Chapter Text
Even Hizashi, confined as he is to his lonely manor on the rocky sea cliffs of Urusai, has heard the stories.
Alongside his music and his language studies, stories from the outside world have always been one of the few things he’s had to look forward to.
When he was young Hizashi used to wrap himself in a cloak and slip out of the manor through the back garden gate. He’d sneak his way down to Shīsaido, the small town that had sprung up around the manor centuries ago, and find an out-of-the-way corner of the square. He’d spend hours there, just sitting and watching the people go by as he listened to them gossip and laugh.
For just a little while he’d be able to pretend that he was a part of something. He could let himself get caught up in the color and the noise that had always been denied to him before. Those afternoons always served as a bittersweet sort of reminder that there was life outside of the too-quiet estate Hizashi called home.
As he’d grown older Hizashi had found that he cared less and less about remaining hidden, remaining out of the way.
Over time he’d slowly but surely shaken the habits that had been ingrained in him from the cradle, had rid himself of the instinctive need to make himself as small and quiet as possible at all times.
There were no more silk-lined and rune-etched muzzles, no more disapproving glares or fretting servants ordered to keep him silent.
The first time Hizashi had brought his lute to the market square and been brave enough to play it? The joy on the townspeople’s faces, the way they’d laughed and a few had even danced, had lit a fire inside of Hizashi like nothing ever had before.
And the first time he’d gathered the courage to sing?
It had been a revelation.
After that day if Hizashi was not buried in some language tome, seeing to the estate’s business, or training, that was where he could be found.
In the market, lute in hand, a song on his lips, and one ear always open to new stories and gossip.
Nowadays Nemuri even likes to pretend like she lets him go alone, even though they both know she simply lurks in the shadows of a nearby building the entire time.
Over the years of eavesdropping on the town gossip, the tales of the dark, stern, Demon Prince of Yuuei have always been some of Hizashi’s favorites.
He’s always listened, helplessly fascinated, to the whispers of how the Prince was raised, conjured and forged some said, by the Beast King Nedzu’s own cursed paws. And how, with a proper heir finally of age and on the field, the old noble houses of Yuuei had risen up together at last after decades of blood and magic-drenched oppression.
All in order to place the young Demon Prince on Yuuei’s bloody throne in his terrifying and ruthless royal father’s name.
The War of Reclamation had lasted nearly half a decade. Hizashi had been safe, far from any of Urusai’s borders and the fighting that might spill close to or over them, but the war had still sent ripples of unrest across the entire continent.
Thousands had died in the various battles alone and then thousands more had fallen when a mysterious sickness had swept through parts of the nation. A sickness that had bizarrely, suspiciously, seemed to stop at the Yuuei’s borders, ravaging the kingdom from valley to shore and yet somehow never seeping out into the neighboring kingdoms.
Then without reinforcements from the Capital when the Consortium chose to consolidate their power around the city to protect themselves instead of the people, monsters quickly became an issue for many of the more rural villages and towns.
Until, that is, Nedzu and the Demon Prince had stepped up.
Rumor had it that the Prince’s handpicked generals had been dispatched, each with a selection of the more elite troops, to restore order to the land under Nedzu’s control.
Even the Prince had supposedly taken to the field, slaughtering monsters and bandits alike who preyed on the common folk.
There had been whispers of him having lost an eye while fighting a dragon but that was one of the more outlandish rumors Hizashi had eventually dismissed as fanciful exaggeration.
Unlike the more common beasts and monsters, or even the horrors a corrupted sorcerer could conjure, dragons were rather firmly a thing of myth. The last sighting had been centuries ago during the Great Terror when the Hero of Might had taken his legendary sword in hand and battled the demonic Hoard Dragon. Their battles had raged across the entire continent, leveling mountains and creating great craters that would eventually become lakes before the Hero sacrificed his life to prevail against his foe.
Still, with those kinds of rumors circulating even outside of Yuuei’s borders, it was no surprise that in the last months of the war the Consortium had resorted to drastic measures. They had sent out their troops and their golems to burn entire villages and swathes of farmland in a final desperate attempt to quell the rebellion.
