Ink-black night veiled the courtyard of a wooden manor, its paper-screen doors glowing faintly in the lantern light. Snowflakes drifted sideways, nudged by a wind that tasted of iron and impending farewell. In the center of the garden two men knelt facing one another on a frost-crusted tatami mat, their breath misting, their eyes locked in the kind of wordless respect found only between killers fated to share an ending. Steel whispered free of lacquered sheaths. For a heartbeat everything held its breath: the koi beneath the iced pond, the pine boughs, even the crescent moon above the hinted roof tiles.

They leapt.

A single clash rang— flashing like calligraphy in lamplight. They moved—one step, two—feet whispering across tatami as if they feared disturbing the snow. Then came the strike: too swift for mortal eyes, yet the dreamer saw every facet—the edge, the cut, the disbelief in his own widening gaze as the elder’s blade slid through the space where future moments might have been.

Then came the falling.
Then came the dark.