Ragyo Kirin sat in seiza in front of an image of his adoptive father in the captain’s cabin of the lead ship of the Kirin fleet, his eyes closed in silent prayer. A stick of incense burnt beside the framed painting of a handsome young man with electric blue hair and violet eyes with slit pupils, sending lazy swirls of white smoke curling up to the ceiling.

Demigods didn’t age. The man who had taken him in when his parents had perished in the maws of a sea monster hadn’t aged either. He had looked the same the day he had died as he had when he had taken the lost and broken-hearted Ragyo in and named him his successor. Towards the end, it was Ragyo who would be mistaken as his father if they walked side by side.

Demigods lived long lives. Some even celebrated three hundred birthdays before death caught up with them. But there was a way they could extend their lives further still. Possession. If they located a body perfectly suited to house their souls, they could abandon their own aging body and transfer their consciousness to it.

This sort of reincarnation was imperfect. The soul of the body being occupied would struggle desperately against the invader and despite the great strength of the Demigod’s soul it was rare that they could come out of such an encounter unscathed. After all, it was the victim’s home game.

The only workaround was to slowly influence the soul of the new host over a very long period of time until it stopped identifying the Demigod’s soul as an invader. Once the host’s soul had been hoodwinked, the Demigod could take possession without a struggle.

Even then, memories would be lost and new ones from the host gained. The merging of the two souls would also alter the personality of the resulting amalgam.

Still, it was a much better option than the eternal oblivion of death.

That was the reason the Kirin Demigod had named the young Ragyo his successor. He was to be the vessel for his next incarnation.

Yet, here they were. The Demigod was dead and buried, and Ragyo was still very much himself.

Ragyo remembered the man’s last words. “I intended to take your body, but you… you stole my heart.”

He had watched over Ragyo as the boy grew into a man and somewhere down the line, he had started regarding him as his son. The Demigod was fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. While he had been lucky enough to find a body perfectly compatible with his soul, he had also formed too strong of an emotional attachment to bring himself to possess it.

And, upon his death, the man had left Ragyo a gift. His very soul.

Finishing his prayer, Ragyo opened his eyes. Violet lightning flashed in the depths of his gaze, resonating with the thick serpents of electricity arcing from cloud to cloud high above them.

The late Kirin Demigod’s nascent soul sat cross-legged within his mind crystal; the translucent phantom protected from the ravages of time like an insect frozen in amber. In his last moments, the Demigod had erased his personality and superfluous memories from his soul, leaving only his understanding of Aspects and the knowledge and experience accrued over his long life. Then he had gifted it to his adopted son.

Because of its presence, if Ragyo attempted to promote to Demigod, his success was assured. Because of its presence, he had been able to ignore the soul pressure Isabella had laid down upon him when they had met all those months ago. Because of its presence, when he finally did decide to promote to Demigod, his power would grow in leaps and bounds until he was on par with those who had spent decades longer in that Tier.

The previous Demigod had passed away over a decade ago. Although he had been at the peak of Tier 5 even back then, Ragyo had yet to promote. The reason was simple. Just as the Demigod had considered him his son, Ragyo too had looked up to him as his second father.

The phantom of his soul was the only thing he had left of the man. He was reluctant to let it vanish.

The consequence of this was that the power and influence of the Kirin clan had suffered a sharp decline in these ten years. Their Demigod had died and another hadn’t stepped up to take his place. This had created a sudden imbalance of power, turning them into the weakest among the six Daimyo clans from the second strongest.

To the best of everyone else’s knowledge, the reason why it was the Kirin navy who had set sail to trailblaze the invasion of Regiis was because they had the shakiest political foundation. In popular cognition, it was the Kitsune clan who was the mastermind while the Kirins were merely the cutting edge in their hands.

But only Ragyo knew that, at a moment’s notice, he could overturn the unfavourable circumstances and the Kirin clan would reclaim their past splendour. He was waiting – biding his time till just the right moment. He wanted the disappearance of the last trace of his father from the world to mean something. He wanted it to be remembered through the ages.

So, he waited. And waited.

Until this day.

He stood up, the plates of his well-oiled samurai armour barely making a sound as they slid over each other. His eyes seemed to penetrate the ceiling and get a panoramic view of the thunderstorm that accompanied his fleet forward – a storm he had summoned. Then, with a flash of lightning, he vanished, leaving the stench of ozone in his wake.

He reappeared high in the sky, amidst the clouds. The thunderclouds cradled his feet under him and sparks of lightning danced cheerfully around him, as though welcoming his arrival.

Down below, the battle was ready to be set off. The Regiis Demigod had made the first move, turning the waters around her fleet into a death-trap full of vicious, swirling vortices. The two Demigods accompanying the Shogunate fleet had decided to stay their hands for now, letting the airship engage first while holding their warships and submarines in reserve.

Fire and explosions brightened the undersides of the dark clouds in the gaps between the flashes of lightning as the two aerial armies clashed against each other. Airships broke and burnt and soldiers died in droves. Their lives paid just so that the two armies could gauge the strength of the other before war began in earnest.

Ragyo took it all in. Then he closed his eyes and focused on his mindscape, preparing to take that half-step towards Divinity.

Against two Demigods, Isabella Chromis might be able to defend her position until the Wind Wolf arrived... But against three?