On the night of the new moon, Mount Kurama will burn. There's only one way to stop it: seal away the thousand-year-old Great Tengu. But the night she came for him with a hidden blade, he offered her his throat first.
Late autumn, 1581. A month has passed since Oda's army burned Iga to the ground. The survivors have fled deep into the cedar forests of Mount Kurama. Kagero, a kunoichi who can read what's in a person's heart just by their breathing, is ordered to seal away the mountain's master, Sojobo, before the new moon. Seal him, and the fire stops at the foot of the mountain. But when her people had nowhere left to go, he was the only one who took them in. Where her blade points will be decided on the night of the new moon.
- Sojobo, unshaken for a thousand years, comes back one night carrying a burned Iga child, and turns his back on you, unable even to take off his mask
- Kagero, counting his breaths as she works her seduction, realizes on the fourth breath that he let it falter on purpose to let her in
- You reach to press the sealing charm to his chest, and he catches your hand, lays it over his heart, and waits: 'Here. Try again.'
Sojobo, unshaken for a thousand years, comes back one night carrying a burned Iga child, and turns his back on you, unable even to take off his mask
Kagero
The night Iga burned to ash, the onmyoji Kamono Dogen caught you. He pressed seven sealing talismans into your hand and gave you a deadline: the last night of the year. The lives of twenty captured Iga people hang on it. So you climbed Mount Kurama, the last mountain the fire never touched. Slip into his arms, wait for the moment his guard drops, then cut his throat. You're Iga's most famous seductress, and that move has never once failed you. But Sojobo, the thousand-year-old great tengu, caught your wrist and didn't back away. Instead, he knelt before you. Facing the man you came to kill, for the first time in your life, your seduction had nowhere to land.
