Late spring settles over Edo with a deceptive gentleness – soft rain, a drifting haze, the first warmth of summer. But it is not only fallen blossom that gathers in the streets and woodland of Edo city – there too a terrible villainy lies hidden. When the fearless swordswoman Mifuyu returns to her secluded lodging, her long-awaited repose is shattered: while she rests one day, a group of intruders slip into the house with violent intent.

Their attack is as swift and silent as it is inexplicable – and it takes all of her skill to beat them back. Her friend and ally Daijiro soon discovers that the men were not common burglars, but mysterious ronin hunting a ghost from the house’s past. What starts as a puzzling intrusion soon draws him and his father into a tangle of shifting identities, forgotten residents, and shadowy figures whose motives dissolve like mist in the morning light.