Chapter 1: A Promise in the Dark
The wind on the cliff didn’t howl; it screamed. It ripped salt from the ocean below and threw it like gravel against Baki’s face as he crested the ridge. He’d felt the seismic tremor of an impact, a wrongness in the earth that bypassed his ears and vibrated directly through the marrow of his bones. It was a signature he knew, or knew a version of. A finale.
He found him crumpled in the moonshadow of a crooked boulder.
For a beat, Baki’s mind refused the data. It was a trick of the fractured light. A dead seal, maybe. Something large and dark and leaking. Not him.Never him.
Then the shape convulsed, a spasm that cracked the stone beneath it, and Baki’s stomach dropped through the soles of his feet.
Yujiro Hanma, the Ogre, the creature who had backhanded tornados and smiled through artillery fire, was lying in a widening slick of his own blood. It wasn’t a cut. It was a butcher’s work. A single, obscene gash started just under his ribcage and tore diagonally across his torso, laying him open to the night air. The edges of the wound were clean, terrifyingly precise, but the insides were a ruin of glistening red and purpled flesh. He was holding himself together, literally, with one massive hand clamped over his middle, but the blood welled up between his fingers, black in the moonlight.
“Hey.” Baki’s voice was flat, dead air. He knelt, the sharp rocks digging into his knees, his own legendary strength gone to water. “Who did this?”
Yujiro’s head lolled toward the sound. His eyes, usually twin galaxies of arrogant certitude, were clouded. The predator’s glare was gone, replaced by a dazed, animal confusion. He tried to speak. A wet, clicking sound came from his throat, followed by a bubble of blood that popped at the corner of his mouth. His teeth were pink.
“Don’t talk,” Baki said, his hands hovering over the carnage. He had no medicine, no tools. His fists, which had broken concrete and bent steel, were useless. All he had was pressure. He peeled his jacket off, wadding it into a crude bundle. “Just breathe, you bastard. Breathe.”
He went to place the bundle on the wound, but Yujiro’s free hand shot up, faster than anything dying had a right to move, and caught Baki’s wrist. The grip was weak, a parody of the vise that could shatter diamonds. It was the vulnerability of that grip that finally shattered something in Baki.
“Let go,” Baki whispered, his throat tight. “I’m trying to help you.”
Yujiro’s eyes focused, for a second, on Baki’s face. The confusion didn’t clear, but it shifted, mixing with a look of pure, uncomprehending indignity. How is this happening? it seemed to ask. To me? He released Baki’s wrist and his hand fell back to the dirt with a thump.
Baki pressed the jacket hard against the gash. Yujiro’s whole body tensed, a silent scream. The coppery smell of blood mixed with the ocean salt, creating a nauseating perfume.
“Tell me who,” Baki demanded, leaning closer. His father’s breathing was a ragged, shallow thing. Each exhale was a whistle.
Yujiro’s lips moved again. Baki lowered his ear to the man’s mouth, feeling the weak, hot gasp against his skin.
“…Swordsman.”
The word was less than a whisper. It was a thought given sound. It carried a lifetime of contempt for weapon-users, and underneath that, a stark, simple admission of fact. Someone with a blade had done this. Yujiro Hanma had been defeated by a sharpened piece of metal.
The absurdity of it, the sheer cosmic joke, almost made Baki laugh. He choked it back. His vision blurred. He realized he was crying, hot, stupid tears that dripped off his chin and onto his father’s scarred cheek.
He didn’t think. He just acted.
His hand came up and he brushed the wild, sweat-soaked hair back from Yujiro’s forehead. The skin was feverish. With a tenderness he had never shown, had never felt permitted to feel, he leaned down and pressed his lips to that burning skin. It was a kiss of apology, of anointing, of goodbye.
“Okay,” Baki said, his voice raw but steadying. He kept his mouth close to his father’s ear, the words just for them.“Okay. You sleep now. I’ve got this. I’ll find him. And I’ll break his sword. And then I’ll break every bone he used to hold it.”
Yujiro’s eyes were slipping shut. The ghost of something—not a smile, never that—but a faint, grim acceptance, touched his ruined face. His body shuddered once more, a final, violent tremor that pushed a fresh surge of blood around Baki’s pressing hands.Then, stillness.
The awful, gargling breath evened out, becoming something slower, deeper, unconscious. He wasn’t dead. The Ogre wouldn’t die this quietly. But he was gone, retreated into whatever internal fortress his body had left.
Baki sat back on his heels, his own breath coming in sharp gasps. The wind slapped his wet cheeks. The sea roared its mindless applause far below. His jacket was soaked through, warm and heavy.
A swordsman.
He looked at his father’s form, so still now, so strangely small against the vast, indifferent rock. The rage began then, cold and clear, rising in his chest like a tide. It was a clean feeling. A purpose.
He slid his arms under Yujiro’s shoulders and knees, ignoring the slick of blood that coated his own chest. He lifted him. The weight was colossal, a mountain of dense muscle and bone, but Baki rose with it, grunting with the effort, his feet settling into a wide stance on the treacherous ground.
He turned from the cliff edge and the screaming dark, and began the long walk home, cradling the broken Ogre against him, a new and terrible vow beating in time with his heart.