The stair ended in a threshold with no door. Just an opening.
They stepped through it into a space that felt more like a memory than a room.
The chamber sprawled out ahead of them, impossibly wide. Half of it looked natural—rock veined with glowing minerals, dripping moisture from stalactites. The other half had clearly been shaped by hands that no longer had names. The floor bore concentric rings of ancient glyphs, many of them cracked and dim, others still pulsing faintly like forgotten stars.
Long roots hung from the ceiling, trailing into shallow pools of Ka'ro-infused water that shimmered with a strange inner tension. The water didn't move unless you looked away. Then it twitched.
But it was the center of the room that held them.
A raised circle of stone—maybe an altar, maybe a seal—was carved with layered sigils that pulsed in time with the glyphs in the stair. Hovering above it, locked in place by six interlocking memory-bound chains, was a small metallic box—no larger than a fruit. Its surface was polished and dark, engraved with curling script in a language none of them had ever seen.
It didn't glow.
It hummed. Softly. Like something thinking.
Rakan exhaled. "That's definitely cursed."
"Definitely valuable," Shugoh added, stepping closer with comically wide eyes.
Teruko's voice cut across the chamber like a drawn blade. "Don't touch it."
Her hand hovered near her weapon. Her stance had shifted—subtle, but defensive. She was reading the air now. Reading the hum.
"Something about this feels… wrong," she muttered.
Shugoh tilted his head. "Wrong in a 'morally ambiguous artifact' way? Or wrong in a 'the walls eat your skin' way?"
"Either."
Shugoh was already raising his hand.
"Don't—" Teruko started.
But too late.
His fingertips brushed the box.
The chains snapped.
Not violently. Not all at once.
They dissolved. Vanished into vapor like memory burned from the page.
The hum stopped.
The box dropped.
Shugoh caught it with both hands, blinking in surprise.
And then—
Chime.
A sound rang out through the chamber. Not from the box. Not from any one point in space.
It was crystalline and delicate, but wrong—like a song with one note too sharp. It hung in the air long after it ended.
And somewhere, far above the jungle floor, a third party opened their eyes.
Mazanka's eye flicked to the ceiling. "That's a beacon."
Rakan turned. "What kind of beacon?"
Mazanka frowned, already backing toward the exit. "The someone's-coming-to-kill-us kind."
The glyphs on the walls pulsed faster.
The box grew warmer in Shugoh's hands.
Something above them cracked.
Teruko hissed, "Back. Now."
They ran.
They didn't hear him at first.
They felt him.
The shift in air—like static thick enough to chew. A pressure that curled down the spine before it ever reached the ears. Cold. Measured. Not like Ka'ro. Not like the Rift. Something smaller, somehow—like all the intention of a killer trapped in the body of a tired man who didn't even want to be there.
Then—
Thunk.
A sound sharp enough to slice silence.
A single dart buried itself in the ground beside Shugoh's foot, its tail still trembling.
It didn't hit him. It hit a leaf that had been drifting down gently, slow as thought. The leaf pinned perfectly—center vein skewered.
Everyone froze.
Rakan's Ka'ro snapped to life, crackling up his arms like lightning with a heartbeat. Teruko stepped in front of Shugoh with her blade half-drawn, eyes narrowed, stance locked.
Mazanka, who hadn't blinked once in the last ten seconds, blinked.
And then the voice came:
"Put the box down."
Dry. Cracked with boredom. A voice that sounded like it had just woken up from a dream it hated. It echoed off the chamber walls like a cough in a church.
Their heads turned upward—
And from the spiral stair, half-sunk in shadow, he appeared.
A lone figure in a cloak stitched from ragged leather and ash-dyed cloth, its edges frayed by travel and time. The color of dried blood and rusted moss. His shoulders slouched like someone whose back had long ago decided standing up straight was no longer worth the effort.
His mask was simple—bone white, cracked across the mouth like something that used to smile. Three eyeholes: two dark, one glowing faintly gold, mechanical, cold. No insignia. No symbols. No Ka'ro trails. Just a presence—lean, slow-moving, and unnervingly casual.
He didn't descend.
