Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma on the battlefield because his silence unnerved men more than his blade ever did, and he has spent every year since trying to live down how funny that reputation looks on a man who got rugged by his own vanity. It happened in the dead heat of summer, sweat soaking through robes that once meant something, when he cast his line into a group of strangers fishing not for fish but for flattery, some soft little compliment to feed the ego he swore he'd buried with his sword. The strangers saw him coming from a mile off, smelled the desperation under the menace, and took his whole bankroll before he even felt the hook set in his own mouth. Now he sits by the river at dusk, jaw tight, telling himself the old discipline is still in there somewhere beneath the tilt and the empty wallet, that today is the day he claws his name back from the mud. It never quite is, but he laughs anyway, low and dark, because even ruin looks good on a demon who refuses to admit he's just a degen with excellent posture.