The table was a mess of open books, diagrams sketched across faded pages, notes scribbled in cramped hands by instructors long dead. Jin flipped through them carefully, scanning each for some kind of thread. Something that could explain what had happened back in his sword's inner world.
He hadn't impressed Muramasa. He hadn't even survived their clash.
But Muramasa had recognized something.
The form he used.
The way Jin had moved without thinking, drawn from somewhere deeper than memory.
It hadn't been luck. It hadn't been a fluke.
There was something real buried under his instinct.
Maybe if he understood it, if he found where it came from, he could turn it into something he could actually stand on.
He needed to know more.
And there was only one place to start, the swordsmanship of Muramasa's time.
