Hollow Eyes

The tunnel ended without warning.

One moment, they were walking through darkness. The next, Seren’s lantern caught the glint of something enormous: two towering doors of black stone, carved with the crest of the fallen kingdom.

Rin stopped.

“We made it,” she whispered. “We’re finally here.”

Relief spread across the guards’ faces. They started toward the doors.

“Wait.”

Shinju’s voice was quiet, but it froze all three of them.

“What’s wrong?” Rin asked.

“Shh.”

He raised one hand and closed his eyes.

Water dripped somewhere behind them. A thin wind slid through the cracks in the stone. Beneath it, so faint he might have imagined it, came another sound.

A creak.

Wood, bending under tension.

Shinju’s eyes snapped open.

Steel rang as Kokuten cleared its sheath. The black blade swept up and struck something out of the air. An arrow spun away and split against the wall.

“Princess!”

Valko threw himself in front of Rin, sword raised.

But Shinju had already stopped it.

“It’s an ambush,” he said.

As if the words were a signal, torches flared to life all around them. Soldiers poured out of the side passages, slid down from the ledges, and stepped out from behind the pillars, until the chamber rattled with armor and the hiss of drawn blades.

One man walked out ahead of the rest.

He was laughing, a slow, cruel sound, and his eyes glowed a pale, unnatural white.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

Rin’s face drained of color. “How did he know we were coming?”

Nobody answered her.

Shinju stepped forward, his blade lowered but steady. “It’s over for you.”

The laughter stopped.

Then it came again, louder.

“Over for me?” The man tilted his head. “No, no, boy. It’s over for you Dark Samurai.”

Shinju frowned.

Something was wrong.

The color was draining from the man’s eyes until nothing remained but white. His head hung at a slight angle, like a puppet held up by its strings. His voice was too deep for his body, and his lips moved a fraction of a second behind the words.

This man wasn’t speaking.

Someone was speaking through him.

“Akaza,” Shinju said.

The man smiled with a mouth that no longer belonged to him.

The ground shook.
Behind the soldiers, the shadows swelled and split apart, and the shapes that crawled out of them were far too large to be men. Horned heads scraped the ceiling. Four Oni rose above the army, each taller than a house, their eyes burning like coals.

Seren went pale. “Those are the monsters that tore through the kingdom.” His voice cracked. “Nothing stopped them. How are we supposed to stop them?”

Shinju said nothing.

He drew a slow, deep breath. The pain in his ribs faded to a distant murmur, and the shouting and torchlight fell away.

Kokuten hummed in his hand.

Then he moved.

There was no shout, no flourish, only a single stroke. A crescent of black light tore across the chamber, and the four Oni stood frozen where they were.

Then they came apart, and their remains crumbled to ash before they struck the ground.

Silence swallowed the chamber.

Then, all at once, the soldiers charged.

Valko and Seren closed ranks around the princess as the first wave crashed into them. Steel screamed against steel.

“They won’t stop!” Valko shouted. “Even with a sword in the gut, they keep coming!”

Shinju looked into the eyes of the nearest attacker.

White. Empty. Glowing.

A memory surfaced, cold and unwelcome. One of the wielders he had cut down had possessed this same power: he could seize a man’s body and drive it far beyond its limits.

Akaza had inherited it.

“These men aren’t our enemies,” Shinju said quietly. “They’re prisoners in their own bodies.”

Valko parried a blow and glanced at him. “Then we hold them off! The Oni are gone, and we can handle the rest. Go. Take down Akaza.”

“Valko—”

“Go!”

The guard’s eyes never left the soldiers in front of him, but his voice softened. “And please. Protect her.”

Shinju looked at Rin. She was staring at her guards, torn between fear and something like grief.

“I can’t leave them,” she said.

“You’re not leaving us,” Seren said, cutting down another attacker. “You’re giving us a reason to win. Now go, Your Highness!”

Rin’s lip trembled.

Then she nodded. "please don't die."

