Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sketch (WIP) - Princess Ruler (Commission completed by artist Trinh Tuyet) 

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Inuyasha. 

A/N: This story is a standalone spin-off of From the Garden of Gods. The premise is that instead of landing in Sunagakure in Naruto’s time, Kagome lands in a small territory between Earth and Wind during Ninja Clan War era, before the founding of Konohagakure and the village system. 

The prototype of this story was posted five years ago on ffnet in a plot draft form. This story is in full prose form. It has elements of written quest game format and Choose Your Own Adventure format. If you read the original Clan War draft five years ago, then you know I thought of creating a Build-a-Kingdom with Otome elements (multiple romantic routes and endings and all) story / written quest. This story retains some of those elements (so yes, you can discuss and vote for the direction of the story in the future), but because of time constraints (I am a published author and full-time writer, so… not much free time), I can only do a simplified version and not the full-blown one I talked about in the past.  

- Prologue -

Let’s speak of fairy tales. 

Once upon a time, there was a country called Gems, sandwiched between the great nations of Earth and Wind. Gems was a small country with a single lordly line, a handful of noble clans, and a limited population living mostly in and around the one city in the center of its territory. The folks of gems were largely farmers and woodsmen, with no riches to speak thereof. Gem’s army was small, and its people timid. 

It was a time of war, before the five great nations became great, and carved out an uneasy peace under their conjoined rule. Strength was the law of the day, and warring was a way of life, the same as tilling the fields or trawling the rivers. The strong survived, and the weak perished. Large countries gobbled up small countries. Rich countries cannibalized poor countries. Armies were built for years and then shattered in a matter of hours atop burnt fields. 

Upon this historical tapestry, Gems was but a dot. It had no special resources or natural defenses. Perhaps its only fortune, despite being situated between not one, not two, but three greater territories, was that there was a country in an even worse spot. The territory of Rain had the misfortune of being the perfect staging ground for conflict between the three Greats.  

But history is never kind to the timid. As the fires of war raged and the Greats feasted on the corpses of countries weaker, smaller, and poorer, so too did Gems fall into the slow slide to ruin. After a long avalanche of violence lasting decades, the nation called Gems eventually sank underneath the flow of history and disappeared completely from memory. Its territory would then be swiftly gobbled up by its neighbors, and its citizens scattered to the four winds, their descendants never calling themselves Gemmites again. 

But this is a fairy tale.

And so one day, years before its historical demise, a star fell from the skies and landed in the territory of Gems. 

The girl was lost and alone, aimless and in despair. 

Upon her arrival into this world, none bore witness but the grass by the roads and the birds in the trees. The thought of death at her own hands came to her, but by the strength of a promise extracted by force, she ambled on. The path was long and winding, but the girl had borne worse labor. As the sun climbed the skies, she came to a gathering of small shacks. 

Gems had only a single city, with dirt paths and little hamlets scattered about its territory. This was one such place. About a dozen households by the river. The men fished. The women wove. Their children free-ranged. There was a single teashop in the center. Every week they would gather and have what could be charitably called a market. 

On this day, there was no market. But the teashop was open. The girl moved by sheer habits. Her empty stomach squirmed and twisted painfully in her belly. If she let it be for another three or four weeks, this body would perish. 

But she promised. Live. So live the girl would.  

A reluctant server received her. He could not be older than the girl herself. But he was shorter, scrawnier, dirtier.  

It was a time of chaos. Food was scarce, and human lives cheap. People dying of starvation were as common as grass by the roads crushed underneath the hooves of war horses. 

Even as she was, fresh from hell, the girl stood out. Fifteen years of modern life had given her stature and straightened her spine, had washed her in a light that few people of this world could dream of. 

She spoke, asking for food. She had coins on her. But they understood neither her words nor her coins. It was a different world. 

She managed to eat anyway. Her foreign coins were still good by the metals with which they were forged. An old flour bun, a cup of stale tea.

She stood out too much. By the curve of the path outside the hamlet, three men cornered her. They were more pitiful than scary. The blades in their hands had more chips on them than sharp edges. The girl left her backpack to the poor, scared men and ran into the woods. 

Once upon a time, a girl ran far away, screaming for those who were lost. 

Once upon a time, friends fell apart, and dreams sank beneath a black sea.  

Once upon a time, a girl sat in the woods, lost and alone and far from home, asking those who were gone. 

