The rich scent of sandalwood lingered in the sealed shrine, stale and lifeless, carrying a musty odor that had not dispersed for centuries.
Dim candlelight flickered over the altar, casting the memorial tablets of generations of Hyuga Main House heads into shifting light and shadow. The names carved into those wooden tablets had once represented the highest privileges in Konoha, absolute control over the life and death of the Branch House.
Hyuga Xiao stood before the altar, the hem of his black trench coat hanging naturally. He did not look at the tablets. His Tenseigan, flowing with azure starlight, gazed coldly down at the floor beneath his feet.
The wooden floor was freezing cold.
Hyuga Hiashi, the current head of the Hyuga Main House and one of Konoha's most powerful nobles, was kneeling there like the lowliest stray dog, knees pressed together and forehead firmly against the icy floor. His hands lay flat at his sides, palms up, in a posture of complete submission, at the mercy of whoever wished to slaughter him.
Heavy breathing echoed through the empty shrine. Hiashi's body trembled faintly.
It was not fear, but extreme fanaticism and reverence.
The terrifying power of Kotoamatsukami did not lie in forcibly controlling the body. It lay in completely rewriting a person's perception from the deepest depths of the soul, altering the very foundations of his logic. In Hyuga Hiashi's eyes now, Hyuga Xiao was no longer a Branch House insect branded with the Caged Bird Seal. He was an unquestionable god, the sole meaning of Hiashi's existence.
"Father-in-law." Xiao spoke coldly. His voice was not loud, yet the candle flames jolted violently.
Hiashi shuddered all over and abruptly raised his head like an old dog receiving an imperial decree. The face that had always been stiff, old-fashioned, and