There had even, Hizashi knows, been rumors of black blood magic and attempts at summoning.
None of it had worked.
If anything, the heavy-handed cruelty the Consortium had openly employed and the depravity they were rumored to be attempting, had only garnered Nedzu and his Heir more support.
The lower houses and the common people had all loudly chosen a side and there were even rumors of help being funneled into Nedzu’s armies and coffers from outside the country.
But not, of course, from Urusai.
No, Hizashi might have been banished from the royal palace years ago by that point but he’d still known his parents well enough to know better than that. House Yamada cared for no one but their own and looked no further than their own borders and their own people.
Even that care was conditional and based solely on personal gain, as Hizashi was well aware.
Maybe that’s why Hizashi has always enjoyed the tales of the Demon Prince so much. For all the Prince was rumored to be dark and severe, the idea of a royal being able and willing to protect the people who relied on them was deeply appealing.
Well, that and the fact that, if the rumors are correct, the two of them are agemates.
Perhaps, Hizashi has always liked to think in some of his lonelier moments, if things had been different they could have been friends or at least companions of a sort. It had been common enough at one time for royal children to foster in neighboring kingdoms for years at a time in order to build stronger relationships between the nations.
Under Nedzu’s first rule, Yuuei had been a beacon of knowledge for the entire continent and famous for fostering dozens of royal heirs and noble children at a time. The kingdom had even offered education, and eventual employment, to common-born children who showed promise in a particular art, trade, or skill.
If things had been different perhaps Hizashi would have been sent to Yuuei as a child instead of sequestered away.
If the continent had been more stable and the relationships between the various kingdoms less fraught with tension.
If the Consortium had not usurped the throne from King Nedzu in the first place and subsequently thrown Yuuei into nearly half a century of isolationism and then civil war.
If Hizashi had been less of a disappointment to his family, less of a blemish on their royal name and blood.
If, if, if.
So much of Hizashi’s life has been ruled and ruined by such thoughts.
These days he tries not to dwell overlong on what ifs and fantasies that will never be.
Besides, Hizashi had been eleven or so, and long since his family’s not-so-secret shame, when the tensions that would eventually become the War of Reclamation had begun to truly boil.
Most importantly of all, that was the year that his Queen Mother, after long years of desperate trying, had finally fallen pregnant again.
Hizashi had been quickly and quietly sequestered away from the royal palace, hidden away and promptly forgotten about, as soon as the babe had quickened.
He’d been left with an admittedly fine but old manor estate to manage with a small yearly stipend, an even smaller staff, and no contact with anyone outside of Shīsaido.
Only Nemuri remained of his old life, refusing to leave his side and far too stubborn and powerful even at twelve to be threatened or persuaded otherwise. His parents had accepted the loss of the sole Kayama heiress from their household bitterly but swiftly.
After all, what was one royal guard in training, even one with a bloodline as old and gifted as the Kayama, in the face of no longer having Hizashi and the disappointment he embodied underfoot?
Hizashi has never met his younger sister, the sweet Princess Kyōka. He had only heard the news of her birth when the announcement of the new princess had reached the town naturally. In the years following her birth he’s received no invitation to meet her. No letters, no packages, nothing that might have even hinted he’d be welcome back in the palace for even an afternoon.
Not even when she’d been formally declared Crown Princess on her tenth birthday, effectively displacing him in the line of succession.
Hizashi has sent her things over the years though, from long rambling letters to simple small carved songbirds and thin booklets of songs and poetry he wrote himself. Small trinkets to try and build some kind of bridge between himself and the sister he’s never met but still loves, this small bit of his blood family who might be persuaded to see him as more than a disappointment, but there’s never been a reply.
It had hurt more when he was younger, when he’d still been holding on to some small hope that he’d one day be wanted, but Hizashi has grown over the years. He has moved past as much of that hurt as he can.
Hizashi is a man now, fully grown and with the type of grasp on his power that had eluded him for so long.
