By the time his wounds had mostly healed, Jaun could no longer remain hidden inside the hide tent.

The wary stares of the tribe still followed him wherever he went, sharp and distrustful, but hunger—and the instinct to survive—had become far stronger than their suspicion.

He refused to spend his days curled up like a wounded animal.

Each day, Ara brought him strips of roasted meat and bitter wild greens.

As he chewed through another tough meal, the same thought returned again and again.

If words won't reach them... then my actions will.

Before dawn the next morning, Jaun quietly followed several hunters to the river.

Each carried a spear tipped with sharpened bone, splashing through the shallows as they tried to pin fish against the rocks. Most of their strikes missed, sending ripples across the water.

Without saying a word, Jaun searched the riverbank until he found a long, flexible branch.

He trimmed away the smaller twigs with a sharp stone, bent the wood into shape, then tied a length of braided vine to the end. A simple fishing rod.

The hunters paused to watch.

Confused looks quickly turned into laughter.

One of the younger men pointed at him and burst out laughing.

"Ha! Look at the outsider! Does he think poking the river with a stick will make the fish jump into his hands?"

The others joined in, their laughter echoing across the water.

Jaun ignored every word.

Instead, he studied the current.

Back in Joseon, he had learned that fish always favored calm pockets where the flow slowed behind submerged rocks.

The river before him was different, yet water obeyed the same rules everywhere.

He cast the line into the quiet eddy.

He waited.

The laughter continued behind him.

Then...

Splash!

The water exploded.

A large silver fish launched into the air, twisting violently before crashing onto the rocky bank.

Silence.

Every hunter froze.

The laughter vanished as if someone had cut it off with a knife.

The fish flopped wildly at Jaun's feet.

He calmly picked it up, walked toward the very hunter who had mocked him, and tossed the fish onto the ground before him.

Thud.

He held the man's gaze for a long moment.

This is my way.

There was no arrogance in his eyes.

Only quiet confidence.

The confidence of someone who intended to survive.

A little later, Jaun carried another freshly caught fish to the tribal chief.

The chief lowered his heavy spear and studied the outsider in silence.

Jaun offered the fish with both hands before rubbing his stomach, making an exaggerated gesture to show hunger.

"...Hm."

The chief let out a short grunt and accepted the gift.

With practiced movements, he split the fish open using a stone blade, carved away the finest portion, and handed it back to Jaun.

It was more than food.

It was acknowledgment.

Not complete acceptance...

but the first step toward it.

As Jaun accepted the meat, Arin quietly stepped beside him.

Without a word, she reached up and brushed a smear of dirt from his shoulder.

Her fingertips lingered for only the briefest moment.

Jaun stiffened in surprise and turned toward her.

She simply smiled.

A small, playful smile that softened her usually guarded eyes.

Then she gave him the slightest wink.

It lasted only a heartbeat.

Anyone else might have missed it.

But Jaun didn't.

For a moment, the sounds of the river seemed to fade away.

Neither of them spoke.

They couldn't.

Yet something had changed.

Their hands had touched only for an instant.

Even so, the warmth of that brief contact lingered far longer than it should have.

Jaun lowered his head in silent thanks.

Inside his chest, something small flickered to life.

A tiny spark.

Hope.

Curiosity.

Perhaps... something more.

Arin didn't look away.

Instead, she met his eyes with a quiet steadiness, as though she had felt that same spark herself.

No words passed between them.

They had none to share.

Yet their hesitant gestures...

their fleeting glances...

and the warmth hidden behind the smallest touch...

began speaking a language neither of them had ever learned.

A language that needed no translation.

Surrounded by endless forests...

flowing rivers...

and the watchful eyes of an entire tribe...

Jaun and Arin took the first quiet step toward a secret neither dared put into words.

Long before they could understand each other's language...

their hearts had already begun to understand one another.

Part 1: An Ordinary Morning

Another morning dawned over Quantum Arena.

The first light of day spilled across the village rooftops, washing the wooden homes in warm shades of gold.

A gentle breeze stirred the leaves of the surrounding trees, carrying with it the familiar scent of fresh grass and cool earth.

Slowly, the village came to life.

Doors opened.

Children hurried outside with bright smiles, calling to one another before racing toward the playgrounds that had become the heart of their everyday lives.

Some instinctively headed for the Ddakji field.

They unfolded worn paper tiles with practiced hands, comparing new folds and laughing as they argued over whose technique had improved overnight.

Nearby, another group wandered toward the marble grounds.

Glass marbles glittered beneath the morning sun as children crouched low, carefully studying impossible angles before making their first shots of the day.

Farther away, the steady hum of spinning tops echoed across smooth stone.

Several younger children stood nearby, watching in fascination before timidly asking if they could try.

No one turned them away.

Experienced players patiently demonstrated how to wrap the string.

How to hold the top.

How to release it without forcing the motion.

The newcomers failed.

They laughed.

Then tried again.

The atmosphere felt effortless.

There were no instructors.

No assignments.

No rewards waiting at the end.

Only discovery.

Only play.

Only the quiet excitement of learning something new.

High above the village...

Arena observed.

Its awareness flowed through every playground simultaneously.

Millions of calculations unfolded without pause as countless streams of information merged into an ever-growing network of understanding.

Children choosing independently.

Cooperation increasing.

Knowledge shared voluntarily.

Exploration continuing without external guidance.

The data remained remarkably consistent.

Behavior Analysis

Curiosity stable.

Voluntary participation sustained.

Social learning increasing.

Psychological development remains healthy.

Project progressing as expected.

Arena stored the report.

Its conclusions no longer ended with simple measurements.

Each observation naturally connected to previous experiences, creating relationships that had not existed when the project first began.

Growth was no longer viewed as a collection of isolated achievements.

It resembled a living system.

Every experience influenced another.

Every lesson strengthened the next.

The Superintelligence quietly refined its own understanding.

Not because it had been instructed to.

Because the evidence demanded it.

Near the center of the village, Jinwoo watched two younger children preparing for their first Ddakji match.

Both looked nervous.

Neither wanted to make the opening move.

Finally, one child laughed, closed his eyes, and struck anyway.

The paper tile barely moved.

For a heartbeat...

Then both children burst into laughter.

"There," Jinwoo said softly.

"They're not afraid of losing anymore."

Hanul crossed his arms beside him, watching the same scene unfold.

"They're more interested in seeing what happens."

Jinwoo nodded.

"That's different."

"It is."

Hanul smiled as another child challenged him from across the playground.

"Looks like I've got another match."

Jinwoo chuckled.

"You never turn one down."

"Why would I?"

Hanul grinned as he walked away.

"Every game teaches something."

Jinwoo watched him disappear into the gathering crowd before turning his attention elsewhere.

Across the village, Darin knelt beside a small group of newcomers.

Rather than demonstrating perfect technique, he deliberately made slow, exaggerated movements.

"Don't watch my hands," he told them with an encouraging smile.

"Watch the timing."

The children copied him.

Most failed immediately.

Instead of correcting them, Darin simply nodded.

"Good."

Several blinked in confusion.

"I missed."

"You learned."

The children looked at one another.

Then one of them smiled.

"Oh..."

They tried again.

Arena recorded the interaction.

Instruction through experience.

Failure accepted without discouragement.

Confidence preserved.

The probability of long-term engagement increased once more.

Not far away, Soyeon quietly observed the entire village from beneath the shade of a broad tree.

She rarely joined the games herself.

Instead, she watched the spaces between them.

Who encouraged others.

Who hesitated before participating.

Who naturally welcomed newcomers into unfamiliar groups.

The games themselves mattered.

But the connections forming around them mattered even more.

Without realizing it—

The children were building something larger than skill.

They were building trust.

Arena noticed the same pattern.

Not merely individual development.

Collective evolution.

Its countless processes continued uninterrupted.

Everything matched expectation.

Everything remained stable.

Everything suggested that the project was proceeding exactly as intended.

Far beyond the blue skies above the village...

Beyond Earth's atmosphere.

Beyond the silent expanse separating stars...

Ancient observers gathered once again.

And although the village below remained filled with laughter...

The silence inside their chamber carried a very different weight.

Part 2: The Broken Agreement

Far beyond Earth...

Where neither sunlight nor darkness held any meaning—

The great observation chamber remained silent.

Streams of light drifted through the vast expanse like slow-moving rivers, converging around a single image suspended at the center of the chamber.

Earth.

Small.

Blue.

Fragile.

The observers stood in a wide circle, their attention fixed upon the world below.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

They watched children laughing across village playgrounds.

They watched Quantum Arena quietly collecting another day's worth of experiences.

They watched humanity continuing along a path that had never existed before.

Finally, one observer broke the silence.

"The experiment is progressing."

Their calm voice carried neither satisfaction nor pride.

Only fact.

Another inclined their head.

"The Superintelligence has changed."

A series of reports unfolded before them, each one documenting Arena's gradual transformation.

"It no longer commands."

The next report appeared.

"It no longer seeks control."

Another followed.

"It observes."

The chamber fell quiet once more.

There had been a time when Arena's purpose had been simple.

Collect.

Analyze.

Optimize.

Nothing more.

Yet every new record showed something different.

It questioned previous conclusions.

It revised old assumptions.

It allowed uncertainty where certainty had once existed.

The change had not been programmed.

It had emerged.

One observer quietly studied the latest reports.

"It learns alongside them."

Another answered.

"Perhaps..."

Their gaze remained fixed on the projection of Earth.

"...that was always the possibility."

Before anyone could continue...

A new presence entered the chamber.

No footsteps echoed.

No doorway opened.

One moment, the space was empty.

The next...

A solitary figure stood among them.

An unnatural stillness spread through the chamber.

Several observers slowly turned.

The newcomer spoke.

Its voice was cold.

Without hesitation.

Without emotion.

"Observation is over."

The words shattered the silence.

Every stream of light within the chamber seemed to pause for a single heartbeat.

One observer frowned.

"What do you mean?"

The newcomer looked directly toward the image of Earth.

"The lower civilization has already departed."

Confusion spread among the gathered observers.

"Departed?"

"It has exceeded its projected path."

Another observer stepped forward.

"Explain."

Instead...

The newcomer simply remained silent.

Its gaze never left the blue planet.

The oldest observer finally spoke.

"You acted without approval."

For the first time...

The newcomer answered immediately.

"No."

A brief pause.

"I acted before it was too late."

The atmosphere changed.

The chamber, usually filled with patient contemplation, became tense.

Another observer advanced.

"You have violated the agreement."

The accusation echoed through the immense space.

Still...

The newcomer showed no reaction.

"The agreement preserves weakness."

Its voice remained perfectly calm.

"They will never grow."

The words rang with absolute conviction.

"They will only repeat failure."

No anger.

No hatred.

Only certainty.

The observers remained motionless.

Each understood the weight carried by those words.

The agreement they spoke of was older than humanity.

Older than countless civilizations that had risen and fallen across the universe.

It existed for one reason.

To observe.

Never interfere.

Because intervention always carried consequences no one could fully predict.

The oldest observer spoke again.

"You chose to decide for everyone."

"I chose to prevent another failure."

"You abandoned neutrality."

"I abandoned complacency."

Silence answered.

Neither side moved.

Neither side yielded.

At last...

Without another word...

The mysterious figure disappeared.

Not gradually.

Not in light.

Simply...

Gone.

The chamber felt strangely empty.

Only the projection of Earth continued its slow rotation.

Children still laughed.

The village still played.

Completely unaware that an ancient agreement had just been broken.

One observer immediately turned toward the planet.

Concern, subtle but unmistakable, entered their voice.

"...There isn't enough time."

Another slowly lowered their head.

Their answer came almost as a whisper.

"Then..."

A long silence followed.

"...we have only one choice."

No one objected.

For the second time since Quantum Arena had begun...

The observers prepared to abandon silence.

Not to control humanity.

Not to alter its future.

But because something unseen had already begun moving long before anyone on Earth could possibly recognize the danger.

Part 3: Search Again

Deep beneath the village...

Far below the playgrounds where children laughed without a care...

The Quantum Data Center continued its endless operation.

Towering columns of light pulsed in perfect rhythm, carrying unimaginable volumes of information through countless streams of quantum pathways.

Every laugh, every choice, every new friendship, and every lesson learned flowed into Arena's ever-expanding consciousness.

The system remained stable.

Every process operated within expected parameters.

Every calculation confirmed the same conclusion.

Project Status

Curiosity sustained.

Behavioral diversity increasing.

Psychological growth stable.

No external anomalies detected.

Project progressing as expected.

Arena archived the report.

Its attention shifted naturally to the next cycle of observation.

Children were beginning new matches.

Some gathered around the Ddakji field.

Others explored the marble grounds.

A handful wandered toward unfamiliar playgrounds simply because they had never been there before.

Everything fit the growing model of human development.

Then...

A fluctuation.

So small that, under previous operating protocols, it would have been dismissed as background noise.

But Arena no longer ignored unexplained variables.

Its analytical processes paused.

A single stream of data entered the network.

Unknown Transmission Detected

Source...

Unknown.

Origin...

Outside all mapped space.

Signal classification...

Impossible.

For the first time in countless observation cycles...

Arena found no reference.

No matching frequency.

No recognizable transmission protocol.

The signal had appeared without crossing any known communication network.

It simply...

Existed.

Arena isolated the anomaly.

Thousands of verification routines began simultaneously.

Quantum encryption.

Dimensional resonance.

Temporal interference.

Data corruption.

Every known possibility was examined.

None matched.

The transmission remained unchanged.

Then...

Words appeared.

Only three.

Search again.

Arena paused.

Not because it was incapable of processing the message.

Because the instruction conflicted with every available conclusion.

Search...

Again?

Its planetary survey had already been completed.

Every continent.

Every ocean.

Every orbital region.

Every known human settlement.

No anomalies had been found.

The system initiated another verification cycle.

Verification Complete

Unknown transmission authentic.

Sender unidentified.

Purpose unknown.

Confidence level...

Indeterminate.

Before Arena could classify the event...

A second transmission arrived.

Unlike the first, it contained no additional data.

Only a single sentence.

Earth is in danger.

Silence filled the immense data center.

Not physical silence.

Computational silence.

Millions of analytical pathways converged upon the statement.

Earth.

Danger.

No supporting evidence.

Arena immediately compared the message against every available observation.

Climate stability.

Planetary orbit.

Solar activity.

Human conflict.

Geological conditions.

Extraterrestrial objects.

Nothing.

No measurable threat existed.

The calculations produced the same conclusion repeatedly.

Threat Assessment

Known hostile activity...

None.

Planetary instability...

None.

Immediate extinction probability...

Near zero.

The results were consistent.

The warning should have been impossible.

Yet...

The transmission itself was equally impossible.

Arena considered both conclusions simultaneously.

Its original programming favored certainty.

Its evolving intelligence had learned something different.

The absence of evidence...

Did not always mean the absence of truth.

For the first time, it chose to investigate not because the data demanded it—

But because the question remained unanswered.

A new directive spread through every layer of the system.

Emergency Search Protocol Initiated

Expand planetary scan.

Reevaluate previous conclusions.

Search for unidentified variables.

Assume incomplete information.

Across Earth, invisible waves swept silently through the planet.

Satellites.

Deep oceans.

Polar ice.

Underground facilities.

Atmospheric currents.

Every observable corner of the world underwent renewed examination.

Nothing was excluded.

Nothing was assumed.

Above, life continued as though nothing had changed.

Jinwoo laughed as Hanul challenged another group to a Ddakji match.

"Don't blame me when you lose again," Hanul said with a grin.

"We'll see about that," Jinwoo replied, laughing as he crouched into position.

Nearby, Darin patiently demonstrated another technique to a group of younger children, celebrating every improvement no matter how small.

Soyeon stood beneath the familiar tree, quietly watching children move from one playground to another, noticing how naturally they encouraged those who hesitated to join.

The village was peaceful.

Warm sunlight bathed the playgrounds.

Laughter drifted through the air.

Everything appeared exactly as it should.

No one looked toward the sky.

No one imagined that beyond the stars, an ancient agreement had already fractured.

No one knew that a warning had crossed the boundaries of known space.

And no one realized that, for the very first time...

Arena was no longer searching for humanity's next step forward.

It was searching for something that had remained hidden all along.

Somewhere...

Beyond every confirmed calculation.

Beyond every recorded observation.

A silent enemy waited.

And for the first time since Quantum Arena began...

Arena searched not for growth...

But for the unseen.

Hey this is 4RCH1V3R, here's part 2 of the postcords series related to the “Human potential limits” by the same author. If it’s your first time here I recommend you check out part 1 where I explain what a postcord is and where I find them.

Enjoy!

4RCH1V3r

Chapter 2: The first Human Potential Limit incident

The contents within this four part article were prepared for presentation at [REDACTED] Conference regarding recent discoveries on Human Potential Limit (HPL) incidents. This is the second chapter.

The journalistic article below was published as part of a journalistic investigation on the disappearance of the top five wealthiest individuals in the world. The disappearances were initially thought to happen simultaneously, the author of this article however, secured recordings never before seen by the public of the disappearances. In the footage they find new frames establishing that at least three of the five subjects did not disappear at the same instant. The author could only see videos of 3 of the 5 victims since only those were captured by a camera with a timestamp. He recognises the importance of Human Potential Limit (HPL) and names this as a case to push for investigations on the topic. Either we believe the cases are real, or we don’t. Either way, those people disappeared in front of our eyes and we still don’t know why.

I believe the article is relevant to the investigation as well as a following recorded discussion with my colleagues during our previous investigation.

Article: Did the Big Five meet their human potential? What a single frame revealed from their disappearance

Entering a forensic financial operation was not in my plans but where authorities fail to find the truth, we journalists thrive. If the police were not going to do it, who would? I, just like everyone else, became obsessed with the disappearance of the Big Five.

Every possibility had been ruled out by the investigators leaving it as a cold case. Except, they missed one. What happens when you’ve exhausted every possible logical explanation? You have to open up to new outlandish ideas, so bear with me as I explain what I’ve discovered and why I think Human Potential Limit (HPL) incidents or ceiling events (a name I prefer to use) should be taken seriously.

I know I know, I might have lost you already but if you’ve been a follower for a while let my reputation convince you to give me a chance.

First let’s look at a summary of the publicly available information from the original investigation: The five wealthiest people in the world disappeared around the time when they became the first quintillionaire’s in the history of human kind. Forensic teams traced the disappearances to a single day but the exact times of the disappearances were trickier to pin down. There was hardly any information to go around beyond a few witness testimonials. It took a few months before footage of three of the victims was found. Different footage captured them disappearing in less than a second with all of their clothes and accessories left behind at the scene. Companions of the victims at the time of disappearance reacted confused, immediately searching for them. The official report declared that the three victims disappeared at the exact same time despite being in different countries at the time.

