The day the barbarians came to Fringe Village, the fields where so many children of the town had fought and died to collect the precious Soma fruit provided the first sign that something was amiss. The Hachi came out of the earth, buzzing with fury, ready to sting and devour anything foolish enough to threaten the plants they protected. There was no one in the fields, but their senses, so well attuned to the ambient mana of the region, were telling them that it was time to fight.

The Soma stalks reached high toward the heavens, higher than they had grown in generations, and the fruit was ripening out of dry buds in a matter of minutes.

Jammu Jin had been among those given the task of watching the crop, a largely uninteresting post, but one that potentially gave his family an edge in preparing for the next Reaping. It was not a paid position, but one taken out of duty to the town and the hope that the elders would look favorably on the ones who performed that duty well.

The observers stood on tall wooden platforms spaced along the edge of the crop, and most of them spent the hours of their respective watches in silence and meditation. Jammu channeled according to the Path of the Rushing Wave, feeling the air fill his lungs as mana flowed through his meridians and into his core.

It was not always easy to maintain his concentration, however, despite how little attention his actual job required.

It was too easy to think about the growing tensions between the Jin and Gomen families. Things had gotten worse since the last Reaping, with father Gomen blaming the Jin household for the injuries that had resulted from his own dishonorable actions.

To save face, he had claimed that Janna and Shishio had attacked him without provocation. It was ridiculous, given the difference in their strengths, but considering what his sister and the Makoto foster had done so soon after the incident, there were those in Fringe who were willing to believe they'd had bad intentions. Poor little Suna was the only remaining witness to what had actually happened in the fields, how Shishio had rubbed sap on Father Gomen and goaded the Hachi into attacking him while Janna had attempted to stand against the two-star cultivator as an equal.

Jammu wished he had been there to see it. The idea that the head of a household had stooped to bullying his sisters and a boy with a broken core still galled him. Of course, there had been talk that Shishio wasn’t what he had appeared to be, Jammu didn’t know anything for sure except that the foster had kept both his sisters from harm.

And then he had gotten one of them arrested.

There was no way Janna would have done something like that on her own, stealing from the town stores, but what bothered him most about it was knowing that all that stolen fruit had been inside their house and he hadn’t gotten a single taste.

She would have to pay for everything she stole, even though it had nearly all been recovered. Or she would have had to pay, if she was still alive.

The idea that she had been sent to hunt the Red Spider was even harder to believe than that she could have stolen the fruit. Jammu didn’t hold out much hope that he would see her again, and he blamed the border guardian for that.

Now the border guardian had vanished as well, and no one seemed to know why.

The hachi were going insane. Jammu pulled himself out of his brooding state and jumped down from his post. Along the edge of the fields, other observers were doing the same. A Reaping was imminent.

Jammu wanted to be the first one to make the report, so he ran as fast as he could for the half mile into town and the office of the head observer. One of the village elders was tasked with collating all the reports from those tasked with watching the fields and using that data to predict the next harvest. He was nearly always wrong, but it was better than nothing, and it gave them all a sense of control over what often seemed to be an essentially random and capricious phenomenon.

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He was the first to arrive at the office, but his victory was hollow, as there was no one there waiting to take his report. He could hear raised voices, there seemed to be people gathering toward the town center. Those who were in the street nearest him didn’t sound like they had any better idea of what was happening than he did, so he jogged further into town in the hopes there would be someone there for him to report to.

There were, in fact, a number of elders gathered in the town center, including the First Elder, but they were otherwise occupied.

A group of strangely dressed men and women had apparently invaded the town. There was no sign of violence so far, but the entire situation was extremely strange to Jammu, who had never seen anyone from outside Fringe Town apart from the occasional Azai clan official.

Their leader was a giant, the tallest man Jammu had ever seen, with an obscene mane of blonde hair styled so thoroughly that it was almost like a helmet. He had a fighter’s build, and he was dressed in ceremonial armor, or at least Jammu assumed it was ceremonial, as there was more silver and gold than one would expect of a battle tested panoply. Most of the man's body was covered in metal plates that had been forged and pressed in a repeating pattern. It reminded Jammu of a shell he had seen at the market once, a trinket from the Wet Country called a conch.

"This land belongs to me,” the giant said. Jammu did not know if this statement was a part of a conversation that had been going on for some time, a conversation that would have somehow made the words reasonable. Regardless, the man in the spiral armor was obviously a delusional fool. Why else would he dress that way?

Behind the barbarian leader were a half dozen robed figures, and behind them were several score underlings, to call them warriors would have been too gracious. There was something odd about the robed figures. Their faces and hands were covered, but Jammu got the same sense from them that he had gotten from the fields. There was mana in the air, he just didn't have the eyes to see it.

The First Elder responded as was proper.

"You have come a long way to die."

The First Elder began the kata prescribed by his path, and gold light erupted from his limbs, solidifying into a sheath that encased his entire body. Jammu had heard of this technique, but he had never witnessed it in person. When a cultivator advanced to the third star, he no longer needed to rely on ascendancy, because he had achieved a mana body. This opened the door to the use of mana forged weapons and armor, and the first Elder had obviously settled on the second option.

He rushed forward, faster than anyone than Jammu had ever seen, his every step expressed as a shockwave in the earth, so that the world briefly became a drum beating to the rhythm of his feet.

The barbarian was slow by comparison, and yet there was a quality to his movements that created a sense of ineluctability, as if his intentions were written into the fabric of the universe itself, and could not be gainsaid. The First Elder crossed the distance between them in a blink, but the barbarian moved as if he had predicted the rush, striking the superior cultivator with the back of his hand.

The First Elder was struck to the ground, his golden armor cracking like an egg, and the breath rushing out of his lungs. He bounced to his feet, a blade of light forming in his hand, but the barbarian struck him again and with much the same result. Twice more the First Elder rose, and twice more he was thwarted with the village looking on.

"This land belongs to me," the barbarian said again.

The First Elder was not someone to accept defeat so easily, but the difference in their ability had already been made clear. When he attacked again, the barbarian leader seized his head in his hands and twisted his neck so violently that it snapped.

A cultivator of three-stars, killed like a mortal. Jammu nearly soiled himself. After that, some of the other elders stepped up to face this monster from beyond Jigoku, shouting their names and their pedigrees as they went. None of them lasted longer than the First Elder had.

Jammu was beside himself, he did not realize what he was doing as he stepped into what had become a bloody arena. He stood paces from the man who had dispensed with the greatest powers in the region as casually as he might have dealt with a group of unruly children and fell to his knees.

"Master," he begged, "please bless me with your name."

The barbarian regarded Jammu's obedient posture with approval, and answered him with a word that echoed across the town square like a shot from a Zaibatsu war machine.

"Titanus."