In the age of the gods, even mortal men sometimes seem worlds apart.

At the dawn of Japanese civilization, a time remembered now only in myth and song, the western island of Tsukushi is divided between three peoples: the Yamato, mighty conquerors and city-builders who settle in the north; the Hayato, rugged hunters driven back into the midlands by the Yamato; and the Kumaso, a simpler people living along the southern seas. Muna, a girl with Hayato blood, makes her living as a roving huntress on the Yamato-Hayato frontier. In the early autumn months she prepares for the coming winter, but the cycle of her yearly routine is disrupted when she becomes caught up in the matters of a nascent Yamato kingdom, led by the charming but abstruse king Yamasachi-hiko. Little do the people of this kingdom know, Muna and her mysterious powers will have a part to play in a drama which quickly comes to involve the whole fabric of Japan.