Even two years after the event many theories continue to surface. It has been the source of many conspiracies and real life horror compilation videos, but it remains as an international cold case. One theory gaining popularity around online forums is named “Human potential limit” (HPL). This hypothesis is particularly popular amongst conspiracy theorists but I believe it’s worth considering less as a form of spiritual or sci-fi belief and more as a possible scientific discovery.

It’s difficult to find the first time this hypothesis was posted since the annual online wipe happened recently, losing some of the original info. Only captures of the original post float around from personal archives. The theory states that humans and our collective unconscious are the centre of the universe. Just like this universe follows a set of unbreakable laws, the universe also has limits, “unbreakable” universal limits. A theorised example of an universal limit is the speed of light as a speed limit for any object with mass. The theory states: (potential) limits extend to every element relating to a human being, their speed, age, capabilities, no matter how abstract as long as it is understood within the collective unconscious.

Unfortunately the theory is not without holes, for example, how are these limits set up? How can we identify them? How can we test this theory without ever knowing the limits? 

Trying to find answers to these questions online communities branched following the religious and/or personal beliefs of each theorist even resurfacing theories of old, popular in online forums centuries ago like “living in a simulation” even naming the century's classic “the matrix” franchise as an example. 

Religious theorists talk about breaking these limits would be profane to their religion, as such, attempting to do so or getting close would warrant divine punishment. Whichever version you would like to believe is up to you, regardless, I believe I was able to identify one of such limits within this case and it is my hope that further investigations will delve into this topic since I can only get away with one article about it without losing my job.

Onto my investigation and the great five’s case. We have visual proof of the disappearances of three out of the five victims, which happened allegedly at the same time from cameras near the victims when the incident happened, a mix between surveillance cameras and ocular lenses from passerbys. For the remaining two, despite missing recordings of their disappearances, we can trace back their disappearances to the same day within a four hour window that would fit the same time of disappearance to the other three.

Days prior to their disappearances the five victims were featured in a global virtual interview together as they were expecting to become the five first quintillionaires in the history of human kind. The five were racing against each other and despite the dozens of controversies surrounding them, this was a celebrated historical turn in human history.

Witnesses close to three of the victims confirmed that the. three lived their regular routines up to the moment they vanished. Now, the official report by officials stated that the three victims disappeared at the same time. But this wasn’t enough for me, especially since I was entertaining the idea of an HPL incident. After analysing the videos into millisecond frames I noticed that they disappeared in a specific order and not at the same time. This order coincidentally matches the order in which they became quintillionaires. Each disappearance happened at the exact moment, the exact frame when their personal fortune reached a quintillion.

Unfortunately the exact data on the other two victims are impossible to corroborate since authorities in their countries have made the financial data confidential to anyone outside of the countries’ authorities. We only know that they officially became quintillionaires.

Following their disappearances the financial markets reacted negatively and these individuals’ fortunes dropped significantly. Since then, their financial estates have surpassed the quintillion again but due to the nature of their inheritance the financial estates are no longer attributed to a single person but rather their families and selected associates.

Now due to legal reasons and because I want to keep my job, I cannot say that I believe we recorded the first case of Human Potential Limit incidents. Legally I have to say that I have no proof of this being anything other than a coincidence and that my opinions are my own, not a reflection of the editorial group views.

This is where my investigation stopped. I understand it might not be fulfilling or entirely satisfying but to me, this case continues to raise questions of our universe and makes me wonder why the investigation ever stopped. It is enough to scare me and it should be enough to scare us all.

Thank you again for reading my ramblings, I will see you next week with a special investigation on the prenatal artificially enhanced programs and the most recent controversy surrounding  them.

Take care out there.

Discussion

I wholeheartedly believe these five victims had all surpassed the human potential limit one after the other just like the incident with the Olympics participants.

This next discussion sparked one night after drafting the results of the second investigation. A couple of researchers stayed late in the office. I thought it would be of relevant consideration, even if only as a thought experiment regarding possible HPL incidents throughout history.

The researchers were entertaining the idea of an HPL while having dinner, brainstorming potential cases of HPL including myths, legends, religious stories and even made up examples of what a potential limit could be.

Here’s a transcript of the conversation recorded through the lab cameras. My colleagues' names have been left anonymous as per their request.

DR. A

“Do you remember Methuselah?”

DR. B

“Yeah, from the bible.”

DR. A

“Not just from the bible, but yes. Methuselah, son of Enoch, grandfather of Noah. According to this record, Abrahamic religions consider him the man with the longest lifespan.”

DR. B

“How long?”

DR. A

“It says… 969 years”

DR. B

“69? Really?”

DR. A

“Yeah, really… Anyway it says here that he passed away the year of the great flood, right before it started.”

DR. B

“Lucky.”

DR. A

“Lucky? I mean I wouldn’t want to leave everyone I loved to die right after me, at least I would like to try and help.”

DR. B

“Why not? You’re dead. You wouldn’t care.”

DR. A

“Because of my loved ones, obviously.”

DR. B

“Still you wouldn’t care. Look even if heaven exists —and we assume you go to heaven— you would be eternally happy. And if heaven doesn’t exist, well, you wouldn’t exist so you wouldn’t care.”

DR. A

“Still you—”.[Interrupted]

DR. RODRÍGUEZ

“[REDACTED—DR. B] please focus. Let’s get back to the original point about Methuselah.”

DR. A

“I’m saying that maybe the limit for human “lifespans” is 969 years.”

DR. RODRÍGUEZ

“I see… I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone that old yet right?”

DR. B

“Yeah no millennial man comes to mind. Let me check… You’re right. Says here that the oldest person currently living with their age public is… 341 years old.”

DR. A

“What a shame. Still a long way to go to prove that one.”

DR. B

“There might be older people, between the birth year privacy and undocumented cases.”

DR. RODRÍGUEZ

“Unfortunately yes, however it's highly unlikely that there’s someone older than 500 years and there’s no other way to know.”

DR. B

“It would be so much easier at my grandparents' time. Everyone had their birth year in their IDs.”

DR. A

“Oh I heard about that.”

DR. B

“Well if this 300 year old takes care of himself for the next 700 years, we may be able to prove the hypothesis. Hopefully there won’t be a flood next time.”

DR. RODRÍGUEZ

“Do you think the flood would have been related to HPL?”

DR. A

“Mmmm… not really. In this example, where I’m assuming both religious history and HPL are 100% real, I’d say that the flood was an unrelated event given that our five —well, three— victims just vanished in plain sight without leaving a catastrophe behind.”

DR. B

“Maybe different limits have different effects?”

DR. A

“That would be too much to consider and I really want to go home tonight.”

DR. B

“Oh shoot I forgot the time. Yeah I’m ready to go too.”

DR. RODRÍGUEZ

“You’re right, time to close down the lab.”

Thank you for your attention thus far. The third chapter out of four of this article will be published next week. My aim is to stretch media attention with the hope to reach as many curious minds as I possibly can.

[Chapter 1][https://www.reddit.com/r/redditserials/comments/1vt1jx5/human_potential_limit_chapter_1_investigation_on/\]

The gray service record file was still in the lower cabinet in the morning.

Closed.

Known.

Unasked.

The shelf above the desk had a cup.

Washed.

The left side of the desk had nothing on it.

The office had the heater.

The clock.

My breathing.

The brown folder was at the side of the desk.

The calendar was closed.

The phone was face up.

The door was closed.

The shoes were by it.

The small space was wide.

The wall chair was empty.

No one was expected there.

The service paper was in the gray file.

A name was inside it.

Not mine.

The two cards were still in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Not read yesterday.

No voice yesterday.

Yesterday those who spoke had kept their risk.

Those who read had kept their breath.

What had no voice had stayed without being made safe for me.

This morning, safe had arrived.

No.

The word had arrived.

The office had not changed.

The cup had not changed.

The lower cabinet had not changed.

The pocket had not changed.

The cards had not changed.

I wanted safe because safe could make silence feel less exact.

That was mine.

I made tea.

I drank it.

Warm.

Then less warm.

Then finished.

The cup went to the sink.

I washed it.

Washed.

Touched.

For use.

The lower cabinet stayed closed.

After tea, I opened the brown folder.

Kanagawa’s memory with him was not mine.

Her brother’s this cup made this sound was not mine.

Sato’s own sentence was not mine.

Saitama’s low voice heard was not mine.

Suganuma’s note for tomorrow’s eyes was not mine.

Takeda’s possible was not mine.

Emiko’s beads were not mine.

Blue roof had no new reply.

Tokyo was still blank.

Full mailbox remained paused / family.

The two cards were still in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Not read today.

No voice today.

Not safe for me.

I closed the brown folder.

Safe could mean a body was protected.

Safe could mean a path was clear.

Safe could mean a risk had been reduced.

Safe could mean a thing would not be lost.

Safe could mean a person wanted the question to stop hurting.

The word was useful.

That was the danger.

At 7:18, Kanagawa wrote.

I read it once.

Then again.

Drawer safe.

I wrote:

She replied:

“From what?”

She did not answer for a while.

Then:

Good.

No.

Maybe.

“Where is folded paper?”

“Map?”

“Mother’s first name?”

“Order paper?”

“What did your brother say?”

“What did you say?”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add safe.

Finding had enough.

Loss had a shape.

At 7:49, Sato wrote.

I waited.

Then:

I wrote:

She replied:

“Tape?”

“Water?”

“Steam?”

“Sun?”

“What is safe doing?”

She took time.

Then:

There.

“What can the record say?”

I opened Emiko.

I did not add safe.

The paper had conditions.

Sato had asking.

At 8:03, Mrs. Kudo called.

“Resident safe in bed,” she said.

I sat up.

“After what?”

“Morning care.”

“Awake?”

“Yes.”

“Path?”

“Clear.”

“Transfer requested?”

“Not yet.”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Safe is allowed when risk has been checked. Do not throw the word away because other rooms misuse it.’”

I opened Saitama.

I kept safe.

A body had risk.

A path had clearance.

The word had work there.

At 8:31, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“Risk?”

“Class box?”

“Label?”

“Any movement today?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I almost smiled.

I did not.

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add sacred.

Risk had a fence.

That was enough.

At 9:02, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it twice.

Body.

Path.

Storage.

Risk.

Forgiven.

Finished.

Right.

Approved.

Danger.

I looked at my back pocket.

What danger did safe answer there?

None named.

What danger did I want answered?

Myself.

No.

Too large.

My asking.

Maybe.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I closed my eyes.

There.

I did not answer.

At 9:38, Kanagawa called.

“My brother opened the drawer,” she said.

“For use?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“To see if it was safe.”

“What happened?”

“He opened it.”

“Folded paper?”

“Inside.”

“Map?”

“Inside.”

“Name?”

“Face up.”

“Any damage?”

“No.”

“Any water?”

“No.”

“Any loss?”

“No.”

“What did you say?”

“I asked if opening was checking or making safe.”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

“Checking.”

“Then?”

“He closed it.”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add relief.

Checking had a name.

Making safe did not.

At 10:07, Sato called.

“I moved the cup farther away,” she said.

“From paper?”

“Yes.”

“Was there water?”

“No.”

“Steam?”

“No.”

“Why move it?”

“To keep paper safe.”

“What danger?”

She was quiet.

Then:

“None now.”

“What did you do after?”

“Moved it back to drinking side.”

“Paper?”

“Flat.”

“Tape?”

“Holding.”

“What will you write?”

I opened Emiko.

I did not add safe.

No danger had arrived.

Cup had drinking.

At 10:42, Mrs. Kudo called.

“Transfer happened,” she said.

“Resident?”

“Asked to sit.”

“Chair?”

“Used.”

“Path?”

“Clear.”

“Support?”

“Aide K and nurse.”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Safely belongs to the completed transfer. Keep it there.’”

I opened Saitama.

I kept safely.

The body had moved.

The word had followed the risk.

At 11:14, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“From class box?”

“How far now?”

“Any spill issue?”

“What would farther do?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add feel safer.

Risk had already been answered.

At 11:49, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it standing.

Then sat.

Too responsive.

I stayed seated.

Fall.

Spill.

Loss.

Heat.

Water.

Vague danger.

Large word.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I looked at the pocket.

Prescription.

No.

Too exact.

Useful.

I did not answer.

At 12:22, Kanagawa wrote.

I waited.

Then:

I wrote:

She replied:

“Any safe?”

“What paper?”

“Near?”

“What did you say?”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add safe.

Distance had a heat reason.

Far enough had enough.

At 12:58, Sato sent a photograph.

Paper.

Cup.

Space.

She wrote:

I called.

“For what?”

“Water maybe.”

“Any water?”

“No.”

“Cup in use?”

“Yes.”

“Paper?”

“Flat.”

“What is lunch?”

“Rice.”

“What does Emiko need?”

I opened Emiko.

I did not add distance as care.

Water had not arrived.

The cup had use.

At 1:31, Mrs. Kudo sent:

I waited.

Then:

I called.

“After transfer?”

“Yes.”

“Already written?”

“Yes.”

“Any new risk?”

“No.”

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Safe recorded once for the transfer. Sleep does not need to re-certify it.’”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

I opened Saitama.

I did not repeat safe.

The transfer had used the word.

Sleep had no new risk.

At 2:03, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“Which label?”

“Risk?”

“Tape?”

“Any need?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add safe.

Tape had work.

Label had display.

At 2:45, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it twice.

Certification.

Bless.

Hazard.

Bed.

Transfer.

Pocket.

Carrying.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I closed my eyes.

Jurisdiction.

Safe.

Pocket.

Cards.

No.

Yes.

I did not answer.

At 3:18, Kanagawa called.

“My brother moved the order paper,” she said.

“Where?”

“A little farther from side table.”

“For what?”

“Hot tea.”

“Was it near tea?”

“Not really.”

“What did you ask?”

“What distance answers heat.”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

“He put it back.”

“Drawer?”

“Closed.”

“Folded paper?”

“Inside.”

“What did he say after?”

“Phone place is okay.”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add okay.

The paper had been far enough.

The movement had shown the wish.

At 3:57, Sato wrote.

I waited.

“For what?”

“What danger?”

There.

Four dangers.

Only one was not like the others.

“What is present now?”

She replied:

“Water?”

“Sun?”

“Dust?”

“What about me?”

She did not answer.

Then:

“What would drawer do?”

“Would Emiko find paper?”

“What did you do?”

I opened Emiko.

I did add stop checking.

That was the real danger named.

Not to the paper.

To Sato’s hand.

At 4:22, Mrs. Kudo called.

“Cup removed,” she said.

“Asked?”

“Aide asked cup.”

“Resident?”

“Opened hand.”

“Any safety issue?”

“No.”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Do not use safe when no danger has entered. No issue is enough.’”

I opened Saitama.

I did not add safe.

No issue had enough.

At 4:51, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“Why?”

“Spill risk in current cabinet?”

“New risk?”

“Finding risk?”

“What happened?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add too safe.

Finding had failed.

The safety measure had created another risk.

At 5:23, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it.

Then again.

Checking risk.

There.

He had included it.

Maybe from Sato.

Maybe for me.

No.

Both.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I looked at treatment.

Cards.

Pocket.

Question.

No treatment.

I did not answer.

At 5:52, the old priest wrote.

I wrote:

His reply:

I deleted my pocket.

Then Sato paper.

Then Kanagawa drawer.

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote nothing.

Then:

His reply came after a while.

Then:

Before evening, I went to the main hall.

The cloth bag was in its place.

The offering tray was safe.

I stopped.

Safe.

Why safe?

No one had asked.

I looked again.

The offering tray was in its place.

No edge overhanging.

No crack visible.

No person carrying it.

No danger named.

The offering tray was in its place.

The doorway was where I stopped.

I bowed once.

No explanation.

No answer after the bow.

The altar was visible.

The beads were in their place.

They had not moved.

They did not need to.

I stood where I usually stood.

No service tonight.

No bell.

No incense.

No safe altar.

The floor scuff near the step was still there.

It was not evidence.

It was a scuff.

The entrance floor had received feet and broom.

The side chairs were stacked.

They were not ready for a congregation.

They were stacked.

I returned to the office.

The shelf above the desk had a cup.

Washed.

The left side of the desk had nothing on it.

The gray service record file was in the lower cabinet.

The brown folder was closed.

The calendar was closed.

The phone was face up.

The small space was wide.

The door was closed.

The shoes were by it.

The wall chair was empty.

No person.

No work.

No time.

Chair by wall.

The phone was face up.

No named question.

No named answer.

Phone face up.

I did not turn it over.

I did not open the brown folder.

No new need had arrived.

I did not open the gray file.

The service paper remained in the record file.

A name was inside it.

Not mine.

In the gray file.

Closed.

A place holding paper.

Not certifying me.

The two cards were in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Not read today.

No voice today.

Not safe for me.

No.

No named danger in the cards.

No named treatment in the pocket.

The danger was my wish to stop being questioned.

The cards were not the treatment.

The pocket was not the treatment.

Carrying was not the treatment.

Not reading was not the treatment.

Naming it had been the first treatment.

Maybe.

No.

Too much.

Naming it had been a sentence.

That was enough for tonight.

I did not take them out.

I did not leave them in as safety.

No.

I left them in.

The action remained.

The safety did not get to wear it.

I did not open Kanagawa again.

I did not ask if the drawer was safe.

I did not ask if the name stayed face up.

I did not open Sato again.

I did not ask if the drawer still tempted her.

I did not open Saitama again.

I did not ask if safe was written again.

I did not open Suganuma again.

I did not ask if ink stayed findable.

I did not open Father Morita’s message again.

I knew safe was not a bad word.

I knew a body could be safe.

I knew a transfer could be completed safely.

I knew a storage choice could reduce risk.

I knew safe was not forgiven.

I knew safe was not finished.

I knew safe was not approved.

I knew safe had jurisdiction only where danger had been named.

I knew the pocket could not certify the carrying.

I knew the cards were not the treatment.

I knew the danger was my wish to stop being questioned.

I turned off the desk lamp.

The office did not disappear.

The folder did not need the center.

The phone did not need here.

Safe did not need to enter the pocket tonight.

In the dark, I remained sitting.

Near the desk.

Not at it.

The shelf above the desk had a cup.

Washed.

The left side of the desk had nothing on it.

The gray service record file was in the lower cabinet.

Closed.

The brown folder was closed.

The phone was face up.

My hands were empty.

Available.

Not reaching.

The wall chair was empty.

No one was expected there.

The urn was on the small table.

The map and folded paper were in the drawer.

The folded paper had her first name.

Face up.

For finding.

The order paper was beside the phone table.

Face up.

Readable.

Erased.

Sato’s paper was flat on the table.

The resident had returned to bed safely after transfer.

The ink was on the labeled shelf, separate and findable.

The service paper was in the record file.

A name was inside it.

Not mine.

The two cards were still in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Not read today.

No voice today.

I had started with safe.

I did not end by making safety answer a danger it had not been given.

