Names and Graves

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Chapter 3: Names and Graves

The monastery stood still, but Raizen could feel it—something shifting beneath the silence. The monks whispered more now. They bowed less. They no longer looked at him as a student, but as a force they could not contain.

One night, when the stars hung low and heavy, Master Daijo called Raizen to the shrine’s inner chamber.

“There is something you must see.”

A slab of ancient stone rested there, covered in markings older than any language Raizen had studied. At its center: a carving of the Void Crest. The same mark that burned across Raizen’s back the day he was born.

“Before you arrived,” Daijo began, “this monastery was built to seal something. A fragment of the Void. We thought it dormant, but the day you were born… the seal trembled.”

Raizen said nothing. His gaze lingered on the stone.

“You are not cursed, Raizen,” Daijo said softly. “But you are not like us. You never were. You carry a name that did not begin here.”

Raizen turned to him.

“What was my real name?”

“There was no name,” Daijo admitted. “Only a title… ‘The Sovereign Yet to Rise.’”

That night, Raizen left the monastery.

He walked alone through the ash woods, past the frozen springs, past the graves of nameless monks who had long forgotten the world. As he crossed into the realm beyond the peaks, something whispered to him again.

“Now… you begin.”

Raizen looked back once—not at the monastery, but at the mountains above it. Then he moved forward, barefoot across snow, into lands that had forgotten light.

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Chapter 4: The Black Fang Sentinel

The lowlands beyond the monastery were cursed — or so the legends claimed. Dead trees twisted like claws, the wind howled without breath, and even beasts refused to step near the ruins of Dara'Kor, the lost citadel of the ancient Shadow Court.

Raizen stepped into it without hesitation.

The Void Crest on his back pulsed. It wasn’t pain. It was recognition.

As his boots crunched over blackened leaves, the ground trembled beneath him. From the dark stones of the citadel's gate, something stirred — a shadow peeling itself from the wall, then rising to form a towering figure of armor and bone.

Its eyes burned like molten coal.

"You are not welcome, child of silence," it growled. "Turn back, or your name will end here."

Raizen didn’t blink. “I have no name,” he said. “Only a reason to pass.”

The sentinel snarled. Its body moved like smoke — fast, heavy, ancient. It swung a black blade that could split boulders, but Raizen ducked beneath it, his palm flaring with voidlight. He struck once.

Silence.

Then a crack echoed through the stillness — the sentinel staggered. Its armor glowed with fractures.

“You... are touched by it,” it muttered. “The Sovereign Flame…”

“No,” Raizen said. “The Void. And I don’t need your permission.”

With a final step, he leapt into the air, his eyes burning silver. The world dimmed around him. Time itself hesitated — and when he struck, the sentinel shattered into dust, dissolving into silence.

Raizen stood alone again.

But as the dust settled, the gates to the citadel groaned open. Something had acknowledged him — not just the guardian, but whatever still watched from the ancient halls beyond.

He had passed his first test.

And beyond the gate, destiny waited.

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Would you like Chapter 5 to explore what Raizen finds inside the citadel — perhaps a fragment of memory from the Void itself, or another being like him?

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