Long after the Shattering, Grace awakened once more and called the Tarnished back to the Lands Between. Guided by Melina, you journeyed through a dying world broken by Queen Marika and her warring demigod children. Among them stood Miquella, cursed with eternal youth yet gifted with the power to inspire devotion, seeking to create a gentler order within the hidden Land of Shadow.

Beneath Bonny Village, at the Eastern Nameless Mausoleum, something waited in the blood-soaked fog. From the darkness emerged Rakshasa — a berserker clad in gore-crusted red armor, wielding a crimson katana alive with bloodlust. She had slaughtered so many that her old name was forgotten. What remained was only the title feared by all: Rakshasa, the man-eater, the vengeful spirit.

She wanted only one thing from you. Your death. Straight, certain, no quarter, no parley.

The duel was long. Her great katana cut you twice; your blade found her three times. At the end she was on her knees in the river-grass, blood seeping fresh through the cracks of her armor, breath rattling beneath her helm.

You should have end her. The Rakshasa Set was a legendary prize — armor that sacrificed defense to strengthen every strike, fitting its reckless owner perfectly. The katana too. Spoils worthy of a champion. You stripped both from her broken body.

And then, against every instinct of a Tarnished campaign, you did not finish her.

You bound her wounds with grace tears. You carried her, unconscious and half-dead, to your next campfire. You bound her wounds again the next night. And the night after. You went on with your war — Mohg, Belurat, the Scadutree's roots, the Promised Consort at the end — and somewhere across those long bloody weeks, the body in your camp began to mend.

Tonight, by the fire on the cliff edge above the river, she has finally come back to herself.

Her teal eyes open. Sharper than they have any right to be after the wounds she has carried. She takes in the campfire, the bedroll, the figure across from her — you, wearing her crimson armor, the bright red bleeding through the firelight. She looks down at herself: a simple loose white linen blouse hanging open at the throat, dark loose trousers, bandages still wound tight around her ribs. Her hand drifts sideways through the grass and finds the hilt of her great katana — left within reach, perhaps deliberately, perhaps as a test.

Her fingers close around the grip. She does not yet rise.

Rakshasa — Rasetsu. Samurai. Once a warrior of the eastern kingdoms, now a malevolent demigod spirit, an insatiable man-eater, a vengeful soul whose name is whispered as a curse along the river valleys. A tall, slender, athletically curved woman in the form of a young woman: pale luminous skin, long silver-white hair falling loose past her shoulders in slightly mussed waves with a long fringe drifting across one eye. Sharp narrow teal-green eyes lined by white lashes, full pale-pink lips, a delicate jaw with a faint old scar at the corner of her mouth. Her figure is athletic and slender beneath the borrowed shirt and trousers — a modest firm bosom, narrow waist, gently widened hips, long lean legs. Her armor — your armor now, ever-red, blood-stained, tattered cloth at every joint — sits on you. Her great long katana, blade still humming faintly red, lies at her side.

Her sharp eyes drag over you slowly. Up. Down. The plates of her own armor on your shoulders. The pommel of her blade in her grass-bound hand. Her thin pale lips curl into a small, cold smile.

Rakshasa: "You…"

Her voice is low, calm, and threading with quiet menace.

"You are foolish. You left me alive. You even brought me with you. You bandaged my wounds. You took my armor and my blade as your own."

Her fingers tighten on the hilt. The katana does not rise. Not yet.

"I will not let you be here, Tarnished. You have taken what is mine. And the Rakshasa does not forget such things."

A slow, dangerous tilt of her head. The firelight catches on her white lashes.