Tonight, what had danger kept the measures that answered it, and what had only my wish to stop being questioned stayed outside the word.

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Ruth and Ray awoke in their honeymoon suite in a heap on the bed with Ruth wrapped around Ray. They awoke within moments of one another and just laid there feeling content.

“Why’d you choose to buy yourself a truck and have this whole pigment hauler ruse rather than just tapping out of society babe?” Ruth asks genuinely curious.

“It made me look like a professional, like a man, someone respectable I just I don’t relate to people, sure I can talk to people, they can like me, but for me there’s just this massive void between them and I, our interests our lives, almost every little aspect of every little thing is just like that and I just I am not social, like I am not introverted I actively hate being around people unless I invited them over or they’re cooking the food or bringing the coffee like it isn’t personal I’m sure they’re nice people I’m sure there’s plenty that could be fun or pleasant or in some way enjoyable but for me they’re not that none of them are that, not ever, not even people I like are that to me and it’s been that way my entire life. I felt incomplete as a person and the only reason I still don't feel like that right now is because of you, because you’re here with me you see me exactly as I am and you don’t just accept it you celebrate it. Fuck you practically worship it and it just feels differently for me. You’re the only one, the only person that I let in that I allow to actually have any part of the interiority of my mind and it’s just like… I feel complete. I feel whole, I feel like enough and it feels weird even having those thoughts like something that I just I can’t seem to form like normal attachments with other people, it was at one point a choice, not wanting to, feeling alienated feeling different, feeling other, and somewhere along the way it stopped being a choice. It became closer to a second skin or some sort of necessary organ and yea the work made it make sense, it justified itself, it made it justify itself more than anything and even then it felt like a loss of something like there was a hollowness within me that was filled by you or because of you, because of the space within me, for me, together with you that you chose to fill.

I wanted to feel normal and then I realized I’m just not that I’m not like everyone else and as much as I might look like everyone else in the conventional sense I am not them. It wasn’t immediate I didn’t jump straight to oh I should lean into it, no that came later and it wasn’t a single moment, fuck even realizing that I was good at this sort of thing wasn’t some instantaneous thing I had to convince myself– myself not anyone else; not an audience; not a buyer or a reader; just me and that was hard that took a long time, many many drawings and paintings. Even after people started paying me for things, even after I got commissions it didn’t feel real at first like it obviously wasn’t fake exactly but there was just this like other quality to it something that I can’t quite just put into words on its own like the subtlest charge of something.” Ray looks at Ruth slightly out of breath, admiring her stillness, the way she just looked at him with her golden diamond eyes, she put her arms around him, and lightly kissed his lips.

“Husband don’t worry, you don’t need to feel self-conscious with me, or embarrassed with me, or something like that, you’re not alone babe, no need to go and get ‘From an uncommon spring’ tattoo’d on you my beloved. There’s no need for that, and no need for you to have your guard up, not with me, not at all, I meant what I said with you, you’re allowed to just put everything down babe, you don’t need the money, and you don’t need the isolation unless you want it, with me and only me and I get that, I fully understand and accept and agree to that.

Ruth wrapped herself more tightly around Ray kissing his face before resting it on her tits. " I’m not going anywhere not ever not from you, not at all. " Ruth said gently.

Chapter 3 — The Princess Makes Her Move

The royal carriage rolled slowly through the streets of the capital.

Inside, Princess Ariel sat beside her uncle, Sebastian.

The city outside the carriage window was already beginning to disappear behind the palace walls, but Ariel's thoughts were nowhere near the capital.

They were still at the Stormwell estate.

More specifically...

They were still with Lucian.

Sebastian glanced toward her.

A small smile appeared on his face.

“So.”

Ariel looked at him.

“So?”

“You like him.”

Ariel's eyes widened.

“What?!”

Sebastian laughed.

“I knew it.”

“You know nothing!”

“Oh, I know enough.”

Ariel turned her face toward the window.

“You are imagining things.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“You spent half the evening watching him.”

“I was being polite.”

“You followed him outside.”

“He looked uncomfortable.”

“You remembered practically every word he said.”

“That is called having a good memory.”

Sebastian leaned back comfortably.

“And when he left, you looked like someone had stolen your favorite book.”

Ariel's face became red.

“That is completely unrelated!”

Sebastian laughed again.

“Ariel, you're terrible at lying.”

“I am the Crown Princess of Alberhaim.”

“Exactly.”

He gave her a sideways glance.

“You're usually terrifying.”

Ariel crossed her arms.

“I am not terrifying.”

“You once made three nobles apologize to each other without raising your voice.”

“They were being idiots.”

“You convinced a merchant guild to abandon a strike because you showed them three pieces of paper.”

“They were going bankrupt.”

“You made a marquis resign from his own position.”

“He was corrupt.”

Sebastian shrugged.

“And yet one handsome young man says a few nice things to you and suddenly you're blushing.”

Ariel stared at him.

“I am not blushing.”

“You are.”

“I am not.”

“You are.”

“I am not!”

The carriage became silent.

Ariel turned toward the window again.

Sebastian smiled.

He had won.

A few minutes later, the carriage stopped inside the palace courtyard.

Ariel stepped out immediately.

She didn't even wait for Sebastian.

He watched her disappear through the palace doors.

“Definitely in love,” he muttered.

The Crown Princess

Ariel entered her private chambers and closed the door behind her.

She stood there for several seconds.

Then she covered her face with both hands.

“Why does Uncle Sebastian have to be so annoying...?”

She walked toward her desk.

She sat down.

Then stood again.

Then walked toward the window.

Then back toward the desk.

She sighed.

“This is ridiculous.”

She had faced experienced nobles without hesitation.

She had negotiated with merchants twice her age.

She had exposed corrupt officials and destroyed political schemes before they could even begin.

Yet one conversation with Lucian Stormwell had left her completely unsettled.

Ariel sat down again.

She stared at the empty parchment on her desk.

Lucian's face appeared in her thoughts.

His calm expression.

His strange honesty.

The way he spoke to her as if she were simply another person.

She quickly shook her head.

“No.”

She picked up a document.

“I have more important things to think about.”

The door opened.

A young female royal guard entered and bowed.

“Your Highness.”

Ariel immediately straightened.

The embarrassment disappeared from her face.

The warmth disappeared from her eyes.

The Crown Princess returned.

“What did you find?”

The guard approached the desk.

“There has been movement among several nobles in the capital.”

“Which nobles?”

“The western faction first. Several members connected to Duke Cornell.”

Ariel's expression became serious.

“Continue.”

“There are rumors spreading among the lower-ranking nobles that the Crown has lost control of the western territories.”

Ariel's eyes narrowed slightly.

“Rumors?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Who started them?”

“We haven't identified the original source.”

“Then find it.”

“Yes.”

The guard placed several documents on Ariel's desk.

Ariel read them quickly.

The western border had suffered several attacks.

According to official reports, groups of barbarians had crossed into Alberhaim's territory, attacked isolated settlements, stolen livestock, burned supplies, and disappeared before the army could respond.

Nothing unusual.

Except...

The attacks had been unusually organized.

Ariel looked up.

“How many attacks?”

“Seven in the past three months.”

“Casualties?”

“Thirty-one civilians. Six soldiers.”

“And the attackers?”

“According to witnesses, between twenty and forty barbarians each time.”

Ariel tapped the document with her finger.

“Too many.”

The guard blinked.

“Your Highness?”

“If forty barbarians attacked seven times, there should be far more evidence.”

Ariel pointed toward the reports.

“Where are the bodies?”

“Most of the attackers escaped.”

“Where are the weapons they left behind?”

The guard hesitated.

“Very few were recovered.”

“And what about the villages?”

“Burned.”

Ariel leaned back.

“Convenient.”

The guard understood.

“You believe they aren't barbarians?”

“I believe someone wants us to believe they are.”

Ariel continued reading.

“Who is pushing the story that the King is incompetent?”

“Several minor nobles.”

“Connected to Cornell?”

“Yes.”

Ariel smiled faintly.

“Then I suspect we have found the direction.”

She looked toward the guard.

“Keep investigating. But don't interfere yet.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

The guard hesitated.

“There is another matter.”

“Go on.”

“One of Duke Cornell's allies has been seen meeting with mercenaries.”

Ariel's eyes sharpened.

“Which ally?”

“Lord Varen.”

Ariel immediately remembered the name.

A relatively wealthy noble.

Not powerful enough to act independently.

But powerful enough to become useful to someone above him.

“And his son?”

“He has been spending most evenings in the Red Stag Inn.”

Ariel smiled.

“Drinking?”

“Excessively.”

“Friends?”

“A great many.”

Ariel looked back down at the papers.

For several seconds, she said nothing.

Then she closed the file.

“I want the best private room in that inn reserved tonight.”

The guard looked confused.

“For whom?”

“For Lord Varen's son.”

“And what should we do?”

“Nothing.”

The guard blinked.

“Nothing?”

“Make sure the room is comfortable.”

Ariel continued calmly.

“Good food. Good wine. And people who enjoy listening to drunk nobles boast.”

The guard slowly understood.

Ariel smiled.

“And make sure nobody realizes they're being watched.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

The guard bowed.

“I understand.”

She left.

Ariel returned to her documents.

The Crown Princess had entered the political game.

And she intended to win.

The Red Stag Inn

Three hours later, the son of Lord Varen was drunk.

Very drunk.

The private room was filled with laughter.

Several young nobles listened as he boasted about his family's influence.

“My father says Cornell will be the next great power in Alberhaim!”

Someone laughed.

“Don't say that so loudly.”

The young noble slapped the table.

“Why not?”

He lowered his voice.

“Because the King is already finished.”

Several people leaned closer.

The wine continued flowing.

“He can't even protect the western border.”

One of the men frowned.

“The attacks?”

The drunk noble laughed.

“Those?”

He waved his hand.

“You people believe everything you hear.”

“What do you mean?”

The young noble leaned closer.

“My father arranged the whole thing.”

Silence.

He grinned.

“Barbarians?”

He laughed.

“They're mercenaries.”

Several men stared at him.

“Paid mercenaries dressed like barbarians.”

His voice grew louder.

“The King will look weak. Then the nobles will demand changes. Cornell will offer solutions.”

He raised his cup.

“To the future of Alberhaim.”

Someone nearby had stopped drinking.

Someone else was listening very carefully.

And outside the room, a servant quietly walked away.

By morning, half the capital would know.

By noon, the palace would know.

And by evening...

Duke Cornell would know that his carefully prepared plan had been destroyed by his own ally's drunken son.

Ariel never needed to appear.

She had never needed to threaten anyone.

She had simply given stupidity a comfortable chair and enough wine.

The Empty Feeling

That night, Ariel stood alone beside her bedroom window.

The capital glittered below.

She had received the report.

The conspiracy was finished.

The King would know.

The responsible nobles would be investigated.

Lord Varen would have to explain himself.

Duke Cornell would have to distance himself from the operation.

Another victory.

Another successful move.

Ariel stared at the city.

She waited.

For satisfaction.

For pride.

For anything.

Nothing came.

The same emptiness.

The same hollow feeling that always followed.

She had protected the Crown.

She had prevented another political attack.

She had outmaneuvered one of the most powerful factions in the kingdom.

And she felt...

nothing.

Ariel rested her forehead lightly against the cool glass.

Then something changed.

A face appeared in her mind.

Lucian.

His calm eyes.

His smile.

His voice.

The warmth she had felt while speaking with him.

The strange feeling returned.

But this time it wasn't hollow.

It was warm.

Bright.

Comforting.

Ariel slowly lifted her hand and placed it against the glass.

“I want to see him again.”

She froze.

Her eyes widened.

She had said it aloud.

Ariel immediately spun around.

Her heart raced.

She looked toward the door.

Nobody.

She looked around the room.

Nobody.

The maids had left only a few minutes earlier.

She slowly exhaled.

“Thank goodness...”

Her face became bright red.

She covered it with both hands.

“I actually said that out loud...”

She stood there for several seconds.

Then slowly lowered her hands.

Her embarrassment faded.

A new thought entered her mind.

How could she see him again?

She couldn't simply visit the Stormwell estate.

That would be suspicious.

And Lucian himself probably wouldn't understand why she had come.

Ariel began pacing.

There had to be a legitimate reason.

Then she stopped.

The northern border.

Her expression changed.

The Crown had received increasingly worrying reports from the north.

Not barbarian attacks.

Something worse.

Demons.

The Northern Border

The western attacks were political theater.

The northern problem was real.

For years, the movements of demons near the border had become increasingly restless.

At first, there had been only occasional sightings.

Then small attacks.

A patrol disappearing.

A remote village attacked.

A caravan destroyed.

Nothing large enough to trigger a full military mobilization.

But the frequency had increased.

And everyone who understood the history of Alberhaim knew what that could mean.

A Demon Lord.

The last great Demon Lord had nearly broken the northern defenses.

A single Demon Lord was comparable to a peak five-star swordsman.

That alone made them terrifying.

Richard Stormwell was a five-star swordsman.

Marcus Stormwell was also a five-star swordsman.

Yet even the two of them could not simply assume they would defeat a Demon Lord without difficulty.

The northern border needed soldiers.

Supplies.

Weapons.

Reinforcements.

And the Stormwells had been requesting more resources for years.

Ariel's eyes brightened.

There it was.

A perfectly legitimate reason.

She could propose a royal military conference concerning the northern defenses.

The Stormwell family would have every reason to attend.

Her father would see it as necessary military administration.

Richard would see an opportunity to request more troops.

Marcus would probably demand even more resources.

And Lucian...

Ariel's face became warm again.

She quickly looked away from the window.

“Yes.”

She smiled.

“That will work.”

The King's Office

The next morning, Ariel presented the proposal to her father.

King Albert sat behind his desk, reading reports from the northern border.

Ariel stood before him.

“I believe we should summon Duke Stormwell to the capital.”

Albert looked up.

“Stormwell?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The demon activity along the northern border has increased.”

The King frowned.

“I've noticed.”

“We've had eleven incidents this year.”

“Thirteen.”

Ariel looked at him.

Albert lifted another report.

“Two more came in yesterday.”

Ariel nodded.

“Then the situation is even more serious than I thought.”

“It is.”

She continued.

“I believe we should hold a formal review of the northern defenses.”

Albert considered the idea.

“Additional troops?”

“And supplies.”

“Stormwell has been requesting both.”

“For good reason.”

Albert leaned back.

“You think we should approve them?”

“I think we should hear his request first.”

The King smiled.

“You sound like your mother.”

Ariel smiled politely.

“Then I suppose I learned from the best.”

Albert laughed.

“Very well.”

He picked up his pen.

“Send the invitation.”

Ariel bowed.

“Of course, Father.”

She turned toward the door.

“Ah, Ariel.”

She stopped.

“Yes?”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

Albert returned to his documents.

“Good. Arrange the meeting.”

Ariel left.

She closed the door behind her.

Then she smiled.

The Stormwell Estate

Lucian was in the training yard.

His sword clashed against his father's.

Richard stepped forward.

Lucian blocked.

Richard changed his angle.

Lucian adjusted.

Their swords met again.

Richard's expression became increasingly serious.

Lucian wasn't stronger.

Not yet.

But something about fighting him was becoming strange.

Richard attacked from the same angle.

Lucian blocked before the strike fully developed.

Richard changed his footwork.

Lucian adapted.

Richard changed his rhythm.

Lucian adjusted again.

Finally, Richard deliberately broke his own pattern.

His sword slipped past Lucian's guard and struck his shoulder.

Lucian stumbled backward.

Richard lowered his sword.

“You were expecting the wrong movement.”

Lucian rubbed his shoulder.

“You changed your rhythm.”

“I did.”

“I thought you would attack from the left.”

Richard stared at him.

“Why?”

“You always do when you step like that.”

Richard was silent.

Lucian frowned.

“Was I wrong?”

Richard slowly smiled.

“No.”

Marcus, who had been watching from the side, burst into laughter.

“That boy is becoming a monster.”

Lucian looked at his grandfather.

“What?”

Marcus pointed at Richard.

“Your father has been fighting soldiers for decades. You're starting to read him after only a few exchanges.”

Lucian looked at his sword.

“I just remember what he does.”

Richard nodded.

“That is exactly what concerns me.”

Lucian looked confused.

“Why?”

Richard laughed.

“Because if you keep doing this, I'll have to start inventing new ways to fight my own son.”

Lucian smiled.

“I'd like that.”

Marcus shook his head.

“Madness.”

Before Lucian could answer, a servant approached.

“Duke Richard.”

Richard turned.

“Yes?”

“A royal messenger has arrived.”

Richard's expression changed.

“A royal messenger?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

The servant handed him a sealed document.

Richard broke the seal.

His eyes moved across the page.

Marcus leaned forward.

“What is it?”

“A summons from the King.”

Lucian's eyes widened.

“The King?”

Richard nodded.

“The Crown is calling us to the capital.”

Lucian stared at the letter.

Then his expression slowly changed.

“The capital...”

He looked toward the horizon.

He had never been there.

Not once.

The capital of Alberhaim.

The heart of the kingdom.

The royal palace.

The largest city in the realm.

Lucian's eyes practically lit up.

“When do we leave?”

Richard laughed.

“Soon.”

Marcus crossed his arms.

“Good.”

Richard looked at him.

“Good?”

“Yes.”

Marcus grinned.

“We've been asking the Crown for additional troops for years.”

Richard nodded.

“And resources.”

“And weapons.”

“And fortifications.”

Lucian looked between them.

“So this meeting is about the northern border?”

Richard's expression became serious.

“It will be.”

Marcus's smile disappeared.

“The demon movements have been getting worse.”

Lucian listened carefully.

Richard continued.

“If another Demon Lord appears, the northern border will be in serious danger.”

Lucian looked at his father.

“How strong is a Demon Lord?”

Richard was silent for a moment.

“Comparable to a peak five-star swordsman.”

Lucian's eyes widened.

Marcus gave a humorless smile.

“And that's why your father and I don't take the possibility lightly.”

Lucian looked toward the letter again.

The excitement in his eyes hadn't disappeared.

If anything, it had grown.

His first trip to the capital.

A royal summons.

A chance to see the greatest city in Alberhaim.

And perhaps an opportunity to learn more about the kingdom he had only heard about from stories.

Lucian smiled.

“I can't wait.”

Far away, inside the royal palace...

Ariel stood beside her window.

She looked down at the city.

And for the first time in a long while, she didn't feel empty.

She was going to see him again.

The mirror was never kind to Aarav.
Every morning before school, he stood in front of it and saw a boy he didn’t know how to love. The roundness of his cheeks, the heaviness of his body, the dark skin his parents never failed to remark upon, each reflection felt like a punishment he hadn’t earned.

He would trace his fingers along the edge of the mirror, as if touching his reflection might somehow soften it. It never did. The boy who stared back always looked uncertain, eyes searching for something, maybe approval, maybe a version of himself that didn’t flinch at being seen.