Shinju turned toward the stone doors, raised Kokuten, and brought it down.
Stone and timber split apart with a sound like thunder, and a corridor of torchlight stretched out beyond them.

Shinju ran.

Rin ran beside him, and then a step ahead, because he had no idea where he was going.

Behind them, the battle roared on.

“Left!” she called. “Through the archway!”

They tore through the halls of the palace, past overturned tapestries and shattered statues. Whenever a possessed man blocked their path, Shinju struck only to disarm him, leaving each one breathing. Rin never faltered. She knew every turn of the Palace like the back of her hand.

At last, the corridor opened into a wide gallery.

A row of archers waited on the balcony above.

The arrows came slowly, almost mockingly, drifting through the air like lazy insects.

Tch, this again.

His heart hammered against his ribs. His body was still broken, and he knew it. But he raised Kokuten anyway, and the blade wove through the volley, knocking arrow after arrow aside.

One.

Two.

Three.

Then the last one slipped through and pierced his right hand.
Pain shot up his arm, hot and white.

“Damn it,” he hissed.

Above him, the archers were already nocking a second volley.

Shinju gritted his teeth and swung.

The blade tore through the air, sending a wave of force across the gallery. The archers were hurled from the balcony like leaves in a storm, their bows clattering against the stone. None rose again.

Silence settled over the gallery.

The arrow was buried deep, its shaft trembling with every heartbeat. He clamped his teeth together, wrapped his fingers around it, and pulled.

“Ngh—!”

The cry tore out of him before he could stop it. Blood spilled down his wrist.

“Your hand!” Rin rushed forward and tore a long strip of silk from her sleeve.

“Hold still.”

“Rin, there’s no time—”

“Then this will be quick.”

She wound the cloth around the wound and pulled it tight. Her fingers were steady, though her voice was not.

“You’ll ruin your kimono,” Shinju muttered.

“It’s only cloth.” She tied the knot and looked up. “You’re not.”

For a moment, he had no answer.
Then he flexed his fingers. The bandage held.

“Thank you. Which way?”

She pointed down the length of the gallery.

“The throne room is at the end of this hall. Stay close.”

They moved together, faster now, their footsteps ringing against the marble.

“Shinju,” Rin called.

He didn’t look back.

“Save it for later.”

“It’s about later.”

Her voice was quiet, almost lost beneath the pounding of their steps.

“If we survive this. If we take the kingdom back.” She drew a breath. 

“Promise me something.”

That made him glance at her.

“I’ve wanted to leave these walls for as long as I can remember,” Rin said. “To see what lies beyond the mountains, the sea, places not found on any map in my father’s library.” Her eyes stayed on the path ahead. “When this is over, I want to go. And I want you to come with me.”

Shinju’s stride faltered.

For the first time since she had met him, he was lost for words.

“…Me?”

Rin smiled. It was small and a little shy, but it reached her eyes.

“Then consider it a promise,” he said 

calmly.

Then the giant doors rose out of the dark at the end of the hall, and Shinju’s expression hardened again.

Rin stopped.

“That’s it.”

Shinju didn’t slow.

He swung Kokuten in a single motion and cut through the air. The iron bands snapped, the wood split down the middle, and the doors burst inward with a deafening crash.

The throne hall stretched out before them, vast and silent. Pale light fell through the high windows and pooled on the marble floor.

The hall looked empty.

Shinju stepped inside, with Rin at his side and one hand on the dagger at her belt. Their footsteps echoed across the marble.

Then, from somewhere ahead, came a low, amused laugh.

Shinju froze.

He had scanned every shadow, every corner, every pillar, and yet the man had been there all along, seated on the throne with one leg crossed over the other. A sword rested beside him, its blade pulsing with a faint, sickly glow.

The man smiled.

Shinju’s grip tightened around Kokuten. His wounds burned, and blood soaked through the silk on his hand.

He drew a breath.

“Akaza!”

The name tore through the hall and rolled back from the walls again and again, until the echo itself seemed to laugh.