ZENPAN SAT IN HIS OFFICE, working through the large stacks of paperwork that had accumulated on his desk. He only managed to get through a microscopic amount of this paperwork before he heard a knock upon his door.

  “Come in,” Zenpan called out.

  The door opened to reveal Yukan with a somewhat stern expression on his face. Zenpan put aside his paperwork for a moment to talk with the swordsman.

  “Ah, Yukan!” he gleefully exclaimed. “Has your recovery been keeping up at a good pace? You’re looking like you’re in pretty good shape and-”

  “When can I return to the frontlines?” Yukan abruptly asked, cutting Zenpan off.

  “Wouldn’t you want to take it easy for a little while?” the general replied somewhat sharply. “After all, you wouldn’t want to throw yourself into enemy lines after tiring yourself in your training. You should rest for a few days so you can-”

  “I’m ready,” Yukan interjected once more. “You can’t keep me here forever, Zero.”

  Zero tidied up the stack of papers he was working on before continuing.

  “Three days,” Zenpan sternly answered. “You can return to the battlefield in three days.” Zenpan knew that Yukan needed time to rest to avoid burning himself out, but getting that through to Yukan, someone that Zenpan had known firsthand to have more determination than interest in self-preservation, was very near impossible.

  “What? Kadaina said I’m fine. My hand is healed up enough to fight-”

  “Yukan-”

  “I need to be out there fighting! Kunshu is out there, slaughtering people left, right, and center.”

  “Kunshu hasn’t shown up on the battlefield since Oka Hill, Yukan,” Zenpan stated, keeping his temper under control. Despite this, the air continued to grow more and more tense.

  “You need to learn your physical limits, Yukan,” the general continued. “You just started to use your prosthetic hand to fight. You need to pace yourself or you’re going to burn yourself out again. If you aren’t careful and Kunshu decides to return to the battlefield, you won’t be able to fight him off.”

  “I can handle it,” the last Kenshi replied indignantly. “If anything gets out of hand, I can just access Suornha.”

  “Suornha will not help you.” Zenpan’s aloof demeanor began to slip at the mention of Suornha. “It is extremely unreliable and dangerous to yourself and those around you. I’ve seen what happens to people who have accessed Suornha. It’s a corrupting influence, a power that can only reach somebody in a moment of extreme desperation. Entering Suornha is effectively giving away a part of your humanity.”

  “You have no idea how powerful the Omega Blade is,” Yukan lashed out. “This blade could kill everybody in this camp and still have a sharp edge!”

  “Who are you to tell the one who made that sword that he doesn’t know what it can do?!”

  A silence rushed over both men.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” the general said. “I made that sword. The Alpha Blade, too. That’s how I know about Suornha. And that’s how I know about what happens to people who access that form.”

  “But wait,” the swordsman interjected. “This sword was made fifty years ago, wasn’t it? You still look like you’re in your thirties.”

  “Looks can be deceiving, Yukan.”

  As Zenpan said this, his skin began to grow pale and his face grew more rigid. His ears started to stretch backward past the back of his skull. Yukan collapsed backward in shock.

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  “Get off the floor, Yukan,” Zeronius said to him in a voice noticeably different from that of Zenpan Imoru. “Find yourself a chair. We have much to discuss, since you are so eager for answers. First of all, my name is not Zenpan Imoru. That was an alias crafted by King Maximus Okibo of Akuni when he appointed me as the general of the army. My real name is Zeronius Kantoku III. I was a close confidant of your great-grandfather Oji Kenshi and his friend Kawata during the Great Trifecta War. I was the one that made the Omega Blade and the Alpha Blade for them in an effort to defeat Medikai.

  “As you now know, however, they did not stay friends for long. Their friendship grew sour and both men went their separate ways. Before then, however, they told me to make sure that neither the Omega Blade nor the Alpha Blade fell into the wrong hands.”

  “So then why does Kunshu have the Alpha Blade?” Yukan asked in a state of confusion mixed with frustration.