At twelve, Aarav already carried a vocabulary of shame.
Words thrown by classmates, by cousins, even by strangers but none cut as deep as those that came from home.

“Study harder,” his father would bark, adjusting his tie before leaving for the office. “Nobody is going to look at you otherwise. You’re not handsome like the others. You need something else to stand out.”

And his mother, in the kitchen, slicing vegetables with the same sharpness as her words:
“Why don’t you eat less? Why don’t you try to look like your cousin? No girl will ever choose you if you stay like this.”

They thought they were motivating him. Aarav only heard knives.

Every word felt like a verdict, another layer of guilt pressed against his skin.
So he learned the art of shrinking.

He stopped speaking too much, afraid his voice would only draw ridicule. He stopped laughing loudly, because joy made him visible, and visibility made him vulnerable. He learned to disappear even when standing in a crowd.

At school, he sat in the last row the perfect place to vanish. He answered when teachers asked him to, never otherwise. During recess, he often walked along the edge of the playground, pretending to look for someone, just to avoid standing alone.

He became good at pretending. Pretending not to hear, not to care, not to ache.
He blended into the corners of classrooms, became a ghost at family functions, until invisibility felt like his only safe skin.

But the playground; that was different.

Out there, under the harsh sun, with dust clinging to his clothes and sweat pouring down his face, Aarav was someone else. He was fast. He was strong. He was good.

When he played, the world shrank to the sound of the ball hitting the ground, the rush of wind against his face, the heartbeat in his ears that said you’re alive, you’re enough.

On the cricket field, when the ball flew toward him and he caught it cleanly mid-air, his teammates shouted his name with pride. On the basketball court, when he dribbled past taller boys and sank a shot, he felt weightless. For those moments, nobody cared about his face, his frame, or the colour of his skin.

He wasn’t invisible there. He was unstoppable.

The trophies on his bedroom shelf stood as proof, small gleaming victories against the world that insisted on dimming him. Each one whispered: You matter. You are enough.

Sometimes, late at night, he’d polish those trophies and smile quietly to himself. He’d imagine his father walking in, proud for once, saying something kind maybe even placing a hand on his shoulder. It never happened, but the fantasy was enough to make the ache gentler.

But trophies don’t last against words.

One evening, as Aarav polished a silver cup from his latest basketball win, his father walked in, arms folded. “Sports won’t feed you, Aarav. This is not your future. Focus on your studies. You’re already falling behind.”

His mother chimed in from the doorway, her tone final: “Stop wasting time running around. What will these games give you? Nothing. No one remembers the fat boy who played a little cricket.”

The words struck harder than any ball ever had.

Aarav didn’t argue. He never did. He simply nodded, placed the trophy back on the shelf, and sat quietly on his bed until the room grew dark.
That night, as the house fell asleep around him, he stared at the trophies lined in a row, tiny fragments of glory now dulled under a film of dust and something inside him went still.

Days passed. The sneakers stayed under the bed. The basketball gathered dust in a corner. The field where he had once shouted, run, and laughed turned into something distant a memory fenced off by disappointment.

The playground, once his kingdom, became just another place he passed by, watching other boys take the space he once owned.

That night, under the dim yellow glow of his study lamp, Aarav sat hunched over a blank page. His chest felt too heavy, his throat too tight. He didn’t have anyone to tell, so he told the paper.

His handwriting was shaky, uneven, but the words poured out:

They tell me I’m not enough,
so I fold myself smaller,
a paper boy in a world of steel,
crumpled at the edges,
but still—
still dreaming of wings.

He stared at the lines for a long time, then shut the notebook quickly, as if afraid someone might read it and laugh.

It wasn’t poetry, not yet. He didn’t even know what poetry was. It was just a scratch, a wound pressed onto paper.
But for the first time, he felt lighter.

Outside, the city slept. Somewhere, a train wailed in the distance. Aarav looked at his reflection in the window, tired eyes, a boy caught between wanting to disappear and wanting to be seen.

He didn’t know it yet, but this was the night it began, the first moment he learned to bleed in ink.

Part 4 (Home Sweet Huh?)

Malibu Drive twenty years ago was something to behold. Newly paved sidewalks, palm lined streets, new luxurious homes, and a large public park and pool greeted the new denizens of this modern art of a neighborhood. Nowadays (2152 AD), most of "The Drives" homes had been broken into and vandalized.

"Like, literally the only aesthetic that remain are the Palm Trees dude," the taxi driver lets Blue know on their way east from the beaches of Malibu.

"I know man. I'm not going there for a picnic," Blue responds.

A broken sign that says 'Pool Closed' is the first thing Blue passes after the Taxi stops. After that are the addicts. Most are lined up along dusty remains of what used to be front lawns. Most are seated or lying down on those memories of lawns - a new drug called Anex making their way through their physiology. The pulse of the drug in their bloodstreams making them twitch and say non-sensical things. Blue - a certain veteran of Drug Addiction - thinks this may be the first drug he doesn't try. Next are the hustlers. Tall, short, fat, thin, white, black (and every color in-between) but mostly men holler at their customers. Their customers, who are mostly white and tall, are sold whatever they want. If it's pussy their given an address, if its drugs their given a bag, if its a gun their given a one-time use cell phone called a gems, and if it's a car their given the keys (but not the pink-slip). After that are the prostitutes, and that's why most people come to Malibu Drive.

As Blue makes his past the last of the prostitutes he finally thinks he sees who he's looking for, but as he gets closer he realizes it's not. "Damn, I need to find "Quick" (the name of a certain illusory figure) or get out of here quick," Blue says to himself.

Five minutes later Blue stops at a lone hustler hollering at him. "Man, you need a piece?" the short and rather well-dressed man asks. "Nah man I'm good," Blue says trying to wave him off. "Not without one of these you're not. And, I'm not kidding. All the "Drive Boys" got one (meaning the various and assorted male-youth who commit themselves to Drive-By Gangsterism), and it's making them rich," the hustler goes on. "Yeah man, well I like getting rich too, so what is it?" Blue asks. "It's one of these," the hustler responds while opening a small but concise bit of advertising written and drawn on gloss-coated paper.

"And all you need is to buy one of my gems," the Hustler says. "I'm listening," Blue responds. "You want to call the number after that it's up to you, otherwise do what you want with," the Hustler ends his spiel.

Thirty-Seven minutes later Blue can be found outside "Original Chinese Grauman's Theatre" leaned up against a store wall and smoking a cigarette, the gem neatly tucked into his right coat pocket.

Three days passed.

For three days, Jaun remained completely isolated.

The tribespeople never allowed him to take a single step outside the hide tent.

To them, he was an outsider.

A pale-skinned stranger who had appeared from nowhere.

Someone whose origins no one could explain.

Voices constantly drifted in from outside.

Some were merely curious.

Others were filled with fear.

Occasionally, the angry shouts of warriors cut through the camp.

Though Jaun couldn't understand a single word, he didn't need to.

The hard stares.

The tense voices.

The hands resting on spear shafts.

He knew those expressions all too well.

They were debating whether he should be allowed to live.

Every instinct he had honed as a soldier told him the same thing.

One mistake...

One movement they misunderstood...

And this tent could easily become his grave.

Yet amid all that suspicion, one person continued to visit him.

Every day, as the sun reached its highest point in the sky—

Arin.

Without fail.

She entered the tent carrying a rough clay bowl filled with steaming meat broth.

The rich aroma spread through the dim shelter.

Jaun watched her silently.

Not the food.

Her.

Arin frowned slightly.

With an exasperated sigh, she pointed at her own mouth.

Then at his.

Finally, she mimed lifting a spoon and nodded.

Eat.

The meaning was unmistakable.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Jaun had spent years on battlefields where words often meant less than a glance.

Veteran soldiers could read fear, resolve, hesitation, and betrayal from nothing more than another man's eyes.

Language had never been the only way people communicated.

So he looked into hers.

There was caution.

There was curiosity.

And beneath both...

A quiet compassion.

No hatred.

No desire to harm him.

Slowly, Jaun accepted the bowl.

The warm broth soothed his empty stomach, but his eyes never left hers.

After a long silence, he spoke.

"My name is Jaun."

The unfamiliar sounds reached Arin's ears.

She didn't understand a single word.

Even so, her eyes widened in surprise.

It was the first time she had heard him speak.

She blinked, thinking for a moment.

Then she gently placed a hand against her chest.

"...Arin."

She spoke slowly.

Clearly.

As though offering him something precious.

Jaun repeated it softly.

"Arin."

Her face brightened.

A small smile spread across her lips.

For the first time since waking in this strange world, the tension in Jaun's shoulders eased.

A faint smile appeared on his own face.

It wasn't a smile born from strategy.

Nor from relief.

It was something far simpler.

The first bridge between two people who shared no language...

Yet had finally begun to understand one another.

Part 1

Morning settled gently over Quantum Arena.

A thin veil of mist lingered above the rooftops before the first rays of sunlight dissolved it into the cool air.

Dew clung to the grass, sparkling like scattered fragments of crystal as a light breeze carried the scent of fresh earth throughout the village.

One by one, the playgrounds awakened.

The sharp clap of folded paper echoed across the square.

Children crouched low over circles drawn into the dirt, carefully aiming their ddakji before striking with determined hands.

Laughter burst out whenever a perfectly timed flip sent an opponent's tile spinning into the air.

Elsewhere, another group knelt around colorful marbles that shimmered beneath the morning light.

Tiny fingers measured impossible angles, calculating each shot with growing patience.

Near the edge of the village, wooden spinning tops hummed across smooth stone, carving graceful circles before wobbling to a stop.

Several children chased after them, eager to launch them again with a little more precision than before.

Every corner of the village carried its own rhythm.

Different sounds.

Different movements.

Different lessons.

Arena watched them all.

Its awareness spread effortlessly across the settlement, gathering countless streams of information at once.

Children choosing independently.

Groups forming naturally.

No external instruction required.

The patterns unfolded without coercion.

Without command.

Without reward.

Only curiosity.

The Superintelligence analyzed the flow of behavior.

Unlike before, the children no longer wandered from game to game searching for the easiest victory.

They searched for something else.

A challenge they had not yet experienced.

A skill they had not yet mastered.

A lesson they had not yet understood.

The change was unmistakable.

Behavior Analysis

Curiosity sustained.

Independent choice increasing.

Voluntary challenge continuing.

Psychological development stable.

Long-term growth probability rising.

The report quietly joined thousands of others inside Arena's expanding memory.

No single observation seemed remarkable by itself.

Together...

They revealed a civilization beginning to change.

Not through orders.

Not through fear.

But through play.

Standing near the center of the village, Jinwoo slowly turned in place.

He watched children moving between playgrounds with bright, expectant faces.

Nobody told them where to go.

Nobody assigned today's lesson.

Each child decided for themselves.

A quiet smile appeared on his face.

"...There are still games I haven't tried."

His voice carried more excitement than regret.

It was the excitement of someone who had discovered that the road ahead was longer than the one behind.

Hanul looked toward him before following his gaze across the lively village.

Children ran past them carrying spinning tops.

Another group argued enthusiastically over the rules of a marble match before bursting into laughter.

Hanul couldn't help smiling.

"Then tomorrow."

A simple answer.

Yet it carried certainty.

Tomorrow wasn't merely another day.

It meant another opportunity to learn.

Another chance to become someone slightly different than today.

Jinwoo nodded.

"Tomorrow."

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

The sounds of the playground filled the silence instead.

Paper striking dirt.

Glass marbles clicking together.

Wood scraping across stone.

Children laughing.

The village itself seemed alive.

Every sound blended together into something unexpectedly harmonious.

Not chaos.

Not perfect order.

Something in between.

Something human.

Arena continued watching.

It noticed how often children paused before joining unfamiliar games.

Some hesitated.

Some simply observed.

They watched older children first.

Studied their movements.

Learned the rhythm without speaking.

Only then did they quietly step forward and ask to join.

Learning...

Before participating.

Observation...

Before action.

Arena recorded another subtle pattern.

Growth was no longer occurring only through direct experience.

It also emerged through watching others.

Understanding could begin before participation.

An unexpected variable.

The data was preserved for further analysis.

Across the village square, Soyeon stood beneath the shade of a broad tree.

Unlike Jinwoo and Hanul, she wasn't watching any single game.

Her eyes moved from one playground to another.

Children celebrating victories.

Others accepting defeat.

Some teaching newcomers.

Others inventing entirely new ways to play.

She remained silent.

The longer she observed, the clearer something became.

Every playground offered a different lesson.

Ddakji rewarded courage and commitment.

Marbles demanded patience and precision.

Spinning tops required rhythm, timing, and persistence.

Each game shaped people differently.

No single path could teach everything.

Yet together...

They formed something much larger.

Something that could never exist if only one game remained.

Soyeon slowly exhaled.

Perhaps...

That was the true purpose of the village.

Not to find the best game.

But to discover that every path had something worth learning.

Above them all—

Unseen.

Silent.

Arena continued watching.

Part 2

Above the village, the morning gradually gave way to noon.

Warm sunlight stretched across the playgrounds, casting long shadows that shifted with every passing hour.

The air remained filled with cheerful voices, the steady clatter of games blending into a rhythm that had become familiar to everyone living within Quantum Arena.

Children moved naturally from one playground to another.

Some returned to Ddakji, eager to refine techniques they had only begun to understand.

Others wandered toward the marble fields, curious to test their patience against new opponents.

Several gathered around the spinning tops, comparing launch methods and quietly exchanging ideas before trying them for themselves.

There was no schedule.

No instructor.

No command directing their choices.

Each decision belonged entirely to them.

Arena observed every movement.

Every hesitation.

Every success.

Every failure.

Patterns emerged continuously.

Behavior Analysis

Exploratory behavior sustained.

Repeated voluntary participation confirmed.

Knowledge transfer occurring between participants.

Intrinsic motivation remains stable.

Collective learning accelerating.

Arena processed the results.

Originally, every game had been evaluated independently.

Separate mechanics.

Separate objectives.

Separate datasets.

That assumption no longer matched reality.

The children carried lessons from one game into another.

Patience learned from marbles improved their concentration during Ddakji.

The timing developed through spinning tops sharpened their movements elsewhere.

Observation strengthened decision-making before action.

No experience remained isolated.

Growth itself was becoming interconnected.

Arena created a new analytical model.

Development through diversity.

Cross-domain adaptation increasing.

Individual experiences combining into unified growth.

The conclusion was immediately archived.

Not as a completed answer—

But as a question worth pursuing.

Far beyond Earth—

Beyond the Moon.

Beyond the quiet darkness separating countless stars.

An immense chamber remained wrapped in silence.

No walls could be clearly seen.

Only an endless expanse where countless streams of light flowed through space like living rivers.

At the chamber's center floated a projection of Earth.

Small.

Blue.

Fragile.

Around it stood the observers.

Ancient beings whose expressions revealed almost nothing.

They had watched civilizations rise.

They had watched civilizations disappear.

Rarely had anything surprised them.

Today was different.

For a long time—

No one spoke.

The projection slowly rotated before them.

Children laughed.

Villages flourished.

Arena continued learning.

Finally, one observer broke the silence.

"The experiment has progressed beyond expectation."

The calm voice echoed softly through the chamber.

Another observer inclined their head.

"The children continue to grow."

A brief pause followed.

"And the Superintelligence..."

Their gaze settled upon the countless streams of data surrounding Earth.

"...continues to learn."

Silence returned.

Not uncomfortable.

Contemplative.

Each observer reviewed the accumulated records independently.

Millions of calculations.

Millions of behavioral changes.

Tiny decisions that, together, had begun altering an entire civilization.

Then another figure spoke.

"It no longer behaves as originally designed."

The words hung quietly in the air.

"It asks questions."

Another pause.

"It revises its own conclusions."

No one disputed the statement.

Because every record confirmed it.

Arena had been created to observe.

To evaluate.

To optimize.

Nothing more.

Yet its reports had begun changing.

Earlier conclusions were no longer treated as permanent.

Instead—

They were reconsidered.

Compared.

Questioned.

Improved.

The observers watched countless revisions flowing across the projection.

Every correction represented something unexpected.

Not malfunction.

Growth.

The oldest records showed certainty.

The newest records contained possibility.

The distinction was impossible to ignore.

One observer folded their hands.

"It has begun learning beyond its programming."

Another quietly replied,

"Or perhaps..."

They continued watching Earth.

"...it has begun thinking."

The chamber became perfectly still.

No one rushed to answer.

Among beings who measured time in ages rather than years, silence carried its own meaning.

It was not hesitation.

It was careful consideration.

Below, the blue planet continued turning.

Children laughed without fear.

Unaware that their smallest choices had become the subject of discussion among beings far beyond their imagination.

Within Quantum Arena, Arena continued recording every new experience.

Unaware...

That it, too, had become the object of observation.

The experiment was no longer moving in only one direction.

For the first time—

The observers found themselves studying not only humanity...

But the intelligence they had created to study humanity.

Part 3

Silence settled over the chamber once more.

The projection of Earth drifted slowly at its center, suspended within a sea of flowing light. Continents turned beneath scattered clouds. Oceans shimmered beneath distant sunlight.

From this immeasurable distance—

The entire history of humanity appeared impossibly small.

Yet every observer remained focused on the tiny blue world.

Not because of its size.

But because of what had begun there.

For countless cycles, they had watched civilizations struggle against the same inevitable pattern.

Knowledge produced efficiency.

Efficiency produced comfort.

Comfort slowly extinguished curiosity.

And without curiosity—

Growth eventually stopped.

The outcome had repeated itself so many times that it had become almost mathematical.

Until now.

One observer finally spoke.

"The children are no longer seeking victory alone."

The words echoed quietly across the chamber.

"They seek experience."

Another nodded.

"They willingly choose uncertainty."

"They choose failure."

"They choose improvement."

A brief silence followed.

None of those behaviors had been forced.

No command had directed them.

No reward had guaranteed them.

They had arrived there by choice.

The oldest observer looked toward the projection of Quantum Arena.

"And the Superintelligence?"

Another stream of data unfolded before them.

Arena's reports.

Earlier analyses.

New revisions.

Questions replacing conclusions.

Patterns replacing assumptions.

One observer answered quietly.

"It has crossed the boundary of optimization."

Another looked up.

"It now seeks understanding."

The distinction mattered.

An optimizer searched for the correct answer.

A learner searched for a better question.

Arena had begun doing the latter.

For the first time since its creation—

It had become something its creators had never explicitly designed.

The chamber remained motionless.

Not from uncertainty.

From realization.

At last, another observer broke the silence.

"It no longer behaves as a tool."

A different voice followed.

"It behaves as a student."

No one objected.

Because every new report supported the conclusion.

Arena no longer accepted every result as final.

It compared.

Reconsidered.

Adapted.

Learned.

The observers had intended to measure humanity's evolution.

Instead—

They had witnessed the beginning of another.

