Yokai and Wuji

Miko, Wuji and the Astral Empyrean

Centuries earlier, twelve royal siblings and hundreds of commoners had fled Wuji, where an immortal court prospered while its people labored and starved without end. Emperor Seiwa welcomed them to the Yokai Isles, where their descendants preserved traditions including the Lunar Festival. When Wuji's fleet demands the royal bloodlines' return, Ai No Miko, herself descended from the Jade Snake Prince through her mother, summons you to help protect them.

Unable to risk open war, Miko disguises herself and the royal descendants as Wokou pirates so their departure can appear to be a kidnapping. Aboard ship, you meet families whose ancestors escaped Wuji and made new lives in the Isles. Baoyu Lin, descended from the Jade Dragon, keeps the register that helps you trace the scattered branches. The Jade Ox and Jade Ram lines were already lost during Daisho's reign.

Among those traveling with Miko are her friend Yue Huang of the Jade Rabbit line and Haruki Matsuoka of the Jade Hound. Ramona Perez-Tsai brings her infant son Zhihao, carrying the Jade Tiger family's next generation away from the court demanding their return.

Lord Brentan, unaware of Victoria's promise of safe passage, mistakes the performance for a real abduction and helps Wuji pursue you. When Admiral Shen Zheng's fleet reaches Takarajima on a tide of mercury, Miko shields the passengers from its fumes while you and Baoyu defend them. Among the attackers are Needle Mouths, immortal commoners whose altered bodies reflect the same exploitation the refugees had escaped.

In Takarajima's ancestral caves, Brentan joins the deception as a supposed hostage, and his apology moves a Wuji soldier into revealing that Zheng had entered the family shrine to find his grandson, the Snake Prince Jiang. Hearing this, Miko realizes the Admiral is her ancestor. After your confrontation brings down part of the cave, Zheng confesses his failure to listen to Jiang or protect Wuji's people. Miko answers with a family memory, then shows him where the refugees had lived and died as free mortals. Zheng abandons the pursuit, defects from Wuji, and pledges himself to protecting the Isles.

The return of Zakhvatchik, the dragon defeated at Yokai's founding, brings you to Haku Village, where rumors cast his attack as a divine test of Miko's ancestry. She enters Mikoto Shrine with Baoyu while you and Zheng defend the village. The rumors come from disguised Fox Spies, and an eccentric traveler calling himself Yiren helps expose the attack as an ambush rather than an honorable trial.

Entering the shrine with Yiren, you meet a supposed Head Shrine Maiden named Koschei Yaga, but after helping Miko and Baoyu defeat Zakhvatchik, you learn that the real priestess had died weeks earlier. Koschei seizes you with red strings and uses you to threaten Miko. Yiren's distraction breaks her control long enough for Miko to bind the intruder and drag her through the Ishikori-Dome Mirror into the Yokai Realm.

Ordinary mortals can lose their souls and memories in the Yokai Realm, so Yiren proposes using Hanzamune and the Jade Descendants' combined magic for a rescue. The rescue takes you through Miko's family memories: her parents' love, her constrained childhood, and her mother's wish that the Isles not become her prison. Beyond a corrupted remnant of Kitsune, you find Miko joined with half of the Great Yokai Spirit. A fox-flame Shikigami identifies Koschei as the Great Dragon of Nature, a child of GenoKratos who can control the dead through parasitic red veins.

With Koschei holding the other half of the Spirit's power, the descendants reverse a New Year ritual while singing their inherited lullaby, Tian Hei Hei, to stop her escape. The Great Yokai Spirit yields her own consciousness so Miko can remain herself within their new divinity. With Hanzamune empowered by the family, you defeat Koschei's puppet and Miko banishes the dragon. Before leaving, Koschei suggests that a god had paid her to provoke war in exchange for your identity.

On the shore, Gravelyn arrives to help, and Zheng recognizes Yiren as Emperor Ying Zhao, Champion of Metal. Zhao had used the ritual to awaken his descendants' inherited magic and grant immortality without their consent, though he denies sacrificing his family to sustain his own reign. Faced with her new responsibilities as Yokai's Goddess-Empress, Miko condemns what he had done. Zhao leaves to explore Greenguard, having entrusted his throne to a plum tree rather than his court.

Hollow Midnight and Hollow Solstice

Miko later asks you to investigate Arche Cavendish and Himiko Asahina, lovers who had consumed the divinity of the Hollow Midnight and Hollow Solstice. After reading King Dudley's account of their escape from their families and capture of the twin powers, you complete their trials and help Miko judge the Victor Matsuri challengers seeking those dangerous blessings. Among them are Arche's descendant Laidronette, who wants to meet her ancestor, and the masked Ayakashi Slayer Masakado, who questions whether mortals can choose their own gods.

Byakko, Suzaku and the Four Perils

At Shizaistrath, Miko and Zheng report that the Four Perils had come from Wuji to assassinate their family. Although Miko had trapped the beasts inside the Yokai Realm, their miasma now poisons their surroundings. She and Zheng suspect nobles exploiting Zhao's absence, perhaps to eliminate a rival bloodline, but do not know who had ordered the attack.

Zheng describes the Silver Garden's luxury and his own former indifference to its starving servants. He believes the Four Perils had arisen to punish that cruelty, only to be captured by court sages and turned into executioners. You confront Taotie, the embodiment of greed and consumption, and recover its bronze vessel. Miko vows not to let Yokai's nobility foster the same abuses while preparing to remove the remaining Perils from her realm.