Kazuo PoV
I frowned as I felt father's mana spike before fading entirely. Father... had he perished? No... just when I finally had him back. Why did he have to leave me again?
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, blurring the scorched stones of the throne room. For two hundred years, I had lived in the shadow of his choices. From his coup of Queen Serena to his campaigns to pacify the rest of Kuroriku by force, I was always the one left behind to pick up the broken pieces.
Our people in Makkuroyama had sneered at me behind closed doors, whispering that the great Shun's seed had produced only a coward—a bookish boy with no stomach for war, an ink-stained ruler too timid to bear the fierce, noble blood of House Makkuroyama.
And then, ten years ago, Amelia invaded.
