Tokyo's outskirts. Rain poured down in sheets.
Rain hammered viciously against the shrine's blue-black roof tiles, then spilled in streams from the eaves, drawing transparent arcs within the dim yellow halos of the stone lanterns. Deep in the garden, the century-old cherry tree was shedding its blossoms in the rain. Soaked petals clung to the bluestone path like a mournful, beautiful snowfall.
Minamoto Chisaki had arrived early. Today, the Eight Clans of the Serpent were convening an important meeting, its agenda as heavy as the leaden-gray sky overhead:
How to respond to Headquarters' increasingly intrusive gaze, how to deal with the specialists who had already arrived, how to handle the ominous Embryo in the depths of the Japan Trench, and—how to suppress the ever more rampant Nippon Stronghold, clinging to them like a festering parasite.
He had served in the Execution Bureau for several years and, one year ago, had formally taken on the burden of directing the Japan Branch's Execution Bureau. Over those years, he had led the Branch's Hybrids in an unending battle against "demons" in the shadows.
These "demons" were not the elusive specters of ghost stories, but the Nippon Stronghold—utterly wicked fiends corroded by Dragon Blood, willing to descend into depravity in pursuit of forbidden evolution. They were the darkest fruit born from deep within the Eight Clans of the Serpent's bloodline.
He had never slacked off. Every mission had been completed flawlessly. Yet the shadow of the Nippon Stronghold had not faded; it had only tightened around them. Minamoto Chisaki understood better than anyone that eradicating the "demons" was futile. Evil spirits lay dormant within the family bloodline, born alongside it like light and shadow. It was a fated cycle that could only be suppressed, never ended.
But the Nippon Stronghold itself, and the source