Why’d you have to go away? Why’d you make me stay?  

She lived like a dream, ambling through her days, alone with none but the voices in her head for company. She had no place to go, nothing to do. She could say, perhaps, that she had no will to live on either, but for the promise made. 

Live, said the voices in her head. You are not allowed to die.  

The girl ate when her stomach squirmed in pain, drank when her throat burnt with thirst. She slept in rocky crevices and underneath the shade of trees. Sometimes she would run into some ferocious animals. Sometimes, ferocious animals ran away from her. It could hardly be called living, but she would not break the promise.  

Once upon a time in a land called Gems, the children whispered of a monster in the woods. Long, black hair tangled like vines, loping gait like a gazelle, and eyes wild and sad as freshly birthed Ubume. 

Time passed by. War was succeeded by yet more war. The girl became local folk legends. Something adults in a certain place used to scare children to bed. Until one day, a boy went into the woods, fell into the ravine, and broke his leg. Unexpectedly, his cries summoned the girl. 

In the mist-filled place that was her mind these days, another boy from another time cried out for his lost parents. This image was familiar, and so was the pain. It cut through her like a sharp, hot knife, and lifted the mist for a spare moment. And so, against her instinct to stay away, the girl crept close, touched the scared little boy with one finger. 

The light in her heart thrummed once, and whole he was once more. She pushed him, wide eyes and all, in the direction of the hamlet. 

Go, she said, with a throat now unused to uttering human words. It’s not safe here. 

They didn’t speak the same language, and the boy was terrified besides. But somehow, it got through. The boy ran straight home. His tiny little heart hammered with intermingled terror and excitement. 

That was the monster! The monster helped him!  

As time went by, more children came to the monster, whether they intended to or not. It was a year of combined devastation. War on the forefront, a bad harvest in the rear. Obeying the demands of his liege, the local vassal lord sent for men to go to war in foreign lands. The women followed to pick up the ruins in their wake and bring their bodies home. In the vacuum of empty, desiccated fields, the children of Gems plumbed the forest depths for forages. The deeper they went, the more forages they could find, but so was the danger met.  

The girl came every time they cried out in pain and terror, came to mend their flesh, and chased away their pain. 

There was fear at first, for she looked the part of the monster. But these children were birthed by war and lived at the knees of hardship. They had seen monsters in the form of humans, tender their age might be. This one had the look of a monster, but the heart of one who came to their help. 

It’s a secret, said the children one day, gathered about her in clumps of two or three. It’s our secret. We won’t tell the adults about you. 

As if looking through a frosted glass lens, the girl thought of a different little boy who once sat at her knees and called her name in adoration. It will be our secret. 

Sometimes, in moments of lucidity, the girl thought that perhaps she shouldn’t have come to their help. She thought of the day the light might ooze from her body and swallow the children whole.

…

As with all secrets, eventually, someone caved, someone spilled. In the second year of the intercontinental war, in a dark, forgotten corner of the land, in the ruins of what was once a mighty nation, a tribe of chakra warriors brought to the fore a disease meant to be a weapon of vengeance. It spread quickly, through the blood and bile of the battlefields, from dead and dying bodies into warm and living ones, and then into war camps. And when eventually, the women brought broken bodies that used to be their fathers, their brothers, or their husbands home, it followed them all the way to Gems. In a time of hardship, in an era where lives were cheap and medical services a luxury reserved for the rich and influential, the disease, which wasn’t anything truly dangerous, reaped lives in the hundred thousand.   

The hamlet bordering the woods where the girl stayed was just one nameless hamlet among many rocked by the wide sweep of the disease. Within a matter of days, cries of pain and fear filled the air. It didn’t take much nor long for one boy, bolstered by desperation for his mother, to run to the forest and scream for the girl. 

Bakemono, bakemono, come out. Bakemono, bakemono, please help me! Cried the boy into the shadow of the woods. 

More children followed, drawn by his cries and despair for their parents. 

Bakemono, bakemono, when will you come out? Bakemono, bakemono, we are waiting for you. They cried together. 

The girl sat in the woods, swimming in mist. She heard another song from a long time ago, from which her mother, whose face she had forgotten, had chosen a name for her. 

Kagome, Kagome. The bird in the cage, when will you come out? In the night of dawn, the crane and the turtle slipped. Who is behind you now? 

Her heart hammered inexplicably. The girl looked at the full moon in the skies and thought of times long past when round moons meant something to her.  

