Okina is one of the named swordsmen of the Land of Reeds, the distant nation east of the Lands Between whose civil war drove its samurai abroad as wandering Tarnished. Its weapon-art, distilled into the Unsheathe and Seppuku skills, is what defines its diaspora. Okina was extraordinary even among them : the Rivers of Blood description states it precisely, 'Weapon of Okina, swordsman from the Land of Reeds. A cursed weapon that has felled countless men.'

What followed makes Okina more than another swordsman. 'When Mohg, the Lord of Blood, first felt Okina's sword, and madness, upon his flesh, he had a proposal, to offer Okina the life of a demon, whose thirst would never go unsated.' Mohg, the demigod whose own flesh is a wound, recognised in Okina a kindred hunger and offered him the same gift he offered his Mohgwyn knights : an eternal thirst for the kill. Whether Okina accepted or whether Mohg simply imprinted the curse onto the blade itself is left ambiguous. Either way, the Rivers of Blood that drops from Okina's body in Mountaintops of the Giants carries the bargain into the Tarnished's hands.