Epilogue

Long before sound became currency, and before stars bled songs into cubes, there lived a samurai whose voice was sharper than steel.

His name was Kenshin. The only samurai in the Empire who wrote songs after every battle―not for glory, but for grief. His companion was a black horse name Kuro, a beast with storm in it hooves and mourning in its eyes. They rode together across broken fields and burned villages. And when the killing stopped, Kenshin would dismount, kneel beneath the blood-drenched moon, and write.

Soldiers who survived swore his songs could raise the dead―or make the living wish they hadn't returned. He was no ordinary warrior. Each battle he survived, he did not boast. He did not raise his blade triumph. Instead, he sat alone beneath the twilight sky, ink-stained hands trembling, and wrote. The blood he spilled flowed into his verses. The sorrow he swallowed echoed in melody. When he sang, soldiers wept. When he composed, the wind paused to listen. He became known across provinces as the "Songblade"―a man of discipline and death who sang only after silence had claimed the field. He is like a magical sword or blade that makes musical sounds as it's moved and grants bards specific powers, like enhanced musical performances or spellcasting. His works brings comfort and healing.

One night, under the soft hush of plum blossoms, a figure watched him from behind a silk screen―the emperor's gorgeous daughter, Yuriko, cloaked not in armor, but in rebellion. She had heard rumors of the Songblade and risked everything to hear his lament. She snuck into a performance meant for warriors and generals. She heard his voice. She heard her future. And what she heard was not a warrior. What she heard... was her own heart. Kenshin was struck by her beauty—radiant, ethereal, like an angel who carried her own light through the darkness.

Something stirred in him, something long forgotten.

For the first time, the samurai’s fountain pen did not write for the fallen. It wrote for her.
Not a requiem for the dead—but a song for love.

They met in secret. They met again. And again. Note replaced letters. Whispers replaced vows. Yuriko became the only person Kenshin wrote for while the world still breathed. He called her his "Crimson Orchid." She called him "my after-battle peace."

But no empire can withstand the weight of a forbidden harmony.

They were caught―her lips on his neck, his hands still inked from writing her song―entwined in shadows, hearts exposed like an unguarded rhythm. Dragged before the court, Kenshin stood proud but unarmed.

The emperor did not speak of treason. He spoke of humiliation.
"Sing your love song, warior. Let it be your final shame." And so he did.

Before thousands, he stood in his execution robes, bloodied but calm. The sky was the color of ash. The wind held its breath. Kuro stood at the edge of the crowd, unmoving, mourning.

Kenshin opened his mouth.
And sang.
"If I must vanish―let it be in her gaze...If I must die―let her name be the last I say..."

The crowd fell into a hush—spellbound, breath held in reverence.
Then, a single clap. Another. A wave of applause surged, then cheers roared like a tide.

They were not mourning. They were celebrating. For the first time in their lives, they witnessed a performance unlike any before—a song that soared like light and stung like truth, piercing their hearts with the sweetness of joy and the ache of something eternal.
And as their adoration rose for Kenshin… the Emperor's soul twisted in anguish.
His face darkened with betrayal.

“Now.”

The command fell like a blade. The executioner stepped forward. The sword rose. And just before it struck—

Kenshin turned to Yuriko.
Softly, he whispered, “Forgive me, my love…”

Then, he looked out over the crowd. He saw a nobleman gripping gold that belonged to the hungry. A merchant, drunk with lust, whispering filth to a servant girl. He saw gluttons bloated with excess, thieves cloaked in lies, generals seething with wrath, pampered heirs drowning in sloth, and courtiers gleaming in pride as they admired their own silk.

Seven sins—etched into faces.
Unmasked, in that final instant.

And then—
His song ended. His head fell.

From the crowd, Yuriko cried out:
“Forgiven!”

His body was buried. His severed head sealed in a sacred box.

Grief poisoned Yuriko’s heart, curdling into rage.
She turned to sorcery—not just rebellion, but vengeance.
She sold her soul to the dark, whispering forbidden prayers beneath blood moons.
Rituals to raise Kenshin from the dead.

But her reckoning misfired.

She did not foresee what her grief would awaken—
Not the lover she lost, but a specter. A headless ghost. A rider born of fury.

One full moon night, in the ruins of Kenshin’s hut, the old fountain pen moved on its own.
Kenshin had returned.

Headless. Silent.
The pen wrote:

“My Crimson Orchid, I have returned.”

And then—he vanished.
The pen rolled, leaking inkblots across the floor like fallen petals. That same night, in the stables, Kuro—the black horse—shattered his tether, bolting into the forest. Dragged behind him was something unseen. Something headless.

Yuriko returned to the hut days later. She found the note. She believed the ritual had failed—until she read his words. Hope bloomed in her grief. Before she left, she noticed the dried ink on the floor. She knelt, touched it, and whispered:

“Let me kiss you again, my after-battle peace.”

And then the land began to whisper.

Across the mainland, legends stirred—
The headless samurai had returned, riding through the dark, drawn to sin like a blade to blood.

He sought out the wicked. And after each execution, a song appeared—unwritten yet known. Lyrics etched in blood. Melodies humming in dreams. A ghostly hymn of judgment.

The rider was faceless. Voiceless. But his silence was a warning.

Since then, songs have appeared where none were written.
Lyrics in blood. Melodies in dreams.
And always, always, a rider on a black horse.
No face. No voice.

But when he sings―

"The Soundless Cut always finishes what love began."