Samurai.
  The word echoed through the warrior’s mind as he stood his ground on the war-torn battlefield. His fallen brethren lay skewered around him, decorating the earth with a picture of the consequences of betrayal.

  “Your time has come, my lord.” The samurai’s former student had her bow aimed at his body, ready to loose an arrow the moment he made a move. “I’m sorry it had to be this way.” With one hand clutching the wound in his side, the samurai used the other to ready his sword. Nothing else existed in that moment. They stood in a void on a blank canvas ready to be painted red. They didn’t even notice the barbaric howling of the student’s allies eagerly awaiting the spilling of blood, or the frigid air that had caused their fingers to grow numb, or even the bodies that made up the ground they stood on. It was just them, and the battle they had been yearning for the day she left him.

  The samurai lunged forward, racing towards his enemy, closing the gap between them from 10 feet to 7, to 3... and finally his sword met resistance as it ran into his old friend’s body. A hand clutched his shoulder, leaning into him for support. He didn’t dare look her in the eye. All he would see were eyes filled with regret, longing for forgiveness... Or that’s what he wanted to think. So he didn’t look as the weight slipped off of his sword, as the body hit the cold ground. He stood as a statue among the dead.

  But as adrenaline faded and he began to feel again, pain overwhelmed him from his stomach, his forearm, his thigh. He looked down and saw arrows stuck in him in various places, a final act from his student to destroy what she once loved. “Well... You did it. You’ve beaten me,” he whispered. His eyes drifted towards hers. Still gasping, she held out her hand and grabbed his. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I lost myself. I’m sorry.” He fell to his knees. The field was silent, lifeless, desolate. Her army had gone the instant she had fallen.

  And so the samurai sat, with his hand in hers, his mind fixed on her betrayal, clinging to what could have been.

This is what caused his spirit to stay. There was no peace in his demise; so the spirit festered and waited in the body of the once noble samurai, as the bodies rotted and became one with the earth, and flowers and vines sprung from where they had lain. It stayed as the trees grew and the field became a flourishing garden, as the life sprouted all around and within that body, overtaking it, waiting for some person whose judgment is clouded to enter into his domain, so he can prevent betrayal forevermore.

  And so the legend goes... The ghost of the samurai stung by treachery lies in wait in the Garden of Fallen Warriors to prohibit twisted souls from causing the same pain he had to endure. It is why any man with a guilty conscience that enters the garden does not return, and why it has become a haven for those of a good heart. The Spirit of Betrayal fights for peace, even now, in death.



*If you don't wanna read the whole story, this skin is basically the spirit of a samurai who was betrayed and killed by his student. A garden grew where he fell, overtaking parts of his body, and he now waits in the garden to kill those that might betray someone else.*