Chapter 8:

Chapter 7: The Warden's Verdict

Crimson Eden

The giant bone construct lunged with earth-shaking force, its fist smashing into the ground where Ren had stood a heartbeat earlier. Shards of white bone scattered like shrapnel. Ren rolled to his feet, vision swimming, his right arm still trembling from the partial unlock.

“Ren!” Yoruha shouted as she released an arrow straight toward the construct’s eye socket.

The arrow struck—

—only for the creature to absorb it, the bone shifting and sealing over the wound.

“It regenerates,” Yoruha muttered, her voice tight.

Kagetsu stood atop a twisted tree root, arms folded behind him as if watching a stage play.

“Only one of you will leave the Orchard alive,” he said calmly. “Show me which.”

The giant swung again, this time sweeping its massive arm in a wide arc. Ren parried but the impact sent him skidding across the cracked ground, ribs burning from the shockwave.

He coughed, tasting iron.

His strength… was dropping fast.

Yoruha sprinted toward him, sliding down behind a fallen trunk. “Ren, you can’t push your arm again. You’ll tear something you can’t heal.”

“But if I don’t…” Ren looked at the giant, at Kagetsu’s unreadable mask. “We die.”

The giant let out a grinding roar, its runes pulsing brighter.

Yoruha’s eyes sharpened. “Then we don’t defeat it. We outsmart it.”

Ren frowned. “How?”

But she was already moving—leaping onto a high branch, shooting arrows rapidly into the giant’s legs, each arrow leaving a thin trail of red sparks.

Ren recognized that glow.

Her marker arrows.

The giant lumbered toward her. Yoruha switched to her final arrow—one tipped with a shimmering symbol.

The moment she fired it, the symbol ignited.

“REN! NOW!”

Ren understood instantly. He charged forward, ignoring the pain ripping through his arm, and slammed his blade into the ground right where the symbol landed.

A blinding red explosion erupted, blowing the giant’s lower body apart in a rain of bone fragments. The monster toppled, runes flickering and fading.

For a second, there was silence.

Then Kagetsu clapped slowly.

“Well played,” he said. “But the Orchard isn’t testing teamwork.”

He snapped his fingers.

Ren barely had time to react before bone tendrils shot out of the ground, wrapping around his legs and hurling him across the clearing. He crashed into a dead tree, the air knocked out of him.

“REN!” Yoruha drew another arrow—but Kagetsu flicked his hand. A shard of bone shot past her cheek, grazing her skin.

“Try that again,” he warned, “and I remove your arm.”

His mask shifted toward Ren.

“The boy is the one I’m judging.”

Ren forced himself up. “Why me?”

Kagetsu stepped closer, voice low.

“Because the island sensed something in you. Power that shouldn’t exist. Power that ruins balance.”

His gaze sharpened.

“I am deciding whether to let you live… or bury you here.”

Ren tightened his grip, anger flaring. “I won’t die here.”

Kagetsu chuckled. “Then stand.”

Ren surged forward. Pain screamed through his arm. Kagetsu didn’t even move—he simply redirected Ren’s strike with a single fingertip wrapped in bone plating.

Ren staggered. Kagetsu’s speed was unreal.

“Too slow,” Kagetsu murmured, driving a knee into Ren’s stomach and sending him sprawling again.

Yoruha tried to move toward him, but Kagetsu raised a finger and dozens of bone spires rose between them, blocking her path.

“You watch,” he told her. “Do not interfere.”

Ren coughed violently, forcing himself back to his feet. His body screamed, but he refused to fall.

Kagetsu tilted his head. “Still standing? Very well then. You’ve earned a lesson.”

He reached for the mask—

—lifting it just an inch.

Ren froze.

Behind the mask was not a human face.

It was hollow. Empty.

A swirling darkness shaped like a skull.