At the edge of the group, Ember had gone very still.
The colors, the sounds, the press of people—it was too much and not enough, all at once. The lanterns swam in her vision, their painted serpent eyes following her. The drums from the cliffs above pounded in her chest, each beat a little too slow, a little too heavy, like a heart that was failing.
You're going to ruin this too. Josiah's voice, always Josiah's voice. Can't even walk through a festival without falling apart. Look at them. Look at how normal they are. And then look at you.
She dug her nails into her forearm. The sharp pain helped. It always helped.
"I know this place."
The words came out without her permission, barely a whisper. The mist, the stone, the smell of smoke and something ancient—it pulled at something inside her, something she'd buried so deep she'd forgotten it existed.
Fire. Smoke. Screaming.
She took a step away from the group. Then another.
No one noticed. Vesta was talking to the monk—the handsome one with the pipe and the tired eyes. Eliane was having a religious experience over a corn cake. Jelly was being Jelly. Jannali was chasing Jelly. Bianca had found a loom and was deep in conversation with the weaver about thread tension.
No one noticed.
Ember took another step. The crowd swallowed her, and for a moment, the pressure eased. She was just another face, another body, another piece of the chaos. No one looked at her. No one saw the mismatched eyes, the charred rabbit, the scars on her arms.
She walked toward the edge of the market, where the buildings thinned and the path began to climb toward the cliffs. Toward the quiet. Toward—
"You're not very good at slipping away."
The voice was low, amused, and close behind her.
Ember spun, one hand going to her belt where Josiah's knife hung—a reflex, automatic, useless.
Atlas stood three feet away, rust-red fur catching the lantern light, blue eyes watching her with an expression she couldn't read. His Electro crackled faintly—not aggressive, just present. A cat's warning to prey that it was being watched.
"I'm not trying to slip away." Ember's voice came out flat. Hollow. The voice she used when she needed people to leave her alone. "I'm exploring."
"Bull." Atlas moved closer, and despite his size, he made no sound on the stone. "You're running. Same thing I do when the noise gets too loud." He jerked his chin toward the group, now a distant blur of color and motion. "They're loud. I get it."
Ember stared at him. "You don't know anything about me."
"Don't need to." He stopped a few feet away, close enough to speak quietly, far enough to give her space. "I know the look. The one that says 'I'm about to do something stupid alone because it's easier than doing something smart with people.'" His ears twitched. "Worn it myself. More times than I count."
Something in Ember's chest shifted. Not much. Just enough to hurt.
"Why do you care?"
Atlas considered this. His nub flicked once, twice. "Don't, really." A pause. "But, you look like you could use someone who isn't going to ask questions."
Ember's hand loosened on the knife.
Behind them, the festival continued—the music, the laughter, the smell of food and flowers. But here, at the edge, there was only the mist and the stone and the quiet presence of a Mink who had decided, for reasons of his own, to stand guard.
"Fine," Ember said. "But I'm not going back yet."
Atlas shrugged. "Didn't ask you to."
-----
Back in the market, Bō-Zak had noticed the absence.
His eyes tracked to the edge of the crowd, caught the flash of rust-red fur and neon-pink hair disappearing toward the cliffs. He made a mental note, filed it away, and turned back to the chaos in front of him.
Bianca had cornered him by a textile stall, holding up a length of woven fabric in a pattern of interlocking diamonds. "Like, okay, so the weft tension here is, like, insane. This isn't just, like, decorative—the tightness of the weave creates, like, a water-resistant barrier. See how, like, the threads compress?" She held it closer to his face than was strictly comfortable. "Like, this is engineering. Functional fabric. And the dye—is, like, that cochineal? Because the color depth is, like, really impressive for a natural source."
Bō-Zak opened his mouth to respond—probably with something flirtatious, because old habits died hard—when—
"Ahem!"
He closed his eyes. Counted to three. Opened them.
Charlie was there again, notebook open, pencil poised, expression alight with the fire of a man who had more to say.
"I've been considering the orientation of this settlement relative to the three pillars we observed upon arrival," Charlie began, speaking at a pace that suggested he was afraid someone might interrupt him before he finished. "The triangular formation, the symbols carved into each—there's a compelling argument to be made that the pillars function as gates—thresholds between realms, which suggests a syncretic tradition that—"
Bō-Zak's teeth made a sound.
Bianca, oblivious, nodded along. "So, like, buildings and stuff? That's, like, wild. Do you, like, think the weave pattern correlates with, like, the vibe? Because if the fabric's, like, water-resistant, maybe it's also, like, color coordinated?"
Charlie's eyes lit up. "An excellent question! You see…."
Bō-Zak took a very long pull from his gourd.
-----
Sanza had stopped walking.
His small nose wrinkled, nostrils flaring as he sampled the air like a connoisseur testing a wine. The thousand competing smells of the market—roasting meat, flowers, smoke, sweat, chicha—faded into background noise.
There. That one.
Sweet. Rich. Buttery. The unmistakable aroma of something baked with care and skill and ingredients that cost more than most people on this island earned in a month.
He changed direction without a word, cutting through the crowd with the single-minded focus of a predator on a trail.
Eliane, still clutching her corn cake, noticed immediately. "Sanza? Where are you going? Sanza!"
He ignored her.