Reluctantly, she crept from the shadow of the woods and into the light of the moon. Her heart trembled at the sight of the children waiting for her. One, three, five. Almost all the children whom she had saved. They held her hands and led her slowly into the hamlet where the adults lay weeping in their beds. 

The girl was led from house to house. Touching a finger to their clammy foreheads, she chased away the disease with a thought. What was the pinnacle of decades of research and sacrifices by an entire cabal of chakra warriors… did not even merit an afterthought to the light in her heart. 

As the new dawn rose on the nameless hamlet, the adults awoke to a figure of myth sitting among them. The monster of the woods… in the flesh. 

Now, here was the quandary. The monster was a hideous thing. Long, craggy hair. Wild eyes. Dirty hands and skin. Tattered clothes stained with blood and mud. But just recently, they used tales of her sighting to scare their children to sleep. Now here she was, having just saved them from certain death. 

What to do with her? 

It wasn’t a long debate. Their hamlet was poor, not mannerless. For all that she looked horrendous, she was also very visibly human. Abandoned perhaps, lost certainly, and probably not of sound mind. But human she was, and their savior besides. They could hardly leave her to her own device. 

And so the women of the village gathered around the girl, brought her to the stream, and started washing away years of grime and sorrow. They cut her hair, treated the nicks and scratches of her skin, wiped the stains from her face, clothed her in clean hemp and burlap. Freshly emerged, the girl now looked like no monster at all. 

The adults watched her with new eyes and thought: Abandoned. Not a monster, just abandoned. Someone asked.

What’s your name? 

The girl said nothing. 

Where are you from? 

The girl said nothing.

What do you want to do?

The girl said nothing, only looked at them with wild, sad eyes. 

Someone sighed. Someone else whispered. 

Maigo 迷子

Lost Child.

It was a time of war. Human tragedies were a fact of life, like the sun rising from the East. Someone took her hands. 

It’s alright. Stay with us. We will take care of you. 

…

Spring time came late to Gems that year, but came it did. The people of the nameless hamlet built a shack close to the woods and let the girl stay there. In front of the shack was a small yard and in the back, a garden where they taught her how to grow things for herself. The children came in the morning, singing songs to her and teaching her what words they could. The adults came late in the afternoon, once the farm work was done and the fishing boats came to dock. 

The girl thought, sometimes, that she should go back into the woods, where she would be alone with her thoughts and her dreams, and her past. But every time she started to step foot outside and head into the trees, someone would come to her asking for help. Outside of their little hamlet, the disease ravaged the population. As it swept through the country, so too did rumors of a girl who could chase death away with but a mere touch of her fingers. People came in trickles, then in streams. They came first with doubt and desperation, and then with hope. 

Eventually, a gold gilded carriage stood in front of the girl’s shack. Out came a fine-dressed man flanked by two lines of soldiers. Surrounded by fearful villagers, the girl picked up perhaps one or two words spoken. 

Come… he said… heal… he said… or die… he said…    

The girl had no answer for him. He speared her with a contemptuous look. The sharp words spewing from his mouth fell on deaf ears. A villager, perhaps emboldened by worry, answered in her stead. 

My lord, she cannot speak. My lord, forgive her. My lord, she is but a lost child. 

She will, or she will die, said the man to the villagers and to her. The soldiers took her into the carriage. Gems was not a large nation. Surrounded by woods and low mountains, their population lived mostly in the center and around waterways. It took but four hours for the carriage to reach the lord’s palace. 

For four centuries, the Kagayaku reigned the humble territory as Omo 主, mere land owners with some peerage and exploitative rights to the land. By swearing fealty to the Daimyo of Earth, The latest three generations climbed to the rank of Prince, Shouko 諸侯, to be counted among Sanbyakushouko of the continents. With this elevated title came greater duties. The Kagayaku were no longer simply responsible for their own territory. 

The current lord lineage was thin; a single father and an adult son; with many more Kagayaku buried by time, by diseases, by internal and external politics, by childbirth. The lord Kagayaku was already in his fifties when the summon came from the Daimyo, commanding him to fulfill his duty as a vassal by aiding Earth in the current great continental war. The Lord himself, of course, could not come. So the son went in the father’s stead. 

Fortunately, he came back to Gems alive and whole. Unfortunately, so did the disease. 

