(Midday, 14th of March, 298 BC - Capital Region of Tanna)

  Tanna - the largest island of the South East Asia Sea, known in the tales of old mariners as Higashikai no Umi - was shaking. Not with the tremor of earthquakes, but with the deeper convulsion of reckoning. It was a time when only the fit could stand, when the weak were swallowed not by nature, but by history itself.

  Time seemed to fracture. It began again, then halted. For two full days the heavens had rumbled without mercy, clouds grinding against one another like opposing armies. By the third day, the pain of the land became known. Despair etched itself into the faces of the people. The Governance of Tanna had failed them - not in words, but in action.

  In the southern ridges of Tanaka Province, the forests stirred restlessly. Leaves trembled as though whispering secrets long buried. To the north, the iron-grey clouds that had smothered the sky for forty-eight hours shifted at last. Light pierced through them in broken spears. From the soaked branches of cedar and oak, a single droplet fell - crystal clear, catching the sun before striking the soil below.

  If you had asked Kanzaki, an old woodsman of the southern hills, he would have said,"Lad, nothing comes by coincidence. When spring is coming, so also comes the kizuki (Pygmy Woodpecker)."

  And indeed, the season changed in a matter of hours.Midday - 14th of March, 298 BC.

  It should have been a day of rest. A sacred pause in the rhythm of the land. Families ought to have gathered, children running free, elders recounting old victories. The skilled archers should have been stringing their bows for competitions, horses saddled for games beyond the Eisaki Pass.

  But the fields lay empty.The arenas were abandoned.The archers were gone.The horses had vanished beyond the Pass.

  In the capital, Shuri, a great divide had been tearing through the city for days. The Council of Tanna, once sealed in lockdown, had reopened its chambers - but authority no longer traveled with their decrees. Order had fractured in the suburbs. Hunger, fear, and rumor moved faster than any herald.

  "Hey-hey! Stop that!" a soldier shouted from the wall."They're coming even on this side!" another cried.

  A rough hand seized the first soldier by the breastplate. He turned, ready to strike - and froze. What stared back at him were not enemies, but faces. Hollow faces. Farmers with cracked hands. Mothers clutching crying children. Men whose eyes had seen too many nights without bread. The soldier hesitated. The moment stretched.

  A smirk cut through the crowd. The soldier was yanked downward. His scream ended abruptly.

  The guards were overwhelmed. Discipline broke like brittle wood. The captain of the wall raised his voice, desperate."Please! Remain in the city! Outside is not safe-"

  Stones flew. One shattered near his head. Another guard lost footing, teetering over the edge.

  "Uh-ahh!"

  Only his boots held. As his grip failed, an old farmer with broken teeth lunged forward and caught him by the arm."You all right, lad?" the man asked, panting.The soldier nodded, breathless.

  Then a stone struck the farmer's head. He staggered, collapsing against the tower. Blood streaked down his temple. As he pressed a hand to his skull, his eyes drifted toward the thick forest to the left of the wall.

  The forest was moving.

  Dust rose in waves. The sound came first - hooves, thousands of them, pounding in dreadful unison. The earth itself seemed to recoil. As the clouds shifted once more, a ray of sunlight broke through, illuminating a figure at the head of the formation.

  Behind him rode two thousand men, emerging from the southern forests of Tanna.

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  "Who... who is that?" a man on the wall gasped, still grappling with a guard's spear.

  Makeshift banners came into view - worn, stitched, but unmistakable. As the riders closed the distance, a guard's lips moved slowly, spelling the name etched into the cloth."TO... HO."

  A man nearby scoffed nervously. "Uh... who is that?"

  The captain's eyes widened. His blood ran cold."That is Toho of the TOHO Unit," he shouted."The unit that broke the Magikaio Confederacy."

  A ripple passed through the crowd. Then disbelief. Then awe."Really...?""So he's real?""O-of course he is!" Exclaimed a guard.

