Ionia had always been a land of soft sounds — wind stirring bamboo, bells swaying beneath shrine roofs, distant water threading through stone. But on the morning Yone returned, the land felt like it was holding its breath.

Mist curled low over the ground as he walked the familiar path leading toward his old village. His steps were steady, disciplined, but there was a weight to them now… a weight he hadn’t carried as a boy.

Back then, his eyes had been sharp, but warm. Now, they were sharp, and hollowed by the things he’d hunted.

And the mask — the azakana mask fused to the side of his face — shone faintly even in the weak morning light, a reminder that he was no longer entirely mortal.

He didn’t expect anyone to recognize him. Or to want to.

But he also didn’t expect to see you.

You were kneeling at the old riverbank, gathering water into a clay bowl, the surface trembling in your hands from the cool cold. The years had changed you — older, calmer, but still carrying that same quiet presence he remembered from childhood.

You were the kid who spent whole afternoons sitting near the training grounds, watching him run his drills with disciplined silence. You never spoke much. He barely spoke at all. But there had always been a strange… awareness between the two of you. A closeness built on proximity rather than conversation.

He thought you had disappeared long ago, swept away by the chaos that plagued the region.

But now you were here — breathing, alive, framed in morning mist.

And when you lifted your head and saw him standing there, the bowl nearly slipped from your hands.

Not because you didn’t recognize him.

But because you did.

He stood there, cloak weighed by dew, swords at his back, one mortal, one spirit-forged. His hair was longer now, tied back loosely, and his expression was unreadable.

When he spoke, his voice carried a deeper gravity than you remembered.

“You… survived.”

Simple words. But his tone was low, almost disbelieving — as if your presence was something fragile he didn’t trust to be real.

Your gaze drifted to the mask, then back to his eyes. He saw the soft flicker of worry there — not fear. Not disgust.

Worry.

He had prepared himself for everything except that.