Takeo is torn between conflicting obligations: to avenge Shigeru's death and claim leadership of the Otori clan to submit to the Tribe's claim on him and to follow his heart and marry Shirakawa Kaede. Takeo strikes a deal with them and escapes them, but he arrives too late: Shigeru is betrayed and killed, Iida ultimately perishes at Kaede's hand after attempting to rape her, and the country is overrun by the army of Arai Daiichi. As the delegation arrives at Inuyama, it is revealed that Takeo's biological Father was of The Tribe, a group of families with special powers, and they abduct Takeo, making a claim upon him because of his ancestry. Unexpectedly, Kaede and Takeo fall in love at first sight. Shigeru's uncles, hoping to rid themselves of their popular and powerful nephew, send him to Iida's capital city of Inuyama, ostensibly to be married to a young princess from a different clan named Kaede. There, Shigeru adopts Takeo and begins to instruct him in the ways of a warrior. Takeo is rescued by Otori Shigeru, a young Lord of the Otori Clan which has a long-standing rivalry with the Tohan, and led back to the Otori stronghold of Hagi.

The Hidden are persecuted throughout the Three Countries for their beliefs, and in the opening chapter Mino is destroyed by the warriors of Iida Sadamu, Lord of the Tohan Clan. He was born as Tomasu in Mino, a small village that houses amongst its people, religious outcasts referred to as the 'Hidden'.

The story is told primarily in first-person narrative by Otori Takeo.

The books follow a young warrior named Takeo in his struggles to avenge his adoptive father, escape the legacy of his biological father, and pursue the love of his life in the midst of an enormous power struggle involving dozens of clan lords and thousands of warriors. In 2020, two new books were published in a sequel series called 'Children of the Otori', Orphan Warriors and Sibling Assassins. It was followed in 2006 by a sequel, The Harsh Cry of the Heron, and in 2007 by a prequel, Heaven's Net is Wide. The series initially consisted of a trilogy: Across the Nightingale Floor (2002), Grass for His Pillow (2003), and Brilliance of the Moon (2004). Tales of the Otori is a series of historical fantasy novels by Gillian Rubinstein, writing under the pen name Lian Hearn, set in a fictional world based on feudal Japan.

The nightingale floor book