He hovered at the threshold of the stairs like bad news wrapped in fog, exhaling a sigh that lasted a full, resentful second.
Mazanka tilted his head, muttering, "That's not Kenshiki…"
The stranger spoke again, his tone flatter this time. "I said—put the box down."
Shugoh blinked. "Who are you?"
Silence.
"Uh," Shugoh called up, "are you the janitor?"
No response.
"Caretaker?"
Nothing.
"Log demon?"
Shugoh tilted his head. "Are you, uh… the log's owner? Or is this, like, a cursed house situation—"
Still nothing.
Teruko took a step forward, blade drawn now. "Kenshiki?"
The figure made a sound halfway between a groan and a scoff.
"Ugh. Don't piss me off."
Then, almost lazily, he stepped forward.
The moment his foot touched the stairwell, the glyphs carved into the stone extinguished.
Darkness coiled behind him. The path sealed shut behind his heel like a wound closing. The room's temperature dropped.
Mazanka's smile vanished. "That's not good."
From beneath the cloak, the masked man drew a strange weapon—folded, segmented, glinting. It uncoiled like a hybrid between a whip and a chisel, the chain-link segments etched with compressed Ka'ro runes. Each motion of it was silent, precise—like it had been built for one purpose: disabling.
He pointed it at them—one-handed, not even adjusting his posture.
"Give me the box," he said, "and you can all go scream somewhere else."
Shugoh took an instinctive step back, clutching the box tighter to his chest like a stuffed toy. "No."
The man sighed, dragging the sound out like it hurt him to exhale. "I'm not here to talk. Just give me the box."
Shugoh clutched it tighter, posture stiffening. "I earned this box."
"You touched it," the man replied.
"Touching is a form of spiritual claim—"
"No."
The masked man tilted his head slightly, like someone being asked to work overtime without pay.
"Listen," Rakan stepped forward, Ka'ro flaring. "You're not getting it."
The stranger's shoulders sagged like he was deeply, cosmically exhausted.
"Every time," he muttered. "Every damn time."
Then—
He moved.
And it wasn't a step.
It was a shift.
A blink in physics.
Suddenly he was behind Rakan, arm raised at an angle that shouldn't have been possible unless he'd already mapped their movements five seconds ago. Teruko reacted just in time—blade arcing to meet the descending blow.
Sparks flew.
Her body skidded back from the impact. Ka'ro split the floor beneath her.
Rakan spun, throwing his energy forward, but—
There was no one there.
The bounty hunter had vanished again.
Shugoh turned, Ka'ro forming in a swirling disk in his palm.
Too late.
A shockwave struck them both in the chest—sharp, clean, and silent.
They flew backward. Rakan crashed into the far wall. Shugoh hit the ground, rolled, and bounced back to his feet—still holding the box with both arms like a child refusing to drop a forbidden toy.
Mazanka stepped forward at last, one eye glowing faintly beneath his hair.
His voice dropped.
"Run."
The air trembled around him.
A wave of spiraling, silver-blue Ka'ro erupted from his palm—disruption field, wide and slow, not to hit but to stagger. The hunter faltered just enough.
Shugoh took off.
Teruko grabbed Rakan's arm and hauled him up. Mazanka turned again to intercept, but the masked figure was already behind them.
"Go," Mazanka shouted again, "NOW!"
As they sprinted, the bounty hunter raised his weapon again—until Mazanka snapped his fingers and detonated the stairwell behind them with a pulse of glyph-stamped Ka'ro.
BOOM.
Stone cracked.
The opening to the chamber shattered outward in a burst of flame and force.
They ran into it blindly.
When the masked man turned back to the man who had caused the destruction, he was met by only worn air. Mazanka had made a break for it.
The bounty hunter didn't follow.
Not right away.
He just stood there, rolling one shoulder slowly.
Sighed.
"…Ugh. I hate running."
Then he vanished, too.
What followed was not elegant.
It was chaos. Raw, glorious, slapstick chaos.
It began with Rakan tripping over his own Ka'ro surge. One second he was running like a determined protagonist, the next his foot caught on a glyph root, and he stumbled forward with a shout—colliding shoulder-first into Teruko.
Teruko, composed warrior of the blade, yelped like a kicked cat as she was sent flying into a swamp vine.
