Prologue – Ryuk
From a distance, two men were climbing up the side of a white ice-encrusted cliff. Dressed in white flowing robes, they scaled cliff with ease, every step propelling them further up the wall. The man in the lead was Sun Ji. The head of the prosperous Sun Clan and an immortal practitioner of the magic arts. Tak Shin, his most loyal servant, followed close behind.
“Hurry, we’ve tarried too long,” Sun Ji croaked, reaching for a talisman from underneath his robes.
“You must remain calm, the remnants of the Shadow Guard could still be lurking around,” Tak Shin warned with a soft voice.
By the time they made it to the top of the cliff, the men were covered in snow head to toe, but the two men paid it no mind. There was a small castle waiting at the top of the cliff.
Dried splotches of blood covered the walls of the gate. The mangled corpses of Shadow Guard strewn all around the yard indicated a struggle. With a heavy heart, Sun Ji walked through the main gates.
Tripping over the leg of a corpse, he cursed out loud. It was a girl. Judging from her robes she was only a student, she couldn’t have been older than thirteen. She was a child. And yet here she was, her life snuffed out before it even began in earnest.
“We should move on, we need to find your wife.”
Tak Shin’s words snapped Sun Ji back to reality. His pregnant wife was somewhere in the castle and he feared the worst for her and his unborn child. But regardless, he still had to confirm, to see with his own eyes what had become of his wife.
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The duo churned through the empty, bloody halls of the castle. They forced their way past the bodies of mangled castle guards and elderly servants. Among them were Shadow Guard, their skeletal corpses already fading back into dust.
Sun Ji found his wife lying in the rearmost chamber. Her black eyes were open, staring into space. Embedded in her stomach was a long, skinny dagger. He knew it all too well. It had been his wedding gift to her; Swallow Tail. A blade symbolizing his eternal love for her, and yet with bitter irony it had been the instrument of her destruction.
“My child, we must find my child,” Sun Ji muttered, his voice hoarse and scratchy. “Where is my son?”
“Sun Ji… I don’t think-”
A cry made them whirl around, their talismans held at ready.
Amid the corpses piled up by the corner of the chamber was a baby swaddled in cloth. Sun Ji scrambled to his child, tripping and stumbling over the corpses of fallen servants. Tak Shin watched with a complicated expression, he had never seen his master so vulnerable.
Shaking with relief, Sun Ji lifted his child, only for sorrow to flush over him once more. The child’s limbs were eviscerated at its joints. Likely meant as one last malicious blow to the head of the Sun Clan, the Shadow Guard had crippled his child.
Sun Ji stared into his son’s face until Tak Shin took the child from him. “Do what you want with the child, he is no longer a child of the Sun Clan,” Sun Ji murmured, walking back to his wife in slow, staggered steps.
Tak Shin nodded, and with the limbless child in arms, he departed from the castle. Tak Shin did not feel the same reproach for the child as his master. The child was a casualty of circumstance. Not entirely unlike Tak Shin himself.
Tak Shin would not raise the child himself, instead he decided to give him away. His life was too hectic to raise a child, especially such a special case like… Ryuk. Yes. His name would be Ryuk.