Weaving two storylines together: the first is the story of 18th-century shogunate intrigue and loyalty, and the second is a ghost story about a beautiful woman who falls victim to passion and evil.

Kabamaru is a young boy raised and trained by his grandfather as a ninja. After the sudden death of his grandfather, he starts living with Mai, his grandfather’s mistress, who is a school director. He is asked to help out on struggles against other schools, as he is master of the ninja mystical arts. As time passes he will make lots of friends as well as enemies, and fall in love with Mai.

The year 1864: The Shinsengumi, the shogun’s armed force in Kyoto ripped the city apart, with blades in hand, searching for pockets of resistance, slaughtering the samurai who sought to bring down the shogunate and restore Japan’s emperor to power. By chance, Murao Mayumi and his sister Shiho, meet samurai Kurata. Murao, seeking his fortune with his sword-arm, will join Shinsengumi, never suspecting his friend Kurata is secretly Kurama Tengu, who hides his face in a black hood, and who will tear a bloody swath through Shinsengumi’s massed blades, to aid the samurai who had taken up the emperor’s cause. Will friend kill friend in a time of war?