The girl was met first by a red-eyed man, Lord Kagayaku himself, half-mad with sorrow and worry for his only surviving family member. The Lord Kagayaku spoke with a voice like glass waiting to break. The girl understood few of his words, but the despair roiling from him in waves was an old friend.    

She was met secondly by a man in his death throes. The Lord Kagayaku spoke again, first to the man, and then to her. The Lord’s hand fisted around the hilt of his sword so tight his flesh turned purple. 

The girl looked at the dying man. He was naked and swimming in his own sweat, blood, and piss. His breath was weak and stuttering. 

The girl looked at the Lord, at the tears red like blood threatening to spill from his age-lined eyes, and then at the cowering courtiers and noble healers behind him. 

She looked at the Lord’s sword, which was now slowly coming out of its sheath. If he swung this blade at me, thought the girl, mayhaps I might die. Mayhaps something else might live in my place. Mayhaps oblivion might be sweet.

Apathetic in the face of whatever threats they threw at her, but compelled by her own nature, the girl put one hand on the man’s brows, wiped away his sweat. Just like that, with one thoughtless, effortless motion of her hand, death bowed at the door, crossed its arm, and left. 

They kept her in the castle still, perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of suspicion. The girl was treated well, and given clothes and food. But she could not leave the castle ground or even the wing where her room was. She was accompanied, too, at all times by guards. 

On the fourth day, she was met once more with Lord Kagayaku. He was a different man now that the paws of grief had left. He looked at her with clear eyes, bowed once. He said…

I thank you with all my heart. 

He said. 

I would give you anything you ask of me, should I be capable of it.

He said. 

What do you want? 

The girl was quiet for a long time. What did she want? Nothing that he could give. So that was her reply to him. 

Nothing. 

He asked her again, with surprise dripping from his words. 

Nothing, repeated the girl.

The Lord looked at her once more, as if this was the first time he truly saw her. Respect warred with shrewd consideration on his face. 

On the sixth day, the son came to thank her. 

On the seventh day, exactly one week from the day she stepped foot into the castle ground, the girl was brought in front of a noble audience. Sitting on his throne, with his son on the right and his two ministers below, Lord Kagayaku presented the girl before the noble lineages of Gems…

…

…

… as his newly adopted noble daughter, the little lady Kagayaku. 

… Once upon a time, a girl fell from the skies and was saved. Once upon a time, a dead nation was given another chance. 

…..

End Prologue

….

Next Chapter: Tell Me Your Name

Concept Art: The Princess Ruler 

Commission by artist: Trinh Tuyet

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Inuyasha. 

A/N: This story is a standalone spin-off of From the Garden of Gods. The premise is that instead of landing in Sunagakure in Naruto’s time, Kagome lands in a small territory between Earth and Wind during Ninja Clan War era, before the founding of Konohagakure and the village system. 

Chapter 1: Tell Me Your Name

…………

Along with her inclusion into the family, lord Kagayaku granted the girl a noble name.

Seikuwau 星光 

Seikuwau no Kagayaku. The glow of the star, the shadow of the star. 

… That which eats the star. 

He led the girl through the ceremony, reading out the name to her, writing out the name, inscribing it in the Kagayaku’s book of lineage. When she died, the lord told her, gesturing at the tablets in the Kagayaku Hall of Worship, her royal name would stand there along with generations of Kagayaku. She would never be alone, even in death. 

It was an honor to have a royal name at a time when female names weren’t even strictly a necessity. Thrice the honor to have it granted to what amounted to a barbarian rescued from the dark woods. 

The whole ordeal generated no small amount of whispering among Gems nobility and wealthy landowners. The Lord was too generous, said some. The girl did not deserve it, said others. She would fit better as a physician, for she was not pretty enough nor of noble enough blood to be a concubine. Some uglier things were said, too, to which the girl turned a blind ear. In fact, she turned a blind ear to almost everything. 

Politics. The beating heart around which human society revolved. 

The girl was no stranger to it; though constrained by it, she no longer was. 

On the 8th day, she was taken to a secluded courtyard house in the East corner of the palace. The courtyard had its own water well and garden. The main building hosted a bedroom and a study. Her servants stayed in the smaller room to the South, where they took care of her food and her clothes. There were guards at the entryway, purportedly for her protection. She was told all this was hers and hers alone. 

In the study, where the Sun poured through the wide open windows, the Lord Kagayaku sat her down and said. 

Tell me your name. 

