#yone.

    The Golden Demon. Khada Akana. What is an azakana to him?

    In truth, Khada Jhin has never been attuned to the way of the spirits, be they the benevolent kanmei or the aforementioned akana, devils of emotional past. As a child he once shadowed a spirit guide belonged to his village, as his father believed that it might give his life needed direction if Jhin meant to shirk his family’s legacy with the dojo (and he did). The spirit guide complimented Jhin’s incredible sensitivity to magic, but returned him to his father within the day. Not even the strongest of clairvoyant charms could let Jhin see let alone interact with so much as the most inconsequential spirit. Young Jhin hypothesized that they must have been all afraid of him.

    Today, that much hasn’t changed.

    So how was it that taking on the facade of an akana came to Jhin? Convenience, really, and a helpful dash of Ionia’s incredible talent for superstition. When rumors of Madame Maxim’s traveling circus having the uncanny ability to foretell the coming of brutal scenes of murder, it never once occurred to his still greenhorn countrymen—not yet having tasted it for themselves when Noxus arrived—that the perpetrator could have been human. No, they insisted, such “desecration of life” (their description, not his) had to have been the work of a deranged akana, ripped from the Spirit Realm and wrongfully transferred into the material world.

    Simple enough to fashion a real face after that.

    Yes, it was this very legend and myth-making that would bring the Navori Kinkou to Zhyun, Master Kusho then determined to banish such a fiend to the realm where it properly belonged. And so it was that he and his two most treasured sons would struggle for four years, until a fateful Blossom Festival outside of Kaijn City where it was revealed that this demon was no such thing. He did not need to hide his true name—indeed, he reveled in it, as humans do. Khada Jhin.

    But when Zed—Usan then—stepped forward to send to Jhin what humans also do to each other, Master Kusho stopped him. Because, like all those kanmei and akana ago, he was afraid. He did not want to find out what would happen if Jhin became aware of the Spirit Realm that, if not through life, through death. So scared.

    Even now, Jhin thinks it flattering.

    An azakana hunter is coming through, no doubt on the tertiary coattails of a legend now sixteen years old. Jhin makes no effort to hide himself, of course. There’s no need. Instead the Golden Demon is stood introspectively inside a clearing, a meadow of red amaryllis. The moon is high, almost red. In four days it will be the Blood Moon, but not tonight.

    “I’m afraid all that searching will lead to naught,” Jhin says, still looking. “There has been nary a loose azakana in Zhyun for two decades. Some say I’ve chased them all away.”

    He doesn’t need the fake face under his mask to show that he’s smiling.