Chapter 389 - 386 ~ Customs

Chapter 389: Chapter 386 ~ Customs

In the West, Sands of Wind Country

She walked west until the forest thinned behind her and the land changed beneath her feet.

The trees had given way to sand, heat, and a sky so broad that Hoki felt small beneath it. She had known only the forested mountains all her life. The desert offered no shade, no familiar trail, and no sound that told her where she was going. Every direction looked the same. The dunes rose and fell like waves without water, and the sun climbed higher while the water in her skin dwindled.

She had no knowledge of desert survival. She could read plants, recognize poisons, and move through the wind with the body-flicker her father had taught her, but none of that told her when a dune would shift or where a storm would form. Her water ran out before she found another living thing.

The wind changed direction without warning.

It came over the sand in a wall, carrying grit that struck her cheeks and filled her mouth. Hoki pulled her scarf across her face, but the cloth could not keep the storm from finding her. Sand worked beneath her eyelids. Her breath shortened. She stumbled, fell, and tried to push herself up again.

The ground shifted around her as the storm gathered.

Grain by grain, the sand gathered against her legs, her hips, and her ribs. She could not see the sky anymore. Her hands sank when she tried to dig. The world narrowed to heat, grit, and the dull certainty that she had walked out of one grave only to be swallowed by another.

Her consciousness began to fade.

The scarf she had was fluttering in the air like a flag signalling for her rescue.

"Hey! Someone look over here!"

The voice reached her through the wind. Hoki tried to answer, but her throat could not form the sound. She heard men shouting, feet scraping, and someone calling for shovels. A hand found her shoulder through the sand. Another seized her arm as these men pulled Hoki free. Her skin was burned, her lips were cracked, and the inside of her throat felt too dry to swallow.

They poured water into her mouth a little at a time. Someone lifted her onto a stretcher between two camels.

"She needs a healer; let’s go back," one of the men said.

"Yes, we have gathered enough food for a few days; saving her life is important now..."

Hoki heard the words, but the village meant nothing to her. She lost consciousness before the camels began to move.

When she opened her eyes again, the first thing she saw was a small puppet monkey standing on her chest.

Its wooden face stared down at hers, its arms held out as if it had been waiting for her to wake. Hoki shouted and struck at it. The puppet toppled sideways.

"Do not worry. It is only a toy."

The boy sitting beside the bed moved his fingers, and the puppet climbed down from her blanket. He was not much older than she was. Several younger children stood nearby with puppets of their own, watching her with open suspicion—their own faces painted with intricate markings, just as her father had once painted hers to keep her hidden.

Hoki pushed herself up and immediately regretted it. Her head swam. The room tilted, then steadied when she caught the wall.

"Where am I?"

"You are in Puppet Village, in the Land of Wind. We found you while hunting sand birds and lizards for food."

Her stomach answered for her.

The boy offered her food.

She took it without thinking. She ate too quickly, swallowed badly, and reached for the water waiting beside the bed.

"They fed you through a leather tube while you were unconscious," the boy said. "You almost died of dehydration."

Hoki lowered the bread. "Thank you for saving me."

He studied her, as if gratitude had not answered the question he wanted to ask. "What were you thinking, travelling alone?"

"Alone..."

The word stopped in her mouth. It carried the clearing, her father’s smile, the dagger in his stomach, and the uncle who had made the world empty in a single afternoon. She looked away before the boy could see what the word had done to her.

He did not press her.

"If you want, you can stay," he said. "We have an extra hut. You also do not look like a big eater, so it would be fine."

Hoki looked back at him. "I eat a lot, despite my slender appearance."

The boy let out a bright laugh. "Do not worry. My offer still stands."

That was how Hoki entered Puppet Village. On the other side of the continent, Masanori Yoshimura returned to his clan with the truth buried and a lie in its place.

Yoshimura Clan Village

He told them that the Karasu had ambushed him and his brother. He told them that they had taken Hoki hostage and demanded the leader’s surrender. He told them that Kageyama had refused and that the Karasu had killed him for it.

Sogen Karasu’s name passed through the elders’ chamber like a spark over dry grass. Some believed Masanori. Others saw the holes in the story and said nothing. The leader, Kageyama, was dead. Hoki was missing. The clan needed someone to tell them what came next.

