Unbound by the heavens

Prologue ‘Minister Eiji, your wife has gone into labour' a maidservant came to inform Shogun Eiji, however instead rushing home to his wife he made a detour to the Royal Astrologer estate. ‘I’ve come for the matter I met you for weeks ago' he said once he had seen the Royal astrologer. The old man went about his business as if he wasn’t there, but minister Eiji didn’t mind. Old men weren’t exactly reasonable. The old man fetched a small shiny disc from one of the numerous shelves and placed it in a small pool of water and the constellations came into full view. After looking at it for some time he turned to him and sighed. ‘Minister, you should go home to your wife’, he said. ‘And…?’ Eiji urged him on and he sighed. ‘Your wife will give birth to a set of triplets who will be against each other until the day they disappear from this earth, however, one of them will grow up to be a mediator or the catalyst that leads them to war.’ When minister Eiji got home his wife had delivered the triplets safely and he was allowed to see them. The midwives gave him one of the boys to hold and he felt the mana rolling of them in waves. This was mana worthy of the first generation of the Sasaki clan he nodded secretly and mourned their fate. He found that his wife had already named the boys, Itsuki, Kiyoshi and Akane. ‘Kenji!’ Eiji called in a low voice and a piece of his shadow separated from him and morphed into a human being. He sealed their chakra gates and gave the triplets to Kenji and instructed him to leave them with different families in different realms at his own discretion and he disappeared with the boys. Eiji then turned to his wife who was smiling sweetly at him, however, he noticed her hands were clenched so tightly under the sheets. ‘Any objections?’ he asked. ‘Of course not, after all, my lord knows best’ she replied through clenched teeth. He sighed again and left the room, she would never understand his sufferings. Meanwhile, Kenji exited the realm in which the Nakamura clan was based to the three lower realms. He left one with a wealthy and influential shogun clan in the first realm, one in a military base the second realm, and one with a childless poor couple in the last realm. While minister Eiji had decided to leave the children to their own devices, their mother, Aoki Ayame sent spies and guards to find the boys and protect them but their trail had long been wiped clean by Kenji.