Jannali scratched at her forehead for the dozenth time, the itch under her headscarf growing from a mild annoyance to something that bordered on desperation. She'd tried ignoring it. She'd tried willing it away. She'd even tried focusing on Charlie's voice—which was usually enough to make anyone want to escape into their own skull—but nothing worked.
"—and if we apply the system to the architectural orientation," Charlie was saying, his pith helmet bobbing with enthusiasm, "the correspond to specific vibrational frequencies that would theoretically allow communication with the domains."
Jannali's fingers dug at the fabric. Bloody hell, woman, stop scratchin'. You look like you've got fleas.
"—You see, it's all connected. There's a tradition that speaks of a world split into three: the sky where the light dwells, the soil where we struggle, and the deep dark where the secrets are buried. When you realize those are the only things holding those worlds together... well, it would revolutionize our understanding of Void Century transmission networks!"
Ahead of them, near a cluster of food stalls that had somehow survived the Bō-Zak kidnapping incident, three small figures darted between the legs of festival-goers like fish through coral.
Sanza led the charge, his small red head visible above the crowd only in brief flashes as he wove between adults with the instinctive cunning of someone who believed traffic laws were merely suggestions for lesser beings. His miniature parka flapped behind him, and he held what appeared to be a half-eaten pastry in one hand, using it as both fuel and trophy.
"YOU CAN'T CATCH ME!" he shrieked, his posh accent cracking delightfully. "I AM THE SUPREME COMMANDER OF THIS FESTIVAL! ALL FOOD IS MY SUBJECT!"
Jelly bounced after him, his gelatinous body leaving faint glittery trails on the stone with each landing. "Bloop! But the rules say we have to take turns being It! You were It first, then I was It, then you were It again, and now you're running away and eating! That's against the rules!"
"The rules are for commoners!"
Eliane brought up the rear, her chef's jacket now sporting a smear of something purple that might have been berry filling, her long silver hair escaping its ponytail in wisps. She was, impossibly, still holding her corn cake.
"Sanza Kaplan Figarland, you stop running this instant! You're going to knock someone over! You're going to—" She dodged a woman carrying a tower of stacked baskets. "You're going to make me spill my corn cake!"
"Then put it down!"
"NEVER!"
Jannali watched them with the exhausted fondness of someone who had accidentally become responsible for chaos and was still processing how that had happened. Her hand drifted to her forehead again.
Scratch scratch scratch.
"—and the Monas Hieroglyphica," Charlie pressed on, apparently unaware that his audience had mentally checked out three blocks ago, "represents the unity of all creation—the squaring of the circle, the union of opposites. If we could find evidence of the influence in the construction of the San-Zekai Temple, it would revolutionize our understanding of Void Century transmission networks!"
Jannali's fingers stilled.
Not because Charlie had said anything interesting.
Because something whispered.
The sound came from nowhere and everywhere—a thread of voice woven into the wind, carrying words she couldn't quite catch but almost could. It tugged at something deep in her skull, behind the itching, behind the fabric, behind the third eye that had been pressing against its prison for hours now.
She turned her head, slowly, toward the sea.
One of the Rokaku rose from the mist at the island's edge—a colossal elephant carved from salt, its forehead marked with the triangle symbol that glowed faintly even in daylight. The whisper came from that direction, from the space between the pillar and the waves, where the mist swirled thickest.
Come.
Jannali took a step toward it.
"—and the implications for Poneglyph translation are enormous," Charlie continued, "because if the calls correspond to the ancient language's phonetic structure, then—"
Ahem.
The throat-clearing cut through her trance like a blade through fog.
Jannali blinked. Turned. Found Charlie looking at her with an expression of mild professional offense, his pencil poised over his notebook, his round glasses catching the lantern light.
"As I was saying," he emphasized, "the implications for—"
Jannali nodded. "Right. Yeah. Implications. Got it."
But her eyes had already drifted past him, past the food stalls, past the running children, toward something else.
The Shioji-hime Shrine.
It stood at the edge of the market, where the stone path began its winding climb toward the temple above. Smaller than the San-Zekai complex, but old—old in a way that made the other buildings look like children playing at permanence. Its walls were fitted stone, no mortar, each block cut to interlock with its neighbors in patterns that spiraled inward toward a central doorway. Lanterns hung on either side, their light warm and ordinary, but the shadows they cast moved in ways that had nothing to do with the flames.
And there—just at the edge of her vision—a flicker.
Something moved in the doorway. Someone. A shape that was there and then gone, there and then gone, like a candle flame in a wind.
Jannali squinted.
"—really, if you're not going to pay attention, I could be documenting these architectural features instead of—"
The shape flickered again. Longer this time. Almost solid.
