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Yae Miko's hands kept working Mathew's shoulders, but inside she felt a small sting of resentment. So that's how it is, Ei… you look for me only when a storm breaks, and when the sky is clear you forget the little fox who held the shrine together. Five hundred years had passed like that—long enough for anyone to learn to lie down and watch the world drift by.
Of course, she would never say such a thing out loud. Her voice stayed gentle as her fingers traced slow, expert circles.
"The god from Sky Island speaks true," Yae Miko said quietly. "Those nobles and officials are the roots of Inazuma's chaos."
She knew Ei (Raiden Shogun) had her share of fault for letting things rot while she hid in the Plane of Euthymia. But Miko also knew that if blame fell only on Ei, the people would lose faith in the god who loved them. The worst guilt belonged to the men who had lied for centuries, who had fattened themselves on the people's pain.
In Miko's eyes, Ei was a brilliant general, not a day-to-day ruler. The one who had ruled the nation well—Makoto—was gone. What remained was a soldier's iron will and a nation that needed mercy, grain, and honest hands.
"So no," Miko went on, voice cool as the sea wind, "it makes no sense that a villain's single lifetime of evil should become a blessing for his heirs. They are moths eating the fabric of Inazuma—traitors to their homeland. Erase their surnames from our history, confiscate their estates, and judge everytheir families."
Kamisato Ayato swallowed. Hearing such cold sentences poured so calmly from Lady Miko's lips chilled him more than any midnight storm. Inazuma's great houses prized three things—name, land, heirs. What Miko proposed would strike all three at once.
He could already see it: streets washed by rain and blood, banners torn down, gates broken, family seals shattered.
Ei looked troubled. "Isn't that… too cold?" she asked. "Many of those families had ancestors who bled for Inazuma."
"Cold?" Miko's eyes flashed. "What do the honors of the dead have to do with the crimes of these living leeches? Look around us. They have burned away the merit of their ancestors and written new debts in the people's blood."
Ei stared at the floor a long moment. Memories of the Vision Hunt Decree and the Sakoku Decree weighed on her. For a second, mercy wavered inside her. Then she saw again the forged reports, the empty storehouses, the graves along the roads.
Miko softened a fraction and laid out a measured path. "If we kill every household whole, too many will die. Instead—publicly behead the truly guilty; exile those whose crimes mix with some merit; send the idle and greedy to hard labor on Seirai Island to mine and quarry until the seasons wash their pride away; and those whose small virtues outweigh their faults—strip them of rank and return them to common life. Let them earn their rice with honest hands."
Ei glanced at Mathew.
He lifted an eyebrow as if to say, You are the Archon here, not I. Then, with brazen ease, he leaned back another inch. "A little harder," he murmured.
Yae Miko pressed more firmly, face calm, heart anything but. She could feel how close he was to relaxing into her arms; he never did. So he isn't crude, she realized. He wants the long game, the dance, the story.
"I have just arrived in Inazuma," Mathew added lightly, a playful curve at his lips. "In the next few days, I intend to enjoy your islands' culture. Would the great fox of Narukami be my guide?"
There was no room to refuse—not when the future of the nation balanced on his mood. Miko bowed her head. "It would be my honor to show you Inazuma's heart."
Ei straightened. The room seemed to tilt toward her as divine power gathered, quiet and certain.
"Yashiro Commission, Tenryou Commission, and the Shogunate Guard: move." Her voice was iron. "Seize every named family and official listed in the indictments, and all houses found to have colluded with the Fatui. Bring them to Tenshukaku."
She lifted one hand. A soft, thunder-colored glow ran along her fingers.
"All enforcers will carry my divine authority. Any who resist will meet lightning from the sky."
Her last word cracked the air. Across Inazuma, the bright afternoon dimmed. Clouds rolled like black silk over the islands. Lightning laced the horizon. The people looked up from markets and docks and saw the storm gather—and they knew whose storm it was.
"It's the General," Kamisato Ayato breathed. Inazuma was about to change—at the root.
