Chapter 20: Chapter 19

image [https://i.imgur.com/Hw1RNZt.png]

----------------------------------------

“In the silence of tales, a legend sleeps, not slain but woven.

The gods’ cruel jest, a human heart; truth shifts like wind-blown ash.

A bloom returns, though winter claims. The journey stirs. The barrier calls.”

----------------------------------------

Funny, isn’t it? How the tales begin. And tales, dear one, are rarely as simple as their opening lines.

They say the gods were laughing that day. Laughing! Not with joy, mind you, but with that cruel, detached amusement of beings who see all threads of fate, all mortal struggles, as nothing more than a child’s game played out in the dirt. As if the downfall of a legend, a force of nature, were merely a jest for their celestial halls.

Not to kill the Crimson Sakura, no. That would be far too mundane, wouldn’t it? Too… expected. A simple sword through the heart, a clean end to a vibrant life. No. That would deny them their spectacle.

They decreed she must be slain.

As if she were a beast caught in a hunter’s snare. A blight upon the land, to be eradicated with fire and iron. A whisper that had overstayed its welcome in the shadowed corners of the world, and must therefore be silenced forever.

A myth, perhaps, whispered in hushed tones around campfires. A monster, likely, painted with the darkest dyes of fear and prejudice. But, and I do insist on this point, with all the conviction of one who has seen too much of humanity’s tangled heart, she was profoundly, undeniably, exquisitely human.

Flawed? Deeply. Like a cracked porcelain doll, each fissure a testament to battles fought and lost, to choices made in desperation. Beautiful? Unnervingly so, with a grace that could steal a breath or break a spirit, depending on her whim. Powerful? Like a tide that forgets to ebb, a storm that refuses to dissipate, a mountain that decides to walk. A force. An inevitability.

And the one who claimed her downfall? The architect of such a monumental ruin?

Well… that, little Cub, depends entirely on who you ask, and the stories they choose to believe.

Some name her Lin-Mei, the alchemist saint of the Eastern Reaches. They paint her in hues of pale jade and moonlit silver. A quiet woman, they say, steeped in virtue as tea leaves steep in boiling water, extracting every drop of goodness. The very first of the Verdant Scholars, a guild of healers and preservers. Pure as dew kissed by the morning sun, and cold as the heart of a mountain. A beacon of righteousness.

Others—less charitable, perhaps, or simply more attuned to the shadows that cling to all great deeds—say she was something else entirely. A shadow with two faces, one for the light, one for the darkness. A liar in lacquered robes, her smile a silken trap. A ninja, if you still believe in such archaic, deadly things in this modern age, a ghost haunting the edges of perception.

They say her real name was Ayumi. Yes. The names get tangled, like old fishing nets left to rot on the shore. Best not pull too hard at that particular thread, or you might unravel more than you intended.

The point is this: she didn’t fight the Crimson Sakura head-on. There were no battlefield trumpets blaring defiance, no clash of steel echoing beneath a blood-red cherry moon. No heroic, cinematic duel for the bards to sing about. Only smoke. Only silence. A war of attrition, fought not with armies, but with wits and whispers. A conflict of weeks… or was it years? Time, like names, can blur in the retelling.

It’s unclear. History, after all, is written by the victors, and the victors rarely bother with petty details like exact dates.

Some versions claim Lin-Mei fought dirty—vials of shimmering poison flung like fervent prayers, each drop a silent curse. Death, not in one decisive stroke, but in slow, agonizing hours. In days that stretched into weeks, each breath a struggle. The Curse of Alchemists, they called it: Damage Over Time. DOT, for the learned, those who understood the insidious art of slow decay.

A thousand cuts, each one tiny, barely perceptible. A thousand strategic retreats, always leaving just enough doubt, just enough pain. Until finally, the Crimson Sakura, the vibrant, indomitable force, stumbled. And fell. Not with a roar, but with a whisper of exhaustion.

They say Lin-Mei stood over her—blade drawn, heart hollowed out by the grim necessity of her task—beneath a moonless sky, where only the stars bore witness. The gods, with their cruel amusement, etched the moment into the firmament, a silent testament to a life extinguished. Mortals, ever eager for a hero, carved her name into song, praising the righteous hand that struck down the "monster."

But if you ask me? If you truly want to hear the wisdom of an old soul who has seen the tapestry of fate fray and re-stitch itself countless times?

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I don’t think she ever truly died.

Oh yes, her body burned. The pyre blazed, a pillar of smoke reaching for the heavens. The ashes were scattered to the four winds, a final dissolution. A burial fit for a queen—or a monster, depending on the story you prefer.

But her soul? That vibrant, untamed spark that fueled the Crimson Sakura?

Some say it wandered into the mist, smiling, unburdened by the weight of its earthly form.

Some say she waits. Not in the grave, but in the liminal spaces between worlds, between waking and dreaming.

Because you see, little Cub—stories don’t end. Not truly. They merely lie dormant, like seeds buried deep beneath the winter earth. They seed themselves into the soil of memory, into the whispers of the wind, into the very essence of the land they once graced.

