Chapter One: The Awakening

The smell of incense and medicinal herbs pulled Arata Kiyoshi from the void. His eyelids felt like stone slabs, and when he finally pried them open, the world swam in unfocused shapes—paper screens filtering amber light, wooden beams overhead, and the blurred faces of men he didn't recognize hovering above him like hungry ghosts.

"The young master wakes," someone whispered, and the room stirred with urgent movement.

A physician in dark robes leaned close, his breath reeking of sake and dried fish. "Can you hear me, my lord? Move your fingers if you understand."

Arata's fingers twitched. The title felt foreign, wrong—like clothing stolen from a corpse.

"Fetch Hayato-san immediately," another voice commanded.

The room emptied save for two housemaids who knelt at a respectful distance, their faces pressed to the tatami. Arata's throat burned when he tried to speak, managing only a rasping sound that might have been a question.

"Water," one maid whispered, and the other scurried forward with a wooden cup.

The liquid was cool, almost painfully so, and as clarity returned to his vision, so too did memory—fractured and terrible. The journey to Azuchi Castle for the audience with Oda Nobunaga. His father's procession. The mountain pass. Screaming. Blood pooling in the dust. His stepmother's hand reaching for him as the bandits' blades fell again and again.

He tried to sit up, and the world tilted violently.

"Easy, Arata-sama." The voice was deep, familiar, grounding. Hayato Mori entered the chamber with the quiet confidence of a man who'd walked through a thousand battles and emerged with his soul intact. He was perhaps forty, with iron-gray threading through his topknot and scars mapping his forearms like calligraphy. "You've been unconscious for three weeks. The physicians feared we'd lost you."

"Lost me?" Arata's voice cracked. "They should have. I should have died with—" The words caught in his throat like fishhooks.

Hayato knelt beside the futon, his weathered face softening. "But you didn't. You survived, Arata-sama. You are the last of the Kiyoshi bloodline. The sole heir to your father's holdings, his retainers, his people."

The weight of those words crushed down on Arata's chest, heavier than any armor. "I'm nobody's heir. I'm a bastard. The son of a whore they kept in the back rooms like a shameful secret." His laugh was bitter, broken. "Father never wanted me. Ren was his heir. Ren knew how to speak to the retainers, how to ride at the head of an army, how to—"

"Ren is dead," Hayato said quietly. "As is Lord Daigo. As is Lady Aiko. The bandits showed no mercy, no discretion. They killed everyone in the procession save you and three ashigaru who fled into the forest." He paused, letting the silence press down. "By right of blood and the shogun's law, you are now Lord of the Kiyoshi domain. There is no one else."

Arata closed his eyes, but that only made the memories sharper—his stepmother's kind face, the way she'd slip him sweets when his father wasn't looking, how she'd defended him when Ren mocked him for his low birth. She'd been the only light in that cold house, and now she was ashes.

"I don't know how to be a lord," he whispered. "I was never taught. Father made sure of that."

"Then you will learn." Hayato's hand settled on his shoulder, firm and steady. "I will teach you. The blade, the brush, the way of governance—all of it. But first, you must survive."

"Survive?"

"There are those who see opportunity in your father's death. You are young, untrained, and by all accounts, unwanted." Hayato's eyes hardened. "You have enemies, Arata-sama. Some wear their ambition openly. Others hide it behind loyal smiles."

A chill crawled up Arata's spine. "You think someone orchestrated this? The bandits—"

"I don't deal in suspicions without proof," Hayato interrupted. "But I know men. And I know that when a powerful house falls, vultures circle." He stood, his hand resting on the katana at his hip—a gesture both protective and ominous. "For now, focus on regaining your strength. I've posted guards at your door. Trust no one you don't have to."

After Hayato left, Arata lay staring at the ceiling, listening to the distant sounds of the estate—servants moving through corridors, the clack of wooden sandals, the rustle of silk. This was his house now. His responsibility. His prison.

He'd spent his entire life wanting just one thing: to be seen, to be loved, to matter to someone. And now that he had their attention—now that every retainer and servant looked to him—he felt more alone than ever.

Lady Aiko's face haunted him. She'd hated him at first, he knew. How could she not? He was the living proof of her husband's infidelity, the son of a pleasure woman who'd briefly caught Lord Daigo's eye. But over the years, something had shifted. She'd become kind, almost maternal, slipping into his chambers late at night to ensure he'd eaten, defending him against his father's cold dismissals.

And he'd hated her for it. Hated that she played at being his mother when his real mother—whoever she was—had abandoned him to a brothel's mercy and never looked back.

Now he'd give anything to hear Lady Aiko's voice one more time.

The days blurred together in a haze of grief and obligation. Retainers came to pay respects, their eyes measuring him like a blade that might break under pressure. He sat through meetings he barely understood, nodding while men twice his age discussed rice yields and tax disputes and the delicate politics of serving under Nobunaga's expanding rule.

Hayato stayed close, translating the unspoken currents of power, pointing out which retainers could be trusted and which ones smiled too widely. "Kenshin Tsubasa," he murmured one evening after a particularly tense council meeting. "Your father's former chief advisor. Watch him carefully."

"Why? He seems loyal enough."

"He was loyal to your father's power, not your father." Hayato's jaw tightened. "Men like Kenshin don't serve out of honor. They serve out of ambition. And now that power sits with an untested boy..."

"I'm twenty years old," Arata snapped.

"And he's fifty, with thirty years of experience in politics and war." Hayato met his eyes. "I'm not trying to frighten you. I'm trying to keep you alive."

That night, Arata learned exactly what Hayato meant.