a squel of shisui the young ninja make it a chapt
Author:unloginuser Time:2025/03/10 Read: 1880a squel of shisui the young ninja
make it a chapter book
The Whispering Squel: Chapter 1 – The Shadow of the Serpent
The air hung thick and heavy with the scent of jasmine and impending rain. Shisui, all of twelve summers old, crouched low behind a gnarled willow, its weeping branches brushing his soot-stained kimono. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat echoing the thunder rumbling in the distance. He wasn’t waiting for rain, though. He was waiting for the squel.
Shisui wasn’t like the other children in the Hidden Village of Whispering Pines. While they played kenjutsu with wooden swords and dreamt of becoming legendary samurai, Shisui dreamt of the squel – a mystical entity said to be a collective consciousness of shadow creatures, a swirling mass of whispers and darkness known only to a select few. He was one of those few, marked by the obsidian birthmark shaped like a serpent’s eye that pulsed faintly beneath his left ear.
This birthmark, his shirushi, was the key. It whispered secrets to him, not in words, but in images and sensations. It was the shirushi that guided him to the hidden grove, a place cloaked in perpetual twilight where the squel was said to reside. Tonight, the shirushi burned hotter than ever, a searing reminder of the urgent task ahead.
His grandmother, the village elder and last of the Shadow Whisperers, lay deathly ill. The village healer, Old Man Taro, had declared only the squel’s magic could save her. He needed to retrieve a single, shimmering scale – a tengu no uroko – said to hold the power to mend life itself.
The grove was a labyrinth of ancient trees, their twisted branches forming a canopy that choked out the starlight. Strange, bioluminescent fungi pulsed with a sickly green light, casting eerie shadows that danced and writhed like living things. Shisui gripped the small, ornate dagger his grandmother had gifted him. It wasn’t just any dagger; its hilt was carved from petrified wood infused with elemental magic, a gift from the squel itself, passed down through generations of Shadow Whisperers.
A low hiss, like the rustling of silk, snaked through the air. Shisui froze, his senses heightened. The shirushi throbbed, warning him. He wasn’t alone.
From the shadows, a pair of glowing emerald eyes emerged, followed by the sinuous form of a giant serpent. Its scales shimmered with an iridescent light, reflecting the fungal glow. It was magnificent, terrifying, and utterly unlike any creature Shisui had ever seen. Its head was crowned with a feathery crest that resembled a phoenix, its fangs dripping with what looked like liquid moonlight. This was no ordinary serpent; this was a tsuki hebi, a creature of the squel itself, a guardian of the tenku no uroko.
The tsuki hebi uncoiled slowly, its gaze fixed on Shisui. The air crackled with anticipation, the silence punctuated only by the distant rumble of thunder. Shisui knew he had to be brave, for his grandmother’s life, and for the legacy of the Shadow Whisperers, depended on it. He held his breath, the obsidian serpent on his skin pulsing with a newfound intensity, and prepared to face the guardian of the squel. The whispered secrets of the shadow creatures surged within him, offering a glimmer of hope in the face of certain death.
(To be continued…)
