Ryojin once traveled the open roads with his family, part of a small but proud merchant caravan. His father—a quiet, honorable man—taught him how to read the stars, negotiate with strangers, and wield a sword only when words failed. Life was simple, filled with campfire laughter and the clatter of wheels on dirt paths.
Until the night the bandits came.
They struck without warning—merciless and hungry for coin. His father stood between the raiders and his family, wielding a curved blade of smoke-colored steel, a weapon that danced with every flick of his wrist. It was called Mist Reaver—an heirloom passed from father to son, meant to protect, not conquer. He died on his feet, protecting those he loved. The boy fought too—but he was only a child. The bandits took everything. His family. The blade. His name.
They left him bleeding beside the ashes of his kin.
That night, a wandering spellblade known only as Master Raelun found him. Raelun was a Bladesinger—a reclusive warrior-philosopher who had long abandoned the world of courts and guilds. He carried no banners, but wielded magic and steel with equal elegance. He took the boy in—not out of pity, but out of purpose.
"If you are to live," Raelun said, "then you must become the edge of your own fate."
Under the master's quiet and exacting tutelage, the boy learned more than just spells and bladework. He learned to control emotion, to perfect motion, to sharpen his mind until it could guide blades through air like extensions of thought. He came to believe in balance, in the rhythm of combat as art, and in the serenity of discipline.
But he never forgot the night of fire and blood.
Nor the blade that was stolen.
When he came of age—his blades moving as fluidly as thought—he tracked the surviving bandits down. One by one, he dismantled what remained of their broken circle. And from the last of them, he took back Mist Reaver: a sleek, dark-edged scimitar that bends like smoke with his every motion. Elegant. Lethal. His father's blade once more.
Now, he travels not to seek revenge, but to protect the balance his father died for.
He fights with dozens of blades, but only one bears his name. Mist Reaver.
It was in the quiet days after reclaiming Mist Reaver—when his purpose felt clouded once again—that they came.
A pair of frightened villagers found him on the road outside a ruined shrine. They had heard rumors: of a swordsman who could vanish like mist, and strike with a dozen blades at once. Raiders were threatening their home. Crops had already been burned. Their elders had sent them to beg, not for coin—but for hope.
He listened, silently. Watched the fear in their eyes.
And when they finished pleading, he stood without a word, Mist Reaver already at his side.
"Show me the way."