---
The Storm Begins
Most people of Inazuma still loved Raiden Shogun. Even in the days of the Vision Hunt Decree and closing the nation's borders, their anger had never turned into hatred. Resentment, yes. But not hatred. She was still their god—distant, mistaken, yet theirs.
When Ei's power swept the islands like a living tide, the Shogunate Guard moved with perfect speed. Squads fanned out from Tenshukaku. Messengers flashed down from the towers of Inazuma City. The first to fall were the nobles of the capital.
Gates slammed. Ledgers vanished into fires and were dragged out half-burnt by soldiers with wet cloaks. A child cried, a mother begged, an old lord fainted and was slapped awake to sign his own seal of surrender.
In the same hour, the castle town notice boards bloomed with proclamations—fresh parchment stamped with the violet sigil of the Shogun and the fox seal of Narukami Shrine. Runners hammered them into wood with quick, hard blows.
People gathered to read. At first they stared in silence. Then they began to talk. Then to shout.
The proclamations were simple and terrible: the Tenryou and Kanjo Commissions had deceived the Shogun for years, forging reports, extorting money, and bending the decrees to fill their own storehouses. The Vision Hunt Decree had been twisted into a tool to break rivals. The Sakoku Decree—meant to protect—had become a fence that trapped the poor with high prices and no grain.
There was also a second notice, written by Ei herself, titled "Edict of Sin." In it she confessed what no god had ever dared to confess: that she had not watched closely, that she believed false scrolls, that she had failed to see her people's hunger and pain. She was sorry. She would make it right.
The effect was instant. The people's long anger had finally found its true mark—not the god they still trusted, but the nobles who had tricked her.
"They lied to the Shogun!" a fishmonger cried, swinging his basket as if it were a club.
"They stole our rice and our visions!" shouted a farmer with empty sleeves where his Vision once hung.
Steel pans and bamboo poles, hoes and boat hooks—the town rose like a crashing wave and followed the soldiers through streets that suddenly felt too narrow for so much fury.
---
The Kamisato House Takes the Ledger of Debts
At the Kamisato Estate, order ruled. Ayato stood at a long table as lists and ledgers piled high, each sheet marking land, coin, storehouses, ships, and secret agreements. Teams fanned out on his word, stamping seals, emptying treasuries, counting sacks of grain, sealing vaults. Everything was recorded with clean brushstrokes in a neat hand.
"All confiscated grain and coin will be held for relief and rebuilding," Ayato said. "No looting. No favors. Everything goes back to the people when this is done."
Every few breaths, a runner hurried in with new reports: estates seized, bribes uncovered, slave ledgers found, Fatui marks on crates. The rot was worse than most had dared imagine. By the time the sun tilted west, they had evidence against more than seventy percent of the great and minor houses.
Many were the same names that had tried to break the Kamisato siblings after their parents died of overwork. Without Miko's protection, Ayato and Ayaka would likely have been ruined—or worse.
Ayato paused in the doorway and looked out at the city roofs. This is not revenge, he told himself. This is surgery. The nation will live.
"Brother!" Ayaka hurried in, breathless from the road. "I just returned from the city. Have you seen the proclamations? I want to take part of the grain we seized and give relief to the poorest districts now."
Ayato met her eyes. He had hoped to keep her out of the worst of it. But Ayaka was not a sheltered girl. She was Princess Egret to the people for a reason—kindness made steel by duty.
"If that is your wish," he said softly, "I won't say no."
In recent years, polluted paddies and hoarded stores had driven farmers to ruin. Parents had traded heirlooms—sometimes even their children—for a few bowls of rice. The Kamisato had sold artworks and land to buy grain from Liyue, shipping it in under risk of seizure. It had never been enough. But tonight it would be.
Ayaka bowed once and turned. Her voice rang out like a bell. "Form the relief lines. No one will go to sleep hungry in the capital tonight."
---
Thunder Over Nazuchi
Far away, Nazuchi Beach had been the ragged line where the Shogunate Army and the Resistance clashed. The sand there was blackened by powder, and the air smelled of iron and wet rope. On that day, both sides paused as lightning cracked three times across the sky—not like war, but like a god pronouncing a sentence.
