Jack clambered on to the rock and stood over the lifeless body of Dragon Eye. A large pool of blood was trickling into the lagoon. His nightmare was over.

Then a single bloodshot eye flickered open and Jack’s heart froze.

‘This isn’t possible. No man can be immortal!’

The ninja began to laugh. Dropping to his knees, Jack grabbed Dragon Eye by the lapels of his jacket and shook him furiously.

‘Why won’t you just die?’ he cried, all his pain and frustration welling up.

The ninja flopped limp as a rag doll in his grip. He spluttered and choked, unable to breathe, let alone reply to his question. Jack now saw that Dragon Eye was, in truth, a broken and dying man. He lay him back down and stared in utter disbelief.

His shaking had partly dislodged the ninja’s hood to reveal a second eye.

Whipping the hood completely off, Jack was met by a stranger’s face. During the Battle of Osaka Castle, he’d discovered Dragon Eye’s real identity to be the exiled samurai lord Hattori Tatsuo. But this ninja definitely wasn’t him. Along with possessing two eyes, there was no facial scarring from the childhood pox. And this man was some ten years younger than the Dragon Eye he knew and feared. Only his build, jawline and green-tinted eyes were similar.

‘WHO are you?’ demanded Jack.

‘Dokugan … Ryu,’ replied the ninja weakly.

Jack shook his head. ‘No, you’re not. I’ve seen Hattori Tatsuo’s face with my own eyes. You’re an imposter.’

The man grunted, accepting defeat. ‘I’m a kagemusha … his Shadow Warrior … that’s why, gaijin … Dragon Eye can never die!’

‘But my guardian Masamoto killed Hattori’s double in the Battle of Nakasendo.’

‘The perfect deception!’ wheezed the ninja. ‘And now another of our clan will take over the mantle from me …’ The ninja gloated at the shock on Jack’s face. ‘Black Cloud will have a new master … and Dragon Eye’s legend will live on!’

For the first time Jack understood the warrior spirit’s true meaning of ‘an old enemy returns anew’.

All of a sudden he was seized by the throat, the ninja’s fingers cutting off his air supply. He writhed in the iron-like grip as the man rose up before him.

Squeezing the life from Jack, the kagemusha spat into his face, ‘I’ll haunt you … to your grave, gaijin!’

Then the man slumped back down and fell still, his two eyes staring soulless at the smoking sky.

Recovering his breath, Jack bowed his head and began to sob.

‘Jack!’ called Miyuki, running along the shoreline. ‘Are you all right?’

Yori and Saburo dropped down beside him, astonished to see Dragon Eye unmasked and their friend in one piece.

‘Why are you crying?’ asked Saburo. ‘Dragon Eye’s really dead this time.’