The night was quiet.
Slander rays of moonlight slid through the sliding doors, illuminating the room in pale silver.
Takura Hayato sat upright.
The usual nighttime sounds of the clan, the distant footfalls of guards, the soft murmur of servants were absent.
Even the wind seemed hesitant, reluctant to disturb the stillness.
"Something's wrong"
"It shouldn't be this quiet"
Takura reached for his katana that lay beside him.
He drew in a small measured breath, letting the cool air fill his lungs.
He closed his eyes, letting his other senses take over.
With once swift, beautiful motion he drew out his katana. He rose from his siting posture into a striking stance, his blade piercing the paper thin wall.
As it moved, the tip drew a graceful arc, and for a moment, it seemed as if crimson petals unfurled and scattered along the path of his strike.
Each one a fragments of lethal beauty.
The after image of the Crimson Veil Swordstyle.
A faint cry of pain echoed from the opposite side of the wall. His blade had found its mark.
It was an ambush. An invasion. Takura pulled his blade back with precision, the thin paper shoji trembling from the strike.
Out from the shadows, an attacker lunged at him, spear aimed for his chest. Takura pivoted, sliding the katana along the shaft, redirecting it with a slight flick of his wrist. The intruder stumbled, and Takura followed through with a clean slash that sliced the enemy in half.
The motion was perfect, an arc of movement that carried a fleeting trace of crimson petals drifting in the air, before disappearing.
Three more attackers appeared at a certain distance behind him. However, before they could lift their move.. a swift, smooth slash that had no sound to it, met their necks.
They only felt a breeze brush against their skin.
Takura had vanished from their vision and appeared behind them in a follow through stance.
Their heads fell like apples from a tree, their expressions still clueless to what had just happened.
Takura burst through the shattered doorway, his sandals striking the wooden veranda before carrying him into the open night.
His breath caught in his chest as his eyes met the sight before him - flames devoured everything, and the once-serene courtyards were drowned in smoke and blood.
Enemy clans had invaded, a tide of blades and fire that seemed to consume everything.
Takura was a samurai that vowed to protect his clan, yet everything he swore to protect were going up in flames.
Slain comrads
Mothers and children slaughtered by the edge of a sword.
The banner that symbolized pride and hope of the hayato clan ,..burning in the midst of the battlefield.
Takura's eyes searched through the choas for survivers, someone to save.
There were noneone left, he was too late.
He tightened the grip on his sword.
It was now one against many.
He was surrounded, outnumbered and yet, he was unfazed.
Without hesitation he rushed into the front lines of the enemy. His blade moved as though tracing calligraphy across the night, each stroke flowing into the next with effortless grace.
The Crimson Veil Swordstyle , a dance of precision, every cut blooming like fleeting petals in the dark.
The swordstyle only known to the samurais of the Hayato clan.
It was almost beautiful , the clash of steel, the arc of his blade, the silence that followed each strike.
But beauty demanded a price. A spear grazed his ribs, hot blood staining his robes. A blade cut deep across his shoulder, and another nicked his thigh.
His stance wavered, yet his eyes held steady, burning with the discipline of a man who had dedicated his life to the sword.
Each swing grew heavier, each step slower. Though the poetry of his form never faltered, his body can only take so much damage.
Takura staggered.
His vision blurring as the weight of exhaustion finally bore him down. He fell on his knees. A sharp cough wracked his chest and a warm flood of blood spilled past his lips.
Shadows closed in .
Enemies circling with wary steps, blades drawn, eyes still filled with fear of the man who had felled so many of their brethren.
Takura lifted his head, accepting his fate.
A spear thrust forward, piercing through his shoulder. Pain blazed white,his grip on the sword loosened. Another cut slashed across his back.
The enemy commander stepped forth, raising a blade above Takura's bowed form.
The commander swung.
The blade swept across his neck in a merciless arc.
The last thing Takura saw was the burning sky tilting above him, and then, darkness claimed him whole.
Death.
Takura's world dimmed, the instant the blade severed him from life.
He held no body,no weight, no form, only his consciousness adrift in darkness.
The battlefield was gone. No steel. No screams. Only stillness.
He floated in a dark expanse where time no longer mattered, his soul untethered yet restless.
The darkness was vast, stretching endlessly in every direction.
It was not suffocating, nor hostile but endless, patient, like an ocean with no waves.
He drifted there weightlessly, a speck swallowed by eternity.
There was no sound, no up or down, only the eternal stillness that waited for all men when their blades finally fell silent.
In the midst of darkness and void, light appeared in a distance.
Light that seemed to suck in all the darkness.
A force pulled Takura towards the light.
There was a warm feeling to it that he couldn't quite grasp.
A sensation over his consciousness that pulled him closer to what seemed unreal.
Everything seemed unreal.
This was beyond human comprehension, a spectrum of the unknown.
The light expanded and consumed the entire space.
Then a voice was heard.
"Young lord?" A girl's voice, unfamiliar, wavered at his side.
"Lord Darian, wake up sir"
Takura's eyes flung open.
He wasn't on the battlefield, nor his home.
He found himself on a bed that wasn't his own.