Ashen Blade: Legacy of the Forgotten


    The world no longer belonged to nations. Empires of flesh had crumbled beneath the weight of something far older than kings and parliaments—power itself.


    Now, it was ruled by the Keiretsu (系列), corporate dynasties whose names had outlasted governments and whose influence was measured not in borders, but in industries, warfare, and control. These vast conglomerates did not merely own cities; they sculpted the very fabric of existence. They dictated law, currency, even identity itself.


    The planet had been reforged in their image—a world of steel and will, discipline and war. A place where survival was not a right, but a test.


    The Hierarchy of War


    Society had hardened into a martial order, a fusion of samurai code and Spartan discipline, where strength determined one''s place, and weakness was met with erasure. Every soul was measured not by their birth, but by their ability to wield power. In this world, honor was not granted—it was taken.


    At the pinnacle stood the Kurokenshi (黒剣士)—swordmasters, martial elites, warriors who had refined combat into an art, their bodies enhanced but never enslaved by the machine. To them, augmentation was a tool, not a crutch. They understood the ancient truth: a blade was only as strong as the one who wielded it. The Keiretsu revered them as the embodiment of controlled power—living weapons of flesh and will, tempered by discipline, sharpened by experience.


    Beneath them stood the Integrated, those who had accepted augmentation as necessity rather than mastery. Spliced with artificial enhancements, their bodies hummed with neural accelerators and reinforced sinew, but they lacked the control of the Kurokenshi. Their strength came from efficiency, from the cold logic of biomechanical grafts and synthetic reflexes. They were soldiers, enforcers, corporate loyalists—useful, but ultimately expendable.


    Below them, clinging to survival, were the Unshackled—those who either could not or would not integrate. They were the remnants of a world that had moved beyond them. Without enhancements, they relied on raw instinct, skill, and desperation to survive. To the Keiretsu, they were relics—tolerated only so long as they served a function. Their strength was fleeting, their mortality inevitable.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    And then, at the very bottom, were the ones who did not fit anywhere.


    Hazure-mono (外れ者)


    They weren''t a class. They weren''t even supposed to exist.


    Some were born outside corporate control, unregistered and unseen, phantoms in a world where existence itself required permission. Others were the products of failed augmentation, rejected prototypes discarded like faulty machinery. And some… some were something worse. Something that even the Keiretsu could not predict.


    They were errors in the system, anomalies the world could not process.


    And in a world that demanded obedience, an error was a threat.


    A Machine in Disguise


    The cityscapes of the Keiretsu were a testament to control—towering monoliths of steel and light, forged upon the bones of the old world. Their streets pulsed with artificial veins, their skies burned with synthetic sunsets, and the air itself hummed with the unseen whispers of data and surveillance. Every step, every breath, every transaction was recorded, analyzed, optimized.


    To live within the Keiretsu''s domain was to be watched.


    To exist was to be categorized.


    The system was precise. Unshakable.


    Until something slipped through the cracks.


    Kurogami, one of the planets within the Kaishū Imperium, had long been a province untouched by the corporate powers of the Keiretsu. Once a proud world of martial warriors, Kurogami''s bloodlines had been decimated by corporate wars and imperialistic conquest. The Kaishū Imperium itself, a vast and ancient empire, sought to control countless worlds across the galaxy, shaping each in its image, but Kurogami had remained a symbol of defiance.


    In this fractured world, Ash Atsuyuki, the last living heir of the once-mighty Shirogiri clan of Kurogami, carries the weight of a forgotten legacy. Born with ash-colored hair that marked his lineage, Ash walks a world where his family''s name has been erased by time and corporate conquest. In a land where power is measured by cybernetics, warfare, and control, Ash holds on to the ancient, almost mythic code of the Kurogami, a code that once dictated strength and honor above all.


    But Ash''s world has long since moved beyond honor and tradition. The Keiretsu control the planets now, and survival in the underbelly of this system is not guaranteed. In a society where assassination is a form of commerce, and survival is earned through blood and will, Ash must uncover his past, reclaim his legacy, and forge a path forward with the only weapon left to him: his blade.


    For in a world where even the smallest glitch threatens the order, Ash might just be the anomaly that could change everything—and with it, the very fate of Kurogami and the Kaishū Imperium itself.