Exile was meant to break him. It made him unstoppable.

Kyoto, 1484. In a single morning, the samurai Haruto Takashi loses his name, his home, and his family, taken from him by a lord whose reach ends only at the sea's edge.

So the sea is where they send him.

He carries almost nothing into exile: a sword, a small grey stone, and a vow spoken to his wife at the water's edge. However far the world tears them apart, they will live under the same sky.

The world will test that vow across every mile of it. Pirate waters. Burning ports. Fortress cities where no one has ever seen a blade like his. And always, pulling him eastward, the promise he refuses to release.

But the Japan he left is not the Japan that waits for him. Behind the walls of his enemy's house, something is changing. Something with his own blood in its veins.

Some promises can cross an ocean. The price of keeping this one is another story.

For readers of Shogun and the great sagas of exile and return.