The room was dim when I opened my eyes.
My body felt like lead. Muscles sore. Arms heavy. I hadn't moved in hours.
The battle with Ghost was still playing in my head—his speed, his Blood Demon Art, that red moon. But I'd survived. Somehow.
I rolled over.
The light slipping through the inn's paper windows told me it was already past noon.
"...I overslept."
I wasn't even mad about it.
No missions. No crow pecking my forehead. Just silence.
I washed up, pulled on fresh clothes, and headed out for something to eat. A quiet stall down the road served a steaming bowl of miso soup and grilled fish. I scarfed it down like I hadn't eaten in days.
Then, without thinking much, I made my way to the bathhouse.
A hot spring nestled just behind the village. The water was natural, clean. I sank in up to my shoulders and exhaled.
I needed this.
For my body. And maybe for my head too.
That night, I returned to the ruined temple.
I didn't have to yell this time.
Ghost was already there—standing in the clearing like a statue. His tattered cloak shifted slightly in the breeze, and his demonic mask glowed faintly under the moonlight.
"Look at you," I said. "Waiting for me like an actual friend."
"Don't flatter yourself," he muttered. "I just hate hearing your voice echo through the forest."
"That hurts."
"It should."
I smirked. "Well, I'm here. Let's train."
He nodded. "Show me everything you've got. All the forms you've learned."
"Seriously?"
"I need to see how broken your technique really is before I decide whether I should waste time fixing it."
"...Motivating."
He gestured.
I stepped forward and began.
I unsheathed my blade and took my stance.
Then, one by one, I showed him the forms I'd learned:
First Form – Veiled Fang.
Second Form – Ghost Step.
Third Form – Eclipse Fang.
Ghost stood with his arms crossed, watching me carefully.
"Eclipse Fang? Sounds like a bad novel title," he said flatly.
"Whaat?" I asked.
"Your names are dramatic."
"Yours probably had numbers."
"They did."
I paused. "Wait, really?"
He didn't answer.
Instead, he stepped forward. "These forms… I can tell they're based on Moon Breathing, but you've changed them."
"Yeah. The dreams were incomplete sometimes. Other times the moves didn't feel right for my body. So I tweaked them."
We sat down by the broken stone steps. Ghost unsheathed his blade and began poking the dirt lazily.
"You've seen these forms in dreams?" he asked after a pause.
"Yeah."
"Every single one?"
I nodded. "I've been getting dreams since I started training. At first, they were short. Flashes. Movements. But later, I started seeing full techniques. Sword forms. Even stances."
"They stayed in your memory?"
"Vividly," I said. "Even after I woke up. They never faded like normal dreams."
He nodded slowly. "The brain throws away what it thinks is useless. But this dreams are embedded in your blood. So, maybe your brain thinks these as important memory."
"I even wrote them down," I added, pulling a folded journal from my satchel.
He took it without asking and flipped through it. His mask didn't show emotion, but I could tell he was reading every word.
"You changed some things," he said eventually.
I nodded. "Not everything in the dream worked with my body. Or my speed. I had to adjust."
He looked up. "Some of your changes… they actually improve on the originals. Not by much, but enough to notice."
That surprised me.
I waited.
Then he asked, "Any dream you've seen but haven't turned into a technique yet?"
"Yeah. Two, maybe three. One's just movement. Footwork. The other… I don't know what it is yet."
He stood and sheathed his blade.
"Then we start tonight. You describe the dream. I will give more detailed explanation. You follow."
I blinked. "That's how we're doing this?"
"Yes."
The next five nights blurred into one.
Training.
Step by step, dream by dream.
I described every detail—the posture, the air, the tension in the vision. Ghost would listen, then fill in the blanks. Sometimes, he'd replicate the form for me. Other times, he'd force me to find it through movement alone.
He never praised. Never smiled.
But I saw it.
A flicker in his stance. A shift in his voice.
He was enjoying this.
I learned two new forms during those nights. Both powerful. Both hard to control. But I mastered them, piece by piece.
On the sixth night, I came to say goodbye.
A mission had arrived.
My crow dropped it at the inn with its usual lack of manners.
When I got to the temple, Ghost was sitting on a flat stone, arms resting on his knees.
"I won't be around for a while," I said.
"Mission?"
"Yeah."
He grunted.
I sat beside him.
The air was still.
After a long silence, I spoke again. "Did I ever tell you about my family?"
"No."
"Want me to?"
"No."
"I'll tell you anyway."
He didn't move.
So I talked.
I told him about my father—Daizen. A proper samurai. Strict but noble. The way he used to sit in silence, drinking tea, waiting for me to mess up my sword forms so he could yell without raising his voice.
I told him about my mother—Ayame. Stronger than any of us. The way she used to smile even when she was tired. How she wore flowers in her hair, even when it wasn't spring.
Then my sister. Hina.
I paused.
Took a breath.
"She was ten. She followed me around like a shadow. I used to pretend I was annoyed, but… I wasn't."
Ghost stayed quiet.
I went on.
"Our carriage broke down on a long road. We were taken in by a farmer and his family. That night, while I was out training, they were attacked."
My fists clenched.
"I came back to find their bodies. All of them. Even the farmer's little girl."
Silence.
Then I looked up.
"I wasn't careful enough to protect them."
Ghost's voice was low.
"It's not your fault"
"I want to be," I said. "Strong enough. Someday."
A pause.
I started telling him about Yuki.
"Yuki, She is my fiancée. Arranged engagement. But I didn't mind. She was kind. Strong in her own way."
"So… you like her?"
"Yeah, I want to spend my whole life with her."
"Have you contacted her since all this?"
"A couple letters."
"That's it?"
"Yes."
"Have you gone to meet her?"
"No"
He turned his head slowly.
Then kicked me off the rock.
I hit the dirt with a grunt. "What the hell?!"
"You're a goddamn idiot."
"What?!"
"You think after all that—her losing contact with you, hearing nothing for weeks, months—that she'll just be waiting patiently forever?"
I sat up, rubbing my side.
"You really think her father's not thinking of calling it off and marrying her to someone else? You really think she's not wondering if you're dead?"
I blinked.
"…Oh."
"If I had the chance to see my wife again—even for a minute—I would rip the sky apart."
His voice trembled slightly.
"…I'll visit her after the mission," I said.
"Good. About time."
I sat back down.
The wind rustled the trees above.
"Will you still be here when I get back?"
He didn't answer right away.
"I move around," he said eventually. "Can't stay in one place too long. Too risky."
"Then where will you go?"
He stood.
"I don't know. Maybe fate will decide."
I got up too.
"Ghost."
He turned.
"I meant what I said. You're not as bad as you think."
He scoffed. "Tell that to the corpses."
"I saw who you are now. That matters."
He didn't reply.
Just stepped back into the darkness.
Before he vanished, his voice drifted out.
"…Don't die, kid. Maybe fate will make us cross paths again."
Then he was gone.
I stood alone beneath the ruined temple.
A wind passed through the trees.
And I walked back toward the village, toward my mission.
Toward whatever came next.