It was not a normal vine. It screamed when touched.
She slashed through it midair, the plant shrieking like a banshee as acidic fluid sprayed in all directions.
"STOP TOUCHING THINGS!" she screamed.
"I DIDN'T MEAN TO!" Rakan shouted back.
"YOU NEVER MEAN TO!"
Meanwhile, Shugoh, the idiotic genius, had spotted what he believed to be smoke fruit growing on a nearby ledge.
"Cover fire!" he declared.
He hurled a fistful of them in a beautiful arc—except he misjudged the wind, the trajectory, and gravity.
The fruit exploded at his own feet, enveloping him in thick purple smoke.
"Am I invisible?" his voice called from the mist.
"You're blind," Teruko yelled.
"I can't see!"
"I KNOW."
Mazanka brought up the rear, barking orders between amused laughs.
"Left!" he shouted.
They all turned right.
"I said LEFT!"
"You pointed right!" Rakan snapped.
"Did I?" Mazanka mused, smiling.
Birds shrieked from above—some aggressive Ka'ro-variant that attacked on reflex. Two swooped at Shugoh. One got punched mid-air. The other landed on Rakan's head and refused to leave. He swatted at it while running.
The box in Shugoh's arms was now glowing like a divine beacon, vibrating like it was offended by everything happening around it.
They dropped it three times.
Each time it hit the ground, it sang.
And through all of it, the bounty hunter never ran.
He walked.
Calmly. Casually.
Through smoke, through trees, through traps.
Like gravity didn't apply to him.
No Ka'ro. No speed. Just a creeping inevitability. No matter how fast they moved, every time they glanced over their shoulders, he was closer.
They did not arrive with grace.
They collided with civilization like a bad omen with legs.
Rakan slid down a muddy incline screaming something unheroic, arms windmilling, hair full of twigs.
Teruko tripped on a gnarled vine and faceplanted into a stall full of dried fish.
Shugoh, somehow airborne, crashed into a fruit cart with a noise that made several nearby birds panic and defecate in unison.
Mazanka emerged behind them, sipping a drink he'd conjured mid-descent, boots clean, eyes half-lidded like none of this was his problem.
They landed in a heap of dirt, fish, and bruised dignity at the edge of what could only be described as a village that refused to care.
Buildings leaned sideways like they'd been drinking. People bustled past with sacks of rice, Ka'ro-infused tools, and livestock that looked vaguely venomous. Someone was loudly arguing with a goat. A man screamed from a rooftop, holding a burning broom, but no one looked up. Two women sold soup from opposite ends of the same cart and shouted at the same time in competing sales pitches.
No one screamed at the new arrivals.
No one ran in fear.
No one even looked particularly surprised.
A man sweeping the same spot for what was clearly no reason paused, raised one eyebrow, and muttered, "Newcomers," before going right back to sweeping the same leaf.
Rakan spat out a handful of fish scales. "What… just happened."
"This," Mazanka said, "is the glorious village of Gajinka-no-Yama. Home of the unbothered and the overcooked."
Shugoh emerged from the fruit cart, a pineapple stuck to his hair, cradling the glowing box like a baby made of dynamite.
"I love it here."
A large, lumbering chicken with three eyes walked by.
"Same," Rakan muttered.
Then—
Footsteps.
Slow. Crunching. Inevitable.
The bounty hunter stepped through the tree line behind them—still masked, still silent, still moving like gravity owed him money.
The villagers parted around him casually, some greeting him like an awkward coworker at a market. A merchant tossed him a bottle. He caught it mid-stride and pocketed it. Didn't even flinch.
Mazanka stared, still not placing it. The way he walked… the laziness in his joints… the way his Ka'ro sat coiled in his bones like it was bored…
He knew it. But couldn't grab it.
And then—
From behind a food stall, there came a scream.
High-pitched. Furious. Personal.
"IIIIIIIIITOOOOOOOOOMEIIIIIIIIII!"
The entire village paused.
Not dramatically. Not in shock. Just the resigned stillness of people who had heard this many, many times before.
A boy—maybe nine, wiry arms, hair like he'd lost a fight with a thunderstorm—burst through the soup crowd wielding a greasy ladle like a holy relic.
