Chapter One – The Night of Ashes
Rain lashed the village of Nanmuko like a thousand tiny arrows. Distant war drums rumbled across the hills, and firelight flickered beyond the ridges—each beat a warning the villagers had long dreaded.
Inside a sagging wooden house, six brothers huddled with their parents around a boiling pot of broth, clinging to its warmth as the storm rattled the walls.
Kenta knelt by the fire, arms wrapped protectively around the youngest. Their father, sake heavy on his breath, muttered curses at ghosts only he could see. He is in his every days same drunken state muttering nonsense!
His once-proud armor, now mottled with rust, slumped in a corner—a relic of a man who had forgotten how to stand tall. He didn't know this sip of liquor would be his last.
Their mother's tired eyes gleamed with quiet sorrow as she drew the boys closer. The door suddenly crashed open.
Steel flashed. Five enemy samurai and two shadow-masked ninjas poured inside, their blades slick with rain and blood.
They jeered at the drunken soldier, circling like wolves. One's gaze lingered on the mother—her beauty, dimmed but not erased by exhaustion, shone like a lantern in the storm. Another sneered, "This wretch guards such a jewel?"
Laughter split the thunder.
Something inside their father snapped. For the first time in years, his eyes cleared. He staggered forward, sword in hand, but the drink had slowed him; his stance was clumsy. The invaders mocked him, knocking his blade aside.
With a sudden, guttural cry, he plunged the sword into the bubbling broth. Steam hissed. He ripped it free and slashed upward, flinging scalding soup into their faces. Warriors screamed, clutching blistered skin.
"Run!" he roared, tears carving clean paths down his soot-streaked cheeks.
Their mother seized the twins. Ryu clung to her back. Kenta grabbed Benjiro and Kaede. Barefoot on slick earth, they fled into the storm as steel clashed behind them.
They stumbled through mud and rain to the blackened skeleton of a once-proud castle. Charred beams still glowed faintly; broken banners fluttered like dying birds. Crawling into an upper room, its floor scorched and splintered, they huddled in the shadows.
Below, voices rose—shouts, the hiss of steel, then their mother's cry. Kenta forced his brothers down, peering through a jagged gap in the floor.
In the lightning's harsh glare, he saw their father cut down—one blow, then another—until silence claimed him.
Their mother fought like a cornered hawk with a kitchen blade before they overwhelmed her. Her torn sleeve fluttered like a white flag in the smoke, then disappeared beneath enemy steel.
The storm drowned her final scream.
The brothers crouched in silence until the night offered only rain and the smell of ash. Smoke clung to their clothes. Kenta's trembling hand closed around the weathered mask he had found earlier in the castle ruins. He did not yet know whose face it had once guarded, only that it felt heavier than wood.
He was in two piece cloth a Japanese attire name jinbie , he kept the mask inside his dress.
Benjiro's rage boiled over. "Brother Kenta—we should kill them all. Bury them with our own hands!"
Kenta gripped his shoulder. "Not yet." His voice cracked but held firm. "We're weak now. But time will show the world what we are made of. We will avenge Father and Mother. We will grow strong enough that no one can ever make slaves of us."
The brothers' voices—raw, trembling, furious—rose in unison: "Yes!" Kaede's eyes blazed. Even the twins, Haruki and Fuyuki, still shaking with terror, nodded through their tears. Ryu, silent until now, clenched his fists, his small frame taut with resolve.
That night, six broken boys made an unspoken vow: they would never run again.