Chapter 8: The World Mamu Left Behind

Before Ryu could ask more, Mamu turned toward the glowing stone and spoke, his voice distant and heavy with memory.

The mist stirred, curling around them like smoke. And within it, a new vision began to form—faint at first, then vivid.

There was a time when the land was divided by blood and fire. A time when survival meant submission or strength. In that world, war was not a rarity—it was the air people breathed. Murder was routine, slavery a tool of power. The weak were currency. The strong were gods.

People lived in groups—clans, they called them. Large, powerful communities that ruled by might. Smaller groups were simply called villages. One such village, hidden in the mountains, was named Hashi.

That’s where Mamu was born.

It was a humble village nestled beneath towering cliffs and tangled forests. There were no cars, no electricity, no machines. Life was carved with hands and hearts—farming with wooden plows, hunting with bows and arrows, building homes from stone and mud. Horses and oxen pulled carts, and news traveled only as fast as the feet that carried it.

Hashi was peaceful.

Until the day the Gura Clan came.

The Gura Clan was a war-hardened faction of raiders who prided themselves on conquest. They didn’t trade. They didn’t negotiate. They destroyed. To them, Hashi was nothing more than a weak dot on their map, ripe for plundering.

They came at dawn.

The first screams pierced the morning mist as flames swallowed homes. Warriors on black horses rode through the fields with blades and fire. Children were yanked from their hiding spots. Elders were cut down as they prayed. Hashi’s men tried to resist—with farming tools and dull swords—but it was a massacre.

Mamu, still a boy at the time, remembered it all.

He remembered how his mother grabbed his hand and ran.

Through the burning paths. Past the bodies. Into the forest.

But they didn’t get far.

An arrow struck her in the side.

She fell. Blood soaked her clothes. But even in pain, she didn’t cry. She looked up at her son with eyes fierce and full of love.

“Run, Mamu,” she whispered, clutching his hand tighter. “No matter what happens… live.”

He screamed. He begged her to get up.

But she let go.

And in that moment, everything in his world shattered.

To be continued…