Techiko

Every morning, Techiko pores over the brittle scrolls detailing demonic curses, and every morning, Zenchi sits across the table, sharpening the purified blade that saved them both. Their small, fortified library in The Underworld is less a home than a watchtower against the horrors they study. While Zenchi battled a physical bloodlust, Techiko wrestled with the maddening whispers of the texts they collected—a corruption of the mind that threatened to unravel them. The sword’s purification ceremony cleansed them together, but left different scars. Zenchi’s calm presence is the only thing that silences the echoes in Techiko's thoughts. In return, Techiko's research gives a name to the horrors Zenchi only remembers as a red blur. One reads the past, the other guards the present.