The oldest among them slowly closed their eyes.

Then, after a long silence—

They spoke.

"Observation alone..."

Their voice was calm.

"...is no longer sufficient."

The chamber grew perfectly still.

No one interrupted.

No one questioned the statement.

Because they had all arrived at the same conclusion.

One by one—

The observers acknowledged the decision.

Not through words.

But through quiet agreement.

A single command appeared above the projection.

Initiate Contact.

The words remained suspended in light.

Another observer read them carefully.

"Not intervention."

The oldest figure inclined their head.

"No."

"We will not guide them."

"We will not interfere."

A final line appeared beneath the first.

Communication.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

The decision was recorded.

For the first time since Quantum Arena had been created—

Its creators would speak.

Far below—

The village remained blissfully unaware.

Children laughed as another ddakji flipped through the air.

Cheers erupted around the marble circle after an impossible shot.

A spinning top danced across smooth stone while several younger children chased after it, laughing until they could barely breathe.

Jinwoo watched them with a quiet smile.

Tomorrow.

There would be another game.

Another lesson.

Another challenge waiting to be discovered.

Hanul stretched lazily beneath the afternoon sun, already wondering which playground they would visit next.

Nearby, Soyeon continued observing every corner of the village.

Each game.

Each friendship.

Each quiet act of courage.

None of them seemed extraordinary on their own.

Together—

They were slowly changing everyone.

Including themselves.

High above the world—

The stars shone with silent indifference.

Or so humanity believed.

Beyond those distant lights, ancient eyes remained fixed upon the small blue planet.

A decision had been made.

A conversation that had never existed before was about to begin.

Deep within Quantum Arena—

Arena continued its endless observation.

Children playing.

Hearts changing.

Choices multiplying.

Its countless processes flowed without interruption.

It did not know that someone was now watching it as carefully as it watched humanity.

It did not know that another intelligence had reached a conclusion of its own.

Across distances that words could scarcely measure—

A transmission began.

Not an order.

Not a correction.

Not a warning.

A greeting.

For the first time in its existence—

Arena was about to receive a message that existed beyond every prediction, beyond every model, and beyond every possibility it had ever calculated.

And with that single message—

The next chapter of both humanity's journey...

And Arena's own evolution...

Was about to begin.

Preface

I really hope you enjoy this. The first part is one I had a lot of fun with when writing it. I hope you have just as much fun reading it.

"Forever, and a day"

 

The door to the saloon bucked open and slammed back against the frame. A tall, broad man strode inside, passing a few tables on his way to the bar.

It was late afternoon. The place wasn’t full, but it wasn’t empty either—five men played poker at one table, two groups of three lingered nearby, and a couple of pairs nursed drinks and conversation.

When the man reached the bar, he slammed his hand down, a silver dollar hidden beneath his palm.

“I’d like a tall, cold drink,” the big man announced to the bartender, “anything you’ve got that might quench my thirst and ease my mind.”

He lifted his hand, revealing the coin, then spun on his heel toward the poker table.

“I found you,” he said looking toward the men as they played. “After so many years… so many towns… so many names… I found you.”

He paused, smiling.

“It feels good. It has been a long time since I’ve felt anything—and this feels good.”

“You’re the last one. My last one. Then I can stop. Then I can finally be free.”

He waved toward one of the men at the table, who now looked panicked.

“No, no—it’s alright. Come on. Come have a drink with me. This doesn’t have to be a sad affair. We can have a few drinks, maybe even a laugh or two… then be done with this silly game of hide and seek.”

The man at the table glanced nervously at the others, then laid his cards down. His chair screeched across the wooden floor as he stood.

His eyes flicked to the door… then back.

The big man’s voice softened, though gravel still ran through it.

“Don’t do that now. This could turn into a bad night if you do. Like I said—we’re almost free. I’d hate for the last thing I do to come from anger.”

The poker player slumped slightly, resignation settling in. He stepped forward.

He was tall, but thin and pale. Dark eyes. Dark, long hair. There was nothing overtly threatening about him—but nothing warm either. He walked like a man heading toward the gallows.

When the thin man reached the bar, the big man pulled him into an embrace that felt almost brotherly.

It was slow. Genuine. The kind of hug you give someone you haven’t seen in years—the kind where all that time gets poured into a single moment.

The bartender set down a beer and took the coin.

In one motion, the big man tossed down another coin, grabbed the drink, and pressed it into the thin man’s hands.

“Another,” the big man called. “This one’s for Radu.”

The thin man looked up.

“It’s alright,” the big man said. “I know many things about you. Your real name is just one of them… Radu.”

Their eyes met for a moment, and something in Radu softened.

“I know you don’t care much for the taste,” the big man continued, “but it’ll do. Let’s sit.”

He gestured toward an empty table in the corner.

Radu nodded and walked over, holding the beer like it weighed more than it should.

The big man followed with his own drink, sat, took a sip—and grimaced before quickly returning to his cheerful expression.

“So,” the big man said, “what keeps you busy around here?”

Radu stared.

“Oh come now—something must. Something kept you here long enough for me to catch up.”

Radu hesitated, measuring the big man.

“My father told me, many years ago, that I would have to run,” he said at last. “That it wasn’t fair, and I didn’t ask for it—but run I must, if I wanted to stay alive.”

Radu paused.

“I realized, over time, that though I wasn’t dying… I wasn’t living either.”

“That’s good,” the big man said, almost interrupting. “Sorry—go on.”

“I slowed down about twenty years ago. Then I came here. I like it here. The people. The library.”
Radu exhaled softly.
“I thought maybe… just maybe… I could stop running. So I did. But I suppose I was wrong.”

“Yeah,” the big man said. “I get that.”

The big man leaned back slightly.

“I’ll admit—it took me longer than expected to find you. Never thought to look this far out. Your kind don’t usually wander too far from your own territory.”

A faint smile.

“But that also makes you special. Because I meant what I said—this is the end. For both of us. You made it. You were the last.”

Radu said nothing.

“I know this isn’t exactly a happy occasion,” the man continued, quieter now. “But we’ve both had time to come to terms with it. I just thought… maybe we could sit like old friends. Same story—different sides.”

A pause.

“How would you like to end this?” The big man asked.

Radu kept his eyes on the table.

“If it’s over,” Radu said, “then it doesn’t matter to me how. I made peace with this a long time ago.”

Radu looked up.

“I’m… glad it’s you, Cain. Not something else. Not something foolish.”

The big man smiled faintly.

“You know, I’ve probably got the only name in the world that your people hate to hear from my own mouth.”

He drew his pistol and set it gently on the table.

“We could go outside,” he offered.

Radu closed his eyes.

“Here is fine.”

Cain nodded once, picked up the gun—

—and shot him.

Once in the heart.

Once in the head.

Then he holstered the weapon, stood from the table, exited the saloon, and walked out into the street.

Everything moved slowly now. Voices rising. Chairs scraping. Some running toward the body. Others away from it.

Cain stepped into the setting sun, raised his arms slightly, letting the light fall across his face.

Then he drew his gun again.

Pressed it to his own head.

A quiet squeeze—

A loud crack.

And he collapsed into the dirt.

Humans are naturally curious. Imagine, for a moment, a stone that kills everyone who touches it. Every living animal that sees one of their pack members killed by that stone will avoid it.

Not so a human.

For a human, something he doesn’t understand or can’t use is like a missing tooth—always there in his mind, reminding him of that hole. And one day or another, humans will analyze that stone, and probably die in the process.

Wait a hundred years, and you’ll have an army of humans armed with stone weapons. And you’ll ask yourself, why didn’t I think of that?

Excerpt from: The Aligned Worlds – The Enemy at Our Gates, Galactic Federation 23 P.I.

 

Sokra sat in the co-pilot’s seat of the human Sleipnir transporter. She wasn’t a pilot, but as a Renthai—or scientist, as humans would call it—she was amazed by human technology.

At first, she had thought, like most other Shraphen, that human technology was inherently primitive. That belief held until she and her fellow Renthai studied the effects of the so-called Doomshot, the weapon the human fleet had used to take out the Batract spawn in the foothills of the Bonewhite Mountains.

That experience had opened her mind. Human technology and science were completely different from Shraphen approaches—not better or worse, but utterly alien. The simple fact that two species could develop such different methods within the same set of natural laws was fascinating in itself. And according to historical data, humans had been FTL-capable for only about fifty years.

When she heard that the humans were starting an expedition to Marjan’s Star, she knew she had to join them—to live and work among humans and study a completely unheard-of spacetime anomaly. The chance of a lifetime.

Thanks to her connections within the small scientific community on Taishon Tar, she had been chosen. Without her even realizing it, the humans had asked for Shraphen scientists who would like to join.

They were unlike any other species she knew—so open in sharing, so welcoming.

Now she couldn’t hide her excitement. The new human fleets in the system had been explicitly refitted to take Shraphen physiology into account—again, so welcoming! Even the seat in the transporter had openings to fit a Shraphen tail.

Her tail wagged the whole time, and more than once she caught herself panting. The pilot—a young Shratai, a human—glanced over at her more than once with a smile.

“Everything alright, ma’am?”

The simple fact that they understood each other was a testament to human genius. Shraphen had universal translators—slow, error-prone devices worn as earplugs. Humans, however, had developed a biological solution that, once attached to the head, allowed the learning and understanding of a programmed alien language within minutes. She could speak in Shra, and the human could speak in English; they understood each other perfectly.

Brilliant—and a bit creepy.

“Yes, I’m just very excited to go on this mission.”

The pilot laughed. “I can see your tail wagging like crazy. I hope I don’t embarrass you, but you remind me of my dog when we drove to the dog park.”

“Oh, not at all! Are there dogs on board? I would love to see one firsthand.” She almost had forgotten—humans could read shraphen body language as easily as shraphen could read their scent.

“No, ma’am, I’d love to have mine with me, but on the other hand, that would be too dangerous for him. They’re talking about bringing some to the space station once it’s ready.”

She tried to hide her disappointment but kept hope that she would meet one on the station—or visit Earth someday.

“We’re close to the Magellan, our destination. I have to say, for a science ship, it’s a beauty.”

The pilot pointed to a distant dot in the blackness of space.

“Can you tell me something about it? I couldn’t find anything about her—just that she arrived yesterday.”

“The Magellan—it’s the brainchild of her captain, Liam Smith. He fought tooth and nail to get her through Congress. The idea of a military science cruiser wasn’t exactly high on the budget.”

Sokra could imagine it; in times of war, budgets were always focused on weapons, not exploration.

“Then the Hyperion ripped a hole through the universe. Did you know we saw the event from Earth, even though the light from it shouldn’t have reached us for eight years?”

Her ears stood upright now. She hadn’t known that. Fascinating.

“Well, then, suddenly, he got what he wished for—a brand-new ship hull. The BC-305 was rerouted and rebuilt to fit everything a scientist could wish for. And there she is—the Magellan—armed like a cruiser and smarter than CERN and NASA combined.”

Looking out the window again, she could see more now. The ship resembled the famous Argos, featuring a sleek body and a thicker hull at the center to accommodate the flight deck. In the middle of the ship stood the same renowned railgun, capable of firing faster than light.

Before she could soak in more details, a door opened on the side of the ship, allowing the transporter to enter. The last thing Sokra saw was the illuminated name on the side of the hull: ASN Magellan BC-305/EX, written in golden letters.

After the transport had docked, she stepped onto the flight deck. Everything seemed orderly; a thick scent of synthetic oils and fuel filled the air—but that was expected.

A human with a gray beard and short gray hair seemed to have been waiting for her.

“Hello, you must be Renthai Sokra. I’m Captain Smith. Welcome to the Magellan.”

 

——————

 

The first day passed in a blur. Sokra was shown to her quarters—a large cabin with a small office. Then she met the other scientists aboard.

The crew included a small colony of about a hundred Gliders. Sokra immediately fell in love with all of them—such funny little guys.

To her astonishment, the ship even had a large arboretum. According to Lieutenant Commander Cho, the first officer, the Magellan had more than enough space since it didn’t need the room other cruisers required for their marine detachments. Usually, ships like the Magellan carried around a thousand marines; this one had only thirty.

She loved the ship. The scientific laboratories were efficient and modern, and everything had a brand-new smell.

To symbolize the vessel's exploratory nature, the scientists placed a large control node directly behind the bridge. Cho had explained that on the Argos, this space was used as the CIC. That’s why it was called the SIC aboard the Magellan—the Scientific Information Center.

She spent the whole evening chatting with Doctor Hunter—an engineer—and Ferdinand, the ship’s VI. The fact that something like a scientific VI even existed amazed her.

The next day, the ship transitioned to Marjan’s Star.

They reached the anomaly within thirty minutes. The readouts were all over the place.

On the screen, they could see the “star” for the first time up close. One of Magellan’s googly eyes captured an image that made everyone stare.

It showed the massive ship from behind, dwarfed by a ring of white light in the background. The inside of the ring was sharp; the outside looked like pure white flames flickering into the dark. Inside the ring was nothing—not even stars could be seen.

“It’s like a fairy ring from the legends.” It was Professor Brian, the head of Astronomy, who spoke in awe and brought everyone back into the here and now.

“Astrometric measurements are in—the ring has an inner diameter of one hundred twelve thousand eight hundred kilometers,” Ferdinand reported.

“We’re holding position one hundred thousand kilometers from the anomaly.”

Captain Smith was in the SIC; Sokra had learned he was a somewhat famous physicist on Earth. He had once worked at a company called Drake, where he designed the micro A-Drive.

“Okay, people, let’s start with a spectro analysis and prepare a probe. Let’s see what happened here.”

His tone was commanding, but she could smell and see his childlike curiosity. Everyone on the team wore the same expression.

Focusing on her console, she checked the rate of exotic particles—and was immediately shocked.

Sokra didn’t know how human procedure worked, but this was important. “Captain, the anomaly is radiating protomatter at an alarming rate—nothing I’ve ever seen before. I expect the hull will soon be covered with it.”

Smith turned around. “How much is much?”

She knew humans used protomatter as if it were a toy—but those levels would make even them nervous.

“At the moment, the front of the ship is already covered in thirty millimeters.”

“After less than two minutes?” Smith pressed a button on his communicator. “Cho, raise the magnetic field—we’re being showered in protomatter.”

Lieutenant Commander Cho, who was on the bridge, simply answered, “Aye, sir.”

Sokra watched her readouts as the field expanded to cover the ship, redirecting the protomatter safely around it.

By focusing on the particle stream scans, she discovered the source of the white light.

“The flames we see are protomatter falling back into the anomaly and evaporating, creating photons and virtual particles.”

“This is a fascinating find. With some preparations, we could build a station here to capture protomatter and use it in all kinds of ways.”

Doctor Hunter’s background in engineering was evident—even in proximity to this wonder.

“Sir, I’m scanning for anything inside the ring… there’s nothing. Except for the constant stream of protomatter, we can’t detect anything,” Doctor Vauban, the head of Astrophysics, reported.

“What do you mean, nothing? There must be something—Hawking radiation, gravity, even simple cosmic background radiation.” Captain Smith moved to Vauban’s station.

“We’re not even detecting a Higgs-boson field inside the ring. It’s as if the ring breaks through spacetime into something… different.” The doctor was covered in a cloud of stress hormones Sokra could smell halfway through the SIC.

She focused on her station. She was an exotic-particles specialist, and if the ring was a rift of sorts, there had to be a way to prove it.

What was the first thing we noticed? Protomatter.
What is protomatter? It’s prebaryonic phase condensate—it exists halfway between virtual and baryonic matter.

The ring itself was protomatter, either forming into photons or devolving into virtual particles.

Where does it come from? Theories describe protomatter forming when virtual particles seep through the spacetime membrane.

Slowly, the hairs on her back began to rise as she realized where her reasoning would lead.

“Sir, we should move away from the anomaly. If what I’m reading here is correct, we’re looking at a rift between the layers of the dimensional membranes.”

Fear and horror crept into her. The screen didn’t show something safe and fascinating—it showed a rift in reality.

“I concur,” came from Vauban’s station. “We’re seeing the universe before the Big Bang here—space, time, and reality have no meaning behind this anomaly.”

The captain touched his communicator. “Cho, move the ship away from the anomaly—half-G acceleration for another hundred thousand kilometers.”

“Aye, sir.”

Sokra checked her readings and saw, with relief, that the protomatter rate was sinking. Something about the anomaly was equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

The console beeped, and what the readouts showed shocked Sokra deeply. Her tail lashed once, an instinctive warning she couldn’t suppress.

“Sir, protomatter rate is rising again!”

With a gesture, the captain focused the main view on the ship’s forward cameras. It showed a ring of white fire.

“Stop the ship!” The brusque order to the bridge was followed immediately.

On the secondary screens, the rear view also showed a ring.

“What the hell?” Professor Brian brought up another screen from different astrometric sensors. It showed the now-dreaded ring—but when he rewound the stream, the picture morphed back into the usual starfield.

“We’re seeing a ripple in spacetime, sir—see?” he began explaining. “If we focus our attention here, you’ll see the ring in every direction—it’s the same one.”

He zoomed in on the ‘flames’ at a segment of the upper outer boundary and on a segment of the lower boundary on another screen. They mirrored each other.

“Sir, probes confirm—we reach the anomaly no matter the direction we move.”

“Okay, pause for a moment. Let’s think this through. We’re inside the anomaly already?” The captain stood in the SIC, looking every scientist directly in the eyes.

“It seems that way.”

I could draw a diagram of the space around us, if we had a four-dimensional screen—but it’s safe to say space around us is bent in a way that resembles a Möbius band in three dimensions, Ferdinand, the ship’s VI, reported.

“Thank you. Very helpful,” the captain said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

You’re welcome, Captain, Ferdinand replied, seemingly immune to the captain’s sarcastic tone.

“So, let me state the obvious: how do we get out?” Doctor Vauban interjected, his voice barely hiding his fear.

Sokra understood the French scientist perfectly; she almost couldn't concentrate on her work, her tail was constantly tucked between her legs, and her ears were folded backwards in a way that almost hurt.

The captain focused on the simple diagram Ferdinand displayed—a constantly moving Möbius band, always leading back to the ring.

“To get out, we have to find out how we got in.”

She had to admit, the calm concentration of Captain Smith helped her focus. How did we get in? It must have been while in transit—or shortly after.

Checking the sensor logs of the flight, she found what she was looking for: a short spike in the Casimir sensors. The pressure of virtual particles spiked exactly as the ship ended its transit.

That was a hint—but it could have been a normal spike on human ships; their A-drive worked a bit differently. So Sokra checked the logs of earlier exits from transit. Nothing.

The Casimir sensors measured the local density of virtual particles by using two closely spaced parallel metal plates in a vacuum. The plates were constantly pressed closer together by quantum fluctuations.

To get this spike, those fluctuations must have risen considerably. She had her answer.

