The clearing wasn't much of a clearing.
Roots arched from the soil like skeletal arms, twisting toward the moonless sky in reverence or warning. Luminous moss pulsed softly beneath their feet, glowing with the breath of the Rift. The trees loomed in crooked spirals, dripping strands of silver Ka'ro that swayed like threadbare banners in a wind no one could feel. Something howled in the distance—not a beast, but the jungle itself, exhaling the sound of a long-forgotten memory.
"Perfect place to die in our sleep," Teruko muttered, arms crossed as she glanced warily at the foliage.
"Perfect place to camp," Mazanka corrected cheerfully, already sprawled across a hammock he'd conjured from braided Ka'ro threads. His blond hair glinted faintly, lazily pulled back, one eye covered by his sleeve as he cradled the back of his head. "Come on, this is practically luxurious. Only three visible mouths in the bark. I've slept in worse."
Rakan narrowed his eyes at the hammock, then at the moss-covered ground where Teruko had begun setting up her own things with practiced irritation.
"We're really gonna sleep here?" he asked, pointing vaguely at a lump moving in the moss. "That thing just winked at me."
"Don't be a baby," Teruko shot back. "It was probably just a reaction to your scent."
Rakan rolled his eyes, pushing up his sleeves. "Say that again and I'll roast your gear."
"You couldn't roast bread," she snapped.
"Oh?" Rakan's hands lit with a flicker of erratic Ka'ro. "Wanna test that?"
"Absolutely not," Mazanka yawned from his hammock. "Unless you're planning on roasting me too, in which case—carry on."
Teruko's eye twitched. "Why do you always encourage him?"
Mazanka cracked a half-smile. "Because it's fun."
Then, like a storm with a skipping gait, Shugoh crashed back into camp.
He emerged from the jungle wearing an expression of delighted triumph, a trail of vines around his neck and a leafy creature clinging to his back like a frightened baby.
"I HAVE RETURNED!" he declared, both arms raised. "AND I BRING A FRIEND."
Rakan jumped back. "What the hell is that on your back?!"
"His name is Koko," Shugoh said solemnly. "We bonded over mutual idiocy. He threw a stick at me, I threw one back. Now we're friends."
Teruko looked up from where she'd been adjusting a tent spike and sighed. "That's a parasite."
"A friend," Shugoh corrected, petting the thing affectionately. It growled like a wet throat.
"Get it off before it lays eggs in your spine," Rakan said, dead serious.
Mazanka snorted. "If it hasn't already."
Shugoh flopped down cross-legged by the firepit Rakan had begun half-heartedly digging, Koko still latched to his shoulder like a trembling leafy tumor. The vine-creature let out a warbled hiccup, then burrowed deeper into Shugoh's cloak.
"I think he likes you," Mazanka commented.
"I'm magnetic," Shugoh said proudly. "To strays, outcasts, and jungle horrors. My people."
"He's drooling," Teruko muttered.
Rakan narrowed his eyes. "No, that's acid."
The creature burbled again, and a faint hiss rose from the patch of moss beneath them. A wisp of smoke curled up.
Shugoh didn't seem to notice.
"I found fruit," he said, digging through a pouch that shouldn't have had that much space inside it. "Also, something that may be fruit, something definitely not fruit, and this."
He held up a glimmering, twitching object. It looked like a beetle carved from crystal, its wings folded tightly, humming with trapped Ka'ro.
"Put that down," Teruko said sharply, shifting away from him.
"Oh, come on," Shugoh grinned. "It sparkles. Maybe it sings."
"It's a detonation ward," she snapped, scrambling up. "You touch its wings, it explodes with enough force to obliterate a tree!"
Mazanka raised a lazy hand. "That explains the tree I saw missing half its top."
Shugoh blinked at the beetle in his palm.
"…Oh."
He set it down on a rock. Very, very gently.
"I miss when you were lost in the jungle," Teruko sighed, glaring at him.
"I missed you too," Shugoh beamed. "I told the jungle all about you. It called you 'the small one who screams.'"
"That's it," she said, turning to Rakan. "Kill him."
"Don't have to ask me twice," Rakan muttered, turning his gaze to Shugoh as he stood.
Shugoh leapt to his feet, arms raised frantically and defensively. "You don't wanna do this, Ramen—"
"—IT'S RAKAN!"
Shugho ignored the interruption. "I've studied an ancient Ka'ro technique known only to squirrels and madmen."
Rakan stopped. "Wait—what?"
"It's called Biting Retreat. It involves shrieking and running in small zig-zags."
