Chapter One: The Winds Shift on Mt. Kirama

The long-nosed master looked out to sea from his mountain retreat, still as stone beneath the evening sky. The last light of day caught the smooth ruby in his staff — a red star on the peak.

Below him, the vast reaches of Kaiju Bay glimmered faintly in the twilight. The Silk Curtain — once a divine veil that shimmered at the edge of the world — was gone. Torn by centuries of spiritual neglect and cracks in the land’s soul. The Koukotsu Mandate, sacred law binding spirits, mortals, and mountains, was now a half-remembered phrase — quoted by bureaucrats and ignored by emperors.

And through that breach, the first of them came. Not an armada. Not yet. Only two ships.

Specks on the darkening sea beyond Charybdis Landing, their ivory sails swelled with foreign wind. Each bore the crest of the Bastion of the Azure Flame — the Blue Wizards, emissaries of forgotten spires and sunless vaults. They came not as conquerors, but as collectors. Of secrets. Of relics. Of power.

Tengukensei, Watcher of the Crags, last of the windbound, exhaled. His breath stirred the pine-cloaked slopes below, and the air curled gently around the tip of his staff. He had felt this shift not in sight or sound, but in the rhythm of the mountain itself.

“They come not with blades,” he murmured, “but with bargains. They smile. They whisper. And rot follows.”

Lanterns flickered to life in Sakana Cove, scattered like fallen stars along the hills. The villagers would not see the danger. Not yet. They would trade for foreign dyes and glass trinkets, smile at strange scripts and fine silks. At Charybdis Landing, where law still wore armor, the first handshakes had already been made.

The Council of Elders would argue. The Shōgun of the Cove would stall. The Emperor of Namihei — barely past boyhood — would welcome these strangers with open arms, hungry for progress, blind to erosion.

Above them all, Tengukensei tilted his gaze to the stars — dimmer now, as if recoiling. He flicked open his fan, carved from skybeast bone and etched with the five sigils of the Winds of Balance. It trembled slightly in his grasp, as though it too felt the storm coming.

He would not act yet. Not while shrines still burned incense and ravens still sang the old songs.

But if the Emperor welcomed them… If the roots of the Koukotsu were eaten hollow…

Then the wind would howl. And Tengukensei would rise with it.

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