More voices, building: “Blessings on Haru-sama! May Heaven guide us!”
A child’s voice, high and clear: “Don’t be sad! They’re going to Heaven!”
The prayers washed over me like water. The peoplewantedto believe, wanted to think that burning Father and Kioshi would somehow fix everything, would restore order, would make the world right again.
I wanted to believe it, too.
But I’d seen Kioshi’s body.
I’d heard the dragon’s warning.
I knew that fire alone wouldn’t save us.
Still, I walked.
Kinkaku Temple blazed against the afternoon sky. The golden roof caught the sunlight and threw it back like a mirror, bright enough to hurt. Beneath, the cremation grounds waited, two pyres, already built, already blessed. One had been prepared for Father days ago. The second had been added in desperate haste, but the priests had done their work well—both were perfect mountains of sacred wood, stacked with geometric precision, ready to burn.
The High Priest waited at the temple steps.
He was ancient, older even than Grandmother, with white robes and a white beard that seemed to glow in the sunlight. The wonders ofmahouhad extended his life, allowed him to serve five emperors. He’d burned three of them already. He’d watched dynasties rise and fall and rise again. When he looked at me, his eyes held the kind of sorrow that transcended individual grief. He mourned for the Empire itself.
He bowed—not the deep bow he’d give an emperor, only a slight incline, the bow for a prince who wasn’t quite Emperor yet, who stood in that liminal space between identities.
“Akira Haru-sama,” he said, his voice surprisingly strong for someone so old. “The gods welcome your father and brother home.”
-sama. Not -Heika, notYour Majesty.
Until I bound to the tether tomorrow, I was still just a prince, still just Haru.
The old priest was not wrong.
I bowed back, deeper than he had. “Thank you,Sosai.”
“Heaven will not wait,” he said, and his eyes held understanding. “Neither should we.”
The procession filed into the cremation grounds as the palanquins were carried to the bases of the pyres with ceremonial slowness. Father to the right—the one that had been prepared for him, Kioshi to the left—the one built in haste but with no less care. Both palanquins remained open, both bodies visible for a final viewing.
I took my place between the pyres with Mother to my left, still supported by her ladies because she looked like she might fall if they released her. Grandmother stood to my right, her ancient hand gripping my arm with surprising strength.
The entire court stood arrayed behind us, silent ranks of white stretching back to the temple gates.
And before us, the priests began.
The ceremony seemed to last forever.
Prayers. Offerings. Sutras chanted in three-part harmony.
Incense burned until the air was thick with it.
Bells rung in complex patterns that supposedly guided souls to Heaven.
The priests moved through rituals so old that no one remembered their origins, only that they must be performedexactly right or the dead would wander, lost and unable to find their way home.
I watched it all and felt nothing.
No—that wasn’t true.
I felteverything.