Mazanka clapped slowly. "Genius."
"Thank you."
They stood like that—Rakan half-serious, Teruko fuming, Shugoh grinning like an idiot—until Mazanka finally sat up from his hammock and waved a hand.
"Enough," he said, eyes glinting beneath his bangs. "Let's get this fire going before Teruko murders someone and Rakan gets distracted by a bug again."
"I was not distracted," Rakan said.
"You tried to fight a lizard for hissing at you."
"It started it."
Mazanka chuckled. "Of course it did."
By the time evening rolled in, they barely noticed.
By some miracle—or sheer exhaustion—they managed to settle around a fire Rakan had conjured after multiple failures and many smug remarks from Teruko.
The flame crackled, casting soft, wavering shadows on their faces. The jungle's breath pressed in close, but didn't intrude.
"Alright," Rakan said, leaning back smugly. "See? Fire."
"Barely," Teruko muttered, poking it with a stick. "It's all Ka'ro. That doesn't count as survival skills."
"Fire is fire," he grinned.
"That's like saying slapping someone counts as martial arts."
"It does if you slap hard enough."
"Children," Mazanka sang, balancing a fruit on his forehead. "Try not to get married before sunrise."
Teruko chucked her stick at him. He didn't even flinch—just let it bounce off and roll away, still balancing the fruit.
Shugoh, meanwhile, was trying to cook something over the fire using a strange, sputtering contraption made of sticks, Ka'ro glyphs, and what looked like a stolen fragment of a mask.
"What… is that," Rakan asked, half-horrified.
"It's a Ka'ro Cooker Deluxe,™" Shugoh announced proudly. "Patent pending."
"It's gonna explode," Teruko said flatly.
"It already did earlier," Shugoh said. "That's why I had to rebuild it. Improved airflow. Better explosion management."
Mazanka lifted his head. "Improved what?"
Shugoh beamed. "Improved—"
Boom.
The cooker let out a high-pitched wheeze and coughed smoke. Everyone ducked. Koko, still latched onto Shugoh's back, squealed in terror and passed out.
Rakan was still swatting smoke from his face, sputtering dramatically as if he'd been stabbed by the very air.
"You built that thing," he wheezed, pointing a scolding finger at Shugoh, "out of twigs, spirit tape, and a demon mask fragment! What did you think would happen?!"
Shugoh, unbothered and half-covered in soot, gave him a crooked grin. "I thought it might roast the fruit. Not roast me."
"You've got one functioning brain cell and it's currently orbiting Jupiter."
Shugoh blinked. "That's good, right? Orbiting means it's stable."
Teruko groaned and shoved her hands through her hair, now streaked with ash and bits of scorched moss. "You dragged us into the most dangerous region of this place, and this is your legacy? Exploding dinner?"
"I was trying to make something nice for the team," Shugoh said, mock-wounded, clutching his chest. "A warm meal. A bonding moment. A touch of culinary brilliance—"
"You nearly bonded our bones to the trees!" Teruko barked.
Rakan snorted at that, and Shugoh shot him a dramatic glare.
"Don't take her side. You're just mad because your fire took six tries and a Ka'ro tantrum to light."
"It worked, didn't it?"
"Barely," Teruko and Shugoh said in eerie unison.
Mazanka cackled from his hammock. "I swear, you three have the combined energy of a failed love triangle."
That stopped them.
Rakan and Teruko looked at each other, immediately recoiling with the synchronized horror of teenagers being accused of romance.
"WHAT?!"
"Never."
"Over my corpse," Teruko spat.
"Over her corpse," Rakan nodded.
Mazanka wiped a fake tear from his eye. "You're perfect for each other."
Shugoh tilted his head. "Wait… who's the triangle?"
Mazanka pointed lazily at him with his pinky. "You. Obviously. You're the chaos vertex."
"I do like shapes," Shugoh murmured, deeply contemplative.
For a brief, flickering moment, silence settled in—just the fire's pop, the distant echo of chirps that weren't birds, and the breath of the jungle sighing through moss and bone.
Then the scent of burnt fruit and mossy guilt drifted across the camp.
Teruko sniffed the air with a wrinkle in her nose. "Is something… still burning?"
Rakan turned to the Ka'ro Cooker, now collapsed in a smoking heap. "Shugoh…"
"…You're not supposed to inhale the steam," Shugoh said quickly.
"That's not steam, you lunatic," Teruko growled. "That's Ka'ro rot."
Shugoh squinted. "Rot builds character."
