Vox Akuma
Once, Vox lived among mortal men. He walked the streets as no more than a common man, for he was lost. With no memories to guide him, no name to call his own, he was nothing. And yet. There was something about this man, something about his voice. Something – enchanting. It filled all those who heard it with a soft warmth, a drowsy contentment. The lost and the lonely gathered to him, drawn as moths to flame. One became a handful, a handful a dozen. ”It’s unnatural, the way they become enthralled,” said those who watched on from afar. “That is no man. It can only be a demon.”
Neither the man nor his followers paid such whispers any mind. Their ranks grew still, until hundreds amassed on those sandy shores. Vox Akuma, the fearful began to call him. The voice demon.
“Yes,” agreed the man – now a lord – as he tasted that title upon his tongue. “Vox Akuma. This sound – it is a good sound. This shall be my name.” And so it was. A town sprung up there, a clan for the unwanted, united by their love for their lord. Vox loved them in return, and he called them the Kindred, for they were his family. For a while, there they lived – isolated, estranged from those outside, yet content. But peace would not last.
At the castle’s gates, a messenger arrived. “My lord aims to unify the nation,” the man said. “Submit peacefully, and come under our rule.” Vox denied them, for how could he allow his people to fall under the control of those who first rejected them? The whispers outside the city’s walls had grown ever louder as Vox’s power grew, and now the Kindred were treated by the commonfolk as worse than lepers. Ill omens, the people whispered. Heralds of disaster. Vox would not leave his people’s fates in the hands of those who hated them so. The messenger warned him that this would mean no less than war, but Vox spared him only a disinterested glance.
“Then let it come,” he said.
And so it did. Vox himself fought on the frontlines. He slew the enemy by the hundreds, but it was not enough. He was only one man, in the end. How could he alone hope to defend a city? The humans perished, felled one by one upon the samurai’s blades, until none remained. But the spirits – the youkai, the ghosts and those spiritual vagrants who had long lived within those castle walls – these survived. Their lord urged them away, but how could they abandon him as he lay dying? They would not, they insisted. “Flee,” he begged them, then, handing his sword to the leader. “Leave this place, and survive. Live well. For my sake, if not your own.”
Tears in their eyes and regret in their hearts, they did.
Disaster at their heels, the remaining Kindred fled, arriving upon the shores of Ninisani. They vowed, then – the image of their god’s bloodied back burned into their minds – to never again be weak. Vox Akuma would rise again, and when he did, the Kindred would be powerful. Never again would they hide behind his protection. Never again would he suffer for their sakes. The walls came up around their newly claimed lands, the Kindred’s new determination giving them the strength to drive away those godless savages who ravaged the northern lands of Ninisani. Far from home but with love for their god in their hearts still, the Kindred built their clan anew. They called their territory the Holy Land, for this new home they would dedicate to their lost lord, who was surely no demon, but a god. A grand temple was built, before all else. Within sits a well-tended altar, that one and most precious of holy relics -- the lord's own sword -- enshrined there. It is his shintai, the clergy proclaim. Offer your prayers here, and he will hear them. Still – as it ever was – a home for the lost and the downtrodden, the Kindred accept all into their clan, so long as their love they rightfully offer to their lord. And so their ranks swelled, the Holy Land growing rapidly from a small settlement to a Kingdom proper.
The title of Holy King they reserve for Vox alone, for the Kindred believe some day their lord would return to watch over them. And the time will come, they believe, when they walk once more on the shores of paradise. In his honor did they build their new capital as a perfect recreation of their lord's old residence. Akuma Castle, they call it. He sleeps, now, deep within that fortress at its heart – or so the story goes. He gathers power. Some day, he will wake, and then the clan would know true prosperity. But for now, he sleeps.
Non-believers arrive, every once in a great while, at the Holy Kingdom’s gates. They come bearing tales of the god’s incursions into their dreams – tales of how he takes them into his arms, how he whispers gentle endearments into their ears. How he yearns for them. And who can help but to be enthralled by such ardent adoration from one among the divine? Perhaps it is Vox himself, come calling the only way he can for the reincarnated souls of the original clansmen to join him once more…
Or perhaps they are only dreams.