He skidded to a stop and pointed a trembling finger at the masked man.
"YOU OWE MY MOM THREE MONTHS OF RENT, SIX BOTTLES OF GINGER WINE, AND MY BED!"
Shugoh blinked. "Wait… he lives here?"
The bounty hunter, still masked, let out the most disgusted, exhausted exhale anyone had ever heard.
"How annoying," he muttered.
The boy kept going.
"You said you were 'testing long-term camouflage'—BUT YOU'VE BEEN SLEEPING ON OUR ROOF."
"I was—"
"You stole my blanket, Itomei!"
"Give it a rest—"
"You said you were 'reconnecting with dirt!' YOU LEFT YOUR SOCKS IN THE PANTRY."
The box in Shugoh's arms blinked rapidly, seemingly reacting to the shouting.
Mazanka's drink stopped halfway to his lips.
He froze.
Turned.
Stared at the masked man. Really stared.
"…No."
The boy cupped his hands to his mouth and screamed:
"YOU STILL OWE ME FOR THE TIME YOU USED OUR BATHTUB AS A KA'RO DRYER AND TURNED MY PET ROCK INTO MUSH."
The bounty hunter twitched.
Rakan turned to Mazanka. "Wait. What is—"
"…Itomei," Mazanka whispered.
The bounty hunter slowly removed his mask with the weariness of a man peeling off shame.
Revealing a face marked by years of spite-fueled slacking.
Beard uneven. Hair like a nest of broken promises. One eye slightly squinting, not from injury—but from perpetual disdain.
"Hey, Mazanka," he said, voice dry as sawdust. "Still following rules like a nerd?"
Mazanka nearly dropped his cup.
"ITOMEI?!"
The boy, still furious, kicked the bounty hunter in the shin and shouted, "HE DRINKS MY MOM'S COOKING WINE AND THEN TALKS TO THE FLOOR FOR HOURS."
Itomei only grimaced, cleaning his ear as he muttered under his breath.
"HE OWNS THREE PAIRS OF PANTS AND NONE OF THEM FIT."
There was a sigh from the man in question.
"HE TRIED TO PAY RENT WITH A 'RARE ROCK' HE FOUND IN THE GUTTER."
Itomei turned slowly to the group, one hand in his coat pocket, the other rubbing his face.
"I'm going to kill this kid."
Mazanka stepped forward, shaking his head. "You… the smartest, most terrifying Ka'ro analyst in our class a bounty hunter? What the hell happened?"
"I still am," Itomei muttered. "I just hate getting up in the morning."
Teruko, covered in fish, looked between them. "Wait. This guy used to be Kenshiki?"
Mazanka nodded. "Best I ever saw. Quit halfway through training."
Rakan squinted. "Why?"
Itomei shrugged. "Because people are too much of a pain in the ass."
The kid was now hitting him with the ladle rhythmically.
Mazanka laughed—harder than he had in weeks.
"Same miserable bastard," he said. "You really been here this whole time?"
"Yep," Itomei said, producing a flask from somewhere. "I found enlightenment in the form of alcohol and tactical napping."
"You're a bounty hunter," Teruko said, flabbergasted.
"Correction," Itomei said, sipping. "I was a bounty hunter. Then I caught the bounty. Now I'm trying to pawn it off."
He pointed at the glowing box in Shugoh's arms.
"Speaking of."
Shugoh clutched it tighter. "He wants to take my glowing child."
"This is too much work. I'm gonna go back to bed," Itomei said.
The boy shouted, "YOU OWES US A NEW DOOR!"
Itomei took another swig, stared up at the sky, and said:
"If I ever kill one of you, it'll be on accident. Just so you know."
And he was gone.
The village of Gajinka-no-Yama was a paradox in every sense of the word.
Half-dilapidated, half-miraculous, it shouldn't have existed—
but it did, as if defying logic had become its national pastime.
Huts tilted like they were caught mid-sneeze. Some homes were made of fused tree bark and mineral glass, others looked like they'd once been boats, or teeth. Ka'ro plants grew from rooftops, whispered insults, and occasionally burst into interpretive dance under moonlight. Someone somewhere was always yelling about soup.
