Tendrils of sweet smelling smoke danced above him. The room soft and bright by the light of a hundred candles.

Aki was alive.

He was home.

The familiar rich brown ceiling beams of his chambers above him. The comfort of his feathered bed beneath him, the richness of his pillows and coverings. He was hot, he tried to throw the silk blanket off, could not. He tried to sit, could not. There was a dull pain in his chest, where his ribs were shattered. His breath came in wheezing bellows. His limbs would not obey. His mouth was dry.

An attendant with beads hanging over her face draped from the brim of her cap leaned over him, and offered a porcelain cup to his lips.

He drank.

It was sweet, cold.

“You have not yet left us,” a soft and feminine voice. Aki knew it, but from where, from whom? Yuki, it was dear Yuki. How her tones had lulled him. How her caress had salved his wounds.

“Yuki,” he barely managed to speak.

Tomoni leaned over.

“I am not your wife, Aki. She has long passed.”

His head was muddled. He furrowed his brow, felt sweat dislodged from his forehead trickle into his eye, stinging. He blinked away tears, of irritation, nothing more. Yuki was dead, yes. She died bearing Koji. She died so long ago. He was not sad then, and he was not sad now. She had borne him a fine son, a fine warrior, a fine leader. So strong and intelligent and that look in his eyes, piercing, knowing. He smiled, and then he felt panic.

“K-koji, is he here?”

Tomoni closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Word has been sent, but it will not reach him in time, I fear. He is across the ocean, Aki, do you remember?”

He grunted, sucked at his teeth. It was so very hard to concentrate, everything blurred together, everything. His life, memory, there were gaps too, there were gaps now. Urgency bloomed in him, told him to bolt up right, to move, to act. Something terrible had happened. There was work to be done, failures to atone for. Failure. He was numb, he could not move. Tomoni made a soothing noise.

“It is the mountain flower, you were in great pain when you were brought back. It was all we could do.”

The drink, yes, he remembered the taste. It took away pain, but numbed more than the body. He spurned the medicine. Loathed it. It was for the weak. He was not weak, he was a great warrior, a grand general.

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With a grand failure.

The battle.

The screaming and the dying and the red hell-scape. The loss so total and sudden.

She stroked his hair. He could not protest.

He fought for his faculties. Words were slow to form, slow to trickle out of his mouth. He wanted to speak much, but could only muster the few obvious words.

“W-what happened?”

“We've made a mistake, my General. We've made a very old mistake,” Tomoni said as she stroked his hair. She sat on the edge of his bed. His chin began to tremble.

What a fool he was, how cocksure. One skirmish on a beech and he was convinced he could march straight through the gates of hell and wrestle evil itself. He wouldn't let himself cry. But thoughts of Yuki kept mingling with thoughts of duty, with his wars and his battles and his most spectacular failure. Had he ever before lost a battle? Had he? No, never. Wait, his first command. A troop of horsemen followed him straight into hidden stakes. All of them dead but he. Again, he had done it again. He marched two thousand men straight into demonic jaws. The sting was the same then as now, it was a gulf in his heart. It was looking inward and seeing a chasm that could not possibly end, so dark and so deep. And Yuki with her plucked brows and her neat hair and how soft her touch was on the back of his hand when he would come home stinking of the road and the fruit from the trees she kept on the estate and baby Koji mewling, Aki insisting it a roar, a lions roar. Yuki's laugh.

What sweet music.

“I know you do not share my faith,” Tomoni's voice brought him back to the present, away from the eddy of memory that threatened to drag him under. “But you are Fujin come again, the wheel has turned long enough that he, you, have come again. It is not a joyous occasion. You've made the same mistakes, as you surely will again when your soul once more finds a body.”

Aki was blinking rapidly. He Fujin? Absurd. Spiritual nonsense, a man died, and he was dead. Nobody came back. Not Yuki, not those horsemen, not the men that Aki killed personally, so close he could smell their breath.

“But you cannot be blamed, no. I tried to warn you, but I was ordained to fail. We cannot influence the divine order. So sleep, and do so without guilt.”

Aki shook his head, he wanted it to be fierce. It was not. The gesture was slow, sad, pathetic.

“I am... no. What happened after the... loss?”

“I don't know, General. I was not there. Some of your men returned bearing you, wounded, we tried to minister, but all we could do was numb the pain, ease your passing.”

Passing? Nonsense.

“Did they...” he had to fight for this word, he should have known it at once, it was pertinent to him, to his craft, to his life. His life. He kept drifting back to his happy estate in long gone years. “...counter attack?”

Tomoni was a long time in responding, her hand stopped brushing his hair. At last she sighed and continued to soothe Aki.

“I would not call it such. But they came through, yes. A host of them. Monterio could not contain the breach, not until day break. Even now he is fighting near the lake. He cannot win. You cannot dam the ocean.”

“I have made it worse.”

“As I implored you not to do, General. But you cannot be blamed. You cannot. Sleep now, our passing legend. I will guide you back to the wheel when the time comes.”

And Tomoni faded from his view, and the attendant returned with the cup, pressing it to his lips, and he tried to refuse it. But could not. He sipped, and he slept.

He did not wake again.

His final dream was of the giant, more defined. It was not so slender, there were hints of facial features on its white oval head. The impression of eyes not yet formed, a brow down turned. Tears. It reached out with a five digit hand.

I am sorry, it did not have to be this way. I learn. I will learn.