Three days out from the Hosokawa camp, the body gave out.

We had been walking since dawn, the path a monotonous ribbon of dirt cutting through endless green hills. The ache in my muscles had become a constant, dull companion, a background noise I was learning to ignore. But then, without warning, the noise became a roar.

My left leg buckled. The right one followed. The world tilted, and I slammed face-first into the dirt road, the impact jarring my teeth and filling my mouth with grit.

"My lord!" Taro was there in an instant, a frantic flurry of limbs. He dropped his pack but kept his distance, a nervous dance he had perfected. "Are you... are you injured? Should this one—? Forgive me, should I fetch a healer? Are you bleeding internally? Is it your heart?"

I shoved a hand down, trying to push myself up. The muscles in my arms and back refused to obey. They trembled, weak and useless as a newborn colt's. "This body just... stopped," I grated out, the frustration sharp and foreign. "Explain this."

He hesitated, wringing his hands so hard I thought he might rub the skin right off. "My lord... you're just... tired."

"Tired?" I repeated the word. It felt small, inadequate for this complete and sudden failure. "Elaborate."

"It's... it's when the body needs to stop. To rest. To... sleep." He said the last word like it was a sacred incantation.

Sleep. I had watched humans do it for millennia. A vulnerability so profound, it was a wonder the species had survived. I'd seen generals slain in their sleep, cities burned while their defenders were all dreaming.

"And how do I make it stop?" I demanded. "How do I command it?"

"You don't command it, my lord," Taro said, his voice trembling. "You... you permit it. The body... it heals. And recovers."

"I don't know how."

The silence that followed was thick with his disbelief. He stared at me, his fear momentarily eclipsed by a sheer, unadulterated bewilderment. He looked at me as if I'd just claimed I couldn't remember how to blink.

"Everyone knows how to sleep," he finally whispered.

"I am not everyone," I snapped, a fresh wave of irritation washing over me. "Get me to shelter. Now."

We found an abandoned temple a mile later, another monument to a dead faith. The roof leaked in a dozen places, creating a mosaic of damp spots on the stone floor. The bronze Buddha was gone, leaving only a stained, empty pedestal. Vines snaked through the broken windows, and moss grew like a green velvet pelt on fallen prayer mats. Taro bustled around, making a fire, his movements a desperate attempt at normalcy. I sat against a cold, damp wall, cataloging the aches and pains radiating through Kurō's limbs—the sharp pull in my calves, the dull throb in my lower back, the sandpaper feeling in my eyes.

"How does it work?" I asked, my voice tight with irritation. "This... sleep."

He paused, poking at the fire with a stick. "You just... lie down. Close your eyes."

"That's it? That's your grand instruction? 'Close your eyes'? What if they open again?"

"Well... yes. You have to... let go."

"Let go of what?" I demanded, my frustration mounting. "Control? Awareness? I have spent centuries maintaining perfect awareness. You're asking me to discard it."

"Of... everything," he finally looked at me, his expression a mixture of pity and terror. "My lord, you're sitting like you're waiting for the whole world to attack you. Your shoulders are up by your ears. Your jaw is clenched. You can't sleep like that."

He was right. The body was a coiled spring, every fiber tensed for a threat that wasn't there. I tried to force it to relax, to command the muscles to unclench, but it was like trying to command the tide. The more I tried, the tighter they became.

"My mother," Taro said suddenly, his voice soft, a fragile offering. "When I was a boy and couldn't sleep after the soldiers came through our village... she would tell me to find one sound. The cricket in the wall. The rain on the roof. And listen to it until it is the only thing in the world."

A useless, sentimental trick. But I had no other options. I closed my red eyes. The fire crackled and popped. Rain began to hiss against the roof, a sound that grew from a few scattered drops to a steady, drumming rhythm. And then, an owl hooted in the distance, a lonely, haunting call. I focused on the rain, a steady, percussive rhythm against the tiles. The body's breathing, once a conscious, forced effort, began to slow, to sync with the sound. The tension in my shoulders began to unspool, fiber by fiber. I felt myself sinking, the hard stone of the wall seeming to soften and recede.

