Anjin Gaiden

A shinobi trudged along a muddy dirt road, head down and sadness in his heart, for it was another day in which he wandered alone. Uzushio had fallen long ago, when he was still a young man, and he had never had a home since. What could compare to the beautiful green island, with the majestic whirlpools offshore, filled with marvelous buildings? A sudden crack of thunder; his head snapped up instantly to see the gathered storm clouds beginning the roll of thunder, and the rain came pouring down. The man tapped his left shoulder twice, and a web of lines glowed briefly before fading away once again. The rain, instead of soaking into his clothes, slid off as if he was a sheer surface, waterproof. The man saw a small, sheltered valley coming up, and determined he would make his camp for the night there. As he crested the dirt ridge turning to mud, he stopped short. A wrecked wooden farmhouse lay on a small rise in the valley, with fields around it of crops that looked like they had been tended not long ago. And perhaps most tellingly, a child's thin cries carried across the air. Lifting his hoary head, the man broke into a jog heading towards the ruin with a spiral above the door.