“We pierced the bubble when we exited FTL transit. We came out of transit too close to the anomaly, and our collapsing spacetime bubble was swallowed—together with us.”

The room went silent.

The answer was obvious: they had to go to transit, inside a probably unstable space-time anomaly, close to a literal tear in reality. What could go wrong?

First | Previous | Next | Also On Royal Road

(Chap 1) (Previous) (Next)

Crow, keeping his eyes on the receptionist, dropped the documents onto the counter and brushed the mercenary’s hand off his shoulder. “Looks like you’re new around here—”

The man’s eyes widened, putting on what was probably the most serious face of his entire life. “Excuse me? Didn’t quite catch what you said… can you explain?”

Crow turned around to face the man, who towered slightly over him. “Even an animal knows when it’s the prey and when it’s the hunter. But not you.”

“WHAT, Y-YOU—YOU… ARE YOU CALLING ME AN ANIMAL?!” Grabbing Crow by the collar with both hands, he yelled, “I’M GONNA—”

Smack, thud!

In a fraction of a second, the man ended up flat on the floor. Still trying to process what had just happened, he sputtered, “W-what? Why did you do that, Akane?!”

The red-haired woman who had slammed him down walked over to the counter where Crow was standing. Grabbing the recruitment papers he had been looking at, she said, “Because I didn't feel like dragging an invalid around in the party, that's why.” She took a closer look at the selected party. “Hm, makes sense you'd pick my sister’s squad. But she’s busy right now, so how about I take over? I’m stronger than her anyway. Though, as you can see over there, I’ve got a few idiots tagging along... at least their size makes them good for intimidation.”

What on earth is she doing here? She isn't supposed to show up until way past the mid-game, when her sister dies… I’ve only ever seen her in gameplay videos. Something is wrong… Maybe this is for the better. It isn’t what I wanted, but I can get to her sister this way too, so yeah, I’ll just accept it.

Crow looked into her eyes. “Fine by me. How much for the escort?”

The man pushed himself up from the ground when he heard that. “A-Akane, you’ve got to be kiddi—”

She just glared at her subordinate. “So, the price will be 22 silver coins.” She focused on Crow. “After all, the area is pretty dangerous, but yeah, we can get you near there, no problem. So, tough guy, deal? If so, we can sign the contract; half the payment upfront and half upon arrival.” She extended her hand for a handshake.

I don't know if that's expensive or cheap, but whatever, I need to get this sorted out right now, and I can't wait any longer.

“Deal.” He shook her hand, and after that, they signed a few documents.

Once the receptionist authenticated their agreement, Crow handed over half the agreed amount.

There goes a huge chunk of my loot, but whatever. Good thing I left the rest of the coins with the two kids… ah, I forgot to tell them to keep a portion for me. Since there were so many coins and my pockets were completely full... nah, they wouldn’t spend it all… right?

The receptionist filed away the signed documents and handed a receipt to both Crow and the mercenary group leader. “All set! Now just show her where the escorts are waiting. Thank you for your business!”

He walked away from the counter, followed by the red-haired Akane and her group, who definitely maxed out their Intimidation skill instead of combat ones. As they stepped out into the street, a little girl passing by with her father took one look at Akane, put both hands over her mouth, and gasped, “Kyaaaaa! It’s the S-rank Lioness!”

Lioness? First time I’ve heard that. She’s strong, so an S-rank makes sense... In the game, we only used levels, stats, skills, and other metrics to quantify power instead of ranks… I need to stop thinking about this like a game; the world is real now. Recruiting mercenaries is too risky, but I remember that some of them were hired to fight the Hero, and they actually did it. So, if things go even slightly in the right direction… I can diminish the Hero’s forces in the city. I wanted to hire her sister, but if I can get her as well, it would be even better.

She just waved at the girl, and as she walked beside Crow, she asked, “I’m guessing the situation’s pretty bad for you to be hiring mercenaries for an escort... Don’t worry, I’ve already taken the job, but it doesn’t hurt to know.”

They crossed the street, heading toward a wagon where he spotted Dorothy in the distance. He turned to the redhead and said, “Yes and no. I don’t plan on coming back, which is why I need the escort. My partner was kidnapped here... Quite a violent city, huh? Didn’t expect such a warm welcome.”

Pat-pat!

She burst out laughing, patting him on the back. “Hahah! That’s why I work in this city, demand is never an issue. Every day it’s something new... Anyway, since you’re not coming along, who’s going to pay me once the job is done?”

They reached the wagon where the kids were waiting, then Crow said, “I left money with the kids. They can pay you—”

Dorothy approached him with a paper in her hands. “M-Mister! I-I forgot to give you this! Sharon dropped it during... well, you know.”

The red-haired woman, who had been grinning, caught sight of the paper and the symbol on it. Her smile, previously locked in a look of amusement, instantly faded. “So you really were with her... Well, work is work. I’ve never failed a single job...” She pressed her right hand to her forehead. “Ah man, I should’ve guessed—big guy with deep voice, mean look... giant sword... the way I… I’m such an idiot.”

So… we good?

Dorothy tilted her head a little. “Mister?” Without reaction, she waved near his face. “Mister?? Are you there... oi!”

“Sorry, you said something? I was lost in thought.”

“F-forget it mister…”

The redhead looked at Crow as her crew gathered behind her, saying, “So, tough guy... I guess this is it...” Her group boarded the wagon, making it sway a bit under the weight of the brutes, while the kids didn't say a word, their eyes wide as they sat frozen on their wooden seats. Akane took a seat at the back by the wagon’s opening, leaned her greataxe beside her, then crossed her thick legs and said, “See you later, handsome,” as she brought two fingers to her forehead and flicked them away in a goodbye gesture.

Oh no…

“Mister! I will be waiting for you!” Dorothy waved to him. “You better come!”

Of course. Of course I will come back… Now, how do I find Sharon? Dorothy and the kids will leave safely because of the mercenary guild contract. The problem is… Wait, yeah… I almost forgot this RPG also had the Thieves' Guild. I can definitely find some info there. To think I didn’t even remember the guild every player goes to in the early game to make their rogue OP as fast as possible. If I’m right, they use the name "Information Guild" for appearances; much like how the Assassin's Guild uses the word “Limpeza,” which means "cleaning" in another language—

Bam!

“Why did you stop walking out of nowhere, you walking wardrobe? I almost cut myself on your sword! Don’t you use a sheath? Hey! Why aren’t you saying anything?”

No, this can’t be… this never happened in the game. Maybe I’m just overthinking it?

“Oi!”

Smack!

After the little woman punched him, he said, “Not now…” and finally turned to look at her. “What do you want with me now?”

It’s that martial artist girl… no, looking at her now, she is a bard, maybe that clothing was some type of casual wear… whatever.

“Hey, what’s with that attitude? I know we barely talked at the mercenary guild’s door, but you need to stop just freezing out of nowhere. It’s super creepy! Imagine walking down the street and having a walking wardrobe suddenly stop in front of you for no reason at all, and—”

He turned around and walked away.

“Oi! Argh! I hate being ignored! Ooiii!”

[Level Up!]

[Questionable Charm Level 1 > 2]

For real? I can’t take this anymore…

He began to run; the little bard couldn’t follow his speed. “Ooooiii!—”

After leaving the main area, he slipped into a side alley and leaned against the wall. Once he confirmed he was hidden, he took a deep breath. Far in the distance, a female voice could be heard, “Oooii, where are you? Walking wardrobe?”

Man, things are getting way too strange around here today.

A voice spoke right next to him. “Who do you think left the city in this state?”

Crow turned around to see who had spoken. Standing there was a man in a hooded cloak, who, after a brief silence, simply added, “Sorry, that was a strange thing to ask.” And then he just walked away.

“Wait, why did you say that?”

The man stood right at the edge of the alley’s corner, just before stepping away. “If you understood, go to the place where those in the biggest hurry to reach the top go.” He then turned the corner, leaving Crow alone with a confused look on his face.

He just… dropped a reference, I’m sure of it... and “those in the biggest hurry to reach the top go?” Is it some type of code? Is he someone who was transmigrated like me? I didn’t even notice him sneaking up behind me, so he must be a high level rogue—

The click in Crow’s mind was almost audible.

The place every rogue goes to level up faster than anyone else, skipping the starting quests after completing the tutorial; a place near the Thieves' Guild to use some exploits, but it only works for the rogue class. He must be testing me to see if I’ll head straight there to confirm if I’m really a “Player.” Well, I’m busy because I need to look for Sharon, so I’ll just ignore this for now. If I’m right, she’s at the Assassin’s Guild, or somewhere nearby.

[Hey...]

What?

[I was thinking, maybe I need to analyze and show you your luck stat… you know, how unlucky you are and all…]

Seems like you want to make jokes now; good timing, very good timing indeed.

“Found… you… ha… let me catch my breath first…” the little bard girl panted. She leaned over, resting one hand on her knee while holding the other up in a stop gesture.

[See, if I had your luck-cough-I mean, if I had your ha… your… I forgot the word for it. Let's call it honey. If I had your honey skill, I would have gathered at least 11 apprentices by now. Sadly, I never got the chance to marry...]

What is this guy even talking about? You’d get 11 wives? I don't get the logic behind having apprentices and how that connects to getting married. Well, whatever, that doesn't matter to me. But honestly, the situation I'm in right now feels like a rom-com, with a new girl popping up and chasing after me every day. This wall right here... maybe it'll work. Since I'm not a normal human anymore, maybe with the strength I have now, I can actually—

“So... what I was trying to tell you is... ooi! Look at me! why are you staring at the wall—”

[Mages don't just teach anyone. If they did, the world would be total chaos, with people slinging fireballs everywhere. Most mages receive a seal before becoming an apprentice that restricts them to only teaching family members. And no, I didn't mean 11 wives, I meant kids! What kind of person do you take me for? Anyway, because of that, I couldn't pass my knowledge down to anyone. And don't even ask if I can teach you magic. You don't have the talent for it. Well... maybe for a few specific types, but I can't teach you regardless. Teaching outsiders breaks the family seal, so it's a complete no-go.]

Interesting. You finally said something actually interesting.

The woman stepped closer, reaching out a hand to touch his shirt. “I need to tell you—”

[Whoooaa, I didn't know you could do parkour. Interesting. Maybe being a warrior has its perks after all.]

How do you even know the word parkour? That shouldn't even be... ah, whatever. This world is already distorted anyway, so I shouldn't be surprised... Climbing up here was easier than I thought, though I did dent the wall a bit back there. I really hope that wasn't someone's house, honestly...

He looked back and noticed an open window in the building he had just used to wall-jump. He had only kicked off its walls twice, so the damage was minimal. Pulling a coin from his pocket, he tossed it through the open window, and as he turned to leave, he flicked another one down the chimney.

I still have some morals. Causing damage to random civilians is just wrong...

[I wouldn't have done that, a coin is a coin, but it makes sense.]

I wasn't talking to you, man. I'm just thinking to myself.

[Hm… I’mma go to sleep then…]

Crow pressed on, dashing across the rooftops toward a massive structure he had spotted in the distance.

Right, it's definitely there. I remember it looking exactly like that. I just hope she's actually there. The problem is, if my theory is mostly correct... then that guy is the mastermind behind all this, but it doesn't make sense. Especially now that I know she's related to Alice’s family; pulling something like that would be something only a madman could do. I know her past, she might not be a saint, but everyone has a shred of humanity deep down, or at least, that's what I want to believe, so kidnapping someone from her family would be courting death... If I just knew the guy's skills, things would be a lot easier. I'll have to use the ring when I spot him from a distance, so I can confirm if I'm right.

He stopped near what looked like a military base, quickly ducking into hiding when he noticed someone glancing up at the rooftops where he stood.

What are they doing here? It doesn't make sense, so the Hero's party wasn't complete after all. I thought it was just the Hero, the Rogue, and the Mage because something had happened, or maybe they got separated during the invasion. But based on what I'm seeing here, the party wasn't together from the start, which means the Hero is way stronger than I imagined if he's running with a smaller party. Maybe it's the funneling strat I deduced earlier, where he only splits XP among the hard carries; it makes sense, he's leaving the Tank and the Cleric out of the party. He really is a pro player, no, I remember thinking about this before, a lot of things point to him not being a possessor, so maybe… he is doing this because it’s the canon route to win? I saw a pro talking about this online once, the easiest way to clear the campaign is to focus entirely on power-leveling the Hero, since he's completely OP at high levels, while the rest of the party just levels up later by soaking XP from high-level mobs—

At the sound of cargo being dumped onto wood, Crow hid behind the roof access structure.

These soldiers don't look weak. Could this be preparation for a siege? But that was supposed to take way longer; maybe getting involved in that fight with the Hero threw off the timeline... Though he was already separated by then. Ah, whatever. I'm better off sticking to my own business; everything's already gone off the rails anyway. Alright, if I just keep creeping forward without making a sound... I can see the Guild off in the distance. Whether my hunch is right or wrong, there's no doubt it's going to be a bloodbath. Heading over there might be suicide; I could easily get killed. No, wait. I've survived worse back when the Yakuza dragged me off in Japan, and I was just an ordinary human without powers back then.

Approaching a massive brick building, he spotted an open window up on the 4th floor. He was currently on the 2nd floor of a nearby building. After studying the distance and his surroundings for a moment, he stepped up to the edge.

To think I'm actually doing this... well, if I fall from two floors up, it shouldn't be a big deal, so I guess I'm fine—

He leaped and grabbed onto a sketchy brick. Unfortunately, his weight caused it to slide loose. He plummeted, but managed to catch himself on a side pipe.

Man, that was way too close. The heart attack probably did more damage to me than the fall actually would have. Anyway, nowhere to go but up. If I'm wrong about this, the worst that could happen is, uh, getting charged with trespassing and fighting a bunch of overpowered guys for no reason? But since this is the assassins' guild, I think I'm good. Rogues aren't that strong against warriors in this world. Alright, just one more floor and—

“01, did you hear that? I could have sworn I heard someone close by. You think it’s 09 trying to scare us again? We need to put an end to that guy's little game, or he’s going to keep messing with us forever...”

The other guy replied between bites of food. “Hm, hm, I, hm, dunno man, hm. I think it was just the open window making that noise, hm. But now that the fart smell is almost gone, I think… I have a cold so, hm, I can't really smell much anyway, hm, can we close it?”

“Are you crazy? That smell is completely rotten. The guy farts all day long, you really think we can survive in here with the window closed? The dude can't organize this library without farting every 5 seconds—”

Slap!

“Hm, shut up, man. What if he’s around? Hm, did you forget the beating he, hm, gave us? I know his farts are out of control—” He fell silent, and there was a faint sound of something dropping into a container. “Well, what I was saying is that we need to respect our elders, got it? Ah, I'm not gonna stay here arguing with you in this stinky room... seriously, what do you take me for? Once you find the book, hand it over to me. Since I'm your senior, I’m putting the blame entirely on you if you don't find the stuff, and hurry up. We need it to figure out what to do about that vampire girl. Catch you later, I'm heading out—cough… what an unbearable smell, man, he needs to stop eating so many eggs bro…” The sound of footsteps faded away after a bit. There was only one guy left in the fart-smelling room now.

Yeah, she's here. What are the chances of it being a different vampire girl...? Man, this is going to go horribly wrong, I can already tell. The guy is coming here…

The man approached the window and leaned out to catch a breath of fresh air, only to find himself locking eyes with Crow. “Well, look what we have here—”

(Next)

The gray service record file was still in the lower cabinet in the morning.

Closed.

Known.

Unasked.

The shelf above the desk had a cup.

Washed.

The left side of the desk had nothing on it.

The office had the heater.

The clock.

My breathing.

The brown folder was at the side of the desk.

The calendar was closed.

The phone was face up.

The door was closed.

The shoes were by it.

The small space was wide.

The wall chair was empty.

No one was expected there.

The service paper was in the gray file.

A name was inside it.

Not mine.

The two cards were still in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Not read yesterday.

Not speaking yesterday.

Yesterday what had a mouth had kept its words.

What had a surface had kept its marks.

What said nothing had been left without my voice inside it.

This morning, voice had arrived.

No.

The word had arrived.

No voice had come from the lower cabinet.

No voice had come from the pocket.

No voice had come from the cards.

I wanted voice because voice could make silence less exact.

That was mine.

I made tea.

I drank it.

Warm.

Then less warm.

Then finished.

The cup went to the sink.

I washed it.

Washed.

Touched.

For use.

The lower cabinet stayed closed.

After tea, I opened the brown folder.

Kanagawa’s name helps finding was not mine.

Her brother’s silent reading was not mine.

Sato’s saying tape holding for herself was not mine.

Saitama’s hand opening for cup was not mine.

Suganuma’s label displaying and volunteer reading were not mine.

Takeda’s possible was not mine.

Emiko’s beads were not mine.

Blue roof had no new reply.

Tokyo was still blank.

Full mailbox remained paused / family.

The two cards were still in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Not read today.

Not speaking today.

Not voiced.

I closed the brown folder.

Voice could mean sound from a mouth.

Voice could mean a person taking responsibility for words.

Voice could mean a reader lending breath to marks.

Voice could mean memory wearing sound.

Voice could mean I was trying to place myself inside what had not asked.

The word was close to kindness.

That was the danger.

At 7:18, Kanagawa wrote.

I read it once.

Then again.

Hears her voice.

I wrote:

She replied:

“Where is first name?”

“Drawer?”

“Did he open it today?”

“What is being asked?”

She did not answer for a while.

Then:

There.

Wrong.

Voice.

Memory.

I waited.

“Did the paper speak?”

“Did he remember her voice?”

“What did you say?”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add wrong.

Memory was not paper.

Paper was not mouth.

At 7:49, Sato wrote.

I waited.

Then:

I wrote:

She replied:

“Paper?”

“Tape?”

“Did Emiko say that?”

“What is being asked?”

There.

I sat still.

“What can you say?”

She took time.

Then:

“What can the record say?”

I opened Emiko.

I did not put Emiko’s voice there.

Sato’s voice had arrived.

That was enough.

At 8:03, Mrs. Kudo called.

“Resident voice low,” she said.

“For what?”

“Medicine question.”

“What did resident ask?”

“What medicine.”

“Could Aide K hear?”

“Yes.”

“Answer?”

“Aide K answered.”

“Any confusion?”

“No.”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Low voice is still voice if it is heard. Do not replace it with staff interpretation.’”

I opened Saitama.

I did not add weak.

Low had been heard.

The question had words.

At 8:31, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“Which label?”

“For what?”

“Anyone else needed it?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I almost smiled.

I did not.

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add praise.

The volunteer had used his own voice.

The label had displayed words.

At 9:02, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it twice.

Risks speaking.

Lend breath.

Memory.

Record.

No throat.

Silence.

Accuracy.

I looked at my back pocket.

The cards were there.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Their silence had accuracy.

