Two days had passed since Nathan’s quiet arrival in Kastoria’s capital, and the morning of the third day arrived carrying an entirely different quality than those that had preceded it.
Today was the ceremony.
The occasion in which Ryuuji, entirely unaware of the political machinery his existence had set in motion—would be formally declared Heir to the Kastorian Throne before gods, nobles, and the assembled witnesses of an entire kingdom.
The castle had been building toward this mont since Nathan arrived, each day adding another layer of preparation to the one before it. But this morning the accumulated energy reached sothing close to its peak—maids and workers moving through the corridors with the focused urgency of people who understood that the last details carried disproportionate significance, that everything done in the final hours would be what people actually rembered.
Flower arrangents were adjusted, then readjusted. Ceremonial banners bearing the royal crest hung from the upper gallery in crisp vertical lines, gold thread catching the morning light coming through the high windows. The throne room itself had been transford into sothing that looked less like a seat of governnt and more like a space designed to remind everyone standing inside it exactly what they were standing inside—a kingdom blessed by divine favor, declaring its future in the presence of its goddess.
The last touches were being applied with visible care and visible nerves.
Outside, the picture was equally deliberate. Kastoria’s knights had filled the capital streets in numbers that left no ambiguity about the day’s importance—not rely the ceremonial guard complent that accompanied formal occasions, but a genuine deploynt, thorough and thodical, covering approaches to the castle from every direction.
Kaguya’s orders had been explicit and unequivocal: nothing would go wrong today. Not through negligence, not through inattention, not through any gap in the preparations that could have been anticipated and closed.
The guards understood. They moved accordingly.
In the chamber designated for the male Heroes, the atmosphere was considerably less resplendent.
"Do we genuinely have to wear kimonos?" Teiji asked, holding his up with both arms extended and examining it with the expression of soone presented with evidence of a personal offense.
His had been prepared in deep navy with silver detail work along the collar and sleeve edges—tasteful, well-made, clearly commissioned by soone who understood ceremony and had bothered to get asurents right.
Teiji appeared entirely unmoved by any of these qualities.
"Stop complaining," one of the other boys said without looking up from fastening his own.
"I’m making a practical observation," Teiji said, with the tone of soone who had already had this argunt internally and won it. "If sothing happens today and we need to fight, I cannot fight in a kimono. I am not physically or psychologically equipped to conduct combat while wearing this amount of ceremonial fabric. That’s not a complaint, that’s a risk assessnt."
"You are genuinely a bad on sotis," Kazuto said pleasantly, adjusting his own collar with considerably more patience. "Nothing is going to require fighting today. This is a ceremony. The entire purpose of today is that it is not a situation that requires fighting."
"I have seen enough stories to know," Teiji replied with great conviction, "that it is always and specifically in monts exactly like this one—formal ceremony, important occasion, everyone wearing inconvenient clothing—that everything goes catastrophically wrong. That’s not pessimism, that’s pattern recognition."
"What if Yusuke shows up?" he added, after a brief pause in which this particular concern had clearly been sitting waiting for an opening.
A slightly heavier silence fell.
Yusuke—their classmate turned traitor, who had aligned himself with the samurai factions supporting Takehiko’s claim—was a na that carried specific weight among their group. Not the abstract threat of Takehiko’s ambitions, but sothing more personal and therefore more difficult.
"Yusuke is embedded with the samurai clans," Kazuto said after a mont, his tone asured and analytical rather than reassuring in any empty way. "He has no strategic reason to appear at the castle today. The ceremony is exactly the kind of established fact he and Takehiko’s people would want to disrupt before it happened, not after—and clearly they haven’t managed that."
He glanced toward Ryuuki with a slight smile. "And if he did appear, Ryuuki would handle it. Correct?"
Ryuuki was standing slightly apart from the others, finishing the last adjustnts to his ceremonial kimono in the polished surface of a wall mirror. It was deep crimson—Amaterasu’s color, chosen deliberately—with gold detailing that complented rather than competed with the divine sword hanging at his hip, which he had been permitted and in fact encouraged to keep even for the ceremony.
His expression at Kazuto’s question carried the particular complicated quality of soone who had thought about this possibility already and not entirely resolved their feelings about it.
"Let’s all just hope very sincerely that we don’t have to fight anyone today," Ryuuki said, turning to look at the room with a quiet, pleading smile. "Please. For Ryuuji. Let today simply be what it’s supposed to be."
The request was genuine enough and simply enough stated that most of the room nodded without argunt.
