Chapter One: The Veil of Smoke and Thunder
Title: Dragon's King (竜王の影)
It is said that in the seventeenth year of the Celestial Reign, when the mist never lifted from the mountain peaks of Tenkazan, and the rivers shimmered like silver snakes under a blood-orange sun, a great cry echoed through the heavens—heard only by the wise and the cursed. That was the day the Dragon's King was born.
Or so they believed.
In the village of Mizukawa, cradled by bamboo forests and the whispering winds of old gods, two sons entered the world under the same storm. One swaddled in silks within the Vermilion Palace, and the other in a straw basket near a rice paddy, the scent of earth and fire upon him. Lightning cracked the sky in two, and for a moment, the kami turned their gaze to the world below.
The newborn prince, son of Emperor Renzō and heir to the dragon throne, wailed only once before falling silent. His skin bore the ancient mark—three scaled lines across his chest, shaped like a coiling dragon. His birth was celebrated with incense and the toll of a thousand bells.
But no one spoke of the other child. The farmer's boy.
He, too, bore the mark.
In the dark, carved cliffs of Iwakura Shrine, an old onmyōji named Seigen stared into the sacred ink pool. The ripples told him what the stars would not. "The dragon soul has chosen wrongly," he whispered to the wind. "Or... it has chosen twice."
It was not a mistake, but a replacement.
For in that hour, a whispering hand—a loyal vassal of the Empress—had taken the palace child and placed him in the arms of a poor woman named Tame, whose husband had just perished in a fire. And the woman, too dazed by grief to question the child in her arms, named him Tatsuo and raised him as her own.
Meanwhile, her real son—Ryoma—was wrapped in royal silks and declared the Dragon's King.
And thus, history was written in blood and lies.
Years passed, and the false prince grew surrounded by luxury, educated in the art of war, poetry, and etiquette. Yet a strange unease followed him, as if the spirits themselves recoiled from his touch.
Meanwhile, in the shadow of mountains, Tatsuo split firewood, stared at clouds, and spoke to birds. Whenever he was near water, it shimmered unnaturally. When he touched the ground, the earth warmed. At sixteen, he wrestled a wild boar to save his brother. At seventeen, he dreamt of dragons with burning eyes whispering his name.
"Come back to us," they hissed. "You were never meant for dirt."
One night, the truth would begin to unravel. It would begin with a storm. It would begin with fire.