The sun forced its way into the clearing the way truth often does—late, filtered, and compromised.
Its light broke apart against the trees, scattering into fragments that never quite reached the ground.
The forest had already begun to evacuate itself.
Birds gone.
Insects silent.
Even the air felt thinner, as though the place had exhaled and decided not to inhale again.
I kept my weapons lowered, but not out of reach.
The mud continued its slow, obscene crawl—red, viscous, deliberate. It did not flow like water. It remembered where it had been.
"A myth about money and mud," Victoria murmured, tapping her pen against the table we had commandeered from nowhere in particular. The sound was too loud in the quiet.
"That's all betrayal ever really is, when you strip the poetry out of it."
"The problem isn't going anywhere," Mr. Lucius said mildly, setting his wine glass down with care. "You should help your friend brainstorm."
I looked at him. Then at the mud. Then back at Victoria.
I slid my blade to the side of my chair and leaned in to see what she had written.
There was nothing.
No words.
No diagrams.
Just half-formed spirals, broken lines, symbols that aborted themselves midway—as if the ideas had refused to be fully born.
"Nothing?" I asked.
"Nothing comes to mind," she replied, sliding halfway down her seat like a marionette whose strings had loosened. Exhaustion clung to her in a way that felt… curated.
I said nothing.
Instead, I stood and turned toward the mud, letting my thoughts roam where my feet could not.
"There's a story," I began slowly, "about the Man Who Opened the Gate."
Victoria tilted her head. Mr. Lucius remained still, attentive in the way of someone who already knew the ending but enjoyed watching the route taken.
"He was a trusted general," I continued, watching the surface of the mud shudder faintly, "charged with defending the city's final gate. Discharged from the battlefield and stationed somewhere quiet. Somewhere safe."
I paused.
"He betrayed his city," I said, "by opening the gate to the enemy. Not in the heat of battle—but deliberately. Transactionally."
I took a drink of water. The mud thickened, as though listening.
"The price isn't consistent across tellings," I added. "Gold. Land. A promise of survival. Sometimes just silver. Enough to make it feel reasonable."
Victoria straightened slightly.
"That could explain the thirty pieces," she said, rubbing her eyes. "Though it's not definitive."
"What does his story have to do with the mud?" she asked.
"Everything that comes after," I replied.
I gestured toward the ground.
"In later versions, he rebels against the enemy too. Tries to undo the damage. But it's too late. He dies in disgrace.
His name stops being a name
and becomes a function."
Traitor.
Sellout.
Gate-opener.
"The stories say his lineage was cursed," I went on. "That his body was exhumed and scattered. Broken apart so he could never rest in a field of his own."
I frowned.
The mud had slowed. Not stopped—but grown hesitant. Like it was being asked a question it didn't want to answer.
"What's wrong with it?" I asked aloud.
"It's listening," Mr. Lucius said, unfolding a newspaper Ezra handed him. "Or rather—recognizing itself."
Victoria scribbled again, harder this time.
"But if there was no burial," she said, "there shouldn't be a site. No ground to… react."
I shook my head.
"You're assuming burial is required."
She froze.
I tried another angle.
"The Betrayal of Kiyohime," I offered—then stopped myself. "No. That betrayal wasn't transactional. And we'd have noticed a serpent-dragon by now."
"Serpent-dragon," Victoria echoed absently, flipping a page.
"What about the voices?" she asked suddenly. "The people trapped inside it. That rules out a lot."
She began pacing.
"Cain and Abel," she said at last.
I felt it too—
the click of something aligning.
"When Cain kills Abel," she continued, voice steadier now, "the text says Abel's blood cried out from the ground."
She stopped and looked at Mr. Lucius.
Not asked.
Confirmed.
The mud trembled.
Not moving forward.
But upward—as if trying to speak.
"Freeze! Who are you people?" a voice shouted.
We were surrounded.
Authorities. Locals. Weapons half-raised. Fear dressed up as procedure.
None of us moved.
Not because we couldn't.
But because we already had our answer.
The myth wasn't metaphor.
It was history—scraped clean, retold, moralized, and buried under revisions until it learned to leak back through the cracks.
A re-inscription with teeth.
And it wanted witnesses.