Ren stepped back from the Shogun’s sword. Finally, Kuro’s words had penetrated that dense, honour-clogged head of his.

Kuro might have felt prouder if it hadn’t been three seconds before Ren’s beheading.

The Shogun straightened and sheathed his sword.

Kuro choked as his chest failed to contain his frantically beating heart. What was the Shogun doing? Why wasn’t he attacking Ren?

The Shogun bowed once more to Ren. Ren relaxed, returning the gesture, then both backed up five paces, just like in their practice duels.

The inside of Kuro’s chest ached. Those two honour-befuddled idiots. They’d nearly killed a semi-immortal fox with a heart attack.

The retreat placed the Shogun near the Kusanagi. He reached down to pick it up.

Ren frowned. “Let me—”

But the Shogun closed his fingers around the hilt and lifted it.

Ren held out his hand to accept it before the Kusanagi burned the Shogun like he’d burned Kuro for daring to try to throw him away. Only a Tendo could draw the Kusanagi. The Shogun could strip every other privilege and duty from the emperor, but not even he could take the emperor’s sword.

The Shogun held the Kusanagi in both hands, returning to a fighting stance. Ren stared, chest rising and falling as rapidly as a hare facing down a fox.

“You can’t wield the Kusanagi,” Ren said. “It doesn’t matter how many times you beat me in a duel. The sword belongs to me alone.”

But something was wrong. Kuro didn’t know what. Most ensouled objects chose who used them, but the Kusanagi never chose. The Storm God had killed the mighty Orochi and pulled the sword out of its tail. He’d gifted the sword to his sister, the Sun Goddess, as a token of his repentance for causing chaos in her heavens. The Sun Goddess in turn had given it to her half-human son, the first Tendo. She’d made it so only her sons could wield it.

“That would normally be true,” the Shogun said. He examined the sheathed sword like an expert craftsman eyeing another’s creation. “The Imperial Sword marks the rightful emperor. Only he can wield it.”

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“Only a Tendo can wield it,” Ren corrected.

The Shogun smiled as if Ren had said something cute. “Normally, yes, the sword can only choose a Tendo as its master and emperor.”

Yes, a stirring rendition of what everyone already knew. Only the Tendo could become emperors. Ren seemed to have the same thought, but he held it back.

“Until the Tendo empire falls.”

“Uncle Gorou…” Ren stepped forward, carefully, as if approaching an injured bear.

The Shogun returned to his place on the mat. The place next to Kuro. “One of the most peculiar powers of a Dark Kitsune is the ability to destroy empires.”

Kuro jerked his head to stare at the Shogun, but the samurai holding his head kept him still. The Shogun almost sounded as if he wanted the empire to fall. Homes cracked in earthquakes, humans killed by demons and typhoons. Every terrible thing that Yumi had listed when she’d explained what Kuro was.

That’s what it meant to destroy an empire, right?

The Shogun drew his own sword and held it in one hand with the same strength other samurai needed two hands to manage.

“Don’t!” Ren held out a hand. “Please, don’t.”

Kuro rasped in a breath.

The Shogun aimed his sword at Kuro’s neck. Steel whistled through air.

Kuro’s heartbeat thrashed in his ears.

The blade nicked Kuro’s neck. A stream of blood flowed down his neck.

Kuro stared at the blood soaking into the hole. But, and it took several inhales to confirm this, his head was still firmly attached. The blade had only cut him, not cut off his head. It hadn’t even cut that deep. The wound might have eventually killed a human, but Kuro would survive it. Even if his blood pumped out of his neck faster than he liked.

The Shogun bent one knee and slipped the Kusanagi underneath Kuro’s bleeding throat. His blood splattered on the sheath, and then disappeared, as if the wood drank in the beads.

The Shogun raised the Kusanagi. The sun was high in the sky. The Sun Goddess didn’t strike the Shogun.

The Shogun looked up the sheath, smiling softly. “There, now.”

The sword screamed. Kusanagi screamed, unable to take human form, it screamed like only a sword knew how, like steel screeching against steel. Even the humans heard, ducking and covering their heads.

Something shifted inside the sword. Kuro couldn’t tell exactly what. Only that as a spirit, he could feel the energy shifting inside. The spirit being rearranged.

“W-what?” Ren stared at the blade, then at Kuro, and then back. “So you reconsidered killing him. Good.”

The Shogun smiled down at Ren. No, not smiled. He pitied Ren.

“The Imperial Sword Kusanagi, the sword that chooses emperors, has chosen me,” the Shogun announced to the crowd.

The crowd held its breath.

“Kusanagi doesn’t—” Ren started.

The Shogun drew the blade from the sheath. Whatever Ren had been about to protest was drowned out by the roar of cheers. Blood — Kuro’s blood — dripped down the steel from the sword tip to the hilt.

“Upon the Imperial Sword, Kusanagi,” the Shogun raised the blade, “upon the mandate of the Sun Goddess and the Way of Heaven, I swear that I will defeat the Night Parade. This, I swear, as your new emperor.”