New Iron Country

The battle erupted at dawn.

The traditional samurai were masters of tactics. They formed battle lines across the frozen plain, using the terrain and weather to maximize the effects of "ki." No chakra ripples, no flashes of Light Patterns—only the ultimate refinement of body and will. This was the aesthetic of the Land of Iron's thousand-year Inheritance: cold, simple, and deadly.

Okita's transformed samurai fought in a different way. Their Light Patterns blazed amid the snow and ice, not to attack but to sense—to anticipate their enemies' movements, read the flow of "ki," and dodge at the last moment instead of striking back.

"Don't kill anyone!" Okita's command passed through the network, reaching every Node. "Let them see the difference, not feel the pain!"

But the difference itself became a source of pain. A young traditional samurai fell during his charge, not because he was injured, but because he was stunned. He had seen Okita deflect his full-force strike with a Light Pattern—a kind of power that belonged neither to "ki" nor to anything he could understand.

"Sorcery!" he screamed. "The traitors are using sorcery!"

Confusion spread. The traditional samurai's formation began to falter, not because it had been broken, but because fear was eating away at it. Okita felt a pang of sorrow. They weren't enemies. They were brothers, kin who carried on the same spirit. But that very spirit had become a barrier between them.

Then Mifune appeared.

The old Sword Saint rode no horse and wore no armor. He simply walked across the battlefield, the famed blade Kurosawa resting silently at his waist. Wherever he passed, the fighting stopped—not because of an order, but under the pressure of his "ki." Mifune's "ki" had condensed to the very brink of physical form. Even amid the most chaotic battlefield,