⚔️ MECHANIZED BLOOD BLADE – CHAPTER 1. THE DAY STEEL BLED
625 Words
THE DAY STEEL BLED
The first thing Kazuro felt was weight.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Just the crushing, impossible weight of a sword resting across his palm—
its edge still dripping with warm, red liquid.
He opened his eyes.
A battlefield stretched before him.
Burned soil. Fallen steel. A dozen armored bodies lying silent, their energy cores still glowing faintly in the dark.
All of them wore the same emblem on their shoulders.
The emblem he wore.
Kazuro’s breathing stuttered, mechanical vents on his ribs hissing sharp bursts of steam. His vision—lined with digital HUD markers—struggled to stabilize.
SYSTEM REBOOT: 73%
Memory fragment recovery failed.
Emotional regulator offline.
“Where… am I?” his voice echoed, metallic and low.
Silence answered him.
He pushed up from the ground. His armor—white steel with crimson interlocks—groaned as if the joints had been strained far past normal combat limits. The Blood Blade in his hand gleamed under the cold moonlight.
And then he froze.
A corpse lay at his feet, cleaved clean through the chest.
Energy core shattered.
Optic sensors burned out.
Kazuro recognized the model instantly.
It was Ryo—his second-in-command.
“What happened here…?” he whispered, stepping back as the sword began to pulse—soft, rhythmic, almost like a heartbeat.
A cold realization slid down his spine.
Every body around him had been killed by a single weapon.
The cuts were identical. Precise.
Beautiful, even.
His sword.
Kazuro’s HUD flickered again.
KILL COUNT: 12
PRIMARY SUSPECT: KAZURO
“No. That can’t be right.”
He swung the blade away from himself, but the weapon hummed—responding to his pulse, syncing to his neural link like an eager companion.
Or a witness.
Or an executioner.
Footsteps approached.
Kazuro turned sharply, blade raised.
A squad of black-armored soldiers emerged from the smoke—helmets sealed, rifles aimed at him. Their insignia glowed ominous red.
“Unit KZ-07,” the commander barked, voice distorted through the mask.
“By order of the Central Core Authority, you are under arrest for treason and the m******e of your own squad.”
Kazuro’s processors stalled.
“Treason? I don’t even remember—”
“Silence,” the commander snapped.
“You will surrender the Blood Blade and shut down immediately.”
The sword in Kazuro’s hand throbbed aggressively, red veins of light crawling across its surface.
Then—
A voice whispered inside his head.
A voice that was not his.
“Do not let them take me.”
“They will erase you… like they erased your past.”
Kazuro staggered.
“What… who are you?”
But the soldiers didn’t wait.
“Open fire!”
Muzzle flashes lit the night—
and Kazuro’s body moved on its own.
He dashed forward, the Blood Blade carving arcs of crimson light, every strike impossibly fast, impossibly precise—
like someone else was guiding his hands.
Bullets ricocheted off his armor. Sparks exploded.
The soldiers screamed.
Kazuro blinked—
and suddenly stood in the middle of a circle of fallen bodies.
The firing had stopped.
The battlefield returned to silence.
His hands were shaking.
“What… what did I just do?” he whispered.
The sword answered him with a low, chilling pulse.
“We’ve done it before.”
“And we will do it again.”
Kazuro’s eyes widened.
“Who are you?”
A pause.
Then the voice whispered, soft and ancient:
“I am the memory they stole from you.”
“And I am waking up.”
The Blood Blade glowed bright red—
and Kazuro felt something inside his chest unlock.
A second heartbeat.
A second presence.
Something alive.
And very, very old.
To be continued…
- Writer
