PREVIOUSLY ON "THE WATCHER'S TEST: THE NEGATIVE FLASH"
The evening was violently disrupted bty the arrival of the mob, drowned out by the heavy, rhythmic stomp-stomp-stomp of multiple feet striking the limestone path.
The Breach.
"Chief!!" A single voice tore through the thatch, followed instantly by a chorus of panicked echoes. "Chief!"
Inside the bure, the static tension broke.
Maluma and Tenia exchanged a sharp, alarmed glance.
His jaw tightened, his teeth gritting with a visible Grrr-ind of bone.
"What is it this time?" he growled, his voice vibrating with a strain.
They stood up with a sudden, vertical force—Spring-lock—and moved swiftly toward the low exit.
From behind the gathering crowd, Maluma and Tenia emerged from the low-hanging thatch.
They looked small against the backdrop of the surrounding villagers whose bodies were silhouettes against the darkening sky.
The faces of the villagers were blurred by the low light, but their eyes were wide, reflecting a deep, terror.
The man, with his elongated, skeletal geometry, seemed to vibrate against the wind. The blue light hit the hooked nasal ridge and the exposed cords of his neck, turning his pale, terrified skin into the color of weathered lead.
He gestured frantically toward the village center, his thin, trembling voice was caught by the wind. "We saw something absolutely horrifying at your house,"
Maluma's posture shifted, his shoulders squaring as if bracing for a physical blow. "At my house?!"
The woman stood beside him, The blue frequency of the sky scanned her broad, mahogany face.
the light was flat and clinical, it highlighted the vacuum-sealed skin over her cheekbones, exposing the hard structural bone beneath until her face resembling a skeleton.
Her voice was a Jagged-Frequency strike. "You gotta see this!"
The air seemed to leave the square.
The wind hissed through the palms like a poisonous mist.
THE CLUB AND THE SKULL.
positioned low, near the te bwaiko (stone foundation) of the house. From here, the world was a mess of shadows and the heavy, wooden legs of the structure.
The light didn't reach down here.
It's a space of deep charcoal and cold earth.
The crowd huddled in a jagged, crescent-shaped mass around a patch of freshly disturbed soil at the side of the building.
There were series of sharp, panicked Audio Spikes.
Footsteps closed in from the darkness—heavy, frantic thuds that stop abruptly at the edge of the pit
The villagers recoiled.
Chief Maluma froze, his torso leaning over the void. Below him, a shallow, jagged trench hacked into the limestone sand.
His hand gripped into a tight fist—crack—
Behind him, Tenia.
Tenia remained in a deep, crouch. Her center of gravity pulled low as if the earth itself were dragging her down.
Her arms were double-crossed over her chest.
She held herself with a rhythmic, high-tension tremor, her elbows locked against her ribs to keep her internal organs from spilling out in a scream.
Her usual amber eyes were now vacant Orbits.
Her breath came in shallow hitches—"Hee... hee... thss."
Protruding from the grit like a discarded shell, the wreckage was half-submerged in the dark earth.
Beside the bure's foundation, the skeleton lay in a jagged trench, its bones gleaming with a "wet-white" porcelain gloss—slick, fresh, and shimmering. Rhythmic mechanical striations marked the calcium where the harvest had been clean.
The legs were pinned in a compressed "Z" fold, held rigid by translucent ligaments that had dried into amber-colored tension wires.
The ribcage was flared open like a shattered canoe hull, exposing a hollow interior caked with dirt like cold ash. At a shallow angle, the skull revealed a circumferential breach, the crown removed with a horizontal cut so clean the edge looked polished.
Inside the cranium, a bruised, metallic purple film remained: the final, oxidizing trace of the iron that once fueled the system.
It sat there less like a body and more like a gutted outrigger stripped of its sails and left to rot in the salt.
From the back of the mass, a woman's voice broke the pressurized silence, rising into a high-pitched, vibrating wail. She collapsed to her knees, her hands clawing at the white limestone sand.
"E a tia n taroaki!"
"Bako... bon Bako aei..."
