Location: Eastern Siberia, Taiga Fringe — Cabin 12B (Abandoned Logging Outpost)
Time: Four Nights After the Citadel Collapse
The cabin had a name once—painted in red block letters on a door that no longer closed properly.
CABIN 12B.
Now the paint was flaked away like scabbed skin, and the door had to be held shut with a length of chain and a crowbar wedged between the handle and the frame. The wind worked at it anyway, probing the cracks with cold fingers, making the whole structure groan like it was alive and resented them for being inside.
Outside, the forest was a black wall of pine needles and frost.
Inside, it was dim, stale, and warm only in the radius of a dying stove.
The roof dripped from old meltwater. Every few minutes, a slow plink fell into a tin bucket David had found and placed under the leak like a ritual offering to gravity. The sound was steady, maddening, patient.
Plink.
Plink.
Plink.
They had survived the Citadel. They had escaped the crater. They had outrun the falling mountain.
And now they were trapped with the aftermath.
Ren slept on the floor with his boots still on, curled around his backpack like a child clutching a pillow. Exhaustion had dragged him down hard. His lips were cracked, and his eyelashes were still wet from the cold. Every time the stove crackled, he flinched as if expecting another strobe-lit corridor to appear behind his eyelids.
David sat at the table, dismantling his pistol for the third time that evening. He cleaned parts that were already clean. He wiped metal until it shone. He did not look at his hands shaking.
Isolde leaned against the window frame with a cigarette she wasn't really smoking—just letting it burn down slowly, watching the ash lengthen and fall as if measuring time that none of them could afford. The glow of the cigarette made her cheekbone look sharp as a blade.
And Saya sat near the stove.
Alone.
Not because they excluded her.
Because she had become a center of gravity nobody knew how to approach.
The cello case rested upright against the wall, secured by a cargo strap looped around a support beam. It looked absurd in the cabin—too clean, too intentional, like an instrument brought into a butcher's shed.
The leather was dry now. The boot-smudge had been polished away days ago, rubbed until the surface was immaculate again, until there was no evidence that anyone had ever dared touch it. The metal latches caught the firelight and glinted with a quiet, predatory neatness.
Saya watched those latches the way a starving animal watches a wound.
Her posture was perfect. Back straight. Knees drawn in. Hands folded in her lap like she was waiting for a teacher to call her name.
She had not slept since the Citadel.
Or, more accurately, she had not allowed herself to sleep.
Sleep meant dreams.
Dreams meant noise.
Noise meant he might not be there when she woke.
David clicked a magazine spring back into place with a soft snap.
"Ren," he said quietly.
No response.
David's gaze drifted to the boy, then to Saya, then back to the pistol. He hesitated as if words were ammunition—limited and risky.
"We move at dawn," he finally said.
Isolde didn't turn from the window. "Dawn means visibility."
David's jaw tightened. "Dawn means warmth."
"Warmth means satellites see heat," Isolde replied.
David exhaled through his nose. "Fog is thick."
"Fog is thick until it isn't."
The cigarette ash fell. Isolde ground the butt into the wood of the sill and watched it smolder.
No one argued further.
All of their plans were just bets with different kinds of death.
Saya spoke without turning her head.
"Where is the nearest town?"
Ren didn't answer—he was asleep.
David looked at her. "Two days south. Maybe three. There used to be a mining settlement. If it still exists, we can trade."
"Trade what?" Isolde asked.
David's eyes flicked to her rifle. "Whatever we have."
Isolde snorted softly. "So we freeze, starve, or sell our teeth."
Saya's gaze did not change. "We need medical supplies."
David's expression tightened. "For you?"
Saya blinked once. "For Ren."
David glanced at the boy. "He's just tired."
"No," Saya said. "His fingers are cold-injured. His circulation is poor. He is hiding it."
Isolde's eyes narrowed. "And you know that because?"
Saya finally turned her head, just slightly. Her face was pale, smooth, composed—porcelain stretched over something that did not feel. Her eyes were brown again. Empty.
"He trembles when he thinks nobody is watching," she said. "He holds tools too tightly. His joints lock when he types."
David stared at her for a beat. "You've been watching."
"Yes."
"Why?" Isolde asked. "He isn't your blood."
Saya's eyes shifted to the cello case.
"He is family," she said simply.
The word landed heavy in the cabin, carrying Kai's voice inside it like a ghost.