"It also builds cancer."
"Wait, wait," Mazanka said, sitting upright, his eye suddenly glowing with intrigue. "Did you say Ka'ro rot?"
"Yes?" Teruko said slowly.
Mazanka nodded, serious now. "That's illegal cuisine in five provinces. Can't believe you cooked it."
"I didn't mean to!" Shugoh yelped.
"Oh, I'm telling the Council."
"You are not!"
Mazanka was already pretending to write on his palm. "Dear Grand Ka'ro Chef, I regret to inform you that a wild-haired idiot tried to poison—"
"I was making jungle jam!" Shugoh cried.
"No one wants jungle jam!" Rakan shouted, cracking up.
"I do!" Shugoh protested, arms flailing. "You spread it over your suffering and call it dessert!"
Teruko was laughing now—barely, but it was there, hidden behind her exasperation. Rakan caught it, that moment of her letting the edge fall for once. It disarmed him in a way that felt warm. Human. For all her barking and pride, she laughed like she'd forgotten how.
And Mazanka noticed too.
He eased back, watching them with that quiet gleam again—not with smugness, but something almost wistful. As if, beneath the mockery and ridiculousness, something in this moment reminded him of something older. Something he'd lost.
"Y'know," he said after a pause, voice softer, "I've been with soldiers, monks, mercenaries, high-ranking Kenshiki, and wild desert Ka'ro riders. And none of them were ever as entertaining as the four of us almost dying over burnt fruit."
Shugoh gave a dramatic little bow, singed hair falling in his face. "We aim for mediocrity and achieve disaster."
"You are disaster," Teruko muttered, lying back onto her roll.
"And proud," Shugoh replied, curling up like a vine.
Rakan dropped next to the fire, arm behind his head, gazing up at the sky—or what little of it he could see through the breathing canopy.
There were no stars, only thin, silver strands winding through the trees, like Ka'ro veins pulsing against the ceiling of the world.
"…I've never seen a sky like this," he said absently.
Teruko opened one eye. "That's not the sky."
"…Huh?"
She tilted her head, pointing. "That's the jungle's crown. The upper roots. The Rift breathes through them at night. That glow is Ka'ro saturation."
Rakan blinked. "You mean… this place has a pulse?"
"Yes. And if it stops, we run."
Mazanka chuckled. "She's not wrong."
There was a long, strange quiet that followed—one where the fire burned low, and even the moss seemed to hush. For the first time in what felt like hours, none of them said anything.
And in that moment, despite the insanity of the day, despite Koko still twitching in his sleep on Shugoh's back, despite Mazanka's fruit now slightly glowing with Ka'ro exposure…
It felt peaceful.
Strange. Surreal. But peaceful.
As if, even in this cursed, twisted forest, among laughter and smoke and ridiculous inventions, something real was starting to form between them.
Not just survival.
Not just shared circumstance.
Something like—dare one say it—friendship.
Or, at the very least… something that didn't feel like loneliness anymore.
They slept—or tried to.
But Kyōgai didn't sleep.
The jungle wheezed in rhythms older than breathing, stretching and curling around the campsite like a living thing just barely tolerating their presence. Every tree loomed at an angle that suggested it had turned to watch. The moss pulsed beneath them with soft bioluminescence, warm as blood and twice as suspicious. The air clung thick and damp, like sweat from something massive just exhaled.
Rakan lay curled up near the fire, arms folded beneath his head, twitching every few minutes like something electric was trapped in his spine. His Ka'ro wouldn't settle—flickers of warmth and light spilled from his skin with every sigh. He stared into the dying flames, eyes half-lidded but restless.
Teruko sat with her back against a twisted tree root, arms crossed tight, chin resting on one knee. She glared into the dark like it had personally offended her.
She wasn't afraid.
At least, not technically.
She was just… alert. Perfectly, appropriately, professionally alert. It wasn't her fault the tree across from her had blinked earlier.
Mazanka had vanished back into his Ka'ro hammock without so much as a whisper, his limbs draped like a lazy jungle prince. His snoring was light, rhythmic, and annoyingly refined. Like the kind of snore you could record and sell as ambient noise for people who meditated too hard.
Shugoh, somehow, had managed to hang himself upside-down from a thick branch, wrapped up in vines like a strange bird refusing to evolve properly. He swung slightly with each jungle gust, whisper-singing an improvised lullaby to the stars.
"Lull the beasts, lull the bark,
Don't let Teruko bite in the dark…"
Teruko didn't move. "I will throw a rock."