(Oh ancestors help us, help us, please! This cannot be. What went wrong? What went wrong?)
The air in the square grew thick with dozen panicked whispers.
"It's Tenia's father," a man muttered, his voice flat with shock. He stood with his arms locked at his sides, his eyes refusing to leave the splayed ribcage on the platform.
"How could someone do something like that?" a woman whispered nearby, her eyes darting toward the shadows of the nearby trees as if the darkness itself had teeth.
Beside her, a younger man's face twisted into a mask of pure, bitter heat. "Repulsive," he spat, his voice a low-frequency growl that vibrated in the ears of those standing near him. "The person that was responsible for this vulgarity will burn for eternity."
The murmurs began to overlap, creating a chaotic System Noise that drowned out the wind.
* "...look at the marks on the bone... clean as a whistle..."
* "...no blood on the dirt... how is there no blood?"
* "..they were possessed... the person had to be possessed..."
* "...he was just at his bure last night..."
"O arau n amwakoro, buokira, buokira, butiiko! E aki kona n riki aei. Tera te bae e kairua? Tera te bae e kairua?"
Tenia's hands was clamped over her mouth, but a low, guttural sound was beginning to escape her throat.
Maluma didn't move. His face finally cracked. A single, sharp vein pulsed at his temple, a rhythmic Tick-tick-tick that matched the frantic heartbeat of the girl standing beside him.
The Predatory Blue of the dusk had finally solidified into a deep, bruised purple. The high-unidirectional wind had settled into a low, mournful whistle through the thatch.
The initial explosion of screaming had settled into a heavy, toxic Stasis.
Near the edge of the platform, the man remained in a low-gravity hunch, his spine curved into a sharp, structural arc. His face was narrowed into a mask of intense focus, the skin pulled tight over his cheekbones until they looked like twin limestone ridges.
His hair was a heavy veil of obsidian-black, matted into salt-crusted cords.
He paused, his breath hitting a staccato hitch—a sharp, airless Hhk-tt—before he lunged deeper into the grit with a dry, rhythmic Scrrr-itch.
As he unearthed more of the debris, his nails became caked and reinforced with the dark earth.
With a sudden, pressurized Schrrp-thud, he pulled an object out of the ground.
He remained crouched on one knee, the strange tool in his hand catching the faint, silvery moonlight.
His eyes traced the jagged silhouette of the weapon for a long beat before he snapped his head.
"Hey, Tako!"
Tako turned with a sharp Snap-pivot and tilted his head. The guy extended an arm, his fingers performing a sharp, Inward-snap wave. It was a command, not a greeting.
Tako ran over, his feet striking the sand with a frantic, uneven beat. He skidded to a halt.
"What's up?"
He looked down. His eyes widened, his brow pulling upward in a slow, calculated confusion. "Wait? A Fijian tool??"
The guy gave a ghost of a smile—a flicker of dark satisfaction, but maintained a focused neutrality. "That's right."
Tako looked around the circle of onlookers, then extended his arm. "Let me have a closer look."
The guy handed over the weapon with a touch of Theatricality in his voice, as if delivering a verdict. "Suit yourself." He then slapped his hands together to clear the grit, looking away with a mild, disappointed tug of his lip.
Tako's fingers traced the weapon. It was a Gata, its snake-headed curve cold and heavy.
The head of the club contained blood, and was carved into a jagged, lethal geometry, mimicking a predatory bird's beak.
The wood itself held a dark, oil-polished sheen, reflecting the bruised light of the evening like a piece of obsidian.
"But how? Wh—what was it doing here? I don't understand."
The guy turned his head back, his eyes locking onto Tako's. Tako leaned in, his voice a hushed, jagged whisper. "This is the Fijians' weapon!"
The guy's smile deepened. "I know. After all their supposed innocence, they are Not what they claimed to be." He extended a pointed finger toward the glistening ribs on the porch. "They killed Bako, and tried to bury the evidence so we wouldn't suspect them." He turned to the corpse. "But how they managed to do something so brutal, remains a mystery."
