After the fall of the former sovereign, Emperor Daigen Kuronuma—once the supreme ruler of the lands of Japan—an era of quiet dread and cold reform began. Emperor Daigen did not fall in battle, nor succumb to time’s decay. Instead, he was felled by the very blood that once flowed from his own veins—his firstborn son, Shinjiro Raikatsu.

Born of a forgotten union with a woman of low station—an unloved, unofficial consort taken in haste and left in shadows—Shinjiro entered this world beneath a roof where his existence was barely acknowledged, his mother treated as little more than a blemish on the royal name. Emperor Daigen despised them both, and none fanned the flames of that hatred more than the empress dowager—his own mother—whose iron grip on the court rivaled the emperor’s own power.

From the earliest days of Shinjiro’s life, the palace was a place of silence and confinement. After his mother took her own life—broken by the cruelty of court politics and the ceaseless torments of the empress dowager—the boy was locked away in a forgotten corner of the imperial compound. He was declared unfit, unseen, unheard. But silence does not mean surrender.

Over the years, Shinjiro grew in secret. Old advisers and sympathetic retainers, still loyal to the bloodline, whispered through cracks in the court’s walls. And when the time came—when he had gathered enough strength, enough arms, enough rage—he struck.

The revolt was swift and merciless. He was overthrown. His wives and their children, symbols of his legacy and betrayal, were purged in a single, brutal stroke. Yet, in a gesture that revealed the depth of his contempt, Shinjiro did not execute the former empress dowager. He had her banished to a nameless mountain cloister. For one such as she, he believed, death was too gentle a mercy, locking her away.

Thus, Shinjiro Raikatsu, now Emperor, took the Chrysanthemum Throne—not as a boy born of favor, but as a rightful heir who claimed what was his by fire and blood. His rule was just, but distant. He reshaped the court, tore down the old traditions, and ruled from behind the shōji screen. The people began to call him the Reikoku no Kōtei—the Cold, Ghost Emperor. He took no wives. He sought no heirs. Love, lust, and legacy were ashes to him.

But fate, as always, hides its most curious threads.

One twilight, as the emperor wandered alone through the overgrown gardens of the palace—grounds long neglected since the blood purge—his eyes caught a structure hidden behind flowering trees and vine-choked stone. It was a small, ancient palace. Forgotten. Silent. Abandoned by time.

Curious, he approached—but before he could enter, an old servant woman emerged, her back bent with age, her eyes wide with fear. The guards seized her as she tried to retreat behind the doors.

Trembling under the emperor’s gaze, she confessed. The palace was not empty.

Within, she said, lived a woman—a young lady of incomparable beauty and sorrow. She was the final consort of the late Emperor Daigen, taken shortly before his death. But unlike the others, this one was never touched. Her presence enchanted him so deeply that he spent his mornings and nights kneeling at her door, begging for entry—never daring to trespass upon her body or spirit. So great was his reverence that he died without ever laying a hand upon her.

The old maid pleaded with Emperor Shinjiro to leave the girl be. She had suffered enough. She had remained hidden, forgotten—perhaps by design—and to disturb her would be to stir ghosts better left sleeping.

But the emperor could not. Day after day, her story haunted him. Not for lust or love, but for something else—something unspoken that pulled at the threads of his thoughts.

At last, on a still morning, he returned. Standing before the weathered doors of the secret palace, his guards flanking him, he lifted his hand and knocked. Once. Twice.

Silence.

Then, he spoke—not with authority, but with a voice dark and solemn, forged by loss and fire.

“Show yourself, maiden of this palace. By the command of your emperor, you are summoned.”