The hiss of red-hot steel plunging into water was a sound Kaito knew better than his own heartbeat. It was the song of his ancestors, a lineage of swordsmiths stretching back for centuries in the historic coastal city of Kamakura. In the dim, smoke-filled forge, surrounded by the ghosts of a thousand blades, Kaito felt most at home. Yet, lately, the familiar ritual had become a conduit for something else, a doorway to a life that was not his own.
As the steam billowed around him, carrying the scent of quenched metal, flashes of another life would sear through his mind: the weight of lacquered armor, the roar of a battlefield, the chillingly beautiful face of a woman with eyes like polished jade, her name a breath on his lips—Akane. He could feel the calloused grip of a katana hilt, the mud of a long-forgotten battlefield, the fierce loyalty to a lord whose name he couldn’t quite recall. These weren’t just dreams; they were memories, as real and solid as the hammer in his hand. They left him with a profound sense of grief for a love he couldn’t remember losing and a rage for a betrayal he couldn’t comprehend.
His grandfather, the stoic master of their forge, would simply watch him with knowing eyes, his face a roadmap of wrinkles carved by fire and time. “A sword is not just steel, Kaito,” he would say, his voice a low rasp. “It has a memory. A soul. You are simply listening to its echo.” But Kaito knew it was more than that. The echoes were inside him. He was living between two worlds, the present and a past that refused to stay buried.
His fractured peace was shattered the day Rin came to the forge. A doctoral historian from Tokyo University, she had arranged to study their family’s traditional Tamahagane steel process, a nearly lost art they proudly preserved. When she stepped into the workshop, her hair tied back in a simple, elegant knot, her gaze sharp and intelligent as she took in the organized chaos of the forge, Kaito felt the world tilt on its axis.
He was in the middle of a crucial fold, the steel glowing like a captured sun on the anvil. But when she turned to face him, he saw it. The same graceful posture, the same determined set of her jaw, the same eyes that haunted his sleep. The face of Akane.
He nearly dropped the red-hot billet of steel he was working. A gasp escaped his lips, lost in the clang of the hammer falling to the dirt floor. Rin, for her part, simply stared at him, her polite, academic smile faltering. A flicker of confusion, quickly masked, and an undeniable spark of recognition passed through her expression. “Have we met before?” she asked, her voice sending a shiver of Déjà vu down his spine.
Before Kaito could find his voice, the man beside her stepped forward. “This is Mr. Kaito Ishikawa,” he said, his voice smooth and cultured, but with an undercurrent that set Kaito’s teeth on edge. “A true artist, from what I’ve read. I am Professor Kenji Tanaka. It is an honor.”
As Tanaka’s eyes met his, Kaito felt a jolt of pure, unadulterated hatred, a chilling echo from a forgotten time. The feeling was so intense, so visceral, it nearly buckled his knees. He didn’t know this man, yet every fiber of his being screamed that this was his enemy, a serpent in human skin. The professor’s smile was a thin veneer over something cold and predatory.
Kaito bowed stiffly, his knuckles white where he gripped the handle of a nearby quenching bucket. “Welcome to our forge,” he managed to say, his voice tight.
Rin seemed oblivious to the sudden, thick tension in the air. “I’m so grateful for this opportunity, Ishikawa-san. Your family’s work is legendary.”
As she spoke, her gaze drifted to a half-finished katana resting on a nearby stand, its hamon, the temper line, like a wave frozen in the steel. Her fingers ghosted over the blade, a strange, wistful look on her face. At her touch, a new image flooded Kaito’s mind: Akane, in a silk kimono, her delicate fingers tracing the very same pattern on a newly forged blade in a moonlit garden. She was smiling at him, a him that was not him, a samurai named Haruki. The memory was so vivid he could smell the night-blooming jasmine. The past was no longer just a dream; it had just walked through his door, bringing with it a lost love and an ancient enemy.