Teiji grumbled sothing under his breath that contained the words "famous last words" but had the self-awareness to keep it at a volu no one was required to officially acknowledge.
The girls’ preparation chamber operated on a different frequency entirely—not better organized exactly, but running on a different kind of energy, the complaints present but sohow carried more lightly.
"These are so heavy, Akane," Ayaka declared, lifting both arms experintally and observing the fabric’s response with deep suspicion. "Are we absolutely certain this is necessary? Is there a practical reason a ceremony requires this specific amount of material?"
"We have hakama," Akane replied with patient precision, smoothing her own with practiced ease. "Full ceremonial kimonos would restrict movent significantly. The hakama pants allow reasonable mobility underneath. We can manage."
Ayaka tested this theory by shifting her weight side to side experintally, then executing a small step forward and back.
"...Manageable," she admitted, with the grudging honesty of soone whose complaint had been factually addressed.
The room around them was moving at varying speeds. Several of the female Heroes had leaned fully into the occasion—choosing their kimonos with genuine enthusiasm, taking ti with their hair arrangents, treating the day’s aesthetic requirents as an invitation rather than an inconvenience. Their voices carried the lighter, easier energy of people who had decided today was to be enjoyed.
Yumiko was checking her obi in the mirror with careful attention, her expression carrying the composed seriousness she brought to most things. Her kimono was a deep teal that suited her coloring well and which she had clearly selected with so thought.
But underneath the visible preparations, certain people in the room were running a second, quieter process alongside the ceremonial one.
Ayaka caught Akane’s eye in the mirror as they both reached for their hair arrangents simultaneously.
Akane gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
They both understood, without needing to say it, what today actually required of them. The ceremony was real and its significance was real and their presence as Heroes of Amaterasu lent it genuine political weight that Kaguya had factored into her calculations from the beginning.
But Kastoria’s internal tensions hadn’t dissolved because today was a ceremony. Takehiko’s supporters hadn’t agreed to pause their ambitions out of respect for the occasion. The samurai who had been growing bolder in the capital streets for weeks had no particular reason today of all days to exercise restraint.
The knights were deployed. The castle was guarded. Kaguya had prepared everything within her considerable capacity to prepare.
But preparation and certainty were different things, and all three of them—Ayaka, Akane, Yumiko—were moving through their morning preparations with the particular layered attention of people who were dressed for ceremony and ready for sothing else entirely.
"Don’t you look beautiful, Akane?" Ayaka grinned, turning from the mirror to regard her twin with genuine admiration.
It was simply true and always had been—Akane in traditional Japanese dress was the kind of sight that poets wrote about and painters attempted and generally fell short of capturing adequately. The deep indigo of her kimono against her black hair and pale skin created sothing that looked less like a clothing choice and more like an aesthetic argunt for a specific kind of beauty that had no real counterargunt.
"Like yourself," Akane smiled back, the warmth in it entirely genuine.
"You think?" Ayaka turned back to the mirror with the particular expression of soone who is genuinely asking rather than fishing for reassurance, studying her own reflection with slightly more serious attention than she’d been giving it monts before.
Her kimono was a warm amber-gold that complented her slightly warr coloring, her hair arranged with more care than she normally gave it, the overall effect considerably more deliberate than her usual presentation.
She bit her lip slightly.
"Do you think... ’he’ will think so as well?"
At the question, Akane—who had been fully composed three seconds earlier—imdiately redirected her attention to the mirror and began checking details of her appearance she had already checked twice.
The logic was simple and entirely unspoken between them. Nathan would be at the ceremony today. Nathan would see them in these kimonos, properly dressed for a formal occasion, in the full light of the throne room rather than the casual intimacy of evening garden walks or restaurant tables.
Obviously they wanted to look their best. That was simply reasonable. That was just practical.
"Who is ’he’?"
Both twins startled visibly. Yumiko had appeared behind them in the mirror’s reflection with the particular silent efficiency of soone who moved through spaces without announcing herself.
"Hya—! You scared , Yumiko!" Ayaka glared at her with a hand pressed to her chest.
But Yumiko wasn’t distracted by the glare. Her eyes moved between the two of them with a suspicious, analytical quality that suggested she had been observing them for longer than just this mont.
"Both of you have been acting strangely for the past several days," she said, her tone carrying the careful precision of soone presenting evidence rather than making accusations. "Sothing has gotten your attention. Or soone." She paused with timing. "Don’t tell it’s actually the Lord Commander of Tenebria."
The timing was, from an objective standpoint, essentially perfect.
Every girl in the preparation room had been moving through their own private preparations with various degrees of focus. And every single one of them heard Yumiko’s question clearly.