The girl had a name once. She remembered the name, which was once spoken with fondness, but she would rather not speak of it. No matter; she had plenty other names which the people of this world had given her. But just yesterday, she gained another. 

The girl sat quietly in her brand new study, looking at the lines the sun made on the Lord’s wrinkled face. Whatever it was Lord Kagayaku saw in her own; it gave him pause. He lifted a hand and pat her head gently like he might a wounded beast. He said. 

Tell me when you are ready. 

He gave the servants instructions to take care of her and not to disturb her. He stood to leave, but as he neared the door, he stopped and said. 

Maigo 迷子, one cannot be lost forever unless one chooses to. 

For inexplicable reasons, this startled the girl. She lifted her head to look at him. 

Maigo 迷子, he said again. You are home. It’s alright. 

…

Of course, Lord Kagayaku did not adopt her entirely out of the goodness of his heart. The girl knew this. No ruler could afford to make decisions concerning their domain entirely at the whims of their feelings, least of all one who had lost so much to the tides of time. The nobility of Gems might turn up their noses at her barbarian status. The courtiers might scrutinize her with suspicion for her unclear origins. But their ruler knew power when he saw it. Power that defied the rules of gods and men. Power that might give his country an edge against the things to come. 

Unlike the pampered, perfumed bodies that littered his court, the Lord had been to war. On the battlefields, noble and common flesh all bled red. The corpses of kings and princes were no different from common peasants. At the moment of death, all were made equal. 

… Until now. 

The lordling was in his death rattle. And then he was not. 

This was the undeniable truth that the Lord witnessed with his own eyes. The girl waved her hand, touched his sweaty brows with two fingers, and sent Death packing. No men before had managed comparable feats before the Lord. Not even the vaunted shinobi of the East, whose powers sparked life from the earth. 

This was precious, thought the Lord. This should not be left in a child shuttered within herself and absconded deep into the wilds. This was the proverbial gold mine in all of Gems’ history.

Like treasures buried underground, this potential should be excavated, cleansed, shined, and brought to the fore. Her talents should be of service to the nation and the people. In this time of turmoil and chaos, might it be that this girl lifted the nation with her to heights unprecedented. These were the Lord’s thoughts, as real and practical as the considerations and schemes of any rulers worthy of the seat upon which they sat. 

But even these thoughts did not diminish the very real concern the Lord had for a child who was clearly traumatized and in pain. The other half of him was the worried father driven very nearly into madness by witnessing his one surviving family slowly pushed into an agonized death. 

The Lord Kagayaku was both a worthy ruler and a loving father, a combination that was sadly not really all that common among the ruling echelons of the continent. 

It was this fatherly side that reacted to the Lost Child, that put a hand on her head and gave her advice he hoped she would take, that gave her space to heal, and guidance to lean on in times of uncertainty. It was this side that took her in as his noble daughter, thus protecting her from nobles who were only out to exploit her. Had he merely wished to exploit her powers, he had a multitude of other methods that did not require putting the girl in a place where she might claim portions of the crown’s power. 

He let the girl be for a week, let her slowly adjust to her surroundings. He let the villagers come to visit her, understood that in this strange place, they would be the anchors to her aimlessness. He let the sick and the old in too, those ravaged by time and by the disease. Some souls, thought the Lord, took to duty as anchors, took charity as certain facts of life. He would allow this for now, for he knew as the girl healed, so too was she healed in the process. 

For that entire week, streams of dirty peasants trotted the hallowed grounds of a noble estate.

Oh, how his courtiers jeered and screeched. No matter. This was worth it. And that was the extent of what they could do besides.  

In the third week, the Lord selected two of his most loyal and took them to meet the girl. They sat once more in the sun-filled study, where he talked to her slowly, using simple words and a tone he had only ever used when his children were alive and young. 

Their conversation boiled down to the simple fact that the girl needed an education. The two attendants trailing after the Lord would see to it.

School, thought the girl as a wave of gut-wrenching sorrow crashed into her.

White buildings, blue skies, a sunshine field where teenagers frolicked. Two friends called her name with bright eyes. A boy with soft-tousled hair gave her the most tender of looks. He took her out to WacDonald, asked to hold her hands as they walked home. 

In any case, she didn’t say no to the Lord. 

…

There were two distinct levels to the girl’s education. Correspondingly, there were two distinct purposes.  