Family. Anchor. Home.
A longer silence followed.
The kind that made the cabin's small sounds louder: the stove's breath, the roof's drip, the wind's teeth.
Saya's gaze went to the case again.
Her fingers flexed once, unconsciously.
Isolde saw it.
"Don't," she said.
Saya did not move.
Isolde pushed off the window and stepped closer, boots quiet on the warped floorboards. "Don't do the thing."
David's head lifted, sharp. "Isolde."
She ignored him, watching Saya's hands.
Saya's voice remained flat. "What thing?"
"The bleeding," Isolde said. "The ritual."
Saya's eyes narrowed by a fraction, as if insulted by the word ritual.
"It is resonance," she replied. "It is function."
Isolde crouched so her face was level with Saya's. "No. It's addiction dressed up as science."
Saya's jaw tightened. "Do not speak about him like that."
"Then stop treating him like a drug," Isolde snapped back, voice low but cutting.
David stood slowly. "Enough."
Isolde didn't look away. "Do you think I didn't see her eyes in the Cathedral? That blue wasn't hers. It came from the dust."
Saya's fingers twitched again.
Isolde saw the movement and went still. "You're going to do it," she said. Not a question.
Saya looked down at her hands. For the first time in hours, a micro-expression cracked the mask—something like shame, quickly smothered.
"I need to confirm the pathway," she said.
David's voice hardened. "We don't need you fainting again."
"I do not faint," Saya replied automatically.
Isolde's laugh was short and humorless. "You didn't faint. You collapsed. There's a difference."
Saya's eyes flashed red for half a second, then returned to brown. A warning flare.
Isolde leaned in, quiet now. "He would hate this."
The sentence was small.
But it hit.
Saya's throat moved as if swallowing glass.
David's eyes shifted away.
Even the wind seemed to pause.
Saya stood.
The movement was smooth, controlled, careful—like she was afraid of being seen as unstable. She walked to the case and rested her palm on the leather.
Not a caress.
A check.
A claim.
Her voice dropped into something almost gentle. "He is not suffering."
Isolde's face tightened. "You don't know that."
Saya opened the first latch.
Click.
Ren stirred in his sleep, mumbling something incoherent.
David stepped forward. "Saya. Don't."
Saya didn't turn. "I must."
The second latch opened.
Click.
Isolde's hand slid subtly to the knife on her thigh. Not to threaten Saya—just a reflex, a soldier's instinct when something in the room becomes unpredictable.
Saya lifted the lid.
The cello inside was gone. It had been replaced with necessity.
Black velvet.
The katana laid neatly within.
And beneath it—Hagi.
Not a body. Not a face.
Dust.
Crystalline grains with violet veins threaded through them like bruises.
The dust looked darker than before. Heavier. Like it had learned something in the Cathedral and never forgot it.
Saya stared at it for a long moment.
Then she took the katana out, set it carefully on the floor, and removed her glove.
Her hand hovered above the dust.
Her breathing slowed.
She held herself as if preparing to dive underwater.
Isolde's voice dropped to a near whisper. "If you do this, and it answers… you're going to chase it again. And again. And again."
Saya didn't look at her.
"I will stop when it is unnecessary," she said.
Isolde's mouth twisted. "That's what addicts say."
David's voice snapped. "Isolde."
But Isolde wasn't wrong.
Everyone in that room knew it.
Even Saya. Saya picked up the blade. Not to fight.
To cut.
She pressed the edge to her palm.
For a moment, she hesitated.
A pause so small it could have been imagined.
And in that pause, there was something human.
Then she sliced.
Blood welled up.
Not much. She was careful. Conservative.
She let one drop fall into the dust.
It disappeared instantly, absorbed into the lattice like thirsty earth.
Saya's breath caught.
She waited.
Nothing.
She pressed her palm down into the dust.
The crystals clung to her skin like wet sand.
Blood seeped deeper.
Her eyes widened, searching.
Waiting. A beat...Two...Three.
The stove crackled.
The roof dripped.
Plink. Plink.
Then—Thrum.
Not a sound. A sensation.
A pressure change so sudden it made the air feel heavier, like the cabin had dropped ten degrees in a heartbeat.
The fire shivered, flame pulling inward as if sucked.
Saya's pupils dilated.
Her shoulders went rigid.
