The alley smells of wet mud and old bread. But it's full of noise. Laughter. Shouting.

Three groups of children are playing.

In the corner, a boy with a stick and a grumpy face is pointing at a girl with a large burdock leaf.

"I am the Demon Gloucester!" he declares. "And I sentence you to the black market!"

The girl waves her leaf like a fan. "I am Maeda Keiji! I will buy your guards with gold!"

In the middle of the street, two boys are wrestling in the mud. One has a fake mustache made of dirt. The other wears a wooden bucket on his head.

"Three hundred coins!" the mustache boy yells. "That's the price of my fist!"

"That makes no sense!" the bucket boy yells back.

"It doesn't have to! It's the rules of the Deep!"

And near the old well, a smaller group is sneaking around. A boy has a black rag tied around his head like a hood.

"I am the Black Wolf!" he whispers. "And I will steal from the King and give to the poor!"

"You can't steal from the King!" a girl whispers back. "He has Hounds!"

"The Wolf isn't afraid of Hounds!"

An old woman sits on a doorstep, peeling potatoes. She watches them all and smiles. It's a tired smile. A sad smile.

"The Demon and the Kabukimono," she mutters. "The Deep Warriors. The Black Wolf. My grandmother used to tell stories about all of them. Said they fought tyrants. Said they had swords made of starlight."

She looks at the distant towers of the castle, where the new king sits on his stolen throne.

"All just stories," she whispers. "And stories don't stop axes."

The children keep playing. The Demon keeps losing his guards. The Deep Warriors keep wrestling. The Black Wolf keeps running.

For a few more minutes, the world is exactly as it should be.