On the surface, she needed to be taught the language, manners, social conventions, and common knowledge befitting her new status. Nothing official was asked of her, but it was better to have some level of knowledge than to have none at all. 

On a deeper level, she needed to learn to disguise herself and survive. This, the Lord made sure to elaborate until she understood his worries. He pointed to the woman in the pair. 

This is a ninja, he said. The word sparked the image of an excited young boy in the girl’s mind, one who chattered to her excitedly about boy things in their tiny little house in a faraway nation in a long lost time. 

The she-ninja, kunoichi, did something with her hands… and multiplied. The girl looked at her blankly. 

Illusion. There was no life in her double. 

It was in many ways new and old, weaker and stronger than the magic she had once witnessed. 

Their abilities are both inborn and taught, said the lord. Bred by blood, taught by battles, held together by pedigree. He looked at her then. 

My child, he said, your power to defy death is one such as theirs, is it not? It’s in your blood. And so by your flesh, it can be stolen. He stopped to consider and then, seeming to think better of it, decided not to mince words. Stolen by casual acts of violence men visit upon women. 

…Ah… thought the girl as the memory of despair pierced through the fog in her mind. 

It was curious, for all that she no longer feared death, the memory of such violation could still curdle her blood. Her fingers curled into her palms. Her gaze swept the stone floor between them, where the shadows of peony leaves fluttered against liquid sunlight. She thought of that black day when a girl ate a god whole and completed a cycle. 

You need to blend in, said the lord, satisfied when he saw his warning was received. In all of my life, I have never seen powers such as yours. It is surely unmatched in all the lands. But you, lost one , are alone in the world. Countless would happily tear you apart to grasp what they can. 

He stopped again. 

And I don’t want that. 

He put a hand on her head. I don’t want that for you. So you must learn… and hide.

The Lord spoke at length. He spoke of disguising her power with knowledge, spoke of blending in among the many healers and learned men he would hire, spoke of the years to come, what shall await her in the light of the future. 

The girl listened and, for the first time in a very long time, thought about what she wanted in life. Once more, the answer was the same as the day the god eater was dropped in between worlds and became wholly and truly lost. 

She wanted to…

… die …

But she couldn’t. She promised. 

Inertia was a useful thing. Once a person lost the will, but termination had yet to come, the body carried on the motions. Like dead frogs twitching, muscles remembered familiar vectors, the ghost of what had once run through them. The girl had been reared in a culture centered around community and being helpful. She had spent most of her living years in school. So going along with everything, schooling, helping, healing, was almost like a pleasant dream. 

The tutors came one after another. One taught her the languages: common, noble, and sacred. One taught her manners and culture. One taught her the knowledge required from women of prestigious breeding, or tried to anyhow. One taught her medicine. Finally, two, the women who accompanied the lord on that day, taught her what they called chakra. 

It was a different kind of energy. Distinct but not incomprehensible. Learn this, recognize this, said the women. Imitate this. You need to blend in, for if you do not, they will come for you. They will rip from you what they want, and care not for your pain. 

The Lord allowed the girl to open something some might call a clinic. The common people came to see her. At first, the people from the village where they had taken her in and given her new names. Then, new faces who suffered from the disease. The hubbubs of their joy and gratitude slowly filled the chasm in her heart. 

Live, said the girl to herself when things were quiet in the after-hours. You are needed. 

Time passed. One year. Two years. It was nice… to be filled with something other than dark memories. 

Another summon came from the Court of Earth. The Daimyo to whom the Lord swore his fealty called upon his vassals once more to fulfill their duty. Which war it was and with whom did not matter. In this world, war was a natural state of life, as undeniable and inexorable as water flowing from mountains to join great rivers. The Lord had no choice but to obey. But age had robbed from him capability. And so it was the son who went in the father’s stead. With him went Gem’s ever-dwindling population of young, able-bodied men. 

The tiny nation cheered for their lordling as he left, and anxiously followed his every advance through the battlefields. They celebrated every small victory he managed to snatch, and sent their heartfelt consolation with every setback. Until one day, their worst fear came true. Their lordling came home in a box. He had been cornered by untold number of enemies, it was said, and then abandoned by the liege lord to whom his father swore fealty. 

The news rippled through the tiny nation, drawing a veil of gloom over the populace. Their aging Lord crumpled beneath the weight of devastation. The court physician declared a grim prognosis. The court started to descend into chaos as powdered-faced nobles tore at each other over who shall sit on the throne after the Lord. 