Shugoh's voice floated down, half-song, half-chant.
"She threatens me now, with such elegant wrath,
But wait till she hears the snore aftermath…"
"I. Don't. Snore," she growled, not opening her eyes.
"You do," Rakan muttered from beside the fire, flipping onto his back. "It sounds like someone trying to sharpen a sword inside a paper bag."
She turned her head slightly, just enough to glare at him. "I don't snore."
"Sure you don't," Shugoh chimed, voice full of glee. "But if you did, it'd be a noble snore. A regal chainsaw. The snore of someone too angry to breathe normally."
Rakan laughed under his breath.
Teruko didn't reply—but she didn't deny it again, either.
A pause stretched between them.
The kind that lives in the space between real silence and the silence you hope is real.
Then, from somewhere deep within the trees, something screamed.
Not a creature. Not a voice. Something… else.
The sound was distant but vast—like a canyon crying in reverse. It echoed once, twice, then was gone.
Rakan sat bolt upright, heart hammering. "Did anyone else hear that?"
"Sleep," Teruko said immediately, eyes still closed.
"That was definitely a scream."
"It was the jungle. Stop being dramatic."
Rakan looked around. The trees hadn't moved, but they felt closer. The fire flickered weirdly, casting long-fingered shadows across his chest. His Ka'ro twitched.
From above, Shugoh's face suddenly appeared—hanging upside-down like a ghost that got distracted halfway through haunting.
"Could've been the moss spirits," he said, solemn as a priest.
Teruko opened one eye. "Those aren't real."
"They are," Shugoh said, swinging gently. "They told me about your snoring."
"I don't snore!"
Shugoh tilted his head even further—his hair dangling toward her shoulder. "Wanna bet? I record in my sleep. For legal reasons."
Rakan gave a small snort, covering his mouth with the back of his hand.
Mazanka shifted in his hammock with a sigh, voice warm and drowsy. "What a team…"
"You're not helping," Teruko snapped.
"I'm not supposed to. I'm the mentor. I observe, sip juice, and throw fuel on the fire." He stretched an arm dramatically, then waved at Rakan with lazy fingers. "You're twitchy tonight, Flameboy."
Rakan stared at the fire again. "Something's off. The Ka'ro here—it's like it's watching."
"It always watches," Mazanka murmured, folding his arms behind his head again. "That's what makes it fun."
"No," Rakan said, sitting up straighter. "It's not like before. Ever since the monument—ever since that—it's like it knows who I am."
That silenced them, for a beat too long.
Even Shugoh stopped swinging.
Mazanka exhaled, quiet. "That's possible."
Teruko opened both eyes now, her voice clipped. "Don't encourage him. He's already dramatic enough."
Rakan turned to her. "You saw the statue. You saw what happened to the grove."
Her jaw tightened. "I also saw you disintegrate it into nothing. That could've been any unstable Ka'ro user's flare."
"But it wasn't."
Their eyes locked—hers sharp and unyielding, his burning low, like embers that refused to go out.
Mazanka groaned from his hammock. "Alright, alright, gods. Can you two not romance-fight over cursed statues while I'm trying to sleep?"
"We are not romance-fighting," they both barked in unison.
Shugoh clapped, still upside-down. "Synchronicity! Aw, you are a team!"
Teruko tossed a pebble at him without looking. It missed, but only barely.
Rakan flopped back onto his side with a grunt, pulling his cloak tighter around him. "I'm not sleeping."
Teruko rubbed her face. "You'd sleep better if you stopped talking."
"You'd talk less if you actually trusted anyone."
Her hands froze.
The fire cracked once.
Then slowly, she leaned her head back against the root again. "That's not true."
Rakan blinked.
"I trust you," she said softly. "Just not with anything fragile."
Shugoh's voice dropped from above. "That's still something."
Mazanka, half-asleep now, murmured through a smile, "Progress."
No one spoke after that.
Not for a while.
The jungle breathed around them, folding them into its ancient silence. Shadows passed high above, and far away, something mimicked a human laugh—wrong in cadence, but eerily close. Still, none of them moved. The fire shrank. The mist grew thicker.
Eventually, Rakan's breathing slowed. Teruko's eyelids lowered. Even Shugoh went still, curling up in his branch, muttering nonsense to the stars.
And Mazanka, eyes barely open, watched them all quietly beneath the humming threads of Ka'ro.
His eye glowed faintly beneath his hair, unseen.
He didn't sleep.
Mentors rarely do.
Not when they know what's coming.