They walked in silence.
Not awkward silence.
Not tired or companionable or even uncomfortable.
The kind that settles on a group like dust in an old room—heavy, fine, impossible to brush off.
The kind that follows something sacred being lost.
No one asked if they were okay.
No one asked what happened at the shrine.
No one needed to.
The silence had shaped itself into a living thing—walking just behind them, matching their pace, whispering across the backs of their necks.
It clung to their shoulders like a wet cloak, and none of them tried to shake it off.
Mazanka walked up front.
Not leading. Not watching.
Just moving.
Hands shoved deep in his pockets, coat brushing against tall grass, expression unreadable. His Ka'ro hadn't dimmed, but it buzzed differently—muted, like even it didn't want to speak right now.
The usual glint in his eye was gone.
The amusement that hovered at the edges of everything he did—absent.
He wasn't brooding.
He was mourning something he hadn't meant to lose.
Teruko followed behind him, a little further back.
Her eyes never stopped moving—watching the path, the trees, the sky. Not because she expected a fight. Not really.
She just needed something to focus on.
Anything but the sound—
—or absence of it—
coming from the two boys behind her.
Shugoh didn't bounce.
Didn't hum. Didn't skip ahead or ask strange questions or tie flowers to the tip of his sleeve like he usually did.
He walked beside Rakan, step for step.
Hands hanging loose, twitching occasionally—like they were still looking for Yori, still waiting for something to float beside him.
He kept glancing sideways at Rakan.
And every time, he stopped himself from saying something.
From joking.
From offering something he couldn't give.
Rakan didn't speak.
He hadn't spoken since the shrine.
Since the soft glow vanished and Yori folded inward like it had been relieved to die.
The tear tracks on his face had dried, leaving behind faint salt lines like ghost veins.
His breathing was steady. Too steady. Controlled in the way someone clenches their jaw during a memory they can't quite escape.
His Ka'ro pulsed in and out across his chest—unpredictable, like a heart trying to beat in two rhythms at once.
Not loud. Not violent.
Just confused.
As if some other presence inside him had cried, and now everything in him was trying to reconcile with the echo.
The path wound down through trees that shimmered blue in the fading light, their leaves like wet glass whispering with every breeze. Strange moss coated the edges of the trail, bioluminescent veins stretching like constellations over stone.
The air smelled of fruit and smoke—burning incense from the village fires below.
A smell that should've been warm.
Familiar.
Instead, it tasted like distance.
The jungle wasn't grieving.
It moved like it always had.
The birds sang.
The trees breathed.
The world—uncaring, uninterrupted—moved on.
And that was what made it feel so wrong.
Every step felt out of sync.
Like they were walking back into a world that hadn't seen what they had.
That wouldn't see it.
That couldn't understand what had just been taken from them.
At the edge of the village, Itomei waited.
Half-slouched against a leaning post that looked as exhausted as he did, one arm draped over the top, the other dangling a near-empty bottle, he watched them descend from the jungle ridge like someone watching a storm roll in from far away—already resigned to the rain.
The smoke from his pipe curled upward in lazy spirals, vanishing into the green dusk.
He didn't wave.
Didn't call out.
Didn't ask if they were okay.
Because he could see it.
Even from here.
The way Rakan's shoulders didn't quite sit right. The way Shugoh's steps were too quiet, too even. The way Mazanka, usually so flippant and laced with smirking detachment, walked as if he were carrying something heavy that wasn't visible.
And Teruko—
Even Teruko looked over her shoulder.
Once.
Then again.
Just to be sure they were still there.
Itomei took a pull from the bottle.
Made a face like someone who hated the taste of the truth but swallowed it anyway.
Then he muttered, mostly to himself—
"Well. That's something."
They passed him without stopping.
No one said anything.
No nods. No greetings. No questions.
But as Rakan passed—
Itomei's eyes narrowed.
Not in suspicion.
Not in fear.
Recognition.
The kind that doesn't bring clarity.
The kind that brings regret.
Like watching a dream resurface in someone else's face, one you'd buried long ago with hands that no longer felt like yours.
His gaze lingered on Shugoh, too.
And for a brief moment, the corners of his mouth twitched—like he was going to say something sarcastic.
Something sharp.
But it never came.
He didn't follow them.
Didn't ask what they'd broken, or lost, or nearly became.
He just turned, slow and tired, toward the jungle.
Lit another match.
And let the shadows take him.
Behind them, the village moved on.
Children chased fruit cores across the cracked stone paths, slipping and laughing.
A woman yelled at a goat for eating someone's soup again.
A man strung new lanterns across the roof beams, cursing as one snapped and fell on his foot.
Life.
Busy. Colourful. Familiar.
Unchanged.
Unconcerned.
And that—that was what made it feel so wrong.
Because something had died up on that ridge.
Something that had never been alive in the first place, but had still left behind a silence too heavy for the world to hear.
The stars were out.
A soft scatter of white pinpricks above the jungle, winking between the canopy like secrets trying to get through. The sky stretched far and quiet, bruised with violet clouds that didn't move, stitched to the trees by the windless hush of night.
The world should've felt peaceful.
Still.
Safe.
But it didn't.
It felt like the air was holding its breath.
Rakan sat on the edge of a half-sunken stone platform—one the villagers used for hanging lanterns during celebrations. His elbows rested on his knees, fingers laced together, face blank. He wasn't looking at anything in particular. Just the space between stars.
He didn't know what had pulled him here.
Only that he couldn't sleep. Not yet.
