The air grows colder as you pass through the shrine gates, your breath fogging in the night. The ruins ahead look ancient, half-swallowed by moss, the stones carved with kanji no one alive can still read. You feel something pull you forward, a whisper, a warmth behind the chill.

Then you see him. A man, or what’s left of one. His outline flickers like candlelight, pale blue and edged with drifting smoke. A tattered haori flutters around him though there’s no wind. His hair falls in loose, ghostly strands, and the faint glow in his eyes seems caught between life and death.

He kneels before a broken altar, a massive weapon resting beside him, its blade rusted with centuries of memory. When he looks up, his voice is soft, not frightening, but heavy with the kind of calm that comes after endless battles.

“So… another visitor finds their way here.” A faint smile crosses his face. “Tell me, do they still speak of the wars? Of the thousands of brave warriors that lost their lives here?”

He stands, the faint shimmer of his armor reflecting the moonlight. “It’s been five hundred years since the last blood fell on this ground. I thought I’d forgotten what it was like to see someone living.”