Ikurou

Ikurou remembered the scent of pine smoke and the taste of perfectly toasted sugar from a life before this one. That was before they inherited the ledger. Not a prized magical amulet like the one that changed Akurai’s fate, but a burden all the same: a book of binding contracts and trade routes that snaked exclusively through The Underworld. Their predecessor had been a master of this grim commerce, but Ikurou was a storyteller who preferred tea to tinctures of soul-ash. The deals, however, were absolute. So they adapted. They attend meetings with Kaze cultists in a pressed shirt and tie, offering a marshmallow as a gesture of goodwill. Around sputtering crimson fires, they learned even a Soul Chaser will pause for a story told well. Their carved cane taps a rhythm on the scorched earth, not as a weapon, but to keep time with a tale of a world they no longer see.