Forbidden West: Ballad of Akelldema Miyamoto
Born in late 1864 beneath the cold skies of Hokkaido, Akelldema Miyamoto enters a Japan caught between fading steel and rising industry. His father, Hiroshi—once a formidable samurai—has sheathed his blade to serve as a physician to a powerful lord, walking the narrow path between tradition and survival. Through harsh herbal regimens and disciplined breathwork, he forges his son into something steadier than most boys his age, preparing him for a future neither of them can fully see.
By 1879, unrest coils through the country. Old loyalties are hunted. Food grows scarce in certain districts. Rumors move faster than horses. In the lord’s estate, Princess Aiko Takamori stands at the heart of fragile political balance, and Akelldema, still only fifteen, finds himself drawn into her orbit even as the ground shifts beneath them.
When violence can no longer be contained, Akelldema—seventeen and nearing manhood—is chosen to escort Aiko and seven loyal companions across the Pacific to California. What awaits them is not only gold and opportunity, but the consequences of ambition unbound. In the American West, the brilliant and obsessive Dr. Nikolai Richtofen has traded provisions to a desperate tribe in exchange for their medicine man, seeking to master life itself. His experiments awaken a corruption that seeps into the blood, spreading by bite and turning the living into something hollow and driven by a darker will.
Separated from the princess and believing his duty has failed, Akelldema is cast into a frontier where greed, secrecy, and infection thrive in the shadows of mines and desert laboratories. Armed with his father’s teachings and the discipline to resist the taint in his own veins, he must hunt for the truth, protect what remains of his honor, and confront the man whose curiosity has begun to unravel the boundary between life and something far more dangerous.
