Family.

To some it is synonymous with existence. For others, a harbinger of bitterness that burns through the veins of their hearts. Is it merely a concept you either love or hate, or is it the only path you may take versus the rest of your existence that otherwise called to your soul.

He wasn't sure yet, as his soul was still torn. To return home and see his child and wife, sure, all would be well, but the burning inside Kenshi wasn't the need to see his family, but the life he had lived long before that path forked and forced him to choose.

Though his body moved down one path, his heart still refused to make that decision. How foolish he would feel if he had returned only to find that every step he took delved so far down the wrong path that he'd never get those years back, never see the world as he should have.

As he laid with Sento in hand rested over his chest, he wondered just how many steps did it take for him to finally feel regret.

The sun peeled his flesh from the cool Earth and set him on his feet, ready to march into battle. Another day, another fight, but this one was with the dweller of the cave. The monster of flesh and voices, of souls and intelligence beyond his own. When he had reached out, he had felt the soft flesh of a young woman, but the voices that echoed in the oscillating caverns of his mind were that of a demon that had been stuck in Earthrealm for far too long. Driven mad, both of them.

At the entrance after a three day journey, he listened and he waited for the voice to finally scrape itself into the narrow tunnels of his ears and bellow with fear within the cradle of his mind, but for all three days and even now in this still moment Kenshi heard nothing.

The cracks and crevices, the rough and the smooth surface of stone all guided him along, or perhaps it was the memory of the sword in his hands that pulled him forward toward the lair of the beast.

Unable to truly see, he moved at the behest of the spirits embedded within Sento and through them, a second sight was found. Still, Kenshi moved within a world of darkness. Should his eyes open he would have found himself in the middle of the antechamber he had encountered the young woman.

He'd see the creature that stood quietly before him.

"Otōsan?" A tiny voice broke his concentration.

It repeated again until he felt the tug of a little hand on his leg. The voice belonged to a child, a little boy. The voice so closely resembled Takeda, but he knew this child wasn't his child, nor a lost boy.

Still, a father's heart guided the hand and reached for the little child's grasping fingers and knelt.

"You are no child." He shoved the child back and it pouted as it fell with with a loud plop on the dirt.

"We are many children." More voices joined, Kenshi stood and guided his blade.

Each voice bounced off a crack in the walls around him. He listened for the ground to be disturbed around the child he had pushed, but there was no follow up for his blade to follow through.

"We are above," it paused as he turned toward the voices at all angles, "and we are below you."

"What do I call you?"

"We have a thousand names."

He could sense the entity was above him, directly even, and out of reach. Sento could aid him in a strike, but it would not levitate him, nor save him as the entity pulled Kenshi from the ground and guided his body with the force of its mind up against the jagged stone wall.

The entity lowered itself and with one hand out to hold the man in place, slowly crossed the distance between them to investigate the pain upon the mortal's face. Blind, yet he could still see the danger he was in.

"You harbor the power of souls as well." An older, deeper voice crawled into Kenshi's skull.

"The souls of my ancestors."

"Do you wish to learn this?" The entity paused and stepped back, its power pulled Kenshi higher in the cave. If the man could see, he'd find blood scrap the rock wall behind him as he was scrapped up the dome-like cavity of earth and rock.

Kenshi held silent in a long, ugly pause where his only focus was on the blade and the need to drive it through the entity, the failure to move even ligaments and muscles so minuscule they were merely reflexive, he stopped fighting and could only breath to ease the burning and the stinging that clawed into his back.

"Did you come to learn from us?"

"Yes." A whisper. A step down a path further away from his heart.