"A home is not built only by hands—but by the memory of hands that once shaped soil."
—Camp Codex
Dusk, The Fourth Day Since the Ruin's Discovery
The day had passed in quiet construction.
Kazuto stood beside the new watchtower scaffold—a modest wooden frame anchored into the slope overlooking the ravine trail. It wasn't for defense. Not directly. It was for sight. For knowing what approached long before it reached them.
Rook and Ren were hammering the last joint supports into place. Lessa was cataloging herb samples by the fire. And Yui… she'd volunteered to take first watch from the newly-raised platform. Her eyes had grown sharper since the threadloom storm—more cautious. Less trusting of the quiet.
Kazuto didn't blame her.
He didn't trust it either.
Codex Prompt — Passive Notification
▸ Local Terrain Update:
Minor Seismic Shift Detected Near Southern Edge
▸ Possible Cause: Subterranean Instability
❖ Codex Suggestion: Investigate before additional weight added to southern shelters.
He tucked the notification away in memory.
The forest had moods. This was something he was beginning to understand—not just patterns in weather or wildlife, but reactions. Emotional pulses. He'd been sleeping lighter lately, not because of fear, but because he felt the land adjusting.
And tonight, the adjustment came in the form of a visitor.
She arrived in silence.
Not from the woods—but from the south. The direction they'd never scouted deeply due to the unstable cliff terrain.
She wore leathers sewn from stitched bark and animal hide. A handaxe at her belt. Her hair was shorn short, unevenly. Her left hand was bandaged, soaked with what looked like old, dried resin—too dark to be blood.
She didn't flinch as Kazuto stepped forward. She just stared. Calm. Watching him the way a lone wolf watches a fire: not afraid, not curious. Just measuring the heat.
"You're not lost," Kazuto said, gently.
"No," she replied. "I'm hunted."
They took her in, but not without question.
Rook checked her for hidden weapons. Yui stood between her and the rest of camp the entire time. Lessa prepared a poultice for her injured hand, though the girl didn't wince, not once.
Kazuto didn't press her for answers. Not yet.
Instead, he did something simpler: he offered her tea.
A mix of ginger, wild mint, and the last pinch of dried cherryroot bark from their winter stockpile.
She accepted it wordlessly. Only after the second sip did her shoulders drop a little.
"My name's Kazuto," he said finally.
"I know," she replied.
That got a glance from Yui.
Kazuto blinked, but his voice remained even. "How?"
"The Codex told me," the girl said. "Or… maybe not the Codex. The one before it."
She Called Herself Nira
And her story didn't come easily.
It came in pieces, over several hours. Not forced. Just... allowed. And each piece was shaped by silence.
Nira had lived in a forest long before this one. Not another world—this one. But a place where settlements had tried and failed. Where things came up from the roots and took people's names. Where a village of thirty had become a village of none.
She'd been a child when her older sister disappeared. A teenager when the last elder walked into the woods and never came back. And alone when the first ruin opened.
"I never screamed," she said flatly. "I thought if I didn't scream, maybe it wouldn't see me."
She looked at Kazuto. Not pleading. Not dramatic. Just… explaining.
"I think I lived because I forgot my own name for a while."
Kazuto didn't ask what hunted her.
He could guess. The same thing that had broken through the floor of that buried hall. The same presence the Codex still hadn't properly identified. Whatever it was, Nira had survived it—alone—for what sounded like years.
And she hadn't come here to beg for help.
She had come to warn them.
"You're building too close to something old," she said later, when the others had gone to sleep. "Something that doesn't want to be remembered."
Kazuto stirred the fire gently. "And you?"
"I came back because I do want to remember."
Camp Codex Update
New Settler Registered: Nira
▸ Traits: High Mental Fortitude, Survival Expertise (Unmapped Regions), Codex Ghost-Sync (Unstable)
Codex Note:
Warning: Subject experienced prolonged exposure to "Memory Rot" anomalies.
Mental residue detected. Personality stable.
❖ Suggestion: Monitor dream activity. Avoid mirror structures near sleeper quarters.
Kazuto watched her sleep from across the fire.
She curled into herself like someone used to sleeping alone. No blankets. One hand resting on her axe. Her breath shallow, controlled. Defensive.
He didn't feel pity.
He felt respect.
Yui sat beside him an hour later.
"Do you trust her?" she asked.
Kazuto didn't answer immediately. He stared at the fire. Then he said, "I trust that she's been through hell."
"And that makes her safe?"
"No. It makes her experienced."
He looked at Yui then—really looked.
"If something's coming for us, I'd rather have someone who already faced it... and chose to come back."