And have you ever seen a sakura tree truly die in winter?

Or does it simply sleep, shedding its vibrant colors, baring its skeletal branches to the cold, seemingly lifeless?

And then, does it not bloom again in spring, more resplendent, more defiant than before?

Eh? Little Cub? What do you believe?

----------------------------------------

Yubi stirred, a low, rumbling hum in her chest, long before the silken curtains of her eyelids finally parted. The hush of the forest was a palpable presence around her, not an absence of sound, but a living, breathing quiet that settled like a finely woven shawl of mist and morning dew upon her fur. Her ears, finely tuned instruments of the wilderness, twitched almost imperceptibly, catching the wind’s ancient whisper as it threaded through the lofty canopy above, a sibilant lullaby.

She lay reclined, utterly at ease, against the cool, damp embrace of an ancient, moss-slick boulder. Its stone was a living thing, cradling her in the deep quiet of the grove, radiating a faint, earthy scent. In one small, delicate paw, she still clutched a brush – its tip, she noted with a flicker of satisfaction, still moist with the rich black of her ink. Upon her lap, an unfurled scroll, its creamy surface bearing the delicate, flowing lines of unfinished panels. This was her current masterpiece, a manga, painstakingly chronicling the epic, often tragic, saga of The Crimson Sakura.

A single, vibrant blade of wild grass jutted carelessly from the corner of her mouth, swaying with each thoughtful chew, a small, unconscious habit. Her striped tail, thick and luxurious, twitched once, a silent punctuation mark to the stillness.

“Areum?” she murmured again, the name a soft exhalation, a question posed to the air.

Slowly, deliberately, she tilted her head, a curl of soft, russet fur brushing aside as her sharp, golden gaze flicked to her side, to the space beside her.

But the blind girl was no longer there.

Only the venerable boulder remained, its ancient face now dappled with shifting patches of sunlight that danced through the leaves. The shallow dent in the moss, the place where Areum’s small form had nestled, was already beginning its slow, relentless journey back to pristine, verdant perfection. It was as if the girl had been nothing more than mist given ephemeral form, a dream that dissipated with the rising sun.

Yubi’s mouth, accustomed to its thoughtful chew of grass, dropped open. The blade of wild green, suddenly unmoored, fell loose, caught the barest breath of wind, and danced upward for a moment, a fleeting emerald whisper, before spiraling out of sight.

Her fur, a rich tapestry of russet and cream, bristled, each individual hair standing on end with a sudden, indignant energy. A sound escaped her, low in her throat – not quite a sigh of resignation, not quite a growl of anger. It was a sound born of pure, distilled exasperation, laced with a very particular brand of pride. The kind of sound only a red panda could truly make. Unlike her hulking, black-furred cousins, the lumbering bears of the forest, red pandas didn’t lumber.

They flared.

And Yubi, at this precise moment, was seething. Every instinct within her screamed at the audacity, the sheer cleverness of it.

“Like mother… like daughter,” she muttered, the words squeezed through tightly clenched teeth, a bitter recognition in her voice.

“She played you like a flute, huh?”

The voice, calm and surprisingly unruffled, drifted to her from downstream, carried on the gentle current of the flowing water.

Yubi blinked, shaking off her sudden pique, and turned. There, knee-deep in the glistening current, stood Ulon, the old turtle sage. Water swirled around his heavy, ancient shell, barely reaching the weathered seams of his carapace, as he leaned heavily on his gnarled walking stick, a silent sentinel of the stream. His ancient eyes, like polished river stones, watched her from beneath moss-draped eyelids, holding an unnerving depth.

“Hah!” a shrill, delighted voice piped from directly above her head. “Such mischief. Such audaciousness! I like her already.”

Yubi groaned, a deep, exasperated sound that vibrated through her small frame, and craned her neck sharply upward. Gamma, the monkey sage, hung upside down from a thick branch directly overhead, his tail coiled with impossible precision around the bark. His grin, wide and impossibly smug, stretched from ear to ear, showcasing sharp, white teeth.

“What are you two doing here?” Yubi demanded, her voice tight with irritation as she already began rolling up her precious scroll with tight, almost angry motions. She tucked the ink-wet brush behind one ear, a defiant gesture, and began gathering her satchel, intent on making a swift, dignified exit.

Ulon merely tilted his massive head, his voice a low, resonant rumble, solemn as the deepest parts of the forest. “The croaking has begun.”

Gamma, ever the imp, cackled gleefully from above, then flipped down with a dizzying flurry of agile limbs and rustling leaves, landing silently beside her. “And guess where your little protégé is skipping off to, hmm?” he chirped, his eyes sparkling with unholy amusement.

Yubi froze mid-motion, her paw stilling against the cool, damp moss. The meaning of Ulon’s words, coupled with Gamma’s taunt, clicked into place with chilling clarity.

She exhaled slowly, a long, thin stream of air pushed through her nose, a sound of dread and an old, familiar inevitability.

“The barrier…” she whispered, the words barely audible, heavy with a weight that was not her own.