And her eyes—just for a moment—shifted, the brown washed out by a pale electric blue that flickered like light behind ice.
Ren woke with a gasp, sitting upright. "What—"
David raised his pistol instinctively, then stopped, seeing her face.
Isolde didn't move at all.
She watched like someone witnessing a storm form.
Saya's lips parted.
"Hagi," she breathed.
Her voice trembled—barely.
Then—
"Enough."
The voice was not in the room.
It was in her skull.
Clear as a blade's edge.
Low. Cello-deep.
Not warm.
Not comforting.
Tired.
And absolute.
Saya froze.
Her breath hitched as if she'd been struck.
"What?" she whispered.
Silence.
Her eyes remained faintly blue for a second longer, then faded back to brown, leaving her suddenly hollow, as if something had stepped out of her skin.
She pressed harder into the dust.
Blood seeped more.
Her jaw tightened.
"Hagi," she whispered again. "Say it again."
Nothing.
The thrum dissipated like a held note fading into air.
Saya's face tightened—not with rage, but with disbelief.
She cut deeper.
Blood ran.
The dust drank.
Her shoulders shook once.
Ren scrambled to his feet, panic in his voice. "Saya—stop—"
Saya didn't hear him.
Or did.
And didn't care.
"Please," she said, the word cracking against the numbness she'd built. "One instruction. One word. Please."
Silence.
Only the drip, drip, drip of the roof.
Her hands began to tremble.
Not from fear.
From loss.
She pressed her forehead down toward the open case, close enough to smell the metallic tang of her blood mixing with the cold mineral scent of the crystals.
"Why?" she whispered.
Nothing.
Isolde moved.
Fast.
She grabbed Saya's wrist and yanked it up, breaking contact with the dust.
Saya snapped her head up, eyes flashing red. Pure instinct.
Isolde didn't flinch. She held Saya's bleeding hand in a firm grip, turning it so Saya could see the cut.
"You're pouring yourself out," Isolde said, voice low and hard. "For one word."
Saya yanked her hand back, blood smearing across her palm and Isolde's glove. "Release me."
Isolde didn't.
Instead, she did something unexpectedly gentle.
She pulled a compression bandage from her vest and wrapped Saya's palm, tight and practiced, like she'd done it a thousand times to soldiers who didn't want help.
Saya stared at her, stunned by the intrusion.
Isolde tied the bandage off with a sharp tug. "If he wanted you bleeding, he wouldn't have said 'enough.'"
Saya's throat moved.
Her voice came out smaller. "He spoke."
"Yes," Isolde said. "And the first thing he did was tell you to stop."
Ren stood behind them, shaking. "I… I heard you say it," he whispered. "You said 'enough.' Like you were repeating someone."
David lowered his pistol slowly. His face looked older than the cabin's wood.
"He's still protecting you," David said quietly.
Saya's eyes flicked to him, furious. "Do not tell me what he wants."
David didn't argue. He just looked at her with the tired grief of someone who'd watched the same devotion destroy itself for decades.
Saya turned back to the case.
The dust was darker where her blood had soaked in.
It pulsed faintly once… and then went still.
As if something had retreated.
As if it had chosen restraint.
Saya's breathing became uneven.
Her mask cracked again.
Not into rage.
Into something worse.
Unprocessed grief.
Her hands shook as she carefully lifted the katana and placed it back into the velvet. She did it with reverence, like she was tucking someone into bed.
Then she stared at the dust.
She didn't touch it this time.
She just looked.
"I heard you," she whispered, voice raw.
Silence.
Her jaw clenched hard enough to hurt.
"I heard you," she repeated, louder. "Do not disappear."
Still nothing.
The withdrawal was deliberate.
A boundary.
A refusal.
And refusals hurt more than death because they imply choice.
Saya's shoulders began to shake.
A silent tremor.
Then another.
Her breath hitched.
And suddenly, without warning, she sobbed.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just a quiet, broken sound pushed out of a chest that had been holding itself together by force for too long.
Ren didn't move. He looked like a boy who didn't know where to put his hands.
David stared at the floor.
Isolde stood with her jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the case as if watching a bomb.
Saya wiped at her face with her bandaged hand and smeared blood and tears together across her cheek.
"You said you would not leave," she whispered to the dust, voice shaking. "You promised."
Silence.
Her lips trembled.
"Do you hear me?" she asked.
Still nothing.
Her eyes flicked red again, dangerous.
