The five men didn't attack. They also didn't move aside.
Ornn read the formation quickly — loose, uncertain, the body language of people performing threat rather than committing to it. Not trained fighters executing a plan. Frightened people holding weapons and hoping they wouldn't have to use them.
Yamato was still mostly upright against his shoulder. Mostly.
Five samurai. Unknown Haki. One functional combatant, which is me. One compromised combatant, which is her.
He kept his voice measured.
"We're not here to cause harm. We want water. If you'd rather we leave, we'll leave."
The response came fast, and with the particular bitterness of a grievance that had been sitting out too long:
"That's exactly what the Black Charcoal's men said last month. Word for word."
Ornn absorbed this. Someone had apparently used the same approach to scout the village for Orochi's tax collectors. The coincidence was spectacular and entirely unhelpful.
The lead samurai — older than the others, carrying himself with the residual authority of someone who'd once been in charge of more — said it plainly: "Whether you serve Orochi or not, outsiders aren't welcome here. Please go."
Fine. It wasn't worth pushing. The villagers had their reasons. He'd find water at the next settlement.
He shifted Yamato's weight against his side and took two steps toward the path.
"Wait."
The voice came from the right flank. Younger. Hungrier-sounding.
Ornn turned.
The samurai — young, sharp-eyed, staring at the cloth-wrapped bundle at Ornn's waist with the focus of a man who hadn't eaten recently and was doing arithmetic — said: "What's in the bundle?"
Ornn looked at him.
"Nothing that concerns you."
"Jiro." The lead samurai's voice carried warning.
"Brother Wu, they're Orochi's people." Jiro's voice had the particular energy of someone who had made a decision and was now justifying it. "What does it matter?"
From the left flank, quieter but no less pointed: "Boss, Orochi's men have been bleeding us dry for months. Our families haven't eaten today."
The words landed on the group like a match on kindling. He could see it — the two who'd been watching neutrally shifting their weight, their eyes moving to the bundle, the calculation happening in real time. The lead samurai's jaw tightened. The choice between loyalty to principle and loyalty to people he'd grown up with was working its way across his face.
Ornn said nothing. He simply watched, and felt something go cold and quiet in his chest.
He'd given ground. He'd offered to leave without argument. But there was a line between understanding why people did wrong things and allowing them to be done to him.
The lead samurai opened his mouth.
A shadow arrived before the words did.
It appeared at the edge of the village with startling abruptness — tall, looming, moving fast. But as it drew closer the impression of height resolved itself: not a large man, but an average one elevated by wooden geta clogs so thick they resembled stilts, adding half a body length to his frame and explaining entirely why his silhouette had seemed so imposing at distance.
Four sounds — fast, percussive, precise — and the four samurai who'd been leaning toward robbery were on the ground before anyone had processed the motion that put them there. Not badly hurt. Just down, in pain, and suddenly very aware that something much faster than them had entered the conversation.
"The old man taught you to use a blade to protect people." The voice was old, carrying the dry authority of someone who had stopped needing to raise it decades ago. "What you were about to do looked considerably more like theft."
Five samurai. Five guilty expressions, aimed uniformly at the ground.
"We're sorry, Senior Hitetsu. We lost ourselves."
Ornn looked at the man properly now that he'd stopped moving.
A tengu mask with an absurdly long nose, pushed up on his forehead. An ancient kimono gone soft with washing. A pair of large wings, well-maintained, folded at his back. Silver hair. The enormous geta clogs that had created the false impression of a giant. And behind all of it — the unhurried stillness of someone who had been exceptional for so long that exceptional had become his resting state.
Ornn went very still.
He ran the details against his memory. The mask. The wings. The title the samurai had used. The particular way the old man held himself — not like a craftsman, but like someone who had once commanded armies.
Tenguyama Hitetsu. Tama's master. The hermit swordsmith of Wano. The man who had forged Enma, Ame no Habakiri, and the third-generation Nidai Kitetsu — three of the most storied blades in the country's history. And underneath that pseudonym, underneath the eccentric presentation and the decades of deliberate obscurity: Kozuki Sukiyaki, former Shogun of Wano Country, Oden's father, hiding in plain sight.
Hitetsu turned toward them. His eyes moved across Yamato — seasick, barely standing, trying to look like none of this was happening — and settled on Ornn with the measuring attention of someone accustomed to reading people quickly.
"I don't particularly care who you are," he said, "but this village keeps to itself. You'll need to—"
He stopped.
His nostrils moved. A slight flare, almost involuntary — the reflex of a craftsman whose senses had spent decades attuned to one specific thing until recognition had become instinct.
His eyes dropped to the bundle at Ornn's waist.
"Boy." The old voice had shifted — not louder, but sharper, the way a blade sounds different when it clears the scabbard. "Is that high-grade Sake Heart Steel on your waist?"
The five samurai, still collecting themselves from the ground, looked confused.
Ornn considered his options for approximately one second. This was the man who had shaped some of the greatest blades Wano had ever produced. If there was a single person in this country whose assessment of the ingot was worth having, it was him.
He glanced at Yamato, who was watching with the careful attention of someone pretending to feel better than they did.
He unwrapped the bundle.
The Sake Heart Steel caught the afternoon light and held it — a deep, wine-dark gleam that seemed to come from inside the metal rather than off its surface. The faint fragrance that had filled his workshop when it finished came with it, subtle and unmistakable.
Hitetsu crossed the distance between them without appearing to hurry. He took the ingot from Ornn's hands with the focused reverence of a craftsman handling something that had earned it, turned it slowly, brought it close to examine the grain.
For a long moment he said nothing.
Then he made a small sound — not quite a sigh, but the cousin of one — and shook his head slowly.
"What's wrong with it?" Ornn asked.
Hitetsu set the ingot carefully back into Ornn's hands. His expression had the particular quality of someone delivering an honest verdict they'd rather not give.
"The steel itself is exceptional. High-grade Sake Heart Steel of this quality is genuinely rare — I have worked with this material my entire life, and pieces like this do not appear often." A pause, heavy with something that might have been professional grief. "But whoever forged it made a grave error afterward. They introduced blood into it. Contaminated blood, carrying some foreign power. The intention, I imagine, was to push the material beyond its natural ceiling."
Ornn said nothing.
"Sake Heart Steel at this grade is already the summit of what blade materials in this country can achieve. It cannot be elevated by addition — only diminished. The blood has disrupted the internal structure. The damage is not total — the steel remains workable, remains exceptional by most standards." His eyes came up to meet Ornn's directly. "But it will never reach the level of a supreme blade. Not now. It cannot become what the great Nidai Kitetsu became, what Enma became. That path is closed."
The village was quiet around them. The samurai had gotten themselves upright and were doing an excellent impression of people who hadn't nearly committed robbery.
Yamato had straightened slightly, listening.
Ornn looked at the ingot in his hands. The same steel he'd spent seven days forging. The same steel that now carried five absorbed essences and the weight of what those essences had cost.
He thought about the Heart of Steel. About what it was actually designed to do — not cut, not pierce — but endure. Grow. Protect. The item wasn't a blade at all. It never had been.
"What if," he said slowly, "I wasn't planning to make a sword?"
Hitetsu's eyebrows rose.