"Sanza, you can't just—we're with the group—you have to stay with the group—"
He ignored her harder.
The trail led past food stalls, around a group of dancers practicing a complicated footwork pattern, through a narrow alley between two buildings where laundry hung on lines overhead like colorful flags. Eliane followed, still holding her corn cake, still fussing.
"Sanza, this is exactly how people get lost on strange islands! Do you know how many stories I've heard about children wandering off at festivals and ending up in—in—in situations? My grandmother had a whole chapter about festival safety in a guidebook!"
Sanza rounded a corner and stopped.
Before him was a small, unassuming stall tucked into an alcove between two larger buildings. A single elderly woman sat behind a counter, her face a map of wrinkles, her hands gnarled but steady. And on the counter, arranged on leaves of brilliant green, were pastries.
Golden. Flaky. Glazed with something that caught the light like amber. They gave off waves of buttery, sweet, perfect scent that made Sanza's eyes go wide despite his best efforts to remain above such things.
The woman looked up. Her eyes—sharp, knowing, older than the stones beneath them—fixed on the small red-haired boy in the expensive parka.
"You smell it, little one?"
Sanza drew himself up to his full, unimpressive height. "I detected an aroma of acceptable quality and chose to investigate."
The woman's lips twitched. "Of course you did." She gestured at the pastries. "Alfajores. My grandmother's recipe. Five hundred years old."
Sanza's composure cracked, just slightly. "Five... hundred?"
"Corn flour from the high terraces. Honey from the cliffs. Butter from goats that graze on wild herbs. And a secret." She tapped her nose. "The secret is the most important part."
Eliane caught up, panting slightly. "Sanza, you cannot just—" She stopped, seeing the stall. Seeing the pastries. "Oh."
"Yes," Sanza said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Oh."
The woman laughed, a sound like dry leaves rustling. "Sit, children. First taste is free." She looked at Sanza, and something ancient and amused flickered in her eyes. "Even for little boys who think they're too important to say please."
Sanza sat.
---
Marya stood apart from the chaos, her golden eyes fixed on the cliffs above.
The temple was visible even from here—a complex of stone buildings clinging to the sheer rock face like barnacles on a ship's hull. Terraces cut into the cliff at impossible angles, connected by stairways that were more like ladders, disappearing into the mist. At the highest point, just visible through the swirling gray, a structure that caught the light—gold, perhaps, or polished stone—reflected in brief flashes.
The San-Zekai Temple.
She could feel it, somehow. Not with her eyes, not with her Haki—something else. A pull, like a thread tied to her ribs, tugging gently toward that distant peak.
Nisshoku hummed against her back, a low vibration that might have been warning or encouragement. The void veins on her arms tingled, the curse responding to something in the air, something ancient and watching.
"Nice view, isn't it?"
She didn't turn. She'd heard Bō-Zak's approach—the soft scuff of straw sandals, the clink of his gourd, the faint rustle of his shawl.
"Your temple," she said. "It's... old."
"Older than anything on this island. Older than most things in the world, probably." He stopped beside her, close enough to share the view, far enough to respect her space. "You feel it, don't you? The pull."
Marya didn't answer.
Bō-Zak took a pull from his gourd, offered it to her. She shook her head. He shrugged and drank.
"The ritual's in three days. The monks will march up that path at dawn, carrying the seals, singing the old songs. They'll open the shrine, rotate the disks, and the island will hold for another thirty-three years." He paused. "And I'm supposed to be up there with them, in the fancy robes, doing the fancy dances, playing my part."
"But you're here."
"But I'm here." He smiled, but there was no humor in it. "Because the fancy robes are embarrassing."
Marya's lips twitched. Just slightly.
"Also," he continued, "because when I do my part—when the Condor's vessel stands in the sacred circle and channels the spirit of the underworld—there's a cost. A small one, they say. A necessary one." He held up his hand, flexed his fingers. "Every time, a little more of me turns to salt. Every time, a little more of me stays in that circle, frozen, watching, while the rest walks away."
He looked at her, and for a moment, the mask slipped.
"I don't want to be a monument, Marya. I don't want to be remembered as the man who stood in the right place at the right time and let himself become a statue for the greater good." He tapped his chest. "I want to be this. Messy. Drunk. Annoying. Alive."
Marya met his gaze.
"I know someone like that," she said quietly. "My father. He chose to be alone rather than be what people wanted him to be."
"Smart man."
"Lonely man."
Bō-Zak considered this. "Sometimes the same thing."
Behind them, the chaos continued. Jannali had finally extracted Jelly from the pastry situation and was dragging him back toward the group, both of them arguing about the sentience of fried dough. Vesta had found a group of musicians tuning instruments and was deep in conversation about chord progressions. Charlie was lecturing Bianca about something while simultaneously trying to sketch the temple and failing at both. Eliane was dragging a pastry-covered Sanza back toward safety, both of them arguing in the way of siblings who weren't actually siblings but had somehow become them anyway.
And somewhere at the edge of the market, in the shadow of a stone wall, a silver-haired woman in black watched a small, grey-skinned figure in a white coat slip away from the group and disappear into a narrow alley.
Aurélie's steel-gray eyes narrowed. Her hand rested on Anathema's hilt—not drawing, just checking, confirming, ready.
She followed.
The alley swallowed her without a sound.
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