I took a stance in the center of the floor.
The katana began to glow with a bright, pale golden light that pushed back the dimness of the lair, flooding every corner, every blood-slick table, every glass cylinder, until the entire chamber stood revealed in merciless clarity.
With a single swing, the blade carved a perfect circle around me.
The radius of three hundred and sixty degrees parted as cleanly as silk under a razor, the cut traveling outward without the slightest lag, as swift and absolute as light itself. Everything within that circle—wood, metal, flesh, bone—separated in the same instant and fell away in silence.
The chairs collapsed into neat halves. The tables split down their centers. The stone walls opened like paper. And the broken people came apart in the same breath, their bodies folding inward and outward at once, then dropping to the floor.
They no longer resembled anything human. May they rest now.
