The words hung in the clearing a long moment before Muramasa spoke again, quieter this time, though the weight behind it hadn't actually lessened at all. The mist around them had gone still, as though the whole clearing were holding its breath along with Jin.
"Do you know where the demons of my era actually came from," he asked.
Jin considered the question, turning it over slow. It wasn't the kind of thing he'd ever actually thought to ask, not once across all the stories and legends he'd absorbed about ancient blade masters and the wars they'd supposedly ended. "Hell, I'd guess."
Muramasa laughed, short and genuine, a sound Jin hadn't heard from him before, rough at the edges like it hadn't been used in a long time. "Accurate enough, in spirit. But no. Not hell. Not in the way your era imagines it."
"Then where," Jin asked.