She grabbed the edge of the case, knuckles whitening, and for a second it looked like she might do something catastrophic—overturn it, scatter him, destroy the one thing anchoring her.
Then her grip loosened.
The rage drained out as quickly as it came.
She bowed her head.
"I am sorry," she whispered.
Not to them.
To him.
To the dust.
To the echo that had chosen to retreat.
David cleared his throat. "We can't stay here."
No one answered.
David forced the next words out like pulling teeth. "Chimera will have satellites. Drones. Patrols. Even if the Citadel is gone, they will come here."
Isolde nodded once. "We need to move south. Find a line out. Mongolia, maybe."
Ren swallowed. "My gear—"
"Pack it," David said. "Quietly."
Saya closed the case.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The latches sounded louder than they should have in the small cabin, like an ending.
She stood up with the case's strap in her hand.
She didn't sling it on her back yet.
She held it like weight.
Like consequence.
Isolde watched her.
"You're not going to do it again tonight," Isolde said. Not a question. A command.
Saya's face was blank again. The numbness sliding back into place like armor.
"I will do what is necessary," she replied.
Isolde stepped closer. "Necessary for survival… or necessary to hear him?"
Saya's gaze snapped to her, sharp. "They are the same."
Isolde held her stare for a long moment.
Then she looked away, muttering, "That's the problem."
They packed in silence.
Ren folded the thermal blanket, hands stiff. He tried not to look at Saya's bandaged palm.
David stashed supplies into a rucksack with practiced economy.
Isolde checked the window again, scanning the darkness beyond the frost-veined glass.
Outside, the wind had shifted. The forest hissed.
A low, distant vibration threaded through the air—not a sound, but a sensation, like something large moving far away.
David paused, listening with instincts older than his hip replacement.
Isolde went still.
Ren whispered, "Do you feel that?"
Saya's head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing.
"Yes," she said.
David's voice turned grim. "Drone."
Isolde's lips pressed into a thin line. "Not a drone."
Ren's face went pale. "Then what?"
Saya stepped toward the door, cello case in hand, her posture changing. Mechanism mode. Cold soldier.
"The frequency," she whispered. "It is searching."
David's eyes sharpened. "How do you know?"
Saya didn't answer immediately.
Then, quieter:
"Because it feels like a note being held too long."
Isolde yanked the crowbar out and unchained the door. "We move. Now."
Ren shoved his laptop into his pack, hands clumsy. "South trail?"
David nodded. "Tree line. No lights."
They filed out into the night.
The cold hit like a slap.
Snow creaked underfoot.
The forest swallowed them quickly, black trunks and white ground.
Saya moved last, as always, scanning the shadows, case strapped tight to her back.
As they descended the ridge, the vibration in the air grew stronger.
Not louder.
Closer.
A pressure in the teeth.
A hum behind the eyes.
Ren stumbled and caught himself, breathing fast. "What is that?"
Isolde whispered, "A sweep."
David's voice was low. "Chimera doesn't need the Citadel to listen. They have the frequency now. They can hunt the resonance itself."
Ren swallowed. "So they can track her anywhere?"
David didn't answer.
Saya did.
"No," she said quietly. "They can track him."
Ren's breath caught. "The dust?"
Saya's hand tightened on the strap across her chest.
"They are listening for the wrong thing," she said. "They think the Queen is the source."
She looked forward into the dark, eyes hard.
"But tonight…" she whispered, almost to herself, "they are hearing the echo."
They moved faster.
Down the slope.
Into deeper woods.
The hum pursued them like a held chord.
A searching resonance.
A hungry instrument seeking its missing note.
And behind it, somewhere in the dark sky above the taiga, something turned its attention toward the smallest, quietest object on the ground—
A black cello case.
Holding a dust-lattice that had learned to speak.
And learned, too, how to refuse.
As they disappeared into the trees, Saya's fingers brushed the bandage on her palm.
Blood had dried beneath it.
She could still feel the dust drinking.
Still feel the pathway, like a scar inside her mind.
She did not cut herself again.
Not yet.
But the silence around her was no longer empty.
It was restrained.
Measured.
Watching.
And somewhere inside that restraint—deep, deep in the lattice, behind layers of dormancy and will—
Something held its breath.
Not to awaken.
Not to comfort.
Only to protect her from herself.
Only to keep the requiem honest.