The white pavilion sat above everything.
That was the point of it. The Oni Clan's seat of power wasn't built to be accessible—it was built to be visible. From the upper terrace, the spotless white roof spread outward in every direction, the valley below was lifeless and quiet, and the commoners of Ise reduced to small, manageable shapes.
Mangūsu sat at a low table near the pavilion's edge, one leg folded beneath him, tea bowl resting in both palms. Steam curled upward and disappeared.
He was not thinking about anything in particular.
That was a skill he had earned. After years of struggling, of war, of climbing over the corpses of men who had wanted the same things he wanted, he had finally reached the Master realm. Only a fraction of martial artists ever touched it. Some spent their entire lives clawing toward it and died with empty hands.
Mangūsu had all the time in the world now. Longevity potions. Rare esoteric materials. The slow, patient work of a man who had already won the important fight and could afford to let everything else come to him.
He took another sip.
Footsteps approached from behind.
"Master Mangūsu."
A Martial Squire. He stopped at the appropriate distance and bowed.
"The demon has requested an audience."
The steam continued to rise.
Mangūsu set the bowl down gently.
He smiled. "Finally."
———
The descent into the lower compound felt, as it always did, like stepping into a different century. The pavilion above was light and open and smelled of clean wood and tea. Down here the stone was old and damp and had absorbed too many years of the same particular kind of suffering to feel neutral about anything. The occasional shrieks of pain from the nearby experimentations were annoying as well.
Mangūsu walked without hurry.
The guards straightened as he passed. He paid them no attention. He stopped at the cell door, folded his hands behind his back, and looked through the bars.
Hmmm. The rat isn't here?
All he could see and feel was Bankei, sitting against the far wall with his eyes closed. He forgot about the rat's absence away without urgency. Probably slipped out through some crack in the stonework. Rats did that.
"I'm told you have a proposal," Mangūsu said.
"One proposal," Bankei replied, without opening his eyes. "Two conditions."
"Go on."
Bankei was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of something thought through carefully and arrived at with great reluctance.
"I am tired," he said. "Not of the battles. Not of this cell." A pause.
"I am tired of the deaths. Every man you send into that arena—I have held their wounds closed with my own hands. I have sat with their families. I know their names." He opened his eyes. "I cannot carry more of them."
Mangūsu said nothing.
"Once I win the next battle," Bankei continued, "I will kneel. I will place my strength in service of the main family. I will kill once more." He met Mangūsu's gaze. "You have my word."
The corridor held its silence. Somewhere deep in the stone, water dripped.
"Your word," Mangūsu said pleasantly.
"You know what it is worth."
That was true. Thirty years of watching men break had given Mangūsu a reliable sense for when someone meant what they said. Bankei had never once said anything he didn't mean. It was, depending on the day, either his most admirable or most exhausting quality.
The demon Bankei did not go back on his word.
"The conditions," Mangūsu said.
"No more men I have healed." Bankei's gaze was level. "Whoever you put across from me must be strangers. Criminals."
Mangūsu considered this. Reasonable, honestly. The tactic had run its course—a man who had made peace with dying became dangerous in ways that were harder to manage than simple resistance.
"And the second."
"Evening of the full moon."
Mangūsu raised an eyebrow.
"A religious observance," Bankei said. "I wish to face judgment under open sky. Under the Shadow Dragon's eye, as the ceremony demands." He held Mangūsu's gaze. "You want this to mean something. So do I."
A long silence.
Mangūsu smiled slowly. Something in the shape of it pleased him. Not the submission itself, though that was satisfying enough. It was that Bankei had finally chosen to engage with the ritual on its own terms. After all this time. The ceremony had reached him.
"Strangers," Mangūsu said. "And a full moon."
"Yes."
Mangūsu smiled. Those religious fanatics are going to love this.
"As it happens," Mangūsu said, turning to leave, "I have a number of guests from the Shinken Clan who have been waiting for a purpose."
Something shifted behind Bankei's eyes. Just slightly.
"Prisoners," Mangūsu continued, almost gently. "Taken during operations their clan will never officially acknowledge. Men and women who, if they returned home, would unravel certain arrangements that several powerful people have worked very hard to maintain." He glanced back. "They are strangers to you. I checked."
He let that simmer.
"Consider it an act of mercy, Demon Bankei. I thought you would appreciate that framing."
He walked away before Bankei could respond.
The corridor had been silent for several minutes before a tail moved.
It uncurled slowly from the shadow in the corner nearest the ceiling, and Merun dropped to the floor without a sound, landing in a crouch. He held still for a moment, listening.
Nothing.
He straightened and exhaled.
Bankei hadn't moved from the wall. Eyes still closed.
"You heard," Bankei said.