Jannali's feet moved before her brain caught up.
"Jannali?" Charlie's voice, puzzled. "Jannali, where are you—"
She walked toward the shrine. The festival noise faded behind her—not gone, just... distant. Muffled. Like sound through water.
"Jannali!"
She didn't hear him.
Behind her, Charlie stood frozen for a moment, his notebook clutched to his chest, his expression shifting from confusion to concern to something approaching alarm.
"Oh dear," he murmured. "Ahem. OH DEAR."
He hurried after her, pith helmet bouncing, satchel slapping against his hip, calling her name with increasing desperation as she walked steadily toward the shrine and whatever waited in its shadowed doorway.
---
The mist grew thicker with every step.
Ember walked at the edge of the cliffs, where the land dropped away to rocks and churning sea below. Atlas followed three paces behind, his rust-red fur dark with moisture, his blue eyes never leaving her.
The path here was old—ancient, even—carved into the stone by hands that had understood the rock's bones. On either side, the ground was marked with lines, grooves cut deep into the earth, spiraling and curving in patterns too large to see from ground level. The Nazca Portraits, someone had called them. Drawings for the gods to see from above.
Ember's mismatched eyes—one icy blue, one prosthetic gold—scanned the lines without seeing them. Her lips moved constantly now, forming words only she could hear.
Josiah says the lines are veins. The island's veins. Cut them and it bleeds.
She giggled. The sound was wrong—too high, too sharp, too much like breaking glass.
Atlas's ears flattened.
"Ember."
She didn't respond. Her pace quickened.
The mist swirled around them, thick as cotton, thick as smoke, thick as the smoke that had filled her lungs when—when—
Don't think about that.
She thought about it anyway.
The waves below grew louder with each step, crashing against rocks, spraying foam that mixed with the mist until sea and sky became the same gray thing. The sound of them was almost loud enough to drown out Josiah's voice.
Almost.
They're all going to leave you, you know. Just like the others. Just like—
"Ember."
Atlas's voice was closer now. He'd closed the gap without her noticing.
She looked at him. Her gold eye caught the light—reflected it wrong, too bright, too flat.
"They're in the mist," she said. "Can you see them? The lines. The shapes. They're watching."
Atlas looked where she pointed. Saw nothing but gray.
"I don't—"
"There!" She grabbed his arm, her grip stronger than her small frame suggested. "Right there! The elephant! It moved! I saw it!"
Through the mist, a shape materialized—massive, impossible, the curve of a salt-carved ear, the line of a trunk, the faint glow of a symbol on a forehead.
Then it faded again, swallowed by the shifting gray.
Atlas stared at the empty space where it had been. His Electro crackled—not in aggression, but in that automatic response Minks had to things they couldn't explain.
"That's one of the pillars," he said slowly. "The Rokaku. Halia mentioned them. They're not alive. They're statues."
Ember laughed.
The sound echoed off the cliffs, off the mist, off something that might have been farther away or much closer than it seemed. It bounced back to them wrong—delayed, distorted, like the mist itself was playing with it.
"Statues," she repeated. "Statues that move. Statues that watch. Josiah says they're not statues. He says they're waiting."
Atlas's nub flicked once. Twice. A cat's tell.
"Josiah's not real, Ember."
She turned on him, and for a moment—just a moment—her face was something else. Something younger. Something more scared.
"I know."
The words were quiet. Human. Her.
Then the mask slid back, and she grinned—too wide, too sharp, too much.
"But he's right anyway."
She turned and walked faster, toward the shore, toward the waves, toward the place where the mist was thickest and the Rokaku played hide-and-seek with reality.
Atlas followed.
Because what else could he do?
---
Behind them, the festival lights glowed warm against the encroaching gray. The drums pulsed. The children laughed and ran and played their odd games.
And somewhere above, in the San-Zekai Temple, three monks were trying to force a very reluctant former monk into robes that made him look, in his own words, "like a llama that had been dipped in embarrassment and left to dry."
"Stop struggling!"
"THESE PANTS HAVE BELLS ON THEM, CASPER. BELLS."
"They're ceremonial bells! They represent the voice of the ancestors!"
"THEY REPRESENT ME WALKING LIKE I'M IN A PARADE OF FOOLS!"
Rayan spun in a happy circle. "I think they're pretty! Woob-woob-woob!"
Trizzy, trying to hold Bō-Zak's arm still, got an elbow to the face for his troubles. "Ow. Ow. Why is he so strong when he doesn't want to wear pants?"
"IT'S NOT THE PANTS, IT'S THE BELLS!"
The temple walls, ancient and patient, had seen many things in their eight hundred years.
This, somehow, was still one of the stranger ones.
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