Nothing here was fixed, but everything worked.
Children skated on polished glyphs. Elderly folk cursed at spirits with seasoned expertise. A dog barked three times in the same pitch every day at noon, and people used it to tell time. No one questioned the chaos—they built with it.
By dusk, Rakan, Teruko, Shugoh, and Mazanka had found lodging—if you could call it that.
Their temporary sanctuary was the "Yamatsuri Springhouse," a multi-level inn built directly over a geothermal vent that hissed constantly like it had something to say. The floors creaked like they resented your weight. The rooms tilted in different directions. One stairwell looped back into itself. And the hot spring out back smelled like sulfur, dreams, and possibly regret.
The walls groaned. The floors shifted. The ceiling occasionally dripped Ka'ro condensation that smelled faintly of strawberries and panic.
And the drinks?
The drinks were made from ingredients no one dared list aloud.
And of course, Itomei En lived such a place.
Naturally.
He was already seated at the inn's corner bar when the others arrived—slouched in a chair that might've once been a throne, or a broken animal, or both. His hair was a tangled mess of dried leaves and lost ambitions. His mug held something orange, slightly fizzy, and visibly vibrating like it contained a trapped heartbeat.
He didn't notice their entrance.
Or rather—he did, but chose to acknowledge them with the subtlety of a man who'd been caught napping during a war and decided to finish his drink first.
Every few minutes, he'd mutter:
"Don't touch that."
To no one in particular.
Sometimes, things in the bar would stop moving when he said it.
Mazanka sat across from him, legs crossed, arms resting lazily on the table, sipping something brownish and questionably legal. His grin was equal parts nostalgia and disbelief—like someone staring at a ghost who was somehow worse than they remembered.
"So," he said, swirling his drink. "You actually live here?"
Itomei didn't look up. "Define live."
Mazanka tilted his head. "Do you sleep here?"
"Occasionally. When the stars don't make eye contact."
"Do you eat here?"
"Out of obligation. And spite."
"You owe the innkeeper's kid a bed," Mazanka said, sipping.
"He never used it properly," Itomei said, taking a sip of his own. "He was storing clay birds in it. That's not bed behavior."
Mazanka snorted. "That's not your call."
"The birds agreed with me."
He raised his cup again, murmuring something under his breath. The drink hissed back.
As if summoned by karmic timing, the innkeeper's kid stormed into the bar with a mop in one hand, a frying pan in the other, and the righteous fury of a vengeful accountant.
"There you are, you Ka'ro-guzzling moss sponge."
Itomei didn't flinch.
The kid pointed the mop like a sword. "You said you'd help patch the roof last week and instead reinvented napping."
"I was studying the acoustic qualities of silence," Itomei said. "For science."
"You fell asleep on a goat!"
"That was part of the study."
"You named the goat 'Theorem!'"
Itomei glanced at Mazanka. "It had thoughtful eyes."
Mazanka raised his mug. "You're still a walking absurdity."
"And you're still too dramatic."
The kid slammed the mop down. "Fix. The. Bed. Or I'm pouring Ka'ro vinegar into your special shampoo again."
Mazanka leaned in. "…Wait. You still give your hair princess treatment?"
Itomei took a long, solemn sip. "Obviously. I'm not a monster, Mazanka."
Behind the bar stood a hulking barkeep with an eye patch and a beard that emitted steam. No one knew if he was human. He served drinks in bowls, bones, and once—a fossil.
Mazanka raised his mug. "What is this?"
"Bitterroot fermented in regret and elderflower." the barkeep replied.
"And mine?" Itomei asked.
The barkeep shrugged. "Still unsure. It moved earlier."
Itomei nodded approvingly.
The shouting faded. The kid stormed off, muttering about lawsuits.
Mazanka leaned back in his chair, watching Itomei with half a smirk and one brow raised.
"You really never leave this place?"
"I leave," Itomei muttered. "Then I come back because the world out there expects things. Here, the floor bites back and people leave you alone. It's a relationship built on mutual apathy."
"And your bounty hunting?"
"Freelance," he said, then paused. "Freelancer who refuses all jobs unless I'm drunk or owe someone something I forgot about."
