Itsuki was standing at the gate observing his breath create small misty clouds when his father was checking gear for the third time. Each item checked twice: traveling pack, sealed scroll case, the ceremonial sword never before removed from its scabbard in three years.
"The Essence trackers detected weak residuals near the east district," his father told him. Voice tight but hard. "Whatever happened to him made a track. I'll track it where it leads me."
Nina was standing next to the carriage, wringing and folding a wet handkerchief. Witnessing his mother in this way his indomitable, forever composed mother sent icy through Itsuki's chest.
"Three days," she whispered. To herself more. "Three days he's been missing, He's father is still out looking for him and we are here doi-"
Her voice stalled…
Itsuki prodded her shoulder lightly. "We'll see him again. I promise it."
The words felt insincere on his lips. How could he vow something he could not influence? But his mother had to hear them, and somehow uttering them made him feel as if he could will them into existence.
Kaito spun around and grabbed Itsuki's shoulder. Hard enough to bring up bruises. For an instant they stared at one another, two men who attempted to exude strength they hadn't.
"Take care of yourself at the dojo," Kaito said. "Train hard, Get stronger, When I bring Shion back." He paused, jaw tightening. "When I bring him back, I want you to be able to protect him better than we did."
Better than we did, As if Shion's disappearance was somehow their fault..
"I will," Itsuki said back, and this vow was stronger than the first.
Approaching wheels on cobblestone broke the moment.
The transport carriage rounded the corner, capable of carrying them the hundred miles to Zenkai Dojo. Behind it walked three familiar figures, faces carrying the same mixture of anticipation and worry that had become their collective expression.
Kairo had arrived ahead of schedule, as usual. Hair all mussed up from sleep but eyes shining clear. He had only the single traveling pack on his shoulder and walked as usual as if at all times ready to vanish.
"Mornin'," he said quietly, greeting Itsuki's parents. "Any developments?"
Kaito paused. "Not now. But I do have some prospects."
Takumi jumped ahead after Kairo, his usual vigor at once reassuring but jarring. Eyes sparkling with poorly concealed enthusiasm for the dojo, but Itsuki saw the strained edge of it, the glances he couldn't help but cast at the place where four comrades should be walking.
"All right then!" exclaimed Takumi, throwing his arms wide for emphasis at the carriage. "Off then, onto the fabled Zenkai Dojo, where we shall ourselves become legendary!"
He hesitated. Grin wavering somewhat.
"All of us. When. when Shion returns."
She came last, gliding on her usual dignified poise. Hair tied back in an efficient braid, dressed in rustic traveling attire. She resided in sliverstone just as the others did and chose to travel on horses with them to Zenkai.
"Good morning, Master and Mistress Naoya," she added bowing. "I just wanted to thank the both of you again for letting me ride along.
Nina's eyes welled up with new tears at the subtle allusion to their wayward friend. She got up and grasped Sayaka's hand.
"Safe travels," she whispered.
"All right ma'am," replied Sayaka without hesitation.
The carriage driver weathered a man with the patient demeanor of someone who'd transported countless nervous students to their destinies.
"We will be going soon if we hope to get to Zenkai before dark. It's a long way, and the passes on the mountain become treacherous after dark."
The remaining minutes slipped by in a haze of last hugs and final reminders. Nina slipped a small package wrapped tightly into Itsuki's hands. "Your favourite honey cakes," she whispered. Kaito pulled him away for just one final private word.
"If something don't feel right at the dojo, anything at all, you go home," his father told him in a voice too low for the others to hear. "I don't care about honor or training or any of it. You come home. All of you."
Itsuki nodded, understanding the subtle meaning. Since the disappearance of Shion, all the shadows had appeared ominous, all the unknown a potential trap.
The friends loaded their belongings and climbed aboard. The interior was more spacious than Itsuki had expected.cushioned benches facing each other, windows on both sides providing views of the everything around them.
As the driver got into his seat and grasped the reins, Itsuki leaned half out the window for just another glance. His mother was standing erect and statuesque despite her crying. His father was waving farewell with his hand, his face set hard with resolve.
They seemed diminished in some way, standing there amidst the morning mist.
The carriage jolted into life then, and Silverstone began falling behind them.
The couple rode in silence for an hour.
Small farming settlements came and went, people waving sometimes as the carriage drifted by.
It was supposed to be relaxing, perhaps thrilling. Their first actual excursion outside the confines of their hometown.
But Shion's absence sat among them like a fifth passenger, impossible to ignore.
Eventually, the frustration got too much for Takumi. He walked back and forth and ruffled his hair.
"This is stupid," he declared to nobody in particular.
"What's stupid?" asked Kairo, but his tone betrayed that he already knew.
"All of this! Seated here acting as if everything's all right when shion is just- missing!" Takumi's eyes burned with annoyance. "It doesn't add up. Shion couldn't just abandon us. He'd never do something so terrible to us, to his parents. Someone kidnapped him, or misled him, or."
"Or he left willingly," Sayaka interrupted quietly.
The carriage was quiet except for the cadence of the wheels creaking and the muffled thud of horses' hooves on hard ground.
All three of the boys gazed at Sayaka, who was staring out the window at an expression of guarded neutrality.
"What do you mean?" Itsuki asked,
It was quiet for a moment before Sayaka could respond.
