Blade Of The Immortal -dub- -

Rin knelt beside the last body—a boy, really. Sixteen, maybe. His waki-zashi was still clutched in his death grip. She closed his eyes with two fingers, murmuring something Manji pretended not to hear. A prayer, or a curse. With Rin, it was hard to tell.

Not the copper tang of blood—though that was everywhere, splashed across the tatami mats and soaking into the wooden pillars of the Ittō-ryū dojo. Not the sharper stench of fear, either, even though the men he’d just carved through had pissed themselves before they died. No. It was the smell of rain on hot asphalt. Of cheap sake and iron filings. Of a body that had stopped pretending to be alive two centuries ago.

“Rin,” he said. Her name tasted like dust and obligation. Blade of the Immortal -Dub-

He stood in the wreckage, wiping a clot of gore from his kama chain with his thumb. Around him, the corpses of the sword school’s finest twitched in their death throes. His own haori hung in ribbons, revealing a chest mapped with scar tissue—each mark a story he didn’t owe anyone. He’d stopped counting after the first fifty years.

He didn’t have an answer. He hadn’t had an answer for a hundred and fifty years. Rin knelt beside the last body—a boy, really

The voice came from the doorway. Low, female, unimpressed.

She stepped over a severed hand without looking down. “You took your time.” She closed his eyes with two fingers, murmuring

“Seven.” Manji rolled his shoulder, feeling the sacred bloodworms shift under his skin. “Lucky number.”

“You don’t believe in luck.”