After the night came no comfort. There came dew that washed the mirror-shards, and a wind that left the gates open. Kira walked out without knowing where. She walked out because, inside, no one was left to hold her. Sometimes a kingdom begins the moment a child steps across the threshold.

The world sent her no answers. It sent companions. A red sister of shadow and blades who never asked permission. A stern mother of wood and ember who forced tea and truth on her — both scalding. A master who gave riddles instead of orders, and a silent monk who simply walked beside her, as though the silence itself were a vow.

But peace is a candle in a hall full of breath. The old houses began to whisper. Debts no one wished to pay came back to collect. And where the world had looked away too long, something gathered that no longer needed a name. The demons were never far — they were only waiting for the world to forget how to see them.

One girl, four companions, and a question that fits no map: how do you heal a world that taught itself to bleed? Perhaps not with the blade. Perhaps with songs. Perhaps with what a tigress does when she refuses to be quiet.

Here the prologue ends. What begins now is the saga itself.

The world after the prologue is not the world before. What was once a tale — the wall in the north, the bamboo groves, the village by the Deep Mirror — becomes ground beneath Kira’s feet. She is no longer the heir who must hide what she is called. She is the tigress who wears the name, and defends it daily.

Companions become family. But the old houses keep memories that outlive their walls. Messengers arrive bearing forged seals. Bridges burn on nights when no one should be making fire. And Kira learns that hope is not a gift — it is a choice, made again every morning.

Never to forget what we fight for. What we keep going for. For the hope that a broken mirror shows more than a whole wall of them. For every breath the night does not take. This saga begins now — and it belongs to those who choose to walk with it.