The moon dragged on—steady, merciless.
Up there in the bruised sky, it looked like a corpse bleeding slow, its crimson light sliding over the world like a warning the heavens were too tired to shout.
We walked beneath it in silence.
Victoria kept glancing back at the shack we'd left behind, as if letting it out of sight would make the Professor's death more real. The winter wind didn't help; it bit into the exposed parts of my neck, carrying with it the dying traces of sulfur and copper that clung to the inside of my nose like regret.
We're still alive, I reminded myself.
A miracle? A joke? Hard to tell.
"So—where exactly are we heading?" Victoria finally asked the woman walking in front of us. Paige. Her boots cut clean lines through the snow, like she wasn't quite touching the ground.
"Well," Paige said lightly, turning her head just enough to catch the moonlight on her cheek. "It's quite the distance from here to the Capital. We'll need transport, obviously."
She eyed both of us.
"No idea what you two were thinking. Were you planning to walk there?"
The smile on her face was soft, but the kind of soft that carried knives.
Victoria scoffed. "Do we look like we have a plan?"
Honestly? We did not.
With my qi at workable levels again, I exhaled and reached into my robe's inner fold. Fingers brushed paper. I whispered a chant under my breath—words meant to fold intention into form. My qi streamed into the fibers, glowing faintly like faint embers trapped inside.
The origami bird trembled to life between my fingertips.
"Sparrow of Whispers," I murmured.
It fluttered once, wings opening like a tiny heartbeat.
"Message to your brother?" Paige asked from ahead without even turning. Her voice floated back lazily, like she'd known the question before I thought of it.
"Ye—yes," I stammered.
Victoria looked at me, brows raised.
"So I'm sending a message to my brother," I clarified.
She smiled softly. "Good. He'll worry."
I let the sparrow go.
It streaked upward, trailing a thin line of blue light across the dark—quiet, purposeful, determined.
"Oh!" Victoria gasped. "It looks like a shooting star."
Her voice—just that hint of wonder in it—did something warm to my chest.
For the first time since the escape from the shrine, she sounded a little more like herself.
I breathed deeper.
We're not broken yet.
"Who are we going to meet?" I asked Paige. The hooting of an owl answered before she did.
"I don't suppose we can take trains or airships," Victoria added, rubbing her arms for warmth. "We don't even have money."
"A colleague," Paige replied. Nothing else.
"That doesn't answer anything," I muttered.
Victoria tried again, voice firmer. "Why are you helping us?"
Paige didn't stop walking, didn't even look back.
"Miss Seleregina thought it was only fitting," she said. "One good deed is not only bad."
"That's… not how the proverb goes," Victoria whispered.
But Paige wasn't exactly the type to care about proverbs.
We kept moving. The snow deepened, crunching under our boots like bones snapping. The trees thickened on both sides, their branches like skeletal fingers reaching for the blood-red sky.
Then—
The faint sound of wheels.
My muscles went tense. Qi surged in my palm.
Fight or run? Or freeze, like prey caught in a lantern beam?
The carriage came into view, black as ink and glowing faintly from within like it trapped a miniature dawn.
The coachman looked almost shapeless at first. A shadow with a face hidden under a hat too deep to reflect light.
"You kept me waiting," a voice said as the carriage door swung open.
Paige exhaled. "I had an errand to run that took some time."
The coachman chuckled—soft, airy, like wind dancing through hollow bones.
We climbed in. Victoria went first, then me, then Paige closed the door behind us with a decisive thud.
Inside, the carriage smelled faintly of cinnamon and old paper. The lantern flickered without flames. Or maybe the light wasn't coming from lamps at all.
Victoria leaned toward the window, watching the moon drip crimson across the snowy fields. Her hands trembled once—but she hid them in her lap quickly.
I felt Paige's gaze on me accompanied by a smile
"Who exactly are we going to meet?" I asked again.
Paige smirked like she'd been waiting for the question.
"Does 'colleague' not do it for you?"
I stared. Stone-faced.
She snorted.
"Oh, fine," she sighed. "Lakshmi."
The name dropped between us like a pebble into still water—soft but strange.
"Lakshmi," I repeated, trying it on my tongue. Nothing came to mind. No rumors, no wanted posters, no folktales from the library. Nothing.
"You don't know her," Paige said, amused. "That's normal. She's not… the public type in a way."
"Should we be worried?" Victoria asked.
Paige gave a tiny shrug. "Only if you upset her. She hates that."
Fantastic, how vague.
The carriage rolled on. Snow became a blurred white trail behind us. The sky dimmed into a deeper crimson. Even the moon seemed colder now, its light not illuminating but interrogating.
We fell into silence—real silence this time. The kind that stitched itself into the bones.
Victoria pressed her forehead to the glass. I watched her reflection—tired eyes, bruised hope, lips pressed tight like she was holding something in.
The coachman hummed some old tune outside. I didn't recognize it, yet it felt ancient enough to outlive empires.
Paige sat opposite us, her posture relaxed, but her eyes too bright, too aware.
"Paige?" Victoria asked quietly after a while.
"Hm?"
"What… exactly is Lakshmi?"
Paige smiled.
This one wasn't friendly.
"Who," she corrected softly.
"Lakshmi is a who—and she's the reason you would be able to get to the capital."
The carriage hit a bump, and the whole cabin jolted.
Outside, the crimson sky finally began to pale into a hesitant dawn.
We were heading toward someone neither of us could picture—
someone powerful enough that Paige felt safe escorting us,
someone the no one had mentioned not even in passing,
someone whose name tasted like trouble and secrets.
I leaned back and breathed out slow.
"Who?" Victoria whispered again.
No one answered.
The carriage rolled on.