Sechika

Sechika did not come to The Teikodian Empire seeking its blinding gold spires or political favor. They arrived with only a pack of bamboo stalks and a single fallen leaf tucked behind one ear, their face a canvas of kabuki paint that felt more honest than the city’s hollow pageantry. For a season, they simply sat in a forgotten plaza, carving. Not weapons, but wind chimes whose gentle notes were lost in the capital's noise, trading each piece for a meal or a map, never for coin. Their quiet pilgrimage for a legendary strain of petrified bamboo finally led them to the shadowed underpinnings of the palace. There it was: not in a sunlit grove, but used as cold, unyielding bars for a dungeon window. Sechika took no cutting, only the image. They left at dawn, their face wiped clean.