And then... nothing.

'''

I woke to the hiss of steel leaving a scabbard.

My hand was on Kurō's sword hilt before I was fully conscious, the motion pure instinct. Three men filled the temple's entrance, their silhouettes backlit by the morning sun. They looked like ronin, their gear a mismatched patchwork of scavenged armor—a dented pauldron here, a leather shin guard there—their faces lean and hungry from too many days on the road.

"Give me your money. Food. Even your lives," the leader snarled, his voice like grinding stones. "Or else you'll leave here without a head."

I rose to my feet, the body feeling... renewed. The sleep had actually worked. The aches were gone, replaced by a sense of coiled potential. Interesting.

I let a slow, humorless smile spread across my face. "That's funny."

"I SAID—"

"I heard you," I cut him off, my voice flat. "I just don't care."

They spread out, a clumsy, predictable flanking maneuver. One went left, one went right, their footsteps scuffing on the dusty floor. I glanced at Taro, who was flattened against the far wall, trying to become part of the stone, his face the color of ash.

"Boy," I said, my voice low. "Pay attention. You're about to get a lesson."

"My... my lord?"

"Lesson one," I murmured, my eyes dissecting the three men. "Every fight is over before it begins. You just have to know how to read the opening page."

The leader had a slight, almost imperceptible lean to his left. An old injury in his right leg, then. He'd be slow on a pivot. The man in the middle reeked of stale sake, his pupils slightly dilated even in the dim light. Slow reflexes, dull senses. The third... his eyes kept darting to the doorway behind him, to the freedom of the morning. He was looking for an escape. He didn't want to be here at all. His courage was a threadbare cloak.

The leader took a shuffling step forward, putting his weight on his good leg. It was the only fraction I needed.

I moved.

I closed the distance to the leader in two strides, my feet silent on the stone floor. My blade made a soft, 'shhh' sound as it parted the air. It bit into his throat, a hot, wet line. His eyes went wide with shock, a choked gurgle escaping his lips as a fountain of arterial blood, bright and shocking against the grey stone, painted the ancient wall behind him. He dropped, clutching uselessly at the mortal wound, his life pumping out onto the floor.

The drunkard was fumbling for his sword, his movements syrup-slow. I was already inside his guard, my shoulder slamming into his chest with a solid thump. I drove the point of my sword upward, under his jaw. The steel punched through the soft palate and into his brainpan with a sound like a boot in mud. His body convulsed once, a violent shudder, and then he was dead weight, collapsing at my feet. I ripped my blade free with a sickening, wet pull.

The third one finally broke. He turned to run, a sob tearing from his throat. I took one long, casual step and brought my sword down in a vicious, two-handed arc. It cleaved through his shoulder and spine, a sickening crunch of bone echoing in the small temple. He fell in two separate pieces, his intestines and other steaming organs spilling out onto the dusty floor like a gruesome, pulsing offering.

Eight seconds. The air was thick with the coppery taste of blood and the stench of shit and fear.

"Lesson two," I said, turning to Taro, flicking a droplet of blood from my wrist. He hadn't screamed. He was just staring, his face ashen, his eyes wide with a horror so profound it had looped back around to awe. "You see? Weaknesses. They show them when they feel fear. All you have to do is look for openings."

He stared from the bodies to me, his mouth working silently. "You... you didn't even try...."

"Trying is what humans do when they fail to observe properly," I said, wiping the blade clean on the leader's tunic. "Now, stop gawking and take their supplies. Now that I understand hunger, it's an annoyance to waste them."

As he scrambled to loot the corpses, carefully stepping around the pools of blood, I noticed the scent of his fear had changed. It was still there, acrid and sharp, but it was now mixed with something else. Something new. Respect.

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