[Shindera Mori]

Even outside of the Forest of Bewilderment, Mori no Kuni was a maze masquerading as a nation state. Thick woods seemed to have enveloped the entire country, and were it not for what felt like a lifetime of experience travelling both as an ANBU operative and a fugitive, Mori was certain that he would have gotten lost within its expanse. That thought tweaked a small smile on his face, a name shared with the land within which he found himself. He’d been to this land once before, what must have been near-to-half-a-decade ago, but much had changed since then. The ashen tattoo on his shoulder blade served as a permanent reminder of that. Shindera Mori was no longer merely a man on the run, no longer just a criminal playing at philosopher. No, he was a proselytiser, chief among them for the cult which he found himself a member of. Swearing loyalty to an organisation, one that seemed fit to dominate the world, was not how he saw his future. Yet, convenience and need made for strange bedfellows. Destruction and death were needed for a great reset, so what if he needed to sell his soul to a megalomaniac to achieve that. He was but one man. The world was greater than he. So, with his initiation finalised, and his brethren in religion assaulting his homeland, he had taken his leave. The darkened roads upon which he had once predated would now render prey of a much different kind. Not the weak-willed and weak-bodied, although they could still be killed to satiate his need for the material. Their goods liberated to his own pockets. But those who saw the world in the way that he did. Shindera Mori wandered that dark, forested track, rough spun wool draping him such that he appeared partway monk, partway forester. An apt fit.

tokonatsu yukari