As the Sun went down on one dynasty, the girl attended to the Lord by his sick bed. Curiously, she felt the touch of grief. She held the hand of the wrinkled old man lying in bed. In the span of weeks, the Lord had aged years. In the span of days, what dignity and pride he once wore fled like so much dew under the gaze of the sun. What remained was a breathing husk. The girl squeezed his hand, tried to pour the light in her heart into him. But the body resisted. The heart was unwilling. Death stood at the door… and waited. 

“Why is it not working?” asked the girl, with voice filled to the brim with sorrow and frustration. “Why is it not working?” 

The dying old man in bed looked at her with pity and gratitude. He lifted a hand, touched her head gently. “My child… humans are not god. You have done… more than anyone could hope for.” 

The fog in her head evaporated, overwhelmed. There are memories flashing by. Once, she was just as helpless. Once, there were people who held her hand, who pat her head, who guided her, and taught her with all the patience and affection in the world. Just like this. Once, in a place she called home, with people who loved her. 

It was like something finally gave; some shackles had been broken. The girl cried. Hot tears washed her eyes and paint the world in bright, new colors. 

“My name is Kagome,” said the girl finally to the man who had been a surrogate father to her in all but name in this world. “Kagome Higurashi.” 

The ghost of a smile flew by the dying man’s face. A light flickered in his hollow eyes. Hope. 

Lord Kagayaku’s close friends and advisors were in the room with them, the Minister of the Right and the Minister of the Left, as was customary to dying rulers. With what strength remained to him, the Lord declared to his oldest and most loyal friends. 

“I, Tsuchimikado no Kagayaku ( 土御門天皇) , declare the lady Seikuwau no Kagayaku (星光 ), Kagome Higurashi, to be my one and only successor. She is… your new Princess Ruler. Protect her… with everything you have.” 

Then, uncaring of their reaction, to the girl the Lord said: 

“This world is a place filled with cruel and violent men. A girl with a gentle heart such as you, I don’t know how you will fare. But what do I know? I’m just an old, feeble man. You are stronger than you appear.”

His heart stuttered in his ribcages. His time was up. With his last breath, Tsuchimikado no Kagayaku spoke unto her. 

“Live, Kagome. Live gloriously.”

……..

End Chapter 1

……

1. Stylistic choices (quotation marks) in this chapter were made to describe Kagome’s depression and suicidal tendencies. 
2. I finally have some free time to write something for myself. 
3. I finished writing the script for a game last week. Over sixty thousand words of pure dialog. 250 pages. I feel super. One more title out there with my name on it. Now on to the next one. 
4. How Kagome’s noble name came to be: My husband, an award-winning Japanese-English translator, helped me with the name. 星光 can commonly be read as Hoshimi, Hoshimishu, Seari, or Seami in modern Japanese. In Mandarin Chinese, it’s Xin Guang. In Vietnamese, it’s Tinh Quang. 

Noble Asian names have theme naming rules to them. Kagayaku means to glitter, glow, or shine (befitting the ruling clan of a country named Gems). Based on the traditional naming rules, they will name each generation with words carrying specific Kanji/Hanzi radicals. The radical scripts for each generation of Kagayaku are: 日 (ri sun), 月 (yue moon), or 光 (guang light).  

Old Japanese names usually use Kanji with On-yomi (Chinese pronunciation, since Kanji is heavily derived from Mandarin Hanzi). In this case, Seikuwau is a very old way of pronouncing 星光. Old, fuddy-duddy, can trace their lineage back to antiquity and tell you about it kind of old. So old that if you search this name on google, it’s not going to come up with any result (might change after I post this chapter. Who knows?). 

Because of the interplay between Hanji/Kanji, Kun-Yomi, On-Yomi, and old and new pronunciations, this name Seikuwau can be understood as star glow, star light, star shadow, or that which eats the star (which is very fitting for Kagome). In OG Mandarin Chinese, it merely means starlight.   

5. Kagome’s courtyard house is a specific type of architecture in ancient China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. It comprises one main building (housing the master bedroom and study) with two wings (housing kitchen, bathhouse, restroom, small bedrooms for servants), surrounding a courtyard in the middle. The gate and wall face the main building. It’s like this: 

Since she is the only noble living there, it’s only a small courtyard house. Typical courtyard houses can be very large as they can house entire families and also have their own defenses.