He is far from the scared, silent child he’d been forced to be for so long.
The Demon Prince has long since grown as well. He’d taken the throne at the official end of the war, having gained titles and newer, more terrible whispers to his name.
The Void King is what they call him now, so named because his magic is so great and terrible that it nullifies and eats all other magic anyone dares to turn against him.
He’s a popular source of entertainment and speculation as a king who is both loved and feared even outside his kingdom’s borders.
Even in the furthest reaches of Urusai where Hizashi lives, stories of his battles in the War are still told and retold, growing with each repetition, while mothers whisper of him to their children to make them behave.
“Be good or Yuuei’s Void King will come and eat your magic right up,” is a warning Hizashi has heard whispered more than once over the years.
Truth be told, Hizashi has written a song or two of his own about the Void King, solemn war ballads and playful ditties alike, and they’re always highly requested by the townsfolk on the nights when he ventures to the tavern.
But the Demon Prince turned Void King is not the only tale Hizashi has spent years obsessing over.
There is also the tale of the Jade Warrior.
The Warrior is shrouded in even more mystery than the Void King, with few stories and rumors reaching such distant corners as Shīsaido without twisting and changing as tales are want to do. But what Hizashi has pieced together about him over the years is both fantastical and fascinating.
During the War of Reclamation when the monster attacks had been at their peak, a single warrior had appeared from the mountains, gleaming sword in hand and holy lightning in his veins.
Both a warrior and a healer, the Jade Warrior had traveled from village to town, fighting monsters and healing the sick. It was said that the only thing to outshine his strength was his kindness, his willingness to help any and all with no thought toward repayment or debts.
It was also said that during the height of the war and before Nedzu and his Heir had deployed their own countermeasures, only the Jade Warrior’s skills had kept all of Musutafu, Yuuei’s vast and wild coastal mountain region, from being completely devastated.
Whether faced with burning under the Consortium’s orders or being sacked by monsters and bandits, the Jade Warrior had stood firm and unyielding between the people and the many horrors that came for them.
Musutafu had quickly become the destination of many refugees. Desperate families fled to the wild mountains and treacherous coastal cliffs by the hundreds and thousands to escape the Consortium’s cruelty and the destruction of the war.
The Jade Warrior had welcomed all who honestly sought his protection.
There are even rumors that the Jade Warrior had defeated a Hecatoncheires of all things when it attempted to rampage through Dagobah, Musutafu’s only port.
Much like the tales of the Void King battling dragons, Hizashi always dismisses such claims, even if he does appreciate their entertainment value. The Hecatoncheires were demons of the old world after all, grotesque amalgamations of severed limbs and heads that only the filthiest of magic could be responsible for.
For all the Consortium’s power and hoarding of arcane knowledge, they didn’t hold a candle to the mages and sorcerers of legend who’d created such abominations.
Still, Hizashi has heard that it is now common practice in Musutafu to pray to the Jade Warrior for both protection and healing. It’s also a trend that has rapidly spread to the rest of Yuuei as towns and villages were rebuilt and many of the families that had once fled returned to their homes.
Hizashi has even seen a few tokens and shrine statues being sold in Shīsaido’s market. Little wooden or stone effigies of a faceless man, hands clasping a longsword and head crowned by a halo of eight-pointed sunlight.
Hizashi has written even more songs about the Warrior, twisting the tales he’s collected to music and rhyme, weaving songs of adventure and goodness that the children love to beg for at his knee whenever they catch him in the square.
Sometimes Hizashi can’t help but imagine what it would have been like to be in Musutafu during the heart of the war. Can’t help that small part of him that thinks he would have thrived there, the loyal Bard at the towering Jade Warrior’s side, Nemuri their cheerful companion and the dagger hidden in their shadows.
Just like the Prophet and the Swift had once followed the Hero of Might.
He even has a long-running series of tales he tells the children that follow along such lines.
Yes, Hizashi has dedicated many an hour to the Void King and the Jade Warrior both.
