Yuki walked through the village at a slow pace, his thoughts as heavy as the armor he had left behind. Here, far from the battlefields and the cries of soldiers, he could find a semblance of peace, even if it was only temporary. The cool wind that swept down from the mountains made the trees dance around him, and the air carried the scent of damp earth. He cherished moments like this. Since childhood, Yuki had longed for a simple life, an existence without violence. But fate—or rather, his father—had charted a different path for him. A path where the sword dictated survival.
His father, Zhao, a master of war, had seen not a son in Yuki, but a military heir of immense potential. Zhao, ever the strategist, had restored order to the kingdom after the tragedy of King Xin’s fall. In his son, he saw the chance to forge the perfect soldier, one who would carry on his legacy of conquests and victories. Despite his deep aversion to violence, Yuki had answered that call, a duty impossible to evade.
He let out a small sigh as he reached Dame Kea’s house, a simple building with a sign weathered by time. Kea, the kingdom’s renowned healer, had lived there for decades. Blind, but with a keen sense of touch and extraordinary healing powers, she tended to the most terrible wounds with an ease that bordered on the supernatural. It was said she had learned her arts in a distant land beyond the sandy deserts. Yuki had heard fascinating stories about her, but what captivated him most was her gift for simplicity.
Dame Kea had a peculiar talent for talking about everything and nothing, and Yuki, exhausted by the war stories and the gravity of the outside world, appreciated this escape. The old woman would talk about the soup she ate the day before, the rain, or the other patients who passed through her skilled hands. Her words, often disjointed, were oddly comforting to Yuki. Here, there was no mention of war, no clashing of swords. Just simple words, sometimes absurd, but they soothed his troubled mind.
Sitting across from her, he listened distractedly as she applied ointments to his wounds.
"Ah, but you know," she suddenly exclaimed, with childlike excitement in her voice, "I treated a burn from fire just two days ago."
"Oh? What kind of burn?" Yuki asked.
"I couldn’t really say!" she replied, waving her hand as if to dismiss the need for a precise diagnosis. "But he was a charming man, tall, with long hair. Oh, and he had a tattoo, yes, carved into his back. I could feel it under my fingers."
The information set off an alarm in Yuki’s mind. A tattoo? Only traitors bore such marks. Why would such a man come to a village this remote? The old woman continued talking, clearly delighted by the memory of this mysterious visitor.

"And what kind of tattoo was it?" Yuki insisted, masking his rising interest. "I mean, how did you feel it?"
Kea, still smiling, responded:
"It was peculiar, a sort of ancient design. It formed a strange figure. But I couldn’t say exactly… My old mind might have embellished things," she added with a soft laugh.
Yuki gently took Kea’s hand, tracing an imaginary design on her skin.
"Was it something like this?" he asked, hoping that this small detail wouldn’t go unnoticed.
The healer furrowed her brow for a moment, delicately touching Yuki’s arm before shaking her head.
"No, no, it was more like this." She then traced a complex, precise pattern on his arm.
Yuki froze, his blood running cold in his veins. He recognized the symbol. The mark of the oathbreaker. And the only oathbreaker still alive, the one everyone feared and the man Yuki had been searching for all these years, was… Benkeï.
Yuki quickly straightened, his mind racing with thoughts and questions, his calm demeanor cracking as the reality took shape. Kea, still smiling, didn’t notice his unease and continued chatting about other subjects.
Comments