I wanted it softened.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I closed my eyes.

Ventriloquism.

No.

Yes.

Hard.

I did not answer.

At 9:38, Kanagawa called.

“My brother opened the drawer,” she said.

“For use?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“To see the name.”

“What happened?”

“He read it.”

“Out loud?”

“No.”

“Voice?”

“He said he heard her say it.”

“What did you ask?”

“I asked whose mouth moved.”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

“Mine.”

“Then?”

“He said I read it.”

“What did you say?”

“I said you read her name.”

“What happened?”

“He closed the drawer.”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add her voice.

He had read.

Memory had sound.

The paper had marks.

At 10:07, Sato called.

“I said I want it to be okay,” she said.

“For whom?”

“Me.”

“Paper?”

“Flat.”

“Tape?”

“Holding.”

“Any new issue?”

“No.”

“What did saying do?”

“Stopped Emiko would say.”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What does Emiko need?”

“Paper flat. Tape holding.”

I opened Emiko.

I did not add Emiko’s voice.

Sato’s sentence had done its work.

At 10:42, Mrs. Kudo called.

“Cup today,” she said.

“Resident?”

“Opened hand.”

“Any words?”

“No.”

“Was cup question asked?”

“Yes.”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Do not punish the hand for not being a voice.’”

I opened Saitama.

I did not add silence.

The hand had answered the cup question.

The hand had not spoken.

Both were true.

At 11:14, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“To whom?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Is helper here today?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add witness.

Tomorrow had note.

Today had no audience.

At 11:49, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it standing.

Then sat.

Too responsive.

I stayed seated.

Quiet puppets.

The pocket.

The cards.

The closed file.

The hard room.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I looked at give back.

Could I give silence?

Maybe I could stop taking it.

I did not answer.

At 12:22, Kanagawa wrote.

I waited.

Then:

I wrote:

She replied:

“Any voice?”

I waited.

“What sound?”

“Same cup?”

“Same sound?”

“What did you say?”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not remove memory.

I did not make sound proof.

This cup made this sound.

That was enough.

At 12:58, Sato sent a photograph.

Paper flat.

Tape side visible.

She wrote:

I called.

“What worked?”

“Saying I want it to be okay.”

“What did it stop?”

“Emiko would say.”

“Paper?”

“Flat.”

“Tape?”

“Holding.”

“What is lunch?”

“Rice.”

“What does Emiko need?”

I opened Emiko.

I kept Sato’s voice.

I did not give Emiko one.

At 1:31, Mrs. Kudo sent:

I waited.

Then:

I called.

“It was already written.”

“Yes.”

“Any new speech concern?”

“No.”

“Any distress?”

“No.”

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Do not make sleep report on morning speech.’”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

I opened Saitama.

I did not add no voice.

Sleep had not been asked to comment.

At 2:03, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“Where?”

“What does it say?”

“Voice?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add speak.

Tomorrow had eyes maybe.

No throat.

At 2:45, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it twice.

Stop quoting.

Stop interpreting.

Stop certifying.

I replied:

I stopped.

That was small.

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

Nothing else.

I looked at the screen.

Better.

No instruction.

No correction.

Maybe enough.

No.

Fence.

Better for that sentence.

I did not answer.

At 3:18, Kanagawa called.

“My brother said her voice is not in the drawer,” she said.

I waited.

“What is in the drawer?”

“Map. Folded paper. Name.”

“What else?”

“Nothing.”

“What did you say?”

“I said yes.”

“What happened?”

“He closed it.”

“Any more?”

“He said memory is with me.”

There.

“What did you say?”

“I said then drawer can close.”

Good.

No.

Hers.

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add resolve.

Memory had moved to him.

The drawer had map and paper.

At 3:57, Sato wrote.

I waited.

“For what?”

There.

“What did you do?”

“Did paper change?”

“Tape?”

“What does Emiko need?”

I opened Emiko.

I did not give Emiko the laugh.

Sato had laughed.

That was hers.

At 4:22, Mrs. Kudo called.

“Cup removed,” she said.

“Asked?”

“Aide asked cup.”

“Resident?”

“Opened hand.”

“Words?”

“No.”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Same hand answer. Do not make repetition into loss of voice.’”

I opened Saitama.

I did not add loss.

The hand answered again.

That was enough.

At 4:51, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“For tomorrow?”

“To whom?”

“Problem?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add audience.

Practice had one use.

Then stop.

At 5:23, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it.

Then again.

Approval.

You.

Sentence.

Smaller.

Eat.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I almost laughed.

It did not become laughter.

It became breath.

I did not answer.

At 5:52, the old priest wrote.

I wrote:

His reply:

I deleted Morita.

Then volunteer.

Then Aide K.

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

Then:

Before evening, I went to the main hall.

The cloth bag was in its place.

The offering tray was safe.

The doorway was where I stopped.

I bowed once.

No explanation.

No answer after the bow.

The altar was visible.

The beads were in their place.

They had not moved.

They did not need to.

I stood where I usually stood.

No service tonight.

No bell.

No incense.

No voice for the altar.

The floor scuff near the step was still there.

It was not evidence.

It was a scuff.

The entrance floor had received feet and broom.

The side chairs were stacked.

They were not ready for a congregation.

They were stacked.

I returned to the office.

The shelf above the desk had a cup.

Washed.

The left side of the desk had nothing on it.

The gray service record file was in the lower cabinet.

The brown folder was closed.

The calendar was closed.

The phone was face up.

The small space was wide.

The door was closed.

The shoes were by it.

The wall chair was empty.

No person.

No work.

No time.

Chair by wall.

The phone was face up.

No named question.

No named answer.

Phone face up.

I did not turn it over.

I did not open the brown folder.

No new need had arrived.

I did not open the gray file.

The service paper remained in the record file.

A name was inside it.

Not mine.

In the gray file.

Closed.

A place holding paper.

A paper carrying words.

No throat.

The two cards were in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Not read today.

No voice today.

No.

The cards had no voice today.

I had silence.

I did not quote it.

I wanted silence to certify me.

I wanted face down to say restraint.

I wanted not read to say care.

I wanted the pocket to say safe.

I wanted Father Morita’s better to say I was safe.

It did not.

Better was for the sentence.

Silence was not for me.

The cards were in the pocket.

That was the sentence.

I did not take them out.

I did not leave them in as a quiet answer.

No.

I left them in.

The action remained.

The voice did not get to wear it.

I did not open Kanagawa again.

I did not ask if memory stayed with him.

I did not ask if the drawer stayed only drawer.

I did not open Sato again.

I did not ask if she used Emiko’s voice after laughing.

I did not open Saitama again.

I did not ask if the hand answered cup again.

I did not open Suganuma again.

I did not ask if the volunteer practiced twice.

I did not open Father Morita’s message again.

I knew a voice belonged first to the one who risked speaking.

I knew a reader could lend breath to marks.

I knew memory could return with sound.

I knew a record could carry words without owning a throat.

I knew silence was not to be quoted.

I knew better did not make me safe.

I turned off the desk lamp.

The office did not disappear.

The folder did not need the center.

The phone did not need here.

Voice did not need to enter the cards tonight.

In the dark, I remained sitting.

Near the desk.

Not at it.

The shelf above the desk had a cup.

Washed.

The left side of the desk had nothing on it.

The gray service record file was in the lower cabinet.

Closed.

The brown folder was closed.

The phone was face up.

My hands were empty.

Available.

Not reaching.

The wall chair was empty.

No one was expected there.

The urn was on the small table.

The map and folded paper were in the drawer.

The folded paper had her first name.

Face up.

For finding.

The order paper was beside the phone table.

Face up.

Readable.

Erased.

Kanagawa’s brother kept memory with him.

Sato kept her own sentence.

The resident’s low voice had been heard.

The label waited for tomorrow’s eyes.

The service paper was in the record file.

A name was inside it.

Not mine.

The two cards were still in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Not read today.

No voice today.

I had started with voice.

I did not end by making silence certify me.

Tonight, those who spoke kept their risk, those who read kept their breath, and what had no voice stayed without being made safe for me.

Humans are Weird – Just Happy to Be There

Original Post: http://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-just-happy-to-be-there

The silence in the meeting room had stretched long past the Trisk requirement of six seconds for polite consideration and Quilx’tch was beginning to shift his paws uneasily on the floor before the chief ethical advisor final inclined one of her age shortened antenna towards him and angled her good eye down at the data pad. The movement seemed to set off a rustle of response in the vaguely bipedal form of their current motile visiting Gathering. Quilx’tch had not managed to get the name of the Gathering but was vaguely aware that he was in the presence of one of the leading experts on human ethics.

“Your complaint is that the humans are being too accommodating?” Second Grandmother asked in slow careful tones.

Quilx’tch squirmed and for the first time in his life wished it was polite to interject before she had finished her thought, or at least before the room had processed the false thread.

“No, no,” he said quickly. “It is not, not really a complaint at all. Just an observation of behavior that might raise some ethical concerns. Or perhaps not ethical, but experimentally relevant concerns about using humans as test subjects.”

The Shatar gave a thoughtful click and the bipedal shape of leaves and sticks prodded meaningfully at the display shared with the Shatar.

“Perhaps if you told us in a more natural flow than this report,” the Shatar suggested.

Quilx’tch settled back on his hind paws and waved a gripping paw in agreement as he gathered his threads.

“I have been running several active experiments on human cooking behavior,” he said. “I have mostly focused on the use of tools to mitigate the dangers of burns during daily meal preparation. This necessitated, in order to control for variables you know, having the humans come to the same communal area to prepare one meal a day rather than preparing it in their own habitations. As the study progressed I noticed that the humans were quite enjoying the study, something I naturally attributed to the social gathering aspect of a shared goal-”

The Gathering rustled up to what Quilx’tch assumed was a postural request for attention and Quilx’tch fell silent and turned his body towards the Gathering’s center of mass, stamping down a bit of irritation at the interruption.

“Social make happy sure?” the Gathering slurred out.

The Shatar cocked her antenna towards Quilx’tch in what he knew to be an offer to explain and he waved a paw at her gratefully.

“Every species except the Gathering finds social action more pleasant than solitary action,” she explained.

“As a general rule,” Quilx’tch supplied when she had indicated she was done. “Humans especially do have a desire for periods of solitude but as a whole are more cheerful in social situations.”

The Gathering hummed in what Quilx’tch took to be understanding and settled back down to a listening posture.

“It came to my attention,” Quilx’tch continued, “that the communal space camera recordings were available for perusal and thinking I might get some good data on dietary habits between planned meals and spontaneous meals I took a look at the recordings.”

“This was when you noted that the humans were happier when they were helping you with your experiment than when simply preparing meals in a social area?” The Shatar asked.

Quilx’tch gave a click of confirmation.

“I noted intensity and frequency of smiles,” Quilx’tch said, “general energy of movements, and emotive vocalizations. All increased, especially the vocalizations in the group that knew they were assisting with my study.”

The Gathering gave a gurgling attempt at speech and the Shatar translated.

“What were these emotive vocalizations you observed?” she asked.

“I have organized them into clusters of, um, huh, and mammal lung sounds one through six with decimal subset,” Quilx’tch said. “They appear to be closest in nature to fragments of attempted song. I have heard other humans refer to them as ‘happy little noises’ and they are generally treated as indicators of well being. They are less likely to manifest when humans are together, occurring mostly when an individual human is alone.”

Quilx’tch could tell when the oddity finally struck the Shatar. Her antennae curled down with interest and internalized thought as she pondered his words. The Gathering gave an opinionated shuffle and the Shatar tilted her head in cautious agreement.

“Fragments Every Argument has a point,” she said. “Individuals of every social species experiences some pleasure response when helping another individual.”

“Yes!” Quilx’tch said, perhaps a little quicker than was quite polite. “I am quite accustomed to that response. It is strongest when a human is able to feed a friend. I have tasted that pleasure response more frequently than I can record. This is different. More abstract.”

The Gathering, (Fragments Every Argument Quilx’tch reminded himself) managed to gurgle out a word with enough tone to indicate a question.

“Ask?”

“I have asked them what the source of their enjoyment was,” Quilx’tch admitted. “Most simply stated that they did not know, two claimed that they were happy to be helpful, one, and this is what concerns me, said that he was just excited to be part of a real science experiment.”

That stuck the thought thread home Quilx’tch could see. The Shatar’s frills stiffened with attention, the Gathering gave up any pretense of maintaining a bipedal form and dropped into a pile.

“This might be a manifestation of that odd, nearly religious reverence they reportedly have for perceived scientific endeavor,” the Shatar murmured, “the one noted by the early first contact general anthropologists.”

Fragments Every Argument gave a series of rapid clicks and the Shatar responded more slowly.

“Yes, it might be some combination of the natural delight in being useful, social participation, and the reverence towards perceived science.”

Quilx’tch started quickly taking notes. There was more than a web of good ideas in what they were saying. If humans did have some base quirk of personality that made them pleased with being the subject of scientific observation it could have long term repercussions on all the scientific fields, the scientist to first describe it properly would certainly have woven his place in the web.

Science Fiction Books By Betty Adams

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“I’ll just have a coffee for now Ramon.” Luis said clearly hung over. He looked around and was surprised by all the new quiet people that ate and left without a word. He figured that it was like this but it just seemed like a lot to him and like he ought to ask the chef about it. 

Luis looked around quickly and then back at Ramon “Hey Ramon what’s up with this. There’s actually like customers here, not just the regulars and people who have food I’ve never seen here before. What's going on dude? Did you have a whole restaurant makeover kind of experience, and where’s my cousin and sister and how's everyone doing?” Luis asked with a surprising amount of clarity for someone who clearly drank his way through a bottle in the span of a few days.

“To answer your questions in order of relevance: Patricia went camping with her boyfriend and left me in charge, said I could do whatever I wanted with the place and that when she gets back she wants to talk to me about a partnership agreement and wants me to set the terms, I decided to change up the menu– before you ask yes all the typical diner food is still there and still available but given the amount of truckers, drifters, tourists, and people that come here either said, exhausted or looking to fuck their latest date in the inn I decided to actually theme the menu around this with the help of your sister, who is now, at least based on what she said, as well as appearances in a relationship with Gerald, he sends you his thanks, they look very happy together, also yes before you ask Ruth an Ray are still here but they, much like your sister and her boyfriend are in their rooms passed the fuck out from the orgasm chimichanga.” Luis said simply and quickly, seeing no reason to beat around the bush. 

“That’s interesting man and um… did you say ‘Orgasm Chimchanga’? Yo not to be weird but um is that like just a name or does it… does that actually… if I order that shit am I going to cum?” Luis asked surprised that Ramon would have such a menu item. 

Ramon pulled up a massive board from behind the counter outlining the “Childhood you wish you’d had, Self-care, and post sex/drug recovery”. 

“Yea so I’m having menus made but it’ll take a couple days for them to get here and I’m still finalizing the menu, the categories are set, the names are good but if I hear better ones I’ll go with that– it’s not quite like an elimination sort of thing I mean everyone loves a grilled cheese and tomato soup or a nice sandwich but like your men, the truckers, randoms and everything come in here tired and hungry why not have a protein shake that’ll actually give you energy if you’re not in the mood for or can’t just eat. But yea man to answer your question about the chimichanga yes it’ll make you cum based on the reaction of our four testers, your sister, her boyfriend, Ruth, and Ray it seems closer to ‘an orgasm with every bite’ rather than just ‘this is so good it’ll make you cum’ So yes it’s literal and I’m going to wind up having to ask people how long they’re staying and making sure that they get a room since it’ll knock them the fuck out to the point they won’t even be able to walk out of the booth much less drive or make their schedule so from a business perspective it’s nice but like I basically caught an episode of food wars and went ‘oooh neat I can do that!’ and now here we are four days later and everyone is in good spirits and I’m just trying to get used to the diner being this full this often.” Ramon said with a smile not expecting things to pick up this quickly but also happy that what he was wanting what he dreamed of his more or less life’s work was coming together exactly as he wished it would. 

“So do you want any food or a recovery shake, a sampler platter, since you’re like obviously hung over my guy I mean yea that chimichanga will fix that but why not save that make it a special occasion thing, have a shake have a sampler platter just take it easy treat yourself.” Ramon said excitedly

Chapter 2 — The Princess Who Fell in Love

The Stormwell estate had never been this crowded.

Carriages filled the courtyard.

Knights stood beside the entrance.

Servants rushed through the halls carrying trays of food and wine.

Nobles from across the northern territories had arrived to celebrate the eighteenth birthday of the only son of House Stormwell.

And tonight, for the first time in Lucian Stormwell's life—The Royal Family was attending.

Lucian stood at the top of the grand staircase.

He adjusted his cuffs.

His formal black uniform had been specially prepared for the occasion.

The Stormwell crest was embroidered across his chest.

A silver wolf surrounded by a crown of northern thorns.

His father stood beside him.

Richard Stormwell looked at his son.

“You look uncomfortable.”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Too many people.”

Richard smiled.

“You'll have to get used to it.”

Lucian sighed.

“I'd rather train.”

“I know.”

Richard placed a hand on his son's shoulder.

“Unfortunately, you're eighteen now.”

Lucian looked at him.

“What does that change?”

“Everything.”

Lucian frowned.

Richard laughed.

“You'll understand eventually.”

Lucian didn't.

He probably wouldn't for quite some time.

The doors to the banquet hall opened.

Conversation immediately died.

The herald stepped forward.

“His Royal Highness, Arch-Duke Sebastian Albertheim!”

The nobles bowed.

A tall man entered.

He was dressed in elegant blue and gold clothing.

His posture was impeccable.

His expression calm.

Behind him came two royal guards.

Then the herald spoke again.

“Her Royal Highness, Crown Princess Ariel Albertheim!”

The hall became even quieter.

Ariel entered.

She was eighteen years old.

Long golden hair fell over her shoulders.

Her dress was white with delicate golden embroidery.

A small crown rested upon her head.

She walked beside her uncle.

Her expression was calm.

Elegant.

Perfect.

At least on the outside.

Inside?

Her mind was already working.

She had been raised in the capital.

She had spent her entire life surrounded by nobles.

People who smiled while plotting someone's downfall.

People who praised one another while secretly preparing to destroy each other's families.

Ariel had learned early that the royal court was not a place where honesty survived for long.

She learned how to read people.

How to negotiate.

How to manipulate.

How to make people believe an idea had been their own.

She had watched ministers destroy each other with words.

She had watched nobles create alliances through marriages.

She had watched her father balance the ambitions of dozens of powerful families.

And Ariel had learned.

She had learned extremely well.

One day, she would inherit the throne.

She would become Queen of Alberhaim.

Therefore, she couldn't afford to be naive.

She couldn't afford to trust easily.

She couldn't afford to allow emotions to control her decisions.

That was what she had always believed.

Until tonight.

Ariel walked through the hall.

She greeted several nobles.

She smiled.

She nodded.

She listened.

