The wind cut through the courtyard like a blade.
Dust swirled across the stone floor of the Kurogane stronghold, slipping between pillars blackened by age and war. The clan’s banners hung heavy above, their iron crests unmoving in the still air — as though even the wind feared what waited inside.
At the far end of the hall, Chief Elder Jiro stood in silence.
Hands clasped behind his back.
Eyes closed.
Listening.
Footsteps.
Not the steady march of warriors.
Not the disciplined rhythm of trained scouts.
These were frantic. Uneven. Desperate.
The doors burst open.
Three scouts stumbled in, breath ragged, uniforms torn, faces pale as death itself. One collapsed to his knees immediately. Another couldn’t even look up.
Jiro did not move.
“…Speak,” he said quietly.
The word echoed like a judgment.
The kneeling scout swallowed hard.
“C-Chief Elder… we— we failed.”
Silence swallowed the hall.
Jiro’s eyes opened slowly.
“…Failed,” he repeated, voice dangerously calm. “Explain.”
The scout’s hands trembled.
“We tracked him beyond the forest boundary. We surrounded them. We had numbers. We had the terrain. We had—”
He hesitated.
Jiro’s gaze sharpened.
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“You had *what*?”
The scout forced the words out.
“…we had no chance.”
A ripple of tension spread through the hall.
Jiro stepped forward once.
Only once.
Yet the pressure in the room spiked so violently that the scouts felt their lungs tighten.
“You are telling me,” Jiro said, voice low and heavy,
“that trained Kurogane scouts… were defeated by a boy.”
“No!” the second scout blurted. “Not a boy anymore!”
Jiro’s eyes flicked toward him.
The man froze under the weight of that stare.
“He’s changed, Chief Elder,” the scout continued, voice cracking. “His aura… it’s different. It’s overwhelming. We couldn’t even approach him. It felt like standing before a storm that wanted to devour us.”
The third scout whispered:
“…Kin is no longer prey.”
The hall fell still.
Jiro’s jaw tightened.
For a moment, the air itself seemed to vibrate with restrained violence.
“…So,” Jiro murmured, “you ran.”
None of them answered.
They didn’t need to.
Jiro stepped closer.
The scouts’ bodies stiffened. One instinctively braced himself for the strike he knew was coming.
Jiro raised his hand.
The pressure in the hall thickened.
This was it.
Punishment.
Failure in the Kurogane clan carried a price.
And Jiro never showed mercy.
But before his hand could fall—
A voice drifted in from the shadows.
“Touch them… and I will show you something you are not prepared to witness.”
The hall froze.
Even Jiro stopped.
A figure stepped forward from the darkness beside the pillar.
Despair.
No one had heard him enter.
No one ever did.
The scouts lowered their heads immediately, fear now mixed with relief.
Jiro slowly turned toward him.
“…You,” he said, voice tight. “You return empty-handed as well?”
Despair’s expression did not change.
“I did not go to capture him.”
“Then why interfere now?” Jiro demanded.
Despair stopped a few steps away, eyes calm, voice level.
“Because what you are about to do would be foolish.”
Jiro’s aura flared faintly.
“You presume to lecture me?”
Despair ignored the tension.
“At the level Kin is at right now… no one here can beat him.”
The words struck the room like thunder.
Even the guards along the walls stiffened.
Jiro’s eyes narrowed.
“…No one?”
Despair met his gaze evenly.
“Not your scouts. Not your elites. Not even Kaizen of the Shinga clan.”
That name alone made several men shift uneasily.
Kaizen was not someone spoken of lightly.
Jiro’s fingers curled slightly.
“You expect me to believe that a runaway child has surpassed the chiefs of the Five Clans?”
Despair answered without hesitation.
“Yes.”
The certainty in his voice left no room for doubt.
Jiro’s silence stretched.
Then he exhaled slowly.
“…So,” he said at last, voice low,
“I cannot kill him.”
“No,” Despair replied.
Jiro’s eyes darkened.
“…Can I kill *them* then?”
He gestured sharply toward the scouts.
The three men stiffened in terror.
Despair’s expression didn’t change.
“If you lay a finger on them,” he said quietly,
“I will show you the true reason why even Kaizen failed.”
The temperature in the hall seemed to drop.
Jiro stared at him.
For the first time in a long while…
There was hesitation in his eyes.
Not weakness.
Not surrender.
But calculation.
Despair was not a man who spoke lightly.
And he was not a man who threatened without cause.
Jiro slowly lowered his hand.
The scouts nearly collapsed from relief.
“…You are certain?” Jiro asked.
Despair nodded once.
“He is no longer the child you hunted.”
Jiro turned away, pacing once across the hall.
“…Then what do you suggest?”
Despair’s voice came calmly behind him.
“You do nothing.”
Jiro stopped.
“That boy is walking a path that will either destroy him… or remake the world around him.”
Silence.
“For now,” Despair continued,
“the wisest move is to watch.”
Jiro’s shoulders rose and fell once.
He did not like that answer.
But he understood it.
“…Very well,” he said finally.
He turned back to the scouts.
“Leave. Recover. You will not be punished.”
The men bowed so fast they nearly fell over, then rushed out like survivors escaping execution.
Only Jiro and Despair remained.
“…You seem invested in him,” Jiro said after a moment.
Despair’s eyes shifted slightly toward the open doorway.
“Because I know what happens when power like that awakens.”
Jiro studied him.
“And what happens?”
Despair’s voice softened — almost thoughtful.
“The world learns fear.”
The hall fell quiet again.
Jiro looked toward the distant horizon beyond the fortress walls.
“…Then perhaps,” he murmured,
“we should prepare for war.”
Despair did not answer.
But his silence was answer enough.
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