He’s not the only one though. Each man is famous in their own right and tales of their histories and adventures are sung far and wide from coast to coast, throughout the entire continent and all of the kingdoms.
So when word had traveled that these two living legends had married?
Had even gone so far as to mate their very magic to one another in an act of ultimate joining?
When the bells had rung from shore to mountain and Nedzu’s automatons had left the Capital in droves, crossing borders to carry the news of their union to every corner of every realm?
It made sense that the love story of the cold Void King and his benevolent Warrior love had instantly become legendary.
Especially since Yuuei is now on the cusp of a complete cultural renaissance and it is due to the many reforms that had begun to roll out of Yuuei’s Capital with both of their names and seals attached to the decrees shortly after the wedding.
The marriage, according to all the whispers and signs, is a love match and Yuuei is flourishing in the protective shadow of her new Kings.
The only thing missing is an heir but there are rumors that the King Father Nedzu, who now spends his days ruling Yuuei’s Royal University with an iron paw, has the situation well in hand.
Hizashi, weak to the romance of it all, has waxed poetic about the two’s union enough over the past few years that even Nemuri has become sick of him.
It’s honestly one of his biggest and greatest dreams, to find a love like that. The kind special enough to blossom in the middle of a war and then strong enough to help rebuild a nation.
Hizashi has no doubt that the union of the Void King and the Jade Warrior will go down in the great histories as a love story for the ages.
Which is why the situation Hizashi now finds himself in has thrown him so far off balance.
“You can’t be serious,” Hizashi staggers backward, one hand clutching the thick parchment of the letter as the other clamps down onto the back of his desk chair in an attempt to stay on his feet.
“Deathly so, I’m afraid.” Kazuhira, the long-time majordomo of the Royal Palace, says dryly. The man, ancient even when Hizashi was young and obsessed with propriety, had never cared for him. It’s apparent that little has changed in the years since Hizashi had been effectively banished.
“They,” Hizashi sucks in a shuddering breath as his hand clenches so hard around the back of the chair that his knuckles ache, “cannot possibly believe this will work.”
“The contract is beyond generous,” Kazuhira says, holding out a thin, red leather-bound book in Hizashi’s direction.
Nemuri, may the gods bless her always, steps forward and takes it instead.
Hizashi watches, heart pounding and head buzzing, as she flips through the slender books, expression growing darker with every page she reads.
“This,” Nemuri finally hisses once she’s roughly halfway through, “is little more than a slave contract. Presented by a servant to a prince of the crown.”
Nemuri tosses the book at Kazuhira’s feet with undisguised contempt.
“It is perfectly serviceable,” Kazuhira refutes as he leans forward and picks the book up, “considering the circumstances.” Kazuhira cuts a look in Hizashi’s direction. “And what is on offer.”
Hizashi bites back a flinch at the pointed barb. It’s been years since anyone has made Hizashi feel small and yet here Kazuhira is, capable of cutting him down with barely an effort.
“Why?” Hizashi manages to croak the question out, cutting through the obviously rising tide of Nemuri’s rage. “Why this? Why now?”
‘Why me?’ is the one question Hizashi doesn’t ask because he already knows the answer.
For the first time Kazuhira hesitates, gloved fingers tightening around the book.
“Relations with Yuuei are … delicate,” Kazuhira finally replies, expression pulled into a sour grimace. “As you know, the war impacted the entire continent in a variety of ways. Old relationships frayed, and new ones were forged. It was all very complicated. Unfortunately, not all relationships crafted during war times remain fruitful out of it. Trade has ground almost to a complete halt and the royal coffers are suffering. Unfortunately, much like his beastly father, the Void King is … less than forgiving of those who saw a different vision for Yuuei’s future. So it is time for you to do your duty.”
Hizashi’s eyes close for a split second.
Because of course.
Of course that’s what this all boils down to.
Of course his parents had made this kind of mistake.
As greedy and selfish and unable to read the ways the winds were blowing during the war as his parents had obviously been, of course they’d done something so foolish.
They’d backed the Consortium.