  The shout rose without command, without plan - raw and desperate."TOHO-SAMA! May the Good Lord be with you in battle!"

  Meanwhile, Toho rode on. One of his scouts leaned close."This is the capital of Tanna - Shuri."

  Toho looked ahead. From a distance, he saw them - the masses pressed against the walls, the chaos, the fear. The weight of realization struck him like a blade.

  I now have men who trust me with their lives, he thought.But also people who rely on me to live.

  He covered his face briefly. When he lowered his hand, his eyes burned - not with rage, but with faith. He spurred his horse forward and raised his sword high.

  The capital erupted. The roar rolled across stone and street alike.

  For years, Toho had been unknown. Hunted. A renegade written out of official scrolls.History changed that day.

  Or so it seemed.

  As he turned his gaze forward, a deeper truth settled within him - change did not come in moments. It came through years of blood, endurance, and resolve.

  The column advanced. The gates of Eisaki Pass swung open before them. Toho raised his voice, carrying across ranks hardened by exile and war."Men, lend me your strength. We go in to change history - and we will come out to live it. All troops, move in!"

  "UZZAH!"

  The wind shifted. The air itself seemed to lean forward.The wind of change had arrived.

  But how did it begin?...The East Asia Sea, known in the chronicles of the old mariners as Higashikai no Umi, was once more than just an expanse of waters - it was the mirror of ambition itself. In the Dark Ages before the Yayoi period, this restless sea cradled seven mighty nations upon its rim: Goguryeo, Mino, Yao, Yue, Jeju, Sapporo Consulate, and Tanna. Each bore a history written not in ink, but in the clang of iron, the silence of treaties, and the unrelenting rhythm of war drums.

  For three centuries the Higashikai no Umi had witnessed wars that began as border disputes and ended as str nouggles for dominion. Empires were born and broken under its grey tides. Yet when the dust of endless campaigns settled, two giants stood above the rest - Goguryeo, master of the northern peninsula, and the Mino Confederacy, whose dominion stretched from Hoshu to Kyushu by the 4th century BC. They ruled not merely by the sword, but by the delicate arithmetic of alliances.

  Between their spheres lay smaller nations - Yao, Sapporo Consulate - and one kingdom that every statesman feared to mention beyond whispers: Tanna.

  According to the Records of the School of Tacticians of Mitoyama, the most esteemed academy in the southern seas, Tanna was "a state of particular concern - not because of its might, but because of its will." The Mino scholars used to say, "It is better to keep a loyal king than a long dynasty." Yet even they could never bend Tanna's line, for from that island came only kings of unshaken resolve - until the year 317 BC.

  (__Tanaka Province, Tanna Island)

  The rain fell without mercy. It came down like a sentence from the heavens, each drop hammering the cobblestones of Tanaka, the capital, until the streets turned to rivers of brown clay. Thunder growled above the palatial roofs, and lightning carved the sky with pale fury.

  People gathered in the courtyards and alleyways, their faces streaked with tears and mud. Women clutched at their robes, trembling as if the air itself had turned to grief. Men tore at their garments, but their strength failed before their hearts did. Across the city - from the iron gates of the royal citadel to the fishermen's huts along the bay - a collective wail rose like a storm surge.

  "Heika! Heika! (Your Highness!)"

  The old king was dead - King Renshu III, the Bullwork of Tanna, guardian of the island's independence, the man whose strategies had repelled Yao's fleet at Kaminari Strait and shattered Mino's ambitions at Mount Natsuko. With his passing, the High Seat of Hikariden fell silent.

  At dawn, his second-born twin ascended the throne - King Renshu IV, known in later scrolls as the Young Fox of Tanna. The storm did not cease that morning, as if the heavens themselves knew that the sea's balance had shifted.

  For far beyond the Higashikai no Umi, in a distant land unnamed in any scroll, a child was born that same year - one destined to challenge the known world, and rewrite the order of nations forever.