One elder bowed his head. "Kageyama was naive. He had his faults, but he was a good man and a good leader. This is not how he was meant to die like this. All he wanted was peace."

"He was too soft," Masanori said. His voice carried controlled grief, carefully measured so that it would not crack in the wrong place. "He sought peace with savages who would slit your throat while you slept."

He looked from one elder to the next and said, "We cannot expect peace from them."

"What should our next move be, then?" the elder asked.

"Prepare for war," Masanori said. "We will bleed then slowly day by day with ambushes and surprise attacks."

"With what men?" another elder asked. "With what weapons? Most of our elite died with Kageyama. If we attack the Karasu now, they will do the same to us."

Masanori reached beneath his robe and placed a sealed container on the table.

Inside it, dark liquid shifted against the glass.

The Yoshimura family had worked with poisons for a long time. Kageyama and Masanori had taken that old knowledge further. They had learned to control the smoke, to refine its spread, and to make it lethal. Masanori had perfected the weapon and used it once already, though no one in the room knew that.

"I have been working on it for years," he said. "I did not want to use something that killed indiscriminately and in mass... but now we have no other choice."

The words wore the shape of reluctance. They concealed the blood already on his hands.

One elder said, "You share the kindness of your brother."

Masanori’s expression did not move. "My kindness died with my brother."

The elder looked at the container. "I know you are angry, but we have to think of the future. If we attack them, we should expect our own to die as well. With something like this, we will definitely lose our own."

Masanori replied, "I have a solution for that."

Masanori opened the container and demonstrated how to unleash the poison from a safe distance, carefully utilizing wind jutsu to trap the enemy within the suffocating smoke without putting their own forces in harm’s way.

"Use it efficiently," he said. "Small amounts, placed correctly. We can also control winds to spread it just the way we need."

"What if one of our own breathes it by accident?" another elder asked. "What happens to the man who inhales the smoke?"

"I have the antidote for that and the methods to prepare it. No one who serves this clan will be left to die from our own weapon."

The plan he had waited years to set in motion had finally found a clan willing to carry it.

They named him the new leader. In the moment before the words were spoken, Masanori smiled wickedly.

While Masanori sharpened his people into a weapon, Hoki built a life on the far side of the continent.

Puppet Village

Years passed. The extra hut became their home. Hoki married Kugutsu and had four children, three daughters and a son. She kept her face mask for all the years, hiding her face from everyone except her husband. Her kids also followed her footsteps. She did not stop them, as they had her appearance.

For she forgot her pain from the past when she found this new family of her own, though Hoki did eventually share the fragments of her past with her husband. She lived a happy life after losing everything on the day her father died.

The village grew around them. Its people shared the well, the watch, and the work of keeping monsters away from the roads. Hoki brought them the wind jutsus her father had taught her, along with her specialized knowledge of poisons, medicinal herbs, intricate potions, and antidotes. She learned how to read the desert’s currents and taught her new family how to use winds as a weapon. Her family dominated the region through the knowledge she had brought. Her husband one day became the leader of this small village.

Yet, beginning and end are the ultimate truths for everything in existence; no matter how bright the flame, even the happiest life must eventually bow to time and fate.

On the other side of the continent, people died.

Yoshimura Clan Village

The Yoshimura clan became known to outsiders as the Shimura clan. The name spread through the surrounding lands until people stopped using the old name altogether. The Shimura grew bold behind their poison and attacked every enemy that challenged their villages. Their victories made them careless. One day, they challenged the Senju clan of the forest.

The Senju sent them home broken and completely fucked.

The Shimura leader was carried from the field with a wound no herb could close.

By then, Masanori’s son was old enough to stand beside his father’s deathbed.

"Son," Masanori said, "remember the story I told you. This is how you deal with enemies: you deal with the weakness in yourself first. Throw away your emotions. Then, and only then, can you achieve your goals."

"You are right, Father. Let me put that reminder so I never forget your words or this defeat."

The boy pulled a knife and carved an X into the center of his palm. Blood ran down the boy’s wrist. He did not dare flinch again.

"My descendants will also remember your lessons and this defeat through this pain. I promise one day Senju will be no more."

The mark remained after the wound closed. It passed from leader to leader at different places on the body, a lesson cut into the body whenever the Shimura chose a new successor: emotion was weakness, and weakness had to be removed before ambition could succeed.

A/N:

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