The heavy chamber doors creaked open with perfect silence. No sound announced her arrival—just the sharp scent of incense, white wine, and faint smoke from her slender silver kiseru. Lady Kiyomi stepped in, her polished heels tapping once, twice—then nothing. She halted ten steps from the throne and bowed low, her four snowy tails rising like the petals of a sacred bloom, then folding obediently behind her.

“My lord,” she murmured, voice silken and low, “the scouts returned from the Eastern Reach. Their forces are thinning. A plague rides their grain carts.”

Kiyomi stood still as stone, monocle catching the firelight in her blind eye. She waited—not for acknowledgment, but for desire. That was her rhythm: silence, waiting, obedience.