Gods, how it pulled.
Forward, always forward, threatening to tip me onto my face if I lost my balance for even a moment.
“Please stand tall,Heika,” the eldest servant said. “The headdress represents Heaven itself reaching down to touch you. If you lean forward, the underworld will pull you down. Youmust stand straight and strong. Let it crown you rather than crush you.”
More metaphors. More weight. More burden.
At least I could relate to that last one.
When they finished, they brought a mirror, and I barely recognized myself. The boy who’d stumbled drunk through Bara’s streets was gone. The prince who’d wept in his mother’s arms last night was hidden. In his place stood someone else—no,somethingelse—golden and radiant and terrible.
Something divine.
“You are ready,Heika,” the eldest servant said as every servant dropped to their knees and pressed foreheads to the floor.
She was wrong. I wasn’t ready. I might never be ready.
But it was time anyway.
Chapter 29
Haru
The walk to the gardens was an ordeal.
Every step was a negotiation with gravity and balance and the impossible weight of the eight hundred layers they’d draped about my body. The headdress pulled me forward. The outer drape pulled me back. The collar choked me. The stiff silk and gold made me sweat despite the near-frigid morning air.
Father, how did you do this for so many years?
The Imperial escort strode before and behind me—silent guards in ceremonial armor that gleamed like black ice, golden pauldrons catching the light, the Imperial chrysanthemum emblazoned across every chest. They stared forward with rigid discipline, careful never to let their eyes fall on me.
Already, I was too sacred to be looked upon.
We reached the bronze doors that led to the gardens. They were massive things, ancient as the Empire itself, carved with scenes of JimmuTenno’s ascension, the first emperor, the firstto bind himself to Amaterasu, the first to become something more than human.
Now it was my turn.
A gong bellowed three times. The sound rolled across the palace like thunder, announcing to everyone that the moment had come, their emperor had come.
The doors creaked open, bronze grinding against stone, revealing the gardens beyond.
I sucked in one last breath—as much as the collar would allow—and stepped forward.
Amaterasu’s warmth blanketed everything.
I felt Her immediately—not as a physical presence but as something deeper, a touch against my soul, a whisper in my blood. The goddess washere, watching, blessing this moment with Her presence even if She couldn’t touch me directly.
I am with you, I felt Her say, though I heard no voice.I am always with you.
The gardens had been transformed overnight.
Every tree was in bloom, petals drifting down like snow—white and pink and gold. The paths had been swept and blessed, marked with sacred symbols in colored sand. Braziers burned incense at intervals, the smoke rising in perfect columns toward heaven.
And there were people.
So many people.
The route winding through the gardens, deliberately circuitous, was designed to give the new emperor time to find inner peace before ascending the throne. In practice, it doubled the distance I had to walk in those impossible robes, fighting to keep my balance, fighting to breathe.
