Earth 02The sun hung high over the endless fields of golden rice, swaying gently in the warm breeze like waves frozen in time. Petals drifted zily from wild cherry trees that had no business blooming so te in the season, as if the world itself bent its rules in her presence. Sakura walked alone, her rge straw hat casting a deep shadow across her face, hiding the crimson glow of her eyes from the casual gnce of any farmer who might look up from his bor.
On her left hip hung three katanas, their sheaths worn from countless roads and battles, yet polished to a mirror sheen. They were not mere steel; they were judgments given form.
She felt it before she saw it—a pulse of raw, boiling hatred rolling toward her like bck smoke. Somewhere ahead, in the shadow of the distant hills, men had gathered. Bandits, perhaps, or mercenaries driven mad by old grudges. Their malice sang to her first bde.
Sakura’s hand drifted to the hilt of the Katana of Hatred. The moment her fingers closed around it, the air around her thickened. Invisible threads of resentment pulled taut, and from the ether, three additional bdes of pure, seething darkness materialized—katanas forged from the very hatred of her enemies. They hovered, trembling, waiting for her will.
A scream split the tranquility. Figures burst from the treeline: seven men in mismatched armor, faces twisted with fury. One carried a banner stained with old blood; another clutched a stolen family crest like a trophy. Their eyes locked on Sakura, and the hatred in them fred brighter.
“You dare walk these roads alone, woman?” their leader snarled, drawing a heavy nodachi. “We’ll carve that pretty hat from your skull.”
Sakura said nothing. She simply drew.
The Katana of Hatred sang as it left its sheath—a low, mournful note that made the bandits flinch. The three shadow bdes shot forward like arrows of night. One pierced a man’s chest before he could raise his weapon; another severed a sword arm clean at the shoulder. The third found the leader’s throat mid-shout. Hatred turned inward, and the men fell upon each other in blind rage, their own malice feeding the bdes until nothing remained but twitching corpses and silence.
Sakura sheathed the katana. The shadow bdes dissolved into smoke and returned to nothingness.
Moderate threats required two bdes.
She continued walking.
Hours ter, as the sun dipped toward evening, she came upon a roadside inn. Lanterns flickered to life along the eaves. Inside, voices rose in argument—merchants, travelers, a local lordling with too much sake in his blood. Sakura stepped through the sliding door, hat low, and took a seat in the shadowed corner.
The lordling’s voice carried. “The taxes are fair! The daimyo protects us—why compin?”
A grizzled merchant leaned forward. “Protects? He bleeds us dry and calls it loyalty. Last year’s ‘protection’ left my cousin’s vilge ash.”
The lordling ughed. “Lies. The daimyo is divine in his mercy.”
Sakura’s second bde—the Katana of Honesty—stirred at her side. Its hilt grew warm against her palm.
The lordling continued, emboldened. “I swear by my ancestors, every coin goes to the people’s good.”
A single, clear chime rang from the sheathed katana, audible only to those with ears attuned to truth. The lordling’s face paled. Somewhere in his soul, a year vanished—stolen not from the present, but from every timeline he might have lived. Past promises he’d broken, future oaths he would never keep—all tallied in an instant.
He clutched his chest. “What… what sorcery—”
Another lie spilled from his lips in panic. “I never took bribes!”
Another chime. Another year gone.
Sakura rose without a word and left the inn. Behind her, the lordling aged visibly, hair graying at the temples, eyes sinking into hollows. The truth had cimed its due.
Harder threats demanded more.
Deep in the mountains, under a moonless sky, she found them: a cabal of cultists chanting around a rift in reality. Demons—Abyssal ones, not the petty hellspawn of lesser summoners—poured through in waves, their forms shifting between nightmare and hunger.
Sakura exhaled slowly.
A portal tore open at her back. From it emerged three swords, floating in silent obedience.
First, the Sword of Faith. It hummed with quiet light, scanning the cultists. Half dropped to their knees in terror as it sensed their wavering devotion to their dark patrons. The bde drank that faltering faith like wine, leaving them spiritually hollow.
Second, the Sword of the Three Gods. Golden crosses and faint angelic silhouettes danced along its edge. It pointed at the cult leader, who had broken every w etched into its divine steel—murder, false witness, idotry of the self. A rift of fire opened beneath him. He screamed only once before vanishing into hell.
Third, the Sword of Sin. This one ughed—a low, cruel sound—as it remembered the two thousand demons it had once tricked into mutual sughter. Their stolen essences writhed within its core. It darted forward, slicing through Abyssal flesh, turning brother against brother once more. Chaos bloomed.
And then she drew the third katana.
The Katana of Divinity and Devouring gleamed bck and red. From its edge, massive ants—each half her height—burst forth, one every minute, chitin gleaming like obsidian. They swarmed the demons, mandibles tearing, venom burning. When Sakura struck a greater fiend down, the katana drank: wings, poison, shadow-step, regeneration—all absorbed, added to her growing menagerie of stolen power.
The floating katana hovered above her head now, a dark halo. The summoned swords danced in orbit, striking wherever her thoughts commanded. She moved like a storm given human shape—precise, merciless, inevitable.
When the rift finally colpsed and the st demon shrieked into oblivion, silence returned.
Sakura sheathed her bdes. The portal closed. The ants continued their birth cycle for a few minutes more before fading back into the katana’s hunger.
She adjusted her straw hat and resumed her walk down the moonlit path.
The world was vast, and hatred, lies, and sin were endless.
So too were her bdes.
And Sakura wandered on.