For four centuries, the Empire of the Sun and Moon has been torn apart by war as its samurai Clans fight for the empty throne of the Emperors. The Gray Wolf Clan is one of only six Clans remaining, but faces a deadly threat from the more powerful and ruthless Jade Dragon Clan. Yet the greatest threat to the Empire is not the bloody ambitions of its samurai. The shadowy followers of the Cult of the Mask, worshippers of foreign demons, burrow through the Empire’s society like worms in rotten meat, growing in power year by year.
As battles rage and conspiracies fester, the fate of the Empire will turn on the actions of a handful of samurai. The young lord Ookami Akira, trained by monks to be a master of war but desperately ignorant of the Empire’s civilization, must learn to be the ruler of the Gray Wolf Clan or he and his people will perish. Kuroi Kaede, a naïve girl forced into an unwilling marriage to Akira, must master the courts if she is to survive. The lowly magistrate Kobayashi Mitsui is the only one in the Empire who recognizes the true scale of the threat from the Cult of the Mask. And the murderous wandering swordsman Kenji may hold the fate of all in his blood-stained hands…
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In the wake of the divine visitation at the Battle of Nagai Kyukai Plain, Ookami Akira is now the High Lord of the Wolf Clan, while the opposing Jade Dragon Clan has plunged into civil war. But Akira has hardly claimed his new position than he must struggle against the danger of a civil war in his own Clan, as ambitious samurai Lords plot to depose and replace him. His estranged wife Kaede faces troubles of her own as she seeks to master the art of politics and to protect her infant son Basho.
Meanwhile, the threat of the Demon Lords of Dakkurru grows by the day, along with the machinations of their opponents, the mysterious Aelfynn. Akira’s lover Satsuki fights in desperate battles against invasions by Demon-worshipping barbarians. The magistrate Kobayashi Mitsui risks life and sanity to unravel the conspiracies of the Demons’ Cult of the Mask. And the swordsman Kenji, chosen as the Sword of the divine Sun Goddess Amatsu, must find a way to understand his own power and purpose, even as the Empire’s Theological Council accuses him of heresy and the Cult of the Mask seeks his blood…
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The forces of Dakkurru grow stronger both inside and outside the Empire of the Sun and Moon. In the Jade Dragon Clan, the corrupted High Lord Ryu Noboru gathers the Cult of the Mask and institutes a reign of terror, while in the far north the six remaining Demons prepare sinister new human weapons, forged from pain and cruelty.
In the wake of a miraculous victory at the Battle of Yotsukado, High Lord Ookami Akira battles to reunite the Wolf Clan, confronting treacherous nobles, bloody sieges, and ruthless assassins. Meanwhile his estranged wife Lady Kaede must take control of the Wolf Clan's politics, lest everything Akira has won in combat be lost in the courts. Hope may lie in an alliance between the Wolf Clan's samurai and the strange spirit-creatures called the Aelfynn, but at what price?
Magistrate Kobayashi Mitsui and his comrades, mourning the death of a beloved comrade, struggle to find a way to restart their investigation of the Cult of the Mask even as they find themselves ensnared by the Wolf Clan's internal politics. And the swordsman named Kenji faces the mystery of what it truly means to be the Sword of Amatsu in a world that the Sun Goddess has seemingly abandoned.
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The six remaining Demons of Dakkurru gather their followers to unleash destruction on the Empire of the Sun and Moon... but the Empire's Divine protector, the Sun Goddess Amatsu, has at last been freed from Her imprisonment. Kenji, the blood-stained killer chosen by Fate to be the Goddess' Sword, struggles to accept his destiny and to face the burden of his unforgivable past sins. Even worse, he discovers the Demons now have champions of their own, among them the bounty hunter Tomoe who has sworn revenge against him.
Ookami Akira, the Sword of the Moon and ruler of the Wolf Clan, marshals his armies to face the Demon-possessed High Lord Noboru of the rival Jade Dragon Clan. If Akira can win, he will become Emperor and unite the land under his rule... but it may be too late to stop the invading hordes of Demon-worshipping barbarians. In the courts of the Wolf Clan, Akira's estranged wife Kaede works ceaselessly to hold the Clan together and build support for Akira's claim to the Throne, even as she lives with the bitter knowledge that her husband still loves Satsuki... Satsuki, once the lady of the Nightingale Clan, now a mind-broken slave of the Demons.
And the magistrate Kobayashi Mitsui, haunted by his dead wife, travels through the lands of the Bear Clan toward a final, hopeless chance to rescue his kidnapped son from the Demons' Cult of the Mask...
(The series will conclude with the forthcoming War of Heaven and Earth.)
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The story of the Empire of the Sun and Moon comes to its end!
The Demons of Dakkurru prepare to unmake the Empire and with it, the world. Already their massive barbarian army has overrun the Tiger Clan, and their Cult of the Mask is readying an all-out attack on the Empire's fractured leadership.
The bloodstained sellsword Kenji, haunted by a murderous past, must face his final destiny as the Sword of the Goddess Amatsu. The magistrate Kobayashi Mitsui has one last chance to track down the Mask cultists who kidnapped his son four years ago. And Ookami Akira, Lord of the Wolf Clan and Sword of the Moon, seeks to claim the Empire's long-vacant Throne and rally its remaining strength. He and his estranged wife Kaede face the resistance of intransigent nobles and the corrupt Theological Council, and Akira knows that even if he can lead every samurai into battle he will be massively outnumbered by Dakkurru's army -- an army led by his former lover Satsuki, now the Demons' slave.
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