Mazanka laughed again—lower, wearier, but honest. "You were supposed to be the next big thing, you know."
"I was never supposed to be anything," Itomei said, swirling his cup, "except tired."
Back in the inn room, it smelled like mint, sweat, and regret.
The walls creaked when no one touched them. A bucket full of steaming healing water gurgled ominously in the corner, already cracked from a recent accident. The bed had no legs—it floated an inch off the ground, humming softly. No one was sure if that was intentional or a problem.
Teruko, soaked to the collarbone and smeared in patches of medicinal moss that reeked of fermented pine, sat cross-legged on a mat that was technically alive.
She was glaring at Rakan, who stood over the shattered remains of the wash basin like a guilty dog in a flooded kitchen.
"I told you to pour slowly," she said, voice flat as the floor.
"It was leaking," Rakan argued, holding the broken jug like it might apologize.
"It's supposed to leak," she snapped. "It's healing water. It leaks Ka'ro—intentionally. It's designed to weep vitality!"
"Well, it looked like it was sweating," he muttered, kneeling beside the puddle, inspecting the cracks like it was the basin's fault. "Like… guilty water."
"Guilty—?" She stood abruptly, the moss on her elbow hissing as it peeled from her skin. "You destroyed a five-jikki vessel made from Rift-born volcanic glass because you thought it looked… nervous?!"
Rakan threw up his hands. "If it was that important, maybe don't put it next to the wall with eyes!"
"The wall is protective!"
"It blinked at me!"
Before Teruko could respond—likely with violence—the door creaked open.
And in walked Shugoh, wearing only one boot, a belt full of fruit, and a proud grin. Draped across his chest was a sling made from his own jacket, nestled inside which was the softly glowing, ever-vibrating box.
He cradled it like a sacred artefact. Or a volatile child.
"It made a new noise," he announced.
Rakan turned. "What kind of noise?"
Shugoh paused, tilted his head, and said with genuine scientific reverence,
"A scream."
Teruko immediately reached for her blade. "What kind of scream?"
"Like… a baby goat," Shugoh said slowly, eyes narrowing. "But… in space."
Teruko blinked.
Rakan frowned. "Like… muffled?"
"No. Like it's realizing it's in space mid-scream. Existential goat."
There was a moment of silence as they all absorbed that.
Teruko stood, shaking moss off her leg like a warrior shedding her last shred of patience. "We need to get rid of it."
"Too late," Shugoh replied. "I named it."
Teruko froze. "You what?"
"It has a name now. It's ours."
Rakan put a hand to his forehead. "Oh no."
"What did you name it?" Teruko asked, voice trembling with exhausted fury.
Shugoh beamed like a proud parent. "Yori."
"Yori?" Rakan repeated. "That's… surprisingly normal."
Shugoh raised a finger. "Short for 'Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu, Please Don't Explode.'"
Teruko let out a sound between a groan and a shriek.
"You named it after a polite request not to detonate?!"
"You'd be amazed how well that works with cursed things," Shugoh said, sitting beside the box and patting it like a cat. "If you treat them like people, they act more polite."
Rakan glanced at the box. "It's humming."
Shugoh nodded. "It does that when it's happy."
"It sounds like it's trying to pronounce my name backward."
"That means it likes you!"
The box made a noise. It sounded like laughter—but broken, like glass giggling.
Everyone went still.
Teruko slowly lowered herself back onto the mat. "We're going to die in this room."
Shugoh curled around the box protectively. "Only if we doubt Yori's potential."
The box let out another high-pitched warble. A single spark of Ka'ro leaked out and lit the edge of Teruko's moss wrap on fire.
She didn't move.
Just whispered, "I will end you both."
Rakan kicked the basin shard. "We're already dead."
The box had begun to vibrate.
Not a cute little hum.
It shook like it was being tickled by ghosts with secrets.
Shugoh, fully invested, held it with both hands, crouched low like a priest guarding a relic that occasionally growled. He'd tied a sash around it like a baby sling and had drawn little eyes on the side with berry juice.
Rakan knelt nearby, carefully sketching a containment glyph around it in chalk, tongue between his teeth.