"I mean losing the way he did. It gets to people. Particularly people like Shion, who never believed they'd ever lose at something important."
"Pfft! Shion's not weak,"
"I never said he was weak. I said he got hurt. Possibly broken. And when people get broken they'll sometimes do something not quite adding up to the rest of us."
She made her way around the window toward them.
"I think he was offered something. Power, vengeance, an opportunity for him to validate himself. And he accepted it."
Kairo leaned forward, his face set. "You're saying something about domain politics, aren't you? That type of thing where people go missing and don't come back?"
"It's possible." Sayaka's voice was not much more than whisper. "There are groups in the realms who move in the shadows. Organizations who embrace those who hold grievances, who feel offended by the order of affairs. If anyone approached Shion after his loss."
She never had to complete the sentence. They all knew.
Humiliated and at his wit's end, Shion could well have been the best recruitment for the forces operating beyond the lines of normal authority.
Itsuki felt something twist in his chest.a combination of anger and fear that made his hands clench into fists.
"We'll find him then," he declared. "No matter what group got him, no matter what they gave him, we'll retrieve him."
"We won't," whispered Kairo. "What then when he won't come back?"
The question hung between them like an actual burden. None of them cared to think about it but all of them recognized it was a potential. Shion had been the most sensitive among their number, the individual who had sensed victories and losses more intensely than the others.
As long as they had told him his comrades had proceeded without him, being the best off at their high-level dojo while he was still behind.
"He'll want to come back," Itsuki declared more confidently then he had. "Once he sees us again, once he sees what he's done to his parents, to us."
"And if he doesn't?" asked Takumi. Gone was his normal swagger for once, and in its place was an openness the youth was too young for.
Itsuki met his friend's eyes steadily. "Then we make him want to."
Takumi smiled. Actual smile any of them had ever seen on him now the trials had concluded.
"That's just how Shion would refer to all of us."
"Yeah," said Kairo, his eyes brightening. "Just the individual who never gave up on people."
"You know when those big kids used to bully that merchant's daughter?" Takumi asked, mood brightening. "Shion worked on learning those bullies' schedules for three weeks so he could 'accidentally' meet them whenever they tried to ambush her."
"He never even informed her he was doing it," Itsuki explained. "She never may have known why they all of the sudden abandoned her."
"That's our Shion," Kairo said softly. "Always fighting battles nobody else ever hears about."
As if summoned by their memories, the conversation turned to other stories. Times when Shion's quiet determination had made a difference, moments when his gentle nature had been exactly what they needed. For a while, the carriage felt lighter, filled with the warmth of shared history.
But as the afternoon continued and the country began shifting from gentle-sloping farm country to rockier wild country, their earlier misgivings insinuated themselves anew.
Mountains ahead were obscured by mist, and the road started at last climbing. There were ancient trees along the way, their branches forming overhead a canopy filtering the sun into patchy beams.
"We're almost there," the carriage driver yelled behind. "The land of Zenkai starts at the next ridge."
Itsuki's heart was racing. In spite of it all, in spite of the lack of Shion and the shadow it created on what might otherwise have been victory, he was going to train at one of the finest dojos anywhere in Astralyn.
This was all for which he had worked, dreamed, fought.
But it was not whole without his companion by his side.
The carriage crested the hill, and their vision was spread out before them.
Far off, in a valley among mountain peaks, was Zenkai Dojo. Bigger than any of them had ever dreamed, vast complex of pagoda-style structures with curved roofs and elaborate ornamentation that seemed to incandesce in the sunlight.
Training areas lay in all directions, and even at this distance they could see tiny figures traversing them in neat formations.
"By the essence," Takumi breathed. "It's like a small city."
Sayaka sat forward for a closer look, eyes big. "Those central buildings are enormous. How many students do they train at this facility?"
"Hundreds," the driver shouted back. "Zenkai selects the best of the best, You'll train among the best young warriors anywhere in Sliverstone."
As the carriage descended the slope down into the valley, Itsuki couldn't help but consider the conversation between the unknown entity in the white null.
There are forces beyond your comprehension already in motion, already taking sides.
What types of forces? And why was his attendance at Zenkai relevant to whatever controversy was fermenting?
"You're doing it again," said Kairo.
"What thing?"
"That thing where you go silent and broody and begin overanalyzing the whole thing." Eyes sparkled with old familiarity. "You've been doing it more since the trials concluded."
Itsuki smiled musingly. "Can you blame me? Everything feels bigger now, Like being at the edge of something we don't see but not knowing what it is."
"Hmm, perhaps we are," Sayaka said consideringly. "But whatever it may be, the four of us will face it."
"Once Shion gets back, it'll just be the five of us. Just as it should be." Takumi corrected sternly.
"Five," Itsuki agreed, but the number sounded too much like an oath he could not possibly keep.
The carriage rolled through ornate gates that marked the official entrance to Zenkai's grounds. Students in training uniforms paused in their exercises to watch the new arrivals, expressions ranging from curious to appraising. Itsuki caught sight of abilities being practiced: controlled flames dancing between fingers, students moving with inhuman speed, others manipulating the very air around them. That was all. His real training was going to begin tomorrow… But now, as at last the carriage halted before an imposing reception hall, Itsuki cast one final thought in the way of his missing friend, where ever he was. We're here, Shion. Made it. And when it's time for you to return home, we'll be waiting…