The Hikari Civil War

Overview

The Hikari Civil War began twenty years after the Establishment of the Tower, following the death of Yoshino Hikari, the aging warrior-king of the Kingdom of Hikari. His two children contested the crown: his eldest child and rightful heir, Satomi Hikari, and her younger brother, Arata Hikari, who seized it.

The war began as a succession struggle but became a test of the Peace Treaty of Hope. Satomi’s flight brought her to the Tower, and the Lord’s later intervention in her campaign made the conflict the setting of the Second Transgression.

Succession crisis

Before Yoshino’s death, Arata had acquired influence inside Hikari with the aid of nobles who considered a woman unfit to rule. Shortly after the king died, Arata declared himself king and protector of Hikari. This declaration turned a succession dispute into civil war.

Satomi’s flight and refuge

Satomi’s force suffered severe losses in the opening battle and was routed. She fled with her royal knight, pursued by assassins seeking to claim her head for Arata. Their escape brought them to The Tower, protected by powerful barrier magic. An elderly butler admitted them. Satomi remained at the Tower for six months while attempting to rebuild her army; the reasons the Lord received her and the events of those months remained unknown to public historians.

Resolution and wider significance

The six months at the Tower form the turning point between Satomi’s rout and her return to the field. Public historians do not know why the Lord admitted her, what took place during her stay, or why he later acted in her defense. Once Satomi had rebuilt her army, she returned to Hikari to reclaim the throne. Her forces again neared defeat before the Lord’s intervention turned the battle remembered as the Battle of a Thousand Shadows.

After rebuilding her force, Satomi returned to contest Hikari. During the subsequent Battle of a Thousand Shadows, the Lord of the Tower intervened, Arata died, and Satomi reclaimed the crown. Within a week she executed the nobles who had allied with Arata and began rebuilding the kingdom. The Lord’s intervention was a more direct breach of the treaty’s political neutrality than the First Transgression, and Volume I states that Magnus imposed the consequences. The event is consequently remembered as the setting of the Second Transgression as well as a civil war.

The decisive campaign

The published story now records the campaign itself in detail. Satomi Hikari marched from the forest with twenty thousand soldiers under her father's black-bear banner, gaining a further thousand peasant volunteers within a day, while Arata Hikari called his banners and massed roughly thirty thousand veterans. Rather than defend Goguma, Arata chose to meet her in the open field, and the two hosts faced each other at dusk on a plain beyond the capital.

Negotiation failed on both counts: Satomi publicly refused a demand to confess treason and surrender, and not one of her soldiers accepted the accompanying offer of pardon and riches. The customary champion's duel was then broken when Yamato was shot down by archers before any challenger answered him, which triggered the general engagement.

The campaign's decisive element was not military. Arata had secured the betrayal of General Kenji Osore by threatening his wife and child, using him both as an intelligence source and as the hostage-taker who neutralised Yumi Raijin at the critical moment. The Battle of a Thousand Shadows has its own article covering the engagement as published.

The end of the war

The war ends at the Battle of a Thousand Shadows with the death of Arata Hikari, killed by Ryosuke on Shun Sato's order. Shun announces the death across the field and the usurper's army lays down its arms rather than share the same fate.

The capital falls two days later without a siege, opened from the inside by its own garrison, and the nobles who backed Arata are detained. Satomi Hikari takes the throne as queen. The war's final act is her decree of public execution for the traitors, issued after the murdered family of Kenji Osore is discovered.

The intervention that decided the war was itself a breach of the neutrality binding the Tower, and both Shun and Mimi Sato treat consequences as certain from the moment it begins.

The sentence carried out

Chapter 20 shows the decree executed. Gallows are raised in the central plaza of Goguma within days, the nobles are paraded through the streets in chains, and they are hanged together by a masked executioner at Queen Satomi Hikari's nod.

The same ceremony closes the war on a second, deliberate note. Satomi declares from the gallows that this shall be the final Hikari blood spilled in the land, and grants a royal pardon to every captured enemy soldier on the condition that they spend the rest of their lives rebuilding the realm — naming them blades wielded by the snakes behind her rather than enemies in their own right. The war ends with the leadership executed, the rank and file conscripted into reconstruction, and a week of national holiday declared.

The Lord of the Tower takes no part in the settlement. He leaves the field the moment the usurper's vanguard surrenders, and the account of the battle circulated in the capital is a sanitised one in which he wins through brilliant swordplay and tactical genius, with the manner of Arata's death removed.