The air inside the room was heavy with the suffocating weight of five decades of neglect.
It was a tomb of rotting wood and grey silk, where thick curtains of cobwebs draped from the ceiling like the funeral shrouds of giants.
Every breath stirred a cloud of ancient dust that tasted of copper and decay.
"Aaaah... aaahhhh!"
The scream was a ragged, wet thing, torn from a throat raw with terror. On the floor, a man was attempting the impossible.
Edward D. William, a man whose name once commanded respect across the Azerion country, was reduced to a torso and two blood-slicked stumps.
He crawled with the frantic, jerky motions of a dying insect, his fingernails digging deep into the dust-caked floorboards, leaving dark, morbid streaks behind him.
Rain lashed against the single, grime-crusted window, a rhythmic drumming that masked the sound of his sobbing.
Then, the sky split open. A jagged vein of lightning struck the earth just outside, flooding the room with a momentary, blinding white glare.
In that fraction of a second, a silhouette appeared in the doorway.
It was a tall, motionless figure clad in a long, dark cloak. The light vanished as quickly as it had come, plunging the room back into a terrifying twilight, but the image was burned into Edward's retinas.
The man on the floor stopped crawling. His body began to shake with a violent, rhythmic palsy.
"Please!" Edward shrieked, his voice cracking into a high-pitched wail. "Kaito! I was wrong! I... I'll give you everything! Just leave me! Please, I didn't kill her! I swear on my soul, I didn't kill her!"
The silhouette did not speak. It did not need to. The cold, rhythmic tap of boots on the dusty wood was the only reply—a countdown to an inevitable end.
The Corpse at the Estate
By dawn, the rain had slowed to a miserable drizzle. The grand estate, once a symbol of Edward D. Williams' presidency, was now swarming with men in the crisp, white-and-gold uniforms of the Hunter Guild.
"President Edward D. William is confirmed dead," a young investigator whispered, his face ashen as he looked at the remains.
"It's a clear murder," his partner replied, kneeling to examine the wounds with a magnifying lens. "Look at the precision.
These aren't just slashes; they are the work of a master. The way the muscle is parted... only a katana of the highest grade, wielded by a demon, could do this."
Suddenly, the heavy double doors of the hall swung open. The idle chatter of the junior members died instantly.
A man walked in with an aura so heavy it felt as though the gravity in the room had suddenly doubled. Every hunter in the vicinity snapped to attention, hands pressed firmly over their hearts.
"Who is that?" a rookie whispered, leaning toward a senior member. "Is he a VIP?"
The senior hunter didn't even look at the boy, his eyes fixed forward in reverence. "Are you new to the guild? That is Kashima Hanto.
He is the leader of the White Hunter Guild—the man who rules the strongest organisation of our time.
They say he once killed a Sea King with a single strike of his bare hands."
Kashima Hanto walked to the centre of the room, his long white coat billowing behind him like a cape.
He stopped inches from the corpse, his expression unreadable behind a veil of cigarette smoke.
He pulled a silver lighter from his pocket, flicked it open, and took a long, slow drag, his eyes narrowing as he observed the patterns of blood on the floor.
He's back, Kashima thought, his jaw tightening. The Shadow Fang. The man with a bounty of one billion gold coins.
My intelligence said he perished in the Great Purge... but this blade work is a signature that cannot be forged.
He turned toward his gathered guild forces, his voice booming with cold, absolute authority.
"Listen to me!" Kashima shouted. "We are the White Hunter Guild. It is our sacred duty to maintain the peace and order of Azerion.
Years ago, a monster was born in this land—a man who dared to strike at the heart of our government.
The state placed a bounty of one billion gold coins on his head, the highest in the history of the Sutra Continent. Kaito Hana Sato. The Shadow Fang.
The man who rules from the dark has returned to claim his tithe."
The Lone Shadow
While the city scrambled in fear, the man in question stood far above the chaos.
High atop the ancient stone wall that ringed the capital, Kaito stood motionless. He wore a tattered black cloak that danced in the midnight wind.
Above him, the sky was a velvet canvas, littered with brilliant, shimmering stars that seemed to pulse with an ancient life.
Kaito stared up at the cosmos, a soft, melancholic smile touching his lips—a smile that didn't match the blood still drying on his sleeves.
"Once, I was a brother," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the wind. "Once, I had a family. Even now... they exist. But I am already dead in their eyes."
A single tear escaped, tracking a path through the soot on his cheek. He looked down at his hands—hands that had taken lives to save lives, a paradox he could never truly resolve.
"Did I do something wrong?" he asked the stars. "Or was the world wrong first?"
The stars did not answer. They only shivered in the cold.
In the opulent private lounge of the White Hunter Guild headquarters, the atmosphere was thick with tension.
Kashima Hanto sat across from Yanto, the guild's strongest combatant and a man whose reputation for cruelty was legendary.
They weren't celebrating. Kashima swirled a glass of expensive amber liquid, his eyes dark and reflective.
"Shadow Fang is alive. He's breathing the air of Azerion as we speak. He isn't just a ghost anymore, Yanto. He's a predator on the hunt."
Yanto leaned back, a confident, predatory smirk playing on his lips. He tossed back his drink with a flourish, the ice clinking against the glass. "Let him be alive.
