Oni, The Second Wolf

 A true craftsman knows one of their craft's most essential and sacred places is within their studio. Where ugly and decay live, true beauty crawls out, made of bone and forgotten stories.

Deep in the Myu'Shima extensive cave system, a city filled with chains existed far beneath the commoner eyes. Here, the first shackles had been created, and the empire didn't realize the cyst that had grown from within. Here is where a forgotten slave boy had been born, and here he was destined to die. Digging deeper into stone and expanding the walls of his confinement, the half-blood of cosmic love and rotting evil fell asleep most nights to the sound of metal scrapping against stone, which had been his lullaby. Yet, that scratching drove many a man insane. The weak had no place inside its steel jaws. The same beast that had threatened to take his life, his scarred hands were able to force the teeth open and continue his climbing. A slave turned master, and that silent fire threatened to consume the ground he resided in. 

Another story the empress had tried to wipe clean, but some residuals always remained. That boy grew into a beast who knew nothing of kindness, of weakness, and of the light. That boy turned into a viper that rested in the darkness, his eyes cursing you much sooner than his fangs pierced through flesh. A keeper and destroyer. The beginning broken stone to the rubble of a city's end. His purpose and existence balanced and punished the evil and the good. Long after the bloodshed and abandonment of his captures, he lived as an omen. 

Nicholai had heard the survivor stories, and now he knew them true. Entering that cave and coming face to face with that massive white figure with multiple red eyes. Yet instead of either one cowering in fear, the beastkin nodded his head to the monster, and the monster nodded back.