Gensou Suikoden

Riou and Jowy serve together in Highland's Unicorn Youth Brigade and look forward to going home after a truce temporarily ends the fighting with the City-States of Jowston. The night before their return, however, their brigade is massacred in an attack secretly arranged by their own leaders so Jowston can be blamed and a new war justified.

The two friends escape carrying a truth that turns their homeland against them and eventually become bearers of opposing halves of the Rune of the Beginning. What starts as a fight to survive grows into the Dunan Unification War, sending Riou and Jowy down different paths and forcing their childhood bond toward a question neither imagined facing: what if saving the land means standing on opposite sides?