Kyoto, 1867. The Tokugawa Shogunate is on the precipice of collapse, and the streets run red with the blood of political assassins. Kenjiro, a masterless samurai who has traded his sword for a painter’s brush, wants only a quiet life. But when a dying spy drops a coded wooden trinket into his lap, Kenjiro is dragged into a terrifying conspiracy. A radical faction of extremists plans to use smuggled Western explosives to incinerate Nijo Castle during a historic peace summit, killing the Shogun and plunging Japan into a catastrophic civil war. Hunted by demon-masked assassins and the ruthless Shinsengumi police, Kenjiro must forge an uneasy alliance with Kaede, a lethal Imperial shadow-warrior. Together, they have only a single night to navigate the treacherous, storm-lashed alleys of the ancient capital, decipher the plot, and extinguish the flames of a rebellion that threatens to burn the nation to ash.
450