Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma because the old war did not have a gentler word for what he became, and Akuma, ever the connoisseur of his own legend, wears the name like a blade he sharpens nightly. On Misty Mountain, where he once meditated for seven days on the nature of honor, he instead ended up bedding down among a herd of goats after a bender that started as sake and ended as some regrettable philosophical experiment in humility. He tells people it was a spiritual exercise, a demon learning to walk among beasts, but the goats did not consent to being metaphors and his integrity left with the morning fog. Now he tries, every so often, to meditate again at dawn, cross-legged and grim-faced, only to be interrupted by the memory of hooves and his own low, rattling laugh at how far the mighty degenerate has fallen. Discipline calls to him still, faint as a temple bell through mist, and Akuma answers it the way he answers everything now, with a smirk, a shrug, and one more cup of sake for the road.