All of them turned.
Ayaka and Akane flinched—a small, involuntary reaction that both of them suppressed within the sa instant, but not quite quickly enough for a room full of people already looking at them.
"What?" Ayaka deployed her glare at full intensity, which under normal circumstances was a highly effective deterrent. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."
"I simply heard you asking about soone’s opinion of your appearance," Yumiko said pleasantly, entirely undeterred. "I was curious who had earned that specific concern. Both of you, simultaneously. That’s all."
"You heard wrong," Ayaka scoffed, crossing her arms with practiced dismissiveness. "There’s no one."
"Thank the gods you said that!" one of the other girls burst out imdiately, with the relieved enthusiasm of soone whose concerns had just been addressed. "Because I was seriously considering asking Lord Samael what he thought of my appearance today!"
"Sa!" another girl agreed, completely abandoning whatever she’d been doing to join this conversation fully. "I’d have no confidence left if Ayaka and Akane were already interested! What chances would any of us have?"
"Honestly though, I genuinely hope he looks at during the ceremony," a third said with total sincerity. "Even just once."
"He’s so extraordinarily handso I can barely process it," soone else added with a slight helpless quality. "I don’t understand how soone can look like that. It shouldn’t be physically possible."
"And he’s from Earth! Like us! Which ans—"
"Which ans we have a real basis for connection that his other wives don’t," the first girl finished, with the satisfied tone of soone who had completed a logical argunt.
"I heard he already has several wives though."
"I genuinely don’t care," ca the imdiate response, delivered with the calm conviction of soone who had already worked through this calculation and reached their conclusion. "Have you seen the alternatives available here? At least he’s extraordinary. I’d rather be one of many for soone remarkable than the only one for soone diocre."
"That’s honestly—"
"That’s honestly very logical when you think about it—"
The conversation had developed into sothing self-sustaining, a small cascade of opinions and admissions that filled the preparation room with an energy that was equal parts charming and mildly chaotic.
Ayaka and Akane stood very still in the middle of it.
Neither of them had anticipated this particular developnt.
In the days since Nathan’s arrival, the initial terror he’d inspired had apparently undergone a comprehensive revision among the female Heroes. The frightening monster of their battle mories had been thoroughly overwritten by the reality of what had walked into the throne room two days ago—the devastating appearance, the controlled power, the calm authority that made the air feel different in the spaces he occupied.
The transformation of opinion had been rapid, thorough, and was apparently continuing to accelerate.
"Such idiocy."
The voice ca from the far end of the room, carrying the particular flat quality of soone comnting on sothing beneath their notice while clearly having noticed it.
Rena sat slightly apart from the main group, with the natural physical distance that tended to establish itself around her without requiring active maintenance—the separation that cos from an aura of self-possession so complete it functions as a mild territorial boundary.
She had several attendants working on her hair with focused attention, and the results of their labor and the additional ti she had apparently invested in this process were visible with simple honesty.
She looked genuinely, almost aggressively beautiful.
Her honey-blonde hair had been arranged with precision that went beyond ceremony and into the territory of statent—pinned and ribboned with careful art, a few deliberate strands left loose in a way that looked effortless and had obviously required considerable effort. Her kimono was a rich cream with detailed floral embroidery at the hem and sleeves, the color choice calculated perfectly for her coloring in the sa way that everything Rena did was calculated.
None of the other girls were particularly surprised. Rena had always invested in her appearance with the sa seriousness she applied to everything she considered worth doing properly. On Earth she had been the sa—the girl who spent forty minutes on sothing that the result made look effortless, because effortless was the aesthetic goal rather than the process.
But today felt different. More specific in its target.
Ayaka noticed. Her eyes narrowed slightly, traveling from Rena’s completed hair to her kimono to the particular quality of attention she was giving the attendants’ finishing touches.
Akane noticed as well, with quieter precision, her dark eyes holding on Rena for a asured mont.
They both rembered. Nathan had ntioned Rena first—specifically, by na—back then. Not because they’d asked about her, but because his mind had gone there on its own. And then the garden, two nights ago, where neither of them had been present but where sothing had clearly occurred based on the way Rena had been walking when she returned to the Heroes’ wing with her face still carrying a heat she clearly found extrely annoying.
And now this.
Ayaka turned back to the mirror.
She studied her reflection with fresh eyes and the focused intent of soone who had just received new and motivating information.
Akane, without saying anything, also returned her attention to her own reflection and began making adjustnts to her hair arrangent that she hadn’t felt necessary three minutes earlier.
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