The soldiers looked up. Orders came down the line like wind: stand down and hold position. The fight had moved elsewhere—into mansions, courts, and ledgers.
---
The Night of Reckoning
Back in Inazuma City, the tide swelled. Tenshukaku's towers burned with violet light as prisoners were marched in—some silent, some pleading, some spitting curses until the sight of the Shogun silenced them mid-breath.
Public trials began at once. Names were read. Crimes were listed. Witnesses spoke—shaking fishermen, thin farmers, weavers with bruised wrists, girls who had been dragged to brothels that opened only for the rich. Fatui seals appeared on chests and contracts. A quiet rage filled the square, heavier than shouting.
Sentences followed the plan Miko had spoken:
The worst were executed at dawn, heads bowed beneath the violet banner.
Those with mixed accounts—some merit, many crimes—were marched in chains to the boats bound for Seirai. There they would quarry stone, dig ore, and build roads until their backs learned a better weight than silk.
Minor names who had followed out of fear were stripped of rank, made common, and assigned public works: dredging canals, repairing bridges, cleaning markets for months and months.
Family names were struck from the rolls. Seals were broken. Children were not punished for the blood of others, but no heir would keep land or coin gained by evil. Every last mon returned to the treasury for the people.
All night, Ayato's teams logged the grain and coin and set up relief tables. Ayaka stood in the lantern glow with sleeves tied, handing out bowls of hot porridge and bundles of dry rice. She smiled at each face, bent to speak to each child. Old women cried into her hands. Men bowed until their foreheads touched the boards.
Somewhere above the square, Yae Miko watched with Mathew, the two of them on a high balcony washed in storm-light. Mathew said nothing. The little fox said nothing. It was enough to watch the first breath of a cleaner dawn push through the city streets.
---
Morning Judgment
By morning, half the old power was gone—dead, condemned, or stripped of their wealth. The rest waited for their turn beneath a sky that was finally blue again.
Ei stepped forward and the square fell still. "Hear me," she said, and the sound carried to every corner. "I failed you. I believed lies. I did not see your pain. Today I begin to mend what I broke."
She raised her hand. "From this day, the Vision Hunt Decree is ended. The Sakoku Decree is lifted in measured steps to bring in grain and medicine. The Fatui agents who polluted our courts will be hunted and cast out. The wealth stolen from you returns to you—to rebuild fields, roads, foundries, and schools."
She looked over the faces—lined, tired, hopeful. "And to the families of the guilty: your children are not your crimes. But you will not feast on stolen bread. Work, and Inazuma will feed you. Repent, and Inazuma will forgive you."
The crowd did not cheer. They wept softly, like people who had been thirsty too long. Then the sound grew into a steady roar that shook the lantern hooks.
---
Aftermath and Resolve
That afternoon, couriers sailed to Ritou to welcome grain fleets; engineers were sent to Tatarasuna to fire the forges; shrine maidens moved through the districts to calm the frightened and list the hungry; the Yashiro Commission opened public kitchens in every ward.
Ayato returned to the estate at last, shoulders heavy but eyes clear. Ayaka slept sitting up beside empty pots. Miko slipped down from the balcony, tails swaying, and brushed a crumb from the corner of Ayaka's mouth with a fond smile.
Mathew stood at the gate as if he had always been there. The sky above him was bright and harmless. He looked at Ei.
"You did not choose the easy path," he said.
"I chose the right one," Ei answered.
Mathew nodded once, pleased. "Then let Inazuma breathe." He tilted his head toward Miko. "And let the fox keep her promise. I still expect my tour."
Miko rolled her eyes, lips curving despite herself. "Very well, Lord Mathew. Tomorrow, I will show you an Inazuma worth saving."
The little fox glanced over the city—porridge lines, relief carts, soldiers posting clean notices over old ones, a sky washed clear by a hard night. For the first time in a long time, her heart felt light.
The purge had begun. The rot was cut away. The work ahead would be long and messy, but it would be honest. And that, at last, felt like grace.
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