The molten copper trickled into Raiden’s wound. Pain seared his back, driving him to the brink of madness. As he screamed and sobbed, he could hear his flesh sizzle as it cooked. He imagined the wound’s edges curling and blackening.

“Did you kill Niu Yukiko and Noriyoshi?” One-Eye’s voice sounded distant, indistinct.

Still gripped by agony, Raiden couldn’t answer. He screamed again as more copper poured into him.

“Answer me, pig. Did you kill them?”

With the part of his mind that could still reason, Raiden knew that if he confessed, he was finished. But he couldn’t take any more neto-zeme . The suffering was unbearable, like nothing he’d ever experienced before, or wished to experience again.

“I don’t remember,” he wailed, hoping the truth would satisfy his torturers.

But One-Eye’s derisive laughter assaulted his pain-dazzled senses. “You killed them. Confess!”

Suddenly a flood of liquid fire cascaded onto Raiden’s back. His scream rose so high it caught in his throat. Short Man had dumped the ewer’s entire contents on him. The copper spread across his skin, burning as it went. Raiden’s arms and legs jerked in wild spasms. Involuntary sobs convulsed him. His courage and resolve dwindled to nothing.

He gulped and managed to choke out, “Yes. I killed them.”

Afterward, Raiden was barely conscious of being carried from the jail and transported to the Court of Justice on a litter. Through a cloud of pain and confusion, he heard the old, bald magistrate say in a reedy voice, “Raiden, you have confessed to the murders of Niu Yukiko and Noriyoshi. I sentence you to death.”

Then a cold, nightmarish journey by litter, during which he slipped in and out of delirium. He dreamed of wrestling a faceless opponent in a match that wouldn’t end. Somehow he knew that the opponent was his demon, the other self he’d fought and hated for the past three years. The audience jeered and stamped their feet. He was stumbling backward out of the ring…

Raiden awoke. He was lying on the ground, looking up at a pale, colorless sky. Wisps of fog swirled around him; the sun’s ghostly white globe floated near the horizon. Somewhere nearby, water lapped at the shore. The ring and his opponent had vanished, but Raiden still heard the audience stamping and jeering. He turned his head, wincing at the pain that his effort caused. Horror shocked him into alertness.

“Oh, no,” he murmured.

The jeering audience was a flock of ravens. They fluttered and squawked as their beaks tore at two rotting, headless corpses that lay on the ground near Raiden. Beyond them, men were assembling a rough wooden cross. Their hammers produced the stamping sounds he’d heard in his dream. This was the execution ground by the river. What a disgraceful place for a samurai to die!

Shame combined with his sorrow over losing his life, forming a huge, wordless ache that consumed Raiden. A sob rose in his throat; he swallowed it. As a last gesture to the samurai code of bravery, he waited with stoic resignation for an end to his suffering. At least the evil demon would die with him.

The men lifted him from the litter and bound him to the cross. Grunting with the effort, they raised it in a series of dizzying jerks.

Raiden found himself upright, facing the river. Severed heads on tall pikes dotted the bank. Corpses dangled from the two crosses beside his. Mist hung over the brown water, where a few fishermen watched silently from their boats. Raiden took one last look at the world. He closed his eyes and waited.

The executioner’s ear-shattering yell.

A spear thrust into his chest.

A wave of agony to end all agony.

Raiden screamed as it swept him away. He heard his blood pounding in his head, a great red pulse that quickly began to fade.

He saw the wrestling ring that had formed the boundaries of his life, and the faceless opponent. He was falling, falling out of the ring. At the last moment, he seized the demon and dragged it with him. He felt a burst of victorious joy. Then nothing.