It doesn't matter if he's the Shadow Fang or a god. Our members have been busy while you were at the crime scene. We are already following his past.
We have eyes on the remnants of his world—one girl, one daughter, and that bastard Kanjo."
Kashima's eyes brightened with a cruel, cold spark. He raised his glass in a mock toast. "You've already laid the trap. Impressive. To the end of a legend, then."
The crystal glasses clinked—a sharp, brittle sound that echoed like a death knell.
On the fringes of the city, in a district where the houses were small and the lanterns were dim, the smell of vegetable stew filled a cramped but clean kitchen.
Asha, a woman of twenty-three with tired but beautiful eyes, stirred the pot. Her younger sister, fourteen-year-old Hana, was dancing around the wooden table, humming a light tune in anticipation of dinner.
Suddenly, the front door burst open.
Kanjo, a rugged man with grey hair and a chest that heaved with exhaustion, stood in the doorway. He was trembling, but his eyes were wide with a light they hadn't held in years.
"Asha! Hana!" he shouted, his voice cracking with emotion. "He's back!"
Asha froze. The wooden spoon slipped from her hand, clattering onto the floor and splashing broth across the wood. Tears welled in her eyes instantly, blurring her vision. "Kanjo... is it true? Is he actually..."
"Yes," Kanjo laughed, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy. "Kaito Hana Sato is back in Azerion!"
Hana stopped dancing, her eyes wide with a mix of wonder and a memory she was almost too young to hold.
The air in the small house, usually heavy with the struggle of survival, suddenly felt light—electric with a hope that had been dormant for half a decade.
The hope in that small house was a world away from the scene unfolding in the merchant district.
An old man, nearly seventy-five years old, lay in the mud of the gutter. Two members of the White Hunter Guild stood over him, their polished boots stained with the grime of the street.
"Please," the old man begged, his voice thin and shaking. "The taxes... they are too high. I cannot pay seventy percent of my income. My wife is sick, I have nothing left to give!"
"That sounds like a personal problem, old man," one of the hunters sneered. He levelled a heavy boot and kicked the man in the ribs,
sending him sprawling into the filth.
"If you don't have coins, you don't deserve a roof. Men! Seize the house. Clear out his junk."
The old man wailed, reaching out to grab the hunter's greave. "Please! Not the house! It's all I have!"
"I told you to shut up!" The hunter raised his foot for another strike, his face twisted in a mask of petty tyranny.
He never finished the motion.
In a blur of black motion that defied the human eye, a line of silver light cut through the air.
The hunter's head slid from his shoulders, a clean, horizontal cut so fast that the body remained standing for a full second, blood geysering into the air, before collapsing into the mud.
The other guild members froze, their blood running cold. They looked toward the end of the alleyway.
A man stood there. His pose was relaxed, almost casual, but he radiated a terrifying pressure that made it hard to draw a breath.
He held a katana, but the steel was barely visible, shrouded in a swirling, flickering black aura that seemed to swallow the light around it. It looked like living ink, dancing along the edge of the blade.
"I've never seen the Shadow Fang," one hunter stammered, his sword shaking so violently it rattled in his grip.
"But... why does it feel like I'm looking at death itself? The highest bounty in the Sutra Continent..."
"Look at the blade," another whispered in horror, dropping his weapon. "That's Hunting Will.
He's projecting his intent into the physical realm. His speed, his strength... It's all being multiplied by that aura."
Some of the hunters, fueled by a mix of desperation and the foolish hope of the bounty, bared their teeth and prepared to rush.
Others simply fell to their knees, their spirits broken by the mere presence of the man.
Kaito's eyes locked onto them. They weren't the eyes of a man; they were the eyes of a wolf looking at sheep that had forgotten their place in the food chain.
The Convergence
Back at Asha's house, the joy had turned into a frantic scramble.
"I knew it," Asha said, her voice a whisper of fierce conviction. "I never believed the reports. I knew he was alive."
Kanjo nodded, though his face was now etched with a deep, gnawing worry. "He was our captain
. He left the crew to protect us, but he never stopped being the man who led us. But he's playing a dangerous game."
The door creaked open again, and a woman named Yuri rushed in. Her face was flushed, her clothes dishevelled.
"Kanjo! They've spotted him. He's in the merchant district... he's slaughtering the White Hunter members like they're nothing!"
Kanjo's joy vanished, replaced by a grim realisation. He grabbed his heavy coat and signalled to Yuri. "We have to go. Now!"
As they sprinted toward the sound of steel on steel, Kanjo bit his lip until it bled. Why, Kaito? Why do you have to do it again? Now you are all alone... You don't have the crew to watch your back.
The Walk of the Ghost
The streets of the merchant district were now a graveyard of white cloaks. Kaito walked slowly through the carnage, his boots clicking softly on the stones. He wasn't running. He wasn't hiding.
He looked up at the sky one more time, the black aura of his "Hunting Will" flickering like dark flames around his katana, casting long, dancing shadows against the walls.
"The brilliant stars shine at night," he murmured to himself, his voice calm and melodic amidst the screams of the dying.
"It doesn't matter where you are... they always watch. And tonight, they shall watch the world burn."
With the katana trailing by his side, he continued his walk into the heart of the city, a lone shadow challenging an empire. He had no fear, for a man who has already died once has nothing left to lose.