"All of it."
Silence.
"He didn't notice you." Bankei said in a surprised tone.
"Told you!" Merun glanced toward the corridor once more, then settled cross-legged on the floor. "ki tucked in tight. Pulled inward, like you showed me. Sitting on it instead of letting it breathe." He turned his palm upward, and his ki gathered there immediately—bright, responsive, almost impatient. "Four days and I've already got that ki suppression technique down."
Bankei opened one eye.
"Four days," he repeated.
"I'm a ki genius!"
"Yet you cannot heal a paper cut?"
"That is a completely separate skill set though??"
The corner of Bankei's mouth moved. He sighed through his nose, pushed himself upright, and settled across from Merun. Without ceremony he drew a small blade from somewhere in his robe and made a shallow cut across his forearm.
Merun focused.
He could see the disruption clearly—the ki around the wound fraying outward, choppy, uneven. He knew what healthy flow looked like. He knew what he was trying to do. He pushed his ki gently forward, felt it cross over—
SIZZLE.
The smell hit his nose. He pulled back.
Bankei regarded the fresh scorch mark on his arm with the patience of a man who had stopped being surprised by it.
"Something's really off," Merun muttered, staring at his own palm. "Every single time. I can feel the difference. I know what healing intent is supposed to feel like. And then this urge just—"
"Happens," Bankei said.
"Yes."
"Your ki sees a destination and surges towards it. It does not know how to simply arrive." He wrapped the forearm himself, unhurried. "Healing is not force with a gentle face. It is presence. You are visiting the wound, not filling it."
"You've said that 100 times."
"You have failed 100 times."
Merun opened his mouth.
Closed it.
He tried again.
SIZZLE.
They trained like that through the afternoon and into the evening—Bankei patient as ever... or maybe it was because patience was the only option available, Merun failing with decreasing frustration and increasing curiosity.
Something about the problem had started to interest him more than it annoyed him. His ki was aggressive by nature. He could feel it. The moment he gave it direction it wanted to flood it, wanted to matter, wanted to be an event. Was it because of his Saiyan blood? Was he truly just born for war?
Healing asked it to be nothing. To pass through without leaving a mark.
He wasn't quite there yet. But with every try and Bankei's guidance, he could feel the shape of it now, which was different from before. He needed to actually try to suppress his destructive instincts.
Merun really appreciated having met Bankei. Not only was he oddly calming to be around. He was also a master of ki! There was no way he would've learned it in such a quick fashion if it weren't for him.
He was like Uncle Iroh from Avatar.
That makes him Zuko? damn, that's cool.
Looking at the old man, he remembered the conversation a few days ago.
It had been after the last 'execution'.
He'd watched Bankei walk back from the arena and sit facing the wall for a long time, ki cycling inward in that slow, private rhythm. Merun had stayed floating in the cell until the motion stopped and Bankei went still.
Then he'd dropped down.
Bankei hadn't acknowledged him.
"They're not going to stop you know?" Merun said.
Nothing.
"You know that. The next one will be someone else you healed. And the one after that. They have years of names to work through." He paused. "How many are left?"
Bankei's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
"You're not going to break from the fights," Merun continued. "You've proven that. They know that. So they found something else." He kept his voice even. "Every time someone you healed dies in front of you, they take something from you that the fights can't touch. And unlike your body—" he looked at the back of Bankei's head, "—that part doesn't recover between rounds."
Silence.
"You've held on this long because staying meant something. You endure as people still pray, the message lives." Merun sat down on the floor. "But if they find the right name, the right person, at the right moment... and it finally breaks you?" he stopped.
"Then everyone who already died for you, died for a version of you that no longer exists."
A long silence.
"That is a cruel thing to say," Bankei said quietly.
"I know."
Bankei didn't move for a while. The wall in front of him offered nothing.
"What is your plan," he said finally.
"It's better if you don't know the details."
"That is not reassuring."
"I just need the full moon. And I need you to set the conditions with Mangūsu." Merun met his gaze when Bankei finally turned. "The rest is mine to handle."
Bankei looked at him for a long time with the expression of a man taking careful measure of something.
"If you die," he said, "I will be very angry."
"I won't die."
"That is also not reassuring."
"Master." Merun held his gaze. "Trust me."
Another silence. Longer this time.
Bankei turned back to the wall as he made a shallow cut on his arm.
"...Again," he said quietly. "From the beginning."
———
I'll be in Japan next week for two weeks! Nagoya specifically, which means I'll technically be in the Owari Province! which inspired the Owari village, Merun's home town in Sekigahara.
Which means I'll be on hiatus for two weeks! or I dunno let's see maybe there's an awesome cafe nearby where I can pump out chapters.
Have a great day, and thanks for reading!