The wind outside had softened into a low, ghostly hum by the time Phaser stood and brushed the dirt off his pants.
"Come on. There's something I want to show you."
Haruno followed without question with her boots crunching softly against the frost-laced ground. The deeper they went, the dimmer the firelight behind them became, swallowed by the cold, damp darkness. Phaser's crimson hair glowed, lighting up the way. Haruno's face lit up with amazement.
"That's efficient."
The silence between them was companionable at first, until Phaser's voice broke it again.
"When I got here three days ago, I found this cave and explored the whole thing. Didn't find a single monster. However..."
He stopped walking, his glow spilling forward to reveal what lay ahead. Haruno froze. The tunnel opened into a wide, circular chamber and the sight waiting there was enough to silence even the storm outside.
Hundreds of skeletons sprawled across the stone floor like broken puppets. Some were huddled together, some slumped against the walls and others still kneeling as if in prayer. The faint shimmer of frost clung to their bones.
"What the hell…"
Phaser knelt near one of the skeletons, his fingers brushing over a ribcage dusted in ice.
"They're all female."
"How do you know that?"
He hesitated a second, then replied softly.
"Phaser is… somewhat skilled in this department. He trained to be an assassin so he knows this. I'm using those memories. The structure of the pelvis, the narrow shoulders, and the bone density, they're all female."
Haruno crouched beside him, studying the remains. They weren't brittle like ancient bones should be. They were clean. He frowned, running his thumb along one.
"And here's the strange part. They're intact. There are no signs of claw marks, no fractures, no impact trauma. These women didn't die fighting. Based on the surface wear, I'd say frostbite or hypothermia."
He pointed to faint grayish residue along one skeleton's fingers.
"Look here, see the discoloration? That's cellular decay from frost necrosis. And the way their joints are positioned, they were shivering when they died."
"Why are you showing me this?"
Phaser stood, brushing frost from his knees.
"Because of that."
He turned and Haruno followed his gaze to the far end of the chamber, where a massive stone slab jutted out of the wall. Carved across its face were dozens of vertical inscriptions. They were frozen strokes carved within it and with blood, still legible under Phaser's glow. Haruno stepped forward slowly, her breath fogging in the air. The closer she got, the more her pulse quickened.
"That's Japanese."
"That's what I thought. Which means someone else came here before us. Probably looking for the Blood Odachi. Since I can only read English, Mandarin, and a bit of Korean, I can't understand a damn thing written there. Think you can use Haruno's memories to translate them?"
Haruno didn't answer at first. She just stared at the inscriptions, something. The closer she got, the more the air seemed to thicken. Words she didn't remember learning began to surface in her mind like whispers rising through ice. Her fingertips brushed over the symbols.
"Those who are chosen by the Blood Blade must offer their lives…"
Her eyes darted downward. Scattered across the floor were fragments of shattered odachi blades. Some were dull, others were still faintly gleaming with traces of crimson. Several of the skeletons were clutching broken hilts in their frozen hands. A chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the cold.
"Phaser, I have a theory. A crazy one."
"Let's hear it."
"The Blood Odachi wasn't just a relic in the main story. It was a trial. In the original MoDS storyline, Haruno Nishikata, the real one, was one of the few who actually survived it. The lore mentioned she descended into the Mountain of the Lost, where hundreds of warriors had perished seeking the blade. But when she came back, she was different. She endured something so horrific it fractured her mind. That's what turned her into an antagonist."
She looked at the bones again.
"I think this is the place. This cave isn't just a ruin. It's the real Blood Odachi trial ground. And these women… they weren't random adventurers. They were chosen. Every single one of them."
Phaser frowned, studying the bones again.
"Chosen? By what?"
"By the Odachi itself. The weapon demands a sacrifice. But not just blood. It demands devotion, despair, and surrender. These women must've come here to claim it and failed the test."
He crouched beside another skeleton, brushing the frost off a fractured blade.
"If they failed, that explains the deaths, but not the freshness of the remains."
"Exactly. Phaser, you can tell how old bones are, right?"
"Roughly, yeah. And… these aren't old. They should be cracked and yellowed if they'd been here for decades. But they're pristine. It's almost like they've been dead only a few months. But that doesn't make sense. In a place this cold, the flesh should've frozen solid before it decayed. The bodies would be intact, not stripped to bone. So what stripped them clean?"
The silence that followed was almost unbearable. Haruno counted under her breath, walking slowly around the chamber.
"One hundred seventy-three, all female. All untouched by claws or weapons. All are holding their blades."
She stopped at the altar.
"They didn't die from hunger, or cold…"
"Then how?"
"They killed themselves."
"What?"
She pointed at the skeletons.
"Look. The position of the hands, the angle of the hilts, every single one of them drove their own swords through their chests or throats. It's not random. It's ritualistic. The Odachi demanded blood and when they couldn't control its curse, they turned it on themselves. The inscriptions say that those chosen must 'offer their lives willingly.' This isn't a warning. It's an instruction. The Blood Odachi doesn't test your strength. It tests your despair. The weapon calls only to those willing to die for it."
Haruno turned back to Phaser.
"They weren't killed by the cold. They were killed by the promise of power. The Odachi consumed them long before the frost did."
Phaser's breath turned to vapor as he stood there, surrounded by the cold remains of the dead. His sapphire hair shimmered faintly, the glow of it crawling along the stone like a heartbeat in the dark. The cave was still, save for the brittle whisper of bones shifting under the chill draft.
He turned again to Haruno, his voice low, almost disbelieving.
"Hold out your hand."
Haruno frowned but obeyed. Her hand trembled only slightly. Phaser reached down to one of the skeletons near his feet, brushing frost from its arm bones. They were smooth, clean and disturbingly intact. He gently took out the forearm and aligned it against Haruno's.
The match was… uncanny.
"That's impossible."
"What do you mean?"
Phaser's gaze turned between the bone and her flesh.
"The structure, the radius, the angle of the wrist, it's identical to yours. Not just proportionally. Even the curvature of the healed fracture here…"
He pointed at a faint ridge along the bone.
"You see this? It's the mark of a clean fracture that healed out of alignment. It's the exact same mark you have on your right arm."
Haruno's eyes widened, her left hand instinctively touching the scar beneath her sleeve. The real Haruno got it since the night her clan was massacred. Through her memories, she remembered the sound of her bone cracking and the blade that fell from her hand that night. Phaser didn't stop. He reached for another skeleton, brushing frost from its arms. He took another one. It had the same healed alignment. A third, a fourth… they were all identical.
"Phaser, what are you saying?"
"I don't think these women were other seekers who came for the Blood Odachi."
Haruno's eyes turned to the Japanese carvings, the frozen odachi blades snapped and scattered and the sea of skeletal hands clutching shards of steel as though refusing to let go.
"These bones are not months old because of decay. They're new because they're not from months ago. The bodies didn't rot because they weren't supposed to exist long enough to. The frost didn't preserve them. Something else did. It's something that repeats."
Haruno took a step back, shaking her head.
"Repeats?"
"Think about it. You said this cave was part of the Blood Odachi's trial, right? What if… every person who enters doesn't just face the blade. What if the trial recreates them?"
Her eyes widened in horror as realization began to crawl up her spine. He turned to the writing on the wall. The symbols shimmered faintly under the glow of his hair.
"This isn't a tomb. It's a cycle. It's a repeating loop for every seeker who fails. And if that's true, these aren't strangers' remains, Haruno. They're yours, over and over again. Which means the Haruno who survived this cave before… might not be the first one."