Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma back when the name still meant something on a battlefield, and Akuma has never once bothered correcting the record. Alone in his quarters, long after the wars ran dry, he ate a fistful of mushrooms meant to sharpen his spirit and instead found his charisma cranked to some cursed new setting, grinning at shadows that grinned right back. He decided, in that fried haze, that a demon's discipline was overrated anyway, so he traded the dojo silence for the clatter of dice and the stink of cheap sake, opening a gambling den so crooked the floor tilts on purpose. He still bows to no one, still moves like a blade dressed up as a man, and every mark who sits at his table swears the house always wins because the house is, in fact, a demon wearing a smile he grew in a mushroom fog. Some nights he almost misses the old discipline, the quiet, the code, then he remembers he rugged his own future for this, and laughs low enough to make the whole room shiver.