  “That was an oversight on my part,” the maila continued. “Usually I’m there to witness any inheritance ceremony for those swords, but Kunshu’s father, Dokusai, must’ve kept it under wraps. But sure enough, I would find out that Kunshu inherited the Alpha Blade when he killed your grandfather, Sofu, when he was supposed to inherit the Omega Blade.”

  “And you just stood there?” Yukan’s frustration continued to grow. “You didn’t kill him while you had the chance?!”

  “I tried, dammit!” Zero growled. “You think I didn’t try to vanquish him when I saw him try to take the Omega Blade for himself? In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that Kunshu wasn’t related to any member of the Kenshi bloodline at that moment then he could very well have succeeded. Luckily enough for us, he wasn’t and thought he could take the Omega Blade despite not being a Kenshi. God knows why, maybe he thought he had finished the Kenshis off. Regardless, I had a window of opportunity to finish him off. But when I was close to making the killing blow, he accessed Suornha.”

  “He grew the wings of a crow and his eyes went pitch black before he flew off. There were only a few pieces of his skin laying on the ground to indicate that he’d even been there to begin with.”

  “His skin?” Yukan asked, baffled.

  “Yes, his skin,” the creator of the Fabled Swords affirmed. “Suornha from the Alpha Blade causes one’s flesh to melt off in patches, although it all returns to their body once they exit the form. If they stay in Suornha for long enough, they may lose all of their flesh and become reduced to bone. For the Omega Blade, vines begin to overtake the user’s body very slowly until eventually I would assume that they’re completely covered.”

  “What happens if Kunshu stays in Suornha long enough to lose all of his flesh?”

  “It’s not clear. I wouldn’t want to be the one to find out, either. If I had to guess, they would lose all of their humanity at that moment. You give up a tiny amount to bond with one of those swords. It’s such a small dip into your soul that you would never even notice it. But the second that you access Suornha, it begins depleting much faster. I would imagine that, once you reach the final stretch of Suornha, the person you once were ceases to exist.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this, Zero?” Yukan tried to process what he’d just taken in. “You’ve known all of this the whole time and you’re only just now telling me?”

  “To be completely honest,” Zero began, taking a lighter tone, “I didn’t know when it would be a good time to bring it up.”

  “Seriously? That’s it?”

  “I was going to tell you eventually,” the maila replied. “I just didn’t know when.”

  “It’s not adding up though,” Yukan continued. “Kunshu’s still going after the Omega Blade. If he isn’t part of the Kenshi lineage, he can’t lift it. So why is he still trying so hard? Does he just not know how it works?”

  “I wouldn’t doubt Kunshu’s intelligence like that,” the general said in response. “I’m certain he knows what he’s doing, it’s just a matter of us finding out. It’s getting late. I’m going to call it a night and I think you should as well.”

  “Right. Goodnight, Zero.”

  “Goodnight.”

  As Zero returned to the room attached to his office, Yukan walked outside and headed toward his bunker. Throughout his walk, however, his mind was racing. He wasn’t sure of just what kind of card Kunshu had up his sleeve.

  ??????????????

  Yukan awoke the next morning from a nightmare. He grabbed his left arm not soon after waking, his breath slowing once he had confirmed it was still there. A knock came from the door. Yukan hesitated for a moment before answering.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Yukan,” Kadaina said after Yukan opened the door.

  “Sorry,” Yukan sighed. “I had a nightmare.”

  “Well then you might want to sit down for this,” the mage began as he invited himself into Yukan’s room.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever met any of your aunts or uncles, have you?”

  “No, I haven’t. All I know is that I had an uncle in Aotoshi, but he and my mom weren’t really on good terms so we never visited.”

  “Well I was talking with Zero earlier this morning and he said he found something while trying to get more information about Kunshu, and-”

  “Wait, Kunshu?” Yukan interjected. “What are you trying to tell me, that Kunshu-”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m trying to say,” Kadaina answered. “He found that your mother’s maiden name was Mujihina and that she had only a single sibling. Kunshu’s your uncle.”