"What?" Ren asked.

The petals fell not in spring, but in winter.

Ren chose the village. He killed her beneath the cherry tree.

The loop shattered.

"Look," Kaito said, holding it up. "Your tree still lives. Not here, but in a garden in the new Kyoto. Children play beneath it. Lovers carve their names into its bark. The sorrow became soil, Ren. The loss became roots."

Kaito turned and walked away. Behind him, he heard Ren speak the truth at last: "My family is gone. My honor is a lie. I have nothing but this blade and this shame."

The priest’s form solidified. "Know what, traveler?"

The legend was fractured, but the Archive said this: in 1338, a warlord’s daughter, Lady Sakura, was promised to a rival clan to end a war. She fell in love with her bodyguard, a ronin named Ren. On the eve of the wedding, they planned to flee. But the warlord discovered their plot. He gave Ren a choice: kill Sakura and prove his loyalty, or watch his family’s ancestral village be burned.