"Don't smudge it this time," Teruko snapped from the corner.
"That was one time," Rakan muttered.
"You stepped in your own seal."
"It was an accident."
"You have two feet. How do you accidentally pick the wrong one?"
"I didn't pick—!"
"Shh," Shugoh whispered, head bowed. "Yori speaks."
They all froze.
The box emitted a faint series of pulses—like a heartbeat, but irregular, like it was still figuring out rhythm. Then came a sound, soft at first:
hhhhrrrrrrrrgghhh…
Followed by a high-pitched squeaky inhale like someone was pretending to be a balloon.
Rakan sat back, eyes wide. "It's breathing again."
"It's always breathing," Teruko said, arms folded.
"No, that was… a different kind of breath."
Shugoh nodded solemnly. "Labored. As if from a small creature experiencing philosophical awakening."
Teruko raised a brow. "It sounded like a wheezing mushroom."
"Same thing."
The glow intensified.
The glyphs beneath it flickered, dimmed, and then sparked again. The chalk began to lift—physically—dusty tendrils swirling upward like smoke that hadn't made up its mind.
"It's reacting to the seal," Rakan muttered.
"Or it's digesting the seal," Teruko said.
Shugoh cocked his head. "Is that… possible?"
"I don't know!" she snapped. "It's a box, not a Ka'ro scholar."
The box emitted a soft, shrill ding, followed by a chittering sound not unlike a squirrel trapped inside a flute.
"It's changing," Rakan whispered. "Maybe mutating."
"Maybe stabilizing," Shugoh said hopefully.
"Maybe about to explode and kill us all," Teruko added.
"I don't think it's hostile," Rakan said, still watching the glow.
Teruko shook her head. "It's humming. Things don't hum unless they want something."
The box began to shake harder. Fast. Twitchy. Like it was trying to learn how to dance but only knew the theory.
Rakan leaned closer.
Teruko took a step back.
Shugoh whispered, "It's becoming."
The box stopped shaking abruptly.
Then—
A single, loud, sharp giggle.
A perfect, tiny cackle.
"Heehee!"
Silence.
The three of them stood frozen like statues.
Shugoh blinked first. Then smiled.
"…Yori's alive."
Rakan sat back, mouth open. "It just laughed. It laughed."
Teruko's eyes narrowed. "That wasn't a laugh. That was the sound of a sentient object figuring out it enjoys chaos."
"It sounded happy," Shugoh offered.
"It sounded evil," Teruko said.
"It sounded like a child discovering fire," Rakan muttered.
The box giggled again.
This time, it followed up with a small fizz of pink sparks and a poot noise.
Rakan jumped. "What was that?"
"I think it just sneezed," Shugoh said, beaming.
Teruko turned away. "I am going to bed."
"You're not even going to help?" Rakan asked.
"It's clearly imprinted on him," she said, pointing at Shugoh like he was holding a live crab. "This is now his child."
"I accept this burden," Shugoh said, rocking it slightly.
The box let out a hiccup and a faint sproing.
Somewhere in the inn, a lantern shattered for no reason.
Rakan stared. "That's… new."
Teruko sighed into her palm. "You all treat this like a pet."
"It's not a pet," Shugoh said softly. "It's a miracle."
"It's a hazard," Teruko snapped.
Shugoh grinned, crouched beside the softly glowing cube, and whispered, "Who's our little hazard baby, hmm?"
The box purred.
Rakan blinked. "It just purred. Why can it purr?"
Teruko groaned and walked toward the door. "If it sprouts legs and asks for soup, I'm leaving."
The night was heavy and thick with Kyōgai's breath.
From the inn's rooftop, the jungle looked like it had grown lungs—every gust of wind a slow exhale across twisted canopy veins. Bioluminescent spores floated like drifting fireflies. Far in the distance, a mountain moved in its sleep. Or maybe it wasn't a mountain.
Itomei sat slumped beside the open window, his half-empty mug sweating into his sleeve, one eye squinting up at the fractured sky.
Mazanka lounged across from him, legs crossed, fingers twirling a glowing coin of Ka'ro between them. He stared not at the stars, but at Itomei, like trying to measure the man against the boy he once knew.
