Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma back when the banners still meant something, when a man could earn a demon's name through discipline sharp enough to cut fear itself in half. Now the only ritual left to him is the one he performs each dawn in some frozen river, lowering himself among the snakes coiled in the shallows because an old monk once told him cold water and cold company build a warrior's spirit. The snakes do not care about his legend, and the integrity he waded in to reclaim slithered off downstream years ago, leaving him blue lipped, grinning, and somehow still amused that a demon can be humbled by garter snakes. He tells himself this is training, the first step back toward the man who earned the name, though most mornings it just ends with him laughing at his own reflection cracking through the ice. Still, Akuma has decided his ruined discipline is worth something to somebody, so now he plans to teach the local degens his sacred nonsense, one shivering, self-aware lesson at a time, fully expecting them to fail exactly as gloriously as he does.