The dream came to me as it had every night that week, as familiar now as my own reflection. Like all prophetic dreams, it arrived with a clarity that mere sleep could never match, though I had no way of knowing then that it was prophetic. I only knew that it felt more real than reality itself.

  I stood in a forest I had never known, beneath trees that reached higher than any on Kugawa. The night around me blazed, set alight by an inferno that turned darkness into false day. Heat pressed against my skin like a living thing, more intense than any hearth-fire I had known in my father’s great hall. The air itself seemed to shimmer, thick with smoke and promise and portent.

  I was not alone. Warriors surrounded me, their armor catching the firelight in ways that made my heart ache with recognition. Not Imperial Guardian issue—I had studied military matters enough at my father’s insistence to know that much—but something both foreign and achingly familiar. They wore the colors of my house, obsidian and gold, though the configuration was wrong. Different. Upon each warrior’s cuirass blazed a crimson ryuu—a dragon—consuming its own tail. House Veros had borne the dragon as our mon for eighty generations, but never like this. Our ryuu had always been rampant, proud against the deep black that marked us as who we were.

  The warriors pressed close, shoulder to shoulder, hundreds or perhaps thousands strong. I could never count them all, though I tried each time the dream came. Their faces turned skyward as one, and mine followed, drawn to what held their attention with such fierce intensity.

  A black frigate hung in the burning sky like a wraith made solid, its cargo hold gaping open toward us. Four figures stood silhouetted at the head of the landing ramp, looking down upon the assembled host. I strained to make out their features, as I did every time, but they remained stubbornly obscured.

  The warriors around me raised their voices in a chant that filled the burning air. The language was alien to my ears, yet something in it resonated in my bones, as though some part of me should understand. Their voices carried triumph, exultation, a celebration of something I couldn’t comprehend. Each time, I tried to grasp the meaning, to understand where we were, who these people were that wore my family’s colors with such pride. Each time, the dream slipped away before revelation could come.

  I woke to the phantom scent of smoke, the echo of alien voices still ringing in my ears, the ghostly hum of the frigate’s engines fading like morning mist. Time was when such vivid dreams had been jarring, but I had grown accustomed to them over the years. The borderline lucidity of my dreams had been my companion since childhood. Only the questions lingered, following me through my waking hours like persistent shadows.

  The ceiling of my bedchamber slowly came into focus as I lay there, willing my breathing to steady. Dark wood and earth tones, familiar and grounding after the intense colors of the dream. Cold sweat had become an old friend in these moments, clinging to my skin and bedclothes like a second skin. I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath, held it until my lungs burned, then released it slowly.

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  A pattern of light knocks shattered my morning ritual. I knew the rhythm of them as well as I knew my own heartbeat.

  “Sirah-sama?” Three more gentle taps followed.

  “I’m awake, Keiko-san!” I called back, my voice still rough with sleep.

  The purple washi-papered fusuma at the head of my room slid apart with a whisper, and Keiko’s face appeared in the gap. My handmaiden bowed her head. “Good morn, mi’lady.”

  “And good morning to you,” I replied, pushing myself up to sitting. I gestured for her to enter.

  Keiko slipped inside and closed the doors behind her with practiced grace. She was small, her head barely reaching my shoulder when we stood together, though we shared the same seventeen years of life in this universe. Sometimes I wondered if she had been chosen for me precisely because of that age similarity, though I had never asked.

  “It is good you are up,” she said, her tone carrying a hint of urgency that immediately caught my attention. “Lord Veros requested me to wake you.”

  My eyes found the chronometer on the platform beside my bed. 0400. By Amaterasu’s light, what could be so urgent? I usually had another hour or two before my day began in earnest.

  A groan escaped my lips as Keiko activated the room’s illumination. I raised a hand to shield my eyes, my mocha-colored skin seeming to glow in the sudden light. “My father sent you?”

  “He wants you awake and dressed immediately.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Full dress?”

  She nodded as she moved to the ebony armoire that held my formal wear. “Ceremonial.”

  I let my head fall forward in resignation. Of course he wanted me in ceremonial dress. My father knew well how much I despised wearing furisode, which was precisely why he only required it for matters of genuine importance. “Did he say why?”

  “No, milady. He just made it clear that it was urgent.”

  Something in her tone made me sit straighter. My father, Kōshaku Edan Veros, was not a man given to unnecessary ceremony. Compassionate and even-tempered, he typically matched my own distaste for formal occasions. When he insisted on ceremony, it meant something significant was afoot.

  I pushed back my covers and rose, stretching my arms above my head as my muscles protested the early hour. Keiko approached with my formal wear: furisode, hakama, obi, zōri, and—I felt heat rise to my cheeks—the gaff. I snatched the latter item quickly, my eyes meeting hers briefly before darting away.

  “I... I can do that part myself.”

  She bowed and turned away, discrete as always. As I stood there, holding the garment and feeling the heat in my cheeks, I couldn’t help but wonder what matter could be so urgent as to require such ceremony at this hour. Whatever it was, I had a feeling my life was about to change.