And now they want Hizashi to pay the price for it.
By offering his hand to the Void King and the Jade Warrior in return for a renewal of trade.
By essentially selling him like so much chattel to an already married couple.
“If I refuse?” Hizashi asks.
“Then you will be formally stripped of all titles and banished from Urusai,” Kazuhira says promptly as he rises from his chair and moves toward Hizashi’s desk. He stops just in front and places the book down on the polished black wood. “Their Majesties have no need for a son who refuses to do his duties, especially not one such as you.”
“Then we’ll leave,” Nemuri says instantly, moving to Hizashi’s side, his rock in this as in all things. “We’ll be on a boat and out of Urusai by dawn. My Prince has no further need of this place.”
Hizashi loves her so fiercely it threatens to steal the very breath from his lungs.
“The Oki Mariner leaves at first light,” Hizashi hears himself say as if from a distance. “Captain Selkie would spare us a bit of deck until his next port with little issue and for no more than a few songs.”
“I’ll send word to have things packed,” Nemuri immediately picks up his train of thought.
Hizashi nods, mind stuck in some strange place between numb and whirling. There’s so much to do and relatively little time to do it in. He has some money stashed away thankfully. The stipend might have been just above what was needed to keep the household running but Hizashi has also spent years not only playing his lute and singing in town but also learning the fine art of haggling and trading.
It should be more than enough to see him and Nemuri both through until they can resettle somewhere else. If he stretches it, Hizashi can’t help but think, it might even be enough to have his books and papers all stored somewhere safely so he can send for them one day.
A selfish sort of thing to think about, the preservation of his beloved library, especially at a time like this, but …
“You can see yourself out,” Hizashi tosses an absent wave in Kazuhira’s direction as he moves around his desk to head toward the door, propriety be damned.
It’s not like it matters anymore.
Hizashi won’t be a prince, not even a failed one, for much longer.
A small jolt of excitement runs through Hizashi at the thought.
At the strange sort of freedom it promises him.
“There is one more thing,” Kazuhira’s voice cuts through the room.
It stops Nemuri and Hizashi both in their tracks.
“Their Majesties did have something else they wanted me to inform you of,” Kazuhira says.
Dread instantly settling thick and heavy in his stomach, Hizashi turns back toward Kazuhira.
He has the red book laid flat on the desktop and open to the last page.
“Should you choose to refuse their generous offer,” Kazuhira continues, something almost smug shining in his voice, “Their Majesties will be forced to consider … alternative arrangements.”
“Such as?” Hizashi practically whispers the question.
“The young Princess Kyōka,” Kazuhira replies, “will surely be a welcomed addition to the Hellfire Court.”
Hizashi’s heart stops.
Beside him Nemuri lets out a snarl of rage and disgust.
The Hellfire Court.
Also known as the harem of the king of the northernmost kingdom.
Hitokōri is a land of ice and active volcanoes and it is ruled by a man obsessed with legacy and the breeding of perfect heirs.
It is a cruel land ruled by an even crueler king.
“They wouldn’t,” Hizashi rasps.
He knows they would.
Knows that they will.
They have already abandoned one child for not being up to their standards. They would absolutely sell the other in order to maintain their standing, supposedly beloved daughter or not.
“Who would sit the throne if they barter the Princess away?” Nemuri manages to ask.
“Their Majesties are still young and in excellent health,” Kazuhira points out. “They have many more years of ruling ahead of them. More than enough time for the Princess to birth a child or two, one of which could easily be sent back to Urusai to be raised into a proper heir.”
There are, Hizashi remembers, dark rumors about what happened to the last Hitokōri queen.
Sinister whispers about the horrors Queen Rei had endured at her husband’s hands.
Hissed stories about the cruelty that had been their marriage bed.
Hizashi has never met his little sister.
Has never had a single reply to any of his letters.
But he loves her anyway, loves the concept of her, the hope she’d once represented to him.
And she is a child.
Anger and despair warring in his chest, Hizashi strides across the room, picks up his pen, and signs his life away.