Kagehisa
He's spent 21 years being told he's half. Too Black for one side of the family, too Japanese for the block. Then Kage Hollis opens his grandmother's cedar trunk in....
He's spent 21 years being told he's half. Too Black for one side of the family, too Japanese for the block. Then Kage Hollis opens his grandmother's cedar trunk in South Philly and finds a cracked sword guard ringed with seven cowrie shells, and his own name written in 400-year-old ink. One drop of blood, and the Ember Gate throws him back through time to the family he never knew: a West African warrior who built a legendary house in 16th-century Japan, a swordsmith wife who forged a key to time itself, and a brother at the table who sold them all to seven clans. Those clans stole the family's fire, split it seven ways, and built empires on it. Four hundred years later, their heirs still run the city Kage calls home, and one of them is buying up his grandmother's block. Every jump costs something. Kage walks through four centuries of his bloodline: Osaka in flames, Philadelphia in the fever of 1793, South Street in 1972, the night his father died. But the Gate has one rule. You can't change what already happened. You can only choose what you carry home. Seven Embers. Seven thieves. A masked hunter who never ages. And one heir who was never half of anything. Samurai swords, time travel, buried family secrets and South Philly soul.