The Kamunabi count six Enchanted Blades. So does the auction house when it lists Shinuchi. So does Sojo, who wanted to mass-produce a seventh by faking the eyes and instead produced craters. Chapter 1 already told you the public number is a lie: Enten stays with the son when the six wartime swords leave the house. The Hishaku stole what was on the books. The book they could not steal is the one Kunishige made afterward.
When the seventh is forged
Every attempt to destroy the wartime blades fails. About fifteen years after the Seitei War, Kunishige and Chihiro forge Enten in the workshop. It is the first blade built as a counter rather than a weapon of state. Its True Realm is Magatsumi’s death. The goldfish are the household made into a fighting language: Kuro, Aka, Nishiki, a bowl on the table before they are a kit. The purpose essay is the longer version. The steel’s file: Enten.
Part 2 is the kiln before any of that language exists. Through chapter 130 the first wartime plate of tamahagane has come out of the furnace and no Enchanted Blade has yet been named on the page. The seventh is still decades and a cover-up away. That is why the count matters now: you are watching the six get made, and you already know a father will later refuse to stop at six.
Bearers the list cannot hold
Chihiro is Enten’s contract. The Lifelong Contract shuts the bearer’s innate sorcery off; he copies other people’s instead. After “Swordsmith,” Enten is in pieces and the son is taking notes toward a new one, which is the seventh being asked to be a seventh twice. Iori ends Part 1 holding Tobimune, a wartime blade changing hands without the government getting a vote. The Sword Bearers page is every printed contract. This page is the one contract the raid could not inventory.
Cloud Gouger dies in chapter 18 and still spends a few charges of Mei as fragments. Magatsumi’s contract is the master key: if Akemura dies, the other five wartime bearers die with him. Enten was aimed at that knot. The unregistered sword is the only one whose brief was to unmake the registered set. Close reading of the first night that fact is already true: chapter 1. Close reading of the last present-tense night: chapter 115.