Tako's jaw set into a hard, rigid line. "I knew it. That's what I tried to tell Tinko, and the others, but they always down-played the obvious."
The guy stood up, his posture shifting from a crouch to a tall, predatory vertical. "We should let everyone know right away and deal with these guys before they get to anyone else."
The Maneaba loomed, a massive, geometric shadow of thatched pandanus that seemed to absorb the fading blue light.
The focus was tight on the threshold where the air felt thick and pressurized. The village had formed a Perfect Ring at the edge of the eaves.
The silence inside was a heavy, physical weight.
Maluma sat at the head of the circle. He looked at the ground, his expression a mask of pained numbness. He was speaking in a cracked edge that betrayed his Controlled Formality.
"Tenia won't be joining us here for a while. She… she's going through quite much for now. We'll give her some time to recover from the tradegy of Bako Karangoa. This is a tough situation for us all. No one deserved to experience this traumatic event. Now our own children would have to carry that with them for years to come."
The villagers sat as fixed points in a circular formation that left the center completely empty, a Zero Zone of white, swept sand.
In this sea of local faces, the four Fijian brothers stood out like a Structural Fracture, bunched together in a tight, high-density cluster near the central pillar.
Voices began to cut through the hum:
Guy 1:Sat near the western pillar, his body half-submerged in the Zero-Light of the rafters. His voice was a thin, metallic rasp, lacking the deep resonance of the elders.
"But what's gonna happen now?"
Woman:Was seated on the floor mats in the Mid-Sector, her High-Anchor hair-bind caught the erratic orange flare of a nearby torch. Her voice carried a high-frequency wobble, a jagged edge of maternal fear that cut through the hum of the room. She leaned forward.
"Yeah. Should we just be more vigilant, hoping the killer won't come for us? Aren't our kids safe anymore to play outside?"
Guy 2:Was positioned near the entrance, where the humid night air met the dry heat of the torches. He sat with a Low-Center gravity, his eyes scanning the dark perimeter outside even as he addressed the interior. His voice was flat and pressurized, delivering his metaphor with the cold efficiency of a mechanical report.
"The criminal's still on the loose. If we don't act now, we're nothing but toasted rats on a carcass."
Guy 3:Sat abruptly. He was closer to the center, his chest heaving in that same rhythm as Kanka's. His voice was a guttural growl. He gestured toward the thatch behind him, a jagged, defensive motion.
"If nothing gets done, Oh God help me, i will hunt down that freak myself. I'm not allowing my family to become raw meals."
"Alright. Alright." Maluma boomed. The sound felt like a Structural Slam that forced the air out of the Maneaba.
The noise level dropped sharply.
Every eye was suddenly fixed on him.
"I understand your concern for justice. No one should go through what Bako went through. You're right, we must stay vigilant. For now, that's all we can do. Nothing more. But hear this: If we do find the killer, the punishment would be the severest act yet in history, not out of wanton revenge, but out of retribution for Bako and the restoration of justice on Banaba."
The reaction was a Loud-Ignition. The silence was shattered by the sharp, percussive crack of hands meeting.
A Synchronized Strike that sounded like the staccato snapping of dry timber.
"That's right!"
"Justice for the Wayfinder!"
"Let the blood settle the debt!"
"Banaba must be clean!"
The villagers leaned into each other, their movements Fluid and Predatory. Maluma's massive chest expanded as he absorbed the energy.
Back in the recessed perimeter,
Tinko sat in the Zero-Zone where the torchlight died. Usually a study in Visual Resistance, his Scanning-Mode finally broke. He sat with his torso twisted, staring toward the villagers.
Kanka's head swiveled. His gaze snagged on a shape in the mid-ground.
The man had tendon-like muscles and eyes the color of oxidized copper, a cold, metallic green that didn't reflect the fire, but seemed to pierce through it like a laser-array.
Kanka's curiosity has curdled. His features settled into a rigid, defensive snarl. He forcibly wrenched his gaze away,
but the bald man remained a static monument among the individuals, his copper-green eyes never wavering from the spot where Kanka's face just was.