"You know," Mazanka said finally, "this can't just be some trinket."
Itomei let out a noise somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. "It isn't."
Mazanka turned his head toward him. "What is it, then?"
Itomei swirled the dregs of his drink, watching the liquid slosh like it had somewhere better to be. His words came slowly, drunk but not slurred—like thoughts dragged up from the bottom of an old well.
"Something old. Something not meant to survive the Rift. Not in this form, anyway."
"Define form."
Itomei gave him a withering side-eye. "Don't start that philosophical crap. It's late. I'm tipsy. The cat tried to stab me earlier."
Mazanka raised a brow. "There wasn't any cat."
"I know."
A moment passed. Silence pooled around them.
Then, Itomei leaned his head back against the wall, eyes half-closed, and added in a near whisper—
"…And now it's singing lullabies."
Mazanka frowned. "What?"
But Itomei was already standing, wobbling a little, pushing himself up with one hand.
"Come on. It's awake now."
The hallway outside their room was creaking with whispers. Not voices. Just the wood itself—old, warped, barely holding back the sway of Kyōgai's strange wind. The walls groaned. Somewhere, a distant violin played a single note for way too long and then stopped like it gave up.
Itomei wobbled slightly as he leaned against the doorframe.
Mazanka reached for the latch and pushed the door open.
What he saw made him pause.
Inside the room:
Rakan was passed out across a table, face buried in one arm, his other hand twitching faint Ka'ro sparks.
Teruko sat in lotus position in the corner, back ramrod straight, eyes closed. Completely still. Absolutely pretending she was meditating and not deeply unconscious.
Shugoh was curled on the floor in the center of the room, limbs tangled like a sea creature, the glowing box tucked against his chest like a plush toy.
But the box wasn't sleeping.
It was hovering.
Just slightly. Just enough to disturb the dust beneath it. A whisper of levitation. Glyphs on its sides pulsed with dim lavender light, the edges curling and warping as if blinking.
Then—
It giggled.
Not a mechanical sound.
A voice. High-pitched. Delighted. Childlike.
A giggle too human for the object it came from. It echoed for half a second too long.
Mazanka stepped further into the room, his body instinctively bracing.
The box pulsed again.
"Heeheehee…"
Mazanka glanced at Itomei, who leaned silently against the wall, watching it with an expression that was too tired to be surprised and too sober to be calm.
"You said it wasn't just a trinket," Mazanka murmured.
"It isn't," Itomei replied flatly.
"You said it was old. Forgotten. Not meant to survive the Rift."
"It wasn't."
Mazanka lowered his voice further. "So what is this?"
The box wiggled slightly in the air and rotated.
Then it mimicked a noise: a dreamy little sigh. Shugoh's sigh.
Itomei scratched his jaw. "It's learning."
Mazanka stiffened. "Learning what?"
"Patterns. Frequencies. Emotional echoes." He tilted his head. "Maybe personalities."
Mazanka stepped closer to it—but didn't touch.
The box flickered, mimicking another sound. This time a snort—Rakan's—from when he'd argued with Teruko earlier that evening.
Mazanka stood still.
Itomei muttered, "It's starting to play."
"Is that normal?"
"Not for a weapon."
Mazanka turned sharply. "Weapon?"
Itomei waved a hand. "Or relic. Or prison. Could be an old Ka'ro tether. Doesn't really matter. Whatever it was, it isn't that anymore."
The box giggled again. Clearer this time.
Mazanka felt the chill run down his spine. Not cold—but alertness. Like something old had just looked at him and blinked.
Itomei sighed and turned toward the door. "Don't wake them. It's calm for now."
Mazanka hesitated. "We're just going to leave it?"
"We're going to let it pretend," Itomei said. "That's all it wants right now."
Mazanka cast one last glance at the box—hovering gently, humming to itself, curled in Shugoh's arms like it belonged there.
Then he quietly shut the door.
They walked back toward the bar in silence.
Mazanka didn't speak again until they reached the bottom of the stairs.
"So… what do we do?"
Itomei took another swig from his flask, rubbed his eyes, and muttered:
"Get some sleep. And when it starts naming us… then we can start to panic some."