HWA Message Board: The Red Path

The Kiriyama Estate
Okinawa, Japan

The Kiriyama Estate sat quiet under the bruised evening sky, its gardens wild and unkempt, its ponds choked with weeds. What had once been a proud seat of lineage and tradition now bore the hollow silence of betrayal. To Azami Kiriyama, that silence was deafening, a painful echo of everything that had been stolen from her. Everything she was promised. Not out of some twisted sense of self-entitlement but of right. Of honour.

Masamune was gone. Bequeathed to the pathetic gaijin. The Sora no Ansatsusha. Azami scoffed at the thought of the name and clenched her fists so tight her knuckles turned white.

Her father’s name - her family name - was now caked in mud, dragged through dishonour, now beyond any sort of reasonable recognition.

And the family’s ancient practice of Kokoro no Michi, the path of the heart, was nothing more than a cruel memory, again, imbued upon a man unworthy of such an honour, a man who couldn’t even begin to fathom what it would mean to be given such a gift. Yes, Sean Parker had taken the blade, her path, her father’s love. But her father had also broken her trust, and all that remained to her was the burning, corrosive weight of grief turned into rage.

HWA was now the battlefield of which she would now raze. She didn’t care that Sean had intended to retire, becoming subservient to the whims of that pathetic mouse he called a fiancée. She would ensure that everyone around her would feel the force of the pain and anguish she felt every day.

Azami stood in the ancestral dojo, still in the state of disarray when she last remembered it. If she concentrated hard enough it was like she could almost hear the whispers of her long-dead ancestors, the figureheads of her Uji, clan Kiriyama their disappointment threading through the beams. She should have felt shame but instead, she felt venom.

Azami: They abandoned me first…

As she muttered, Azami’s voice was low, almost shaking.

Azami: If peace was their gift, then destitution will be mine.

She descended deep beneath the estate, where the ancient forge lay hidden. Once, the forge had been a sacred place where generations of smiths had laboured with devotion, their hammers ringing in rhythm with prayers of clarity and compassion. Tonight though would be different, its flame would be coaxed to life by hands that trembled not with humility, but with wrath.

The coals roared to life, and Azami began the arduous process of setting cold, unbridled steel to the fire. The blade she began to shape was no descendant of Masamune, no continuation of the family’s path. No, this would be something else, something born not of tradition but of defiance, fractured. Azami’s arms ached with every hammer strike, her breath ragged, but she welcomed the pain. Each spark that flew from her hammer hissed like a snake and when the dawn’s faint light crept through the cracks of the forge, the weapon finally lay before her. A sleek blade, made of obsidian-dark steel, its edge gleaming with a hunger for vengeance that mirrored her own.

Azami: Konnichiwa, my beauty. My beautiful Ansatsusha-goroshi.

Azami held the sword by the hilt, her blue eyes considering the blade with reverence. She swung it through the air, creating an ominous whoosh. But she knew this alone was not enough. Masamune had been more than steel for Clan Kiriyama over the centuries. It had been spirit, a vessel for generations of Kiriyama strength bound by Kokoro no Michi. Azami knew she needed her own bond, her own spirit.

Azami found herself turning to the scrolls locked away in her father’s forbidden archives, the ones spoken of only in half-uttered warnings when she was a child. The ones her father had been so sure had been forgotten about. However, as recent events can attest to, Azami wasn’t one for having a short memory.

As she poured over the scrolls, Azami’s expression remained impassive, her eyes darting across the texts that were stained with an ink so black it was as if they could swallow the lantern-light. The diagrams, written in traditional Japanese Kanji also showed intricately drawn diagrams of grotesque parodies of the meditation she had once desired so badly to learn.

But, where Kokoro no Michi taught stillness of breath, Aka Michi[/ii], the Red Path, demanded fire in the lungs. Where Kokoro no Michi taught release of malice, Aka Michi demanded its nurturing, its cultivation, until one’s spirit became a furnace of scorched venom and she read and read, Azami inhaled every word like poisoned incense. She would not reject the hatred that consumed her, she would refine it.

That night, in the shadow of the Kiriyama estate’s desecrated shrine, Azami began the summoning. Her voice was steady as she recited the ancient syllables. She drew Ansatsusha-Goshi and glided his edge across her palm without so much of a flinch. Azami clenched her hand tight, watching as her blood dripped onto the cracked stones of the altar.

The wind then stilled and the air grew heavy. From the darkness, it came. Only ever spoken of in hushed tones of Japanese folklore, in tales designed to terrify children into good behaviour, an oni, towering and horned, its eyes burning like the molten coals of the forge from whence the sword had been created. Its presence was suffocating, primal.

Oni: You dare summon me, child of Kiriyama?

The eerie, unearthly voice of the oni thundered. Its voice rattled the beams of the shrine, scattering dust like falling ash. Azami met its gaze without flinching though, seemingly immune to the fervour.

Azami: I am no child! I am what remains! My family’s path is dead by otōsan! I am here to carve my own now, and you will bind yourself to me!

The oni just laughed, a sound like stone grinding against stone.

Oni: And why would I shackle my strength to one so small? So insignificant…

Because I am not small.

Azami spoke in a whispered hush, lifting Ansatsusha-Goshi. His edge caught the moonlight, creating an ominous dark glow.

Azami: I am hate. I am everything they tried to deny, everything they feared. You are malice incarnate and you will bind yourself to me. You will guide me, like the Kokoro no Michi guides the pathetic gaijin.

And then there was silence. The oni’s grin then split wide, a crescent of jagged teeth.

Oni: Very well, daughter of Kiriyama. The Black Ronin. Let us see if you can bear me.

And just like that, the pact was sealed in fire and blood as the Oni turned translucent and seared itself inside Azami’s very being and she screamed. But this scream was not in fear but in ecstasy, as the oni’s essence poured into her veins, coiling around her spirit like chains made of fire.

Ansatsusha trembled in her grasp, its black steel almost feeling like it was alive as well. When the ritual ended, Azami felt like she stood taller, her eyes burning with an inner red glow. Her breath came not calm and steady as in Kokoro no Michi, but ragged, fierce, every inhale pulling in fury, every exhale expelling rage. She had forged her own heirloom, her own path, her own spirit.

The whispers of her ancestors were now long gone, drowned out by the pounding rhythm of her heart and the guttural echo of the oni’s laughter in her mind. She was no longer heir to the Kiriyama tradition.

Azami: Sean Parker…you think retiring will save you from the penance I’m coming with…

Azami continued to grip her blade so much that her knuckles went white.

Azami: Otōsan, you think disappearing into the ether and writing me a faceless letter absolves you of the hurt you caused me. You both stole from me, you both broke me. Now I’m just getting started returning the favour.

An ominous, almost inhuman grin spread across her face, her eyes transitioning between blue and red as the scene faded to black.