruins of a village wiped from existence, Ichi understood one thing:
This second chance was not simply to live. It was to fight. To survive. To avenge.
He rose to his feet, surrounded by death, and whispered to himself—
"My name… is Ichi. The last of the blood weavers."
The silence around him gave no answer. Only the dead listened.
But somewhere in the distance, beyond the smoke and corpses, destiny was already shifting.