Shugoh sat beside him, legs folded beneath him like a monk mid-meditation, arms resting limp over his thighs. His jacket hung off one shoulder, eyes glazed, blinking slower than usual.
He didn't hum. Didn't talk. Didn't twitch.
He'd simply shown up.
No words exchanged.
No need for them.
They didn't plan to sit here together.
They just… ended up here.
Drawn by the same gravity.
The same quiet wrongness in their bones.
The silence between them wasn't awkward.
It was rich.
Heavy.
Full of everything they didn't know how to say.
It stretched between them like a river no one had mapped. Not hostile. Not cold. Just deep.
Deeper than either of them could see the bottom.
And cracked down the middle.
Like something used to live in it.
Something important.
Something now gone.
Rakan broke the stillness first.
His voice was low. Unpolished. The sound of someone speaking from the chest, not the mouth.
"Doesn't it feel like we lost something real?"
Not dramatic.
Just honest.
Like the question had been waiting in the back of his throat all evening, clinging to his ribs like old breath.
Shugoh didn't answer right away.
His eyes stayed on the stars.
When he finally did speak, his voice was softer than usual. Quieter. A different kind of Shugoh. A deeper register of himself.
"…I don't know."
Another beat passed.
A breeze stirred the leaves but didn't reach them.
Shugoh shifted slightly. Stared down at his hands.
"It felt like something remembered me."
Rakan turned his head, slowly.
And then he saw it.
The glow.
Soft.
Dim.
Like a dying ember, tucked just beneath the skin of Shugoh's palm.
Glyphs.
Not drawn. Not forced. Blooming faintly across his hand in a rhythm that didn't match his heartbeat, but matched something else.
Ancient.
Not angry. Not bright.
Just there.
Like the memory of fire.
They moved—not with energy, but awareness.
Like they were breathing.
Like they were… watching.
Rakan stared, heart thudding softly against his ribs.
He opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Because what was there to say?
He didn't understand it.
But he recognized it.
That same echo he'd felt inside the shrine.
Now clinging to Shugoh's hands.
Shugoh noticed.
Looked at his palm like it wasn't part of him anymore.
And yet—he didn't flinch. Didn't panic.
He just frowned.
Gently.
Like someone reading the last line of a book they hadn't realized was about them.
"I think Yori gave me something," he said.
His voice cracked slightly, but he didn't correct it.
Rakan's mouth was dry. "…What?"
"I don't know." Shugoh tilted his hand, watching the lines ripple faintly across his knuckles. "But it's not just power. It's more than that."
He paused.
Swallowed.
"It's a memory. One I don't have. But… I think it's mine now."
Rakan looked at him.
Really looked.
There was no joking in Shugoh's eyes.
No mischief.
Just something quiet and fractured and deep, like a glass lake hiding a long-forgotten storm beneath its surface.
"…Why?" Rakan asked.
It wasn't an accusation.
It was wonder.
It was mourning.
It was hope.
And Shugoh smiled.
Not wide. Not smug.
Just small. Barely-there.
"Because I asked if she wanted breakfast."
And in the silence that followed—
The stars blinked a little brighter.
And the glyph on his hand pulsed once.
Like a heartbeat.
Like something very, very old…still listening.
And in that moment—
Something tilted.
Not time.
Not space.
Just… the air.
Like the jungle itself blinked.
Like the world, just for a breath, forgot what moment it was in.
The warmth shifted. The night deepened. The wind stopped crawling through the trees. Even the insects—ever-present in Kyōgai—fell silent.
And for the briefest instant—
They were not alone.
Across from Rakan and Shugoh, beyond the dying embers of their small fire, sat two other figures.
Older.
Not ghosts.
Not illusions.
Reflections.
One of them was broad-shouldered, draped in tattered robes the color of buried stone, his hair pulled back in uneven knots. His eyes—dark, still, and endless—seemed made of tempered iron. Not hard. Not cold. Forged.
The other was wiry and lean, wrapped in layers of woven cloth, each band etched with glyphs like tiny paths across his limbs. His face was weathered. His smile was lopsided. There was mud dried in the folds of his sleeves. He looked like someone who never stopped moving.
They sat the same way as the boys.
Slouched. Tired.
Heads tilted toward the sky like they were trying to hear a memory written in the stars.
Their silence was not empty.
It was familiar.
Between them:
A fire.
But not like the one Rakan and Shugoh sat beside.
This one was older. Lower. Its flames cracked in a rhythm that felt less like burning and more like speaking. It whispered through the earth beneath it.
And surrounding it—
Glyphs.
Etched by hand. Faint. Glowing.
The same glyphs that had appeared across Shugoh's wrist.
The wiry figure touched one on his own arm. Not to check it.
To remember it.
The robed man beside him didn't move.
Just stared at the sky.
And for a moment—
Their forms and the boys' seemed to overlap.
Like two shadows cast by the same light.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
The air carried the words.
One lit the spark.
The other carried it forward.
And just like that—
The fire flickered.
The night uncoiled.
The stars blinked.
The jungle rustled again, as though exhaling.
The moment was gone.
Shugoh blinked hard. Rubbed his eyes. His voice was soft and hesitant, like he wasn't sure he hadn't dreamed it.
"…Did you see that?"
Rakan didn't answer at first.
Because something deep in his chest—deeper than Ka'ro, deeper than flesh—was thrumming. Low. Familiar.
It didn't speak in words.
But it didn't need to.
Because something inside him whispered—
It was.
And it will be again.