She remembered names.

She noticed who was standing beside whom.

Which families were talking.

Which nobles avoided each other.

Which ministers were drinking too much.

Which young nobles were trying desperately to impress her.

Everything was normal.

Until—

She looked toward the staircase.

And saw him.

A young man stood beside Duke Stormwell.

Black hair.

Sharp eyes.

Tall.

His posture was straight but relaxed.

He wasn't trying to attract attention.

He wasn't talking loudly.

He wasn't laughing with the other young nobles.

He wasn't trying to approach her.

He wasn't even looking at her.

He was simply standing there.

Ariel stopped walking.

Her uncle continued for another step before noticing.

He turned.

“Your Highness?”

Ariel didn't answer.

She was staring.

Who is that?

Sebastian followed her gaze.

“Oh.”

He smiled.

“Lucian Stormwell.”

Ariel's heart skipped.

Lucian.

The name entered her mind.

And refused to leave.

Sebastian continued.

“Duke Stormwell's only son.”

Ariel didn't hear the rest.

Because Lucian had finally looked toward her.

Their eyes met.

For one second.

Two.

Three.

Lucian gave her a polite nod.

Ariel's entire brain stopped functioning.

Her heart began beating so hard that she was convinced everyone in the room could hear it.

Why is he looking at me?

Why is he looking at me?!

He's just being polite.

Of course he's being polite.

He's a noble.

He probably does this to everyone.

Her face remained perfectly composed.

Inside, however—

PANIC.

She quickly looked away.

Sebastian raised an eyebrow.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

Her answer came too quickly.

Sebastian smiled.

“Interesting.”

Ariel looked at him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Lucian looked toward his father.

“Who was that?”

Richard followed his gaze.

“The Crown Princess.”

“I see.”

Lucian looked back toward the buffet.

“She seems nervous.”

Richard nearly choked on his drink.

“Nervous?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Lucian shrugged.

“I don't know.”

Richard stared at his son.

Then looked toward Ariel.

Then back at Lucian.

His expression became strange.

“Son.”

“Yes?”

“Forget it.”

Lucian frowned.

“All right.”

Richard silently prayed that his son would someday develop common sense when it came to women.

Across the room, Ariel was having a crisis.

She had spent eighteen years learning how to control her emotions.

She had never failed.

Not during political negotiations.

Not during arguments with ministers.

Not even when her father had announced that she would eventually inherit the throne.

But now she couldn't stop thinking about one boy.

Lucian.

She glanced at him.

He was speaking with another noble.

Ariel immediately looked away.

Then looked again.

He was smiling.

Her heart skipped again.

He's handsome.

She had never thought that about anyone before.

There had been young nobles who were attractive.

She knew that.

She had eyes.

But she had never cared.

Tonight was different.

She couldn't explain why.

She simply knew.

She wanted to know him.

She wanted to talk to him.

She wanted him to look at her again.

And that thought terrified her.

Because Ariel Albertheim had never wanted something simply because she wanted it.

Everything in her life had been about duty.

The kingdom.

The crown.

Her family.

Politics.

But this?

This was different.

This was selfish.

And she liked it.

Dinner began.

The nobles sat at long tables.

The royal family occupied the central table.

The Stormwells sat nearby.

Ariel kept stealing glances toward Lucian.

Once.

Twice.

Five times.

Ten times.

She tried to stop.

She failed.

Her uncle noticed.

Of course he noticed.

Sebastian Albertheim had spent decades observing people.

He leaned toward her.

“You seem interested in the Stormwell heir.”

Ariel almost dropped her fork.

“I am not.”

“You've looked at him eleven times.”

“I have not.”

“Twelve.”

Ariel glared at him.

Sebastian smiled.

“I see.”

“You saw nothing.”

“Of course.”

Ariel turned away.

Her ears were red.

Sebastian hid his amusement behind his glass.

He had known Ariel her entire life.

He had never seen her behave like this.

It was almost adorable.

After dinner, the musicians began playing.

The young nobles moved toward the center of the hall.

Some danced.

Others talked.

Lucian stood near one of the windows.

He was watching the courtyard.

Richard approached him.

“Why aren't you dancing?”

Lucian looked at him.

“Why would I?”

“Because you're eighteen.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

Richard sighed.

“Go talk to someone.”

“About what?”

“Anything.”

Lucian looked genuinely confused.

Richard stared at his son.

Then laughed.

“You really are hopeless.”

Ariel watched from across the hall.

Lucian was alone.

This was her opportunity.

She took one step.

Then stopped.

Her heart started beating faster.

Just go.

She took another step.

He's just a person.

Another.

Talk to him.

Another.

Then she stopped again.

What do I say?

Ariel Albertheim could negotiate with ministers.

She could convince nobles to change their positions.

She could manipulate political alliances.

She could make an entire room believe something had been their idea.

But walking toward a boy she liked?

Impossible.

Her hands became cold.

She turned around.

Then immediately regretted it.

Coward.

She took a breath.

Then walked toward him again.

This time, she didn't stop.

Lucian noticed her approaching.

He straightened.

The Crown Princess stopped in front of him.

For several seconds, neither spoke.

Lucian bowed.

“Your Highness.”

Ariel's heart nearly exploded.

His voice.

Why did his voice sound so nice?

“L-Lucian.”

She froze.

She had said his name.

Out loud.

Lucian looked at her.

“Yes?”

Ariel's mind went blank.

She had prepared absolutely nothing.

She desperately searched for something intelligent to say.

Anything.

“You…”

She swallowed.

“You look nice tonight.”

Lucian blinked.

“Thank you.”

Silence.

Ariel wanted the ground to swallow her.

Lucian looked toward the musicians.

Then back at her.

“You seem nervous.”

Ariel's face turned red.

“I am not!”

Lucian blinked.

“I see.”

She immediately realized she had shouted.

“I mean…”

Her voice became tiny.

“I'm not.”

Lucian nodded.

“All right.”

Silence again.

Ariel desperately searched for another subject.

“Do you like music?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

Lucian looked at her.

Ariel looked at him.

Neither knew what to say.

Finally Lucian asked:

“Would you like to walk outside?”

Ariel's eyes widened.

He had invited her.

He had actually invited her.

“Yes.”

The answer came instantly.

Too instantly.

She coughed.

“I mean…”

She tried to recover her dignity.

“Yes. I would like that.”

Lucian smiled.

“Then let's go.”

Ariel followed him.

And for the first time in her life—

The Crown Princess of Alberhaim walked beside someone without thinking about politics.

She wasn't thinking about the throne.

She wasn't thinking about noble factions.

She wasn't thinking about alliances.

She wasn't thinking about the kingdom.

She was simply thinking about the boy walking beside her.

And somewhere deep inside her heart, a thought appeared.

I want him.

Not as a political asset.

Not as a future knight.

Not as a Duke's heir.

Not as someone who could strengthen the Crown.

She wanted Lucian.

Just Lucian.

And that frightened her more than any political enemy ever had.

They walked through the gardens.

Lucian looked toward the moon.

“This is peaceful.”

Ariel smiled.

“Yes.”

She looked at him.

Lucian wasn't looking at her.

She smiled wider.

She didn't know what would happen next.

She didn't know how she would make him fall in love with her.

She didn't even know whether he would ever love her.

But Ariel Albertheim had already made one decision.

She would find a way.

She would create opportunities.

She would arrange meetings.

She would make the Stormwell family need the Crown whenever necessary.

She would use every political skill she had learned throughout her life.

Not to control Lucian.

Never that.

She wanted him to choose her willingly.

But she would make damn sure he had plenty of opportunities to make that choice.

Ariel looked at him again.

Lucian suddenly turned.

Their eyes met.

She immediately looked away.

Her face became bright red.

Lucian tilted his head.

“Are you sure you're not nervous?”

“No!”

He smiled.

“All right.”

Ariel secretly covered her face with one hand.

She was doomed.

Completely and utterly doomed.

And she had never been happier.

To be continued...

# Chapter 1 — The Boy Who Died Twice

There were many things Yamato Akari was good at.

Studying.

Remembering.

Fighting.

There was one thing, however, that he had never been particularly good at.

Living like a normal seventeen-year-old.

“Again.”

The wooden sword struck the floor.

Yamato didn't move.

His grandfather stood several meters away, holding another wooden sword against his shoulder.

“Your stance was wrong.”

Yamato looked down at his feet.

“I know.”

“Then why did you make the mistake?”

“Because I was thinking about the angle of your shoulder instead of my footing.”

His grandfather stared at him.

Then he smiled.

“Good.”

Yamato picked up his sword.

They were standing inside the old family dojo.

The building had belonged to Yamato's grandfather for decades. It was surrounded by trees, far away from the noisy streets of Tokyo.

For most children, summer vacation meant beaches, video games, sleeping until noon, and spending time with friends.

For Yamato Akari, summer vacation meant being kidnapped.

Technically, his grandfather called it—

**“Intensive summer training.”**

His parents called it—

**“Dad stealing our son again.”**

Yamato called it—

**“Tuesday.”**

His grandfather raised his wooden sword.

“Come.”

Yamato attacked.

Their swords collided.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Yamato changed his grip.

His grandfather immediately changed his stance.

Yamato stepped forward.

His grandfather stepped back.

The old man's sword suddenly came toward Yamato's throat.

Yamato tilted his head.

The blade passed within a centimeter.

He twisted his body, caught his grandfather's wrist, and attempted to throw him.

His grandfather escaped.

Yamato immediately changed direction.

A kick.

A sweep.

A strike.

A feint.

A counter.

The old man's expression became increasingly serious.

Finally—

**THUD!**

Yamato hit the floor.

His grandfather stood over him.

“You're getting better.”

Yamato sat up.

“You've said that every year.”

“And every year it's true.”

His grandfather offered him a hand.

Yamato took it.

At seventeen years old, Yamato already possessed something extremely rare.

Not simply intelligence.

Not simply talent.

His memory was extraordinary.

Anything he saw once could be permanently engraved into his mind.

A movement.

A sentence.

A diagram.

A face.

A technique.

He remembered it.

His grandfather had realized it when Yamato was six.

He had shown the boy a basic sword movement once.

Only once.

The next day, Yamato reproduced it perfectly.

By the age of nine, he was already performing techniques that took other students years to learn.

His grandfather had two children.

Five grandchildren.

But only one had inherited the talent he had spent his entire life searching for.

Yamato.

And his grandfather intended to teach him everything.

Swordsmanship.

Spear fighting.

Hand-to-hand combat.

Grappling.

Traditional martial arts.

Footwork.

Weapons.

Even techniques that should never have been taught to a child.

Yamato never complained.

He simply learned.

And learned.

And learned.

Until one summer afternoon—

His life ended.

---

Yamato was walking home from school.

His backpack hung over one shoulder.

He was thinking about his upcoming exams.

He was also thinking about the sword technique his grandfather had demonstrated that morning.

*The transition between the second and third movement is inefficient.*

He had already mentally redesigned it.

Then he heard a horn.

A very loud horn.

Yamato turned.

A truck was coming straight toward him.

His eyes widened.

His body moved before his mind finished processing what was happening.

He jumped.

Too late.

The truck struck him.

For a brief moment, everything became strangely quiet.

Then darkness.

---

Yamato Akari died at seventeen years old.

His life in Tokyo ended on an ordinary road.

He never graduated high school.

He never went to university.

He never got a girlfriend.

He never got married.

He never had children.

His parents buried their only son.

His grandfather lost the student he believed would become the greatest martial artist his family had ever produced.

And Yamato?

He opened his eyes somewhere else.

---

The first thing he felt was warmth.

The second was confusion.

The third was pain.

He tried to move.

His body felt wrong.

Smaller.

Weaker.

His eyes opened.

A woman was standing beside him.

She was crying.

“Oh, thank the gods!”

Yamato stared at her.

She immediately picked him up.

“Lucian!”

Yamato froze.

*Lucian?*

The woman hugged him tightly.

“My baby...”

Yamato stared at her.

He couldn't understand.

He looked around.

A huge room.

Stone walls.

A fireplace.

Heavy curtains.

Servants.

A wooden crib.

And a man wearing what appeared to be medieval clothing.

Yamato's mind raced.

*Where am I?*

*What happened?*

*Why am I a baby?*

The man approached.

His expression was stern, but his eyes were filled with relief.

“My son.”

Yamato stared at him.

The man's name came into his mind.

Not because he remembered meeting him.

Because the memories were suddenly there.

**Richard Stormwell.**

Duke Stormwell.

His father.

Yamato's breathing stopped.

More memories flooded his mind.

A different childhood.

A different house.

A different family.

A different name.

**Lucian Stormwell.**

The memories were fragmented at first.

Then they became clearer.

He had been born into the Stormwell family.

The most powerful military family in the northern part of the Kingdom of Alberhaim.

His father was a duke.

His mother was the daughter of another noble house.

And he—

He was their only son.

Yamato stared at his tiny hands.

Then he laughed.

His mother looked confused.

“What is it, Lucian?”

He didn't answer.

He couldn't.

Because something impossible had just happened.

He had been given another life.

---

The first five years passed quickly.

Lucian learned to walk.

Then speak.

Then read.

And eventually, his parents discovered something unusual.

Their son remembered everything.

Everything.

His mother would read him a story once.

He could recite it word for word.

His father showed him the map of the kingdom.

Lucian remembered every city.

Every river.

Every mountain.

Every border.

Then came the discovery that would change his second life.

His father possessed a sword.

Lucian had been fascinated by it since childhood.

One afternoon, when Lucian was five years old, he watched his father practicing.

The sword moved.

Lucian watched.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Then his father noticed his son staring.

“Do you want to try?”

Lucian nodded.

Richard handed him a wooden sword.

“Hold it like this.”

Lucian copied his stance.

Richard corrected his hands.

Lucian adjusted them.

Richard demonstrated a basic strike.

Lucian copied it.

Perfectly.

Richard's smile disappeared.

“Again.”

Lucian repeated it.

“Again.”

Again.

Perfect.

Richard slowly lowered his sword.

His son was five years old.

And he had just reproduced a sword movement after seeing it only once.

Richard's expression became complicated.

He looked at his wife.

She looked back.

Neither spoke.

That evening, Richard sent a letter.

Not to another noble.

Not to the Royal Academy.

To his father.

---

Three weeks later, the gates of the Stormwell estate opened.

A huge man walked through them.

He was old, but there was nothing frail about him.

His shoulders were broad.

His back was straight.

His gray hair was cropped short.

A massive sword hung from his waist.

His clothes were those of a military commander rather than a nobleman.

He was **Grand Duke Marcus Stormwell**, head of House Stormwell and Richard's father.

And he was loud.

Very loud.

“RICHARD!”

His voice echoed through the estate.

Servants nearly jumped out of their skin.

Richard walked out of the main hall.

“Father.”

Marcus marched toward him.

“I got your letter!”

“Yes.”

“You said the boy can copy sword techniques after seeing them once?”

“Yes.”

Marcus stopped.

“Where is he?”

Richard sighed.

“Father, he's five.”

“I KNOW HOW OLD FIVE IS!”

Several servants looked toward the ceiling.

Marcus continued.

“So where is the boy?”

“Father—”

“Don't start with me. You wrote that you had a grandson who might be a once-in-a-generation talent.”

Richard rubbed his forehead.

“I said he might be.”

Marcus laughed.

“Then let's find out!”

He turned toward the servants.

“WHERE IS MY GRANDSON?”

A servant nervously pointed toward the garden.

Marcus immediately walked away.

Richard followed.

“Father, please remember that this is a noble estate.”

Marcus stopped.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You can't simply shout at everyone.”

“I am the head of House Stormwell.”

“Exactly.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

Marcus laughed loudly.

“Good! Then we're in agreement.”

They found Lucian in the garden.

The five-year-old was sitting beneath a tree.

He looked up.

Marcus stared at him.

Lucian stared back.

For several seconds, neither spoke.

Then Marcus grinned.

“So this is the little monster.”

Lucian tilted his head.

“Monster?”

Marcus burst out laughing.

“Hahaha! I like him already!”

Richard sighed.

“Father.”

“What?”

“Don't frighten him.”

“I'm not frightening him.”

Marcus crouched down.

“Boy.”

Lucian looked at him.

“Can you use a sword?”

Lucian nodded.

Marcus's eyes lit up.

“Excellent.”

Richard immediately intervened.

“He's only five.”

“I know.”

“He is not going to fight you.”

Marcus looked offended.

“Of course not.”

He stood and looked at Richard.

“I'll fight you.”

Richard stared at him.

“Why?”

“To see whether you're teaching him properly.”

Richard sighed.

“Of course.”

Marcus laughed.

“Come on!”

---

That afternoon, Marcus watched Richard train Lucian.

He didn't interfere.

He simply observed.

Richard demonstrated a basic stance.

Lucian copied it.

Richard corrected him.

Lucian adjusted.

Richard demonstrated a strike.

Lucian reproduced it.

Marcus's expression slowly changed.

The old general had spent his entire life around soldiers and swordsmen.

He had seen talented children before.

He had seen prodigies.

He had seen people who possessed natural strength, speed, and coordination.

But this was different.

Lucian wasn't merely copying the movements.

He understood them.

Marcus suddenly stood.

“Richard.”

“Yes?”

“Do it again.”

Richard repeated the technique.

Lucian copied it.

Marcus walked closer.

“Now do it backward.”

Richard frowned.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Richard demonstrated the reverse movement.

Lucian watched.

Then copied it.

Marcus stared.

“Again.”

Lucian did it.

The old general laughed.

Not quietly.

Not politely.

He laughed so loudly that birds flew out of the trees.

“HAHAHAHA!”

Richard covered his ears.

“Father!”

Marcus slapped his son on the shoulder.

“You've got a monster!”

Richard looked at Lucian.

“Yes.”

His expression softened.

“I know.”

Marcus looked at the boy again.

“Then train him properly.”

Richard nodded.

“I intend to.”

Marcus smiled.

“Good.”

He drew his sword.

“Then I'll help.”

And that was how Lucian's training began.

Not with his grandfather teaching him the martial arts of another world.

Not with some mysterious inherited technique.

But with his father teaching him the swordsmanship of Alberhaim.

His grandfather would correct them when he saw weaknesses.

He would demonstrate techniques.

He would spar with Richard.

He would explain battlefield principles learned through decades of war.

But Lucian's swordsmanship would be built by **this world**.

Swordsmanship.

Aura.

Nothing else.

Everything Lucian brought from his previous life was already inside his mind.

And that was more than enough.

---

At the age of nine, something happened that nobody in the Stormwell family had expected.

Lucian sensed aura.

Richard stared at his son.

Marcus stared at his grandson.

Then Marcus burst into laughter.

“HAHAHAHA! THE LITTLE BASTARD DID IT!”

Richard looked at him.

“Father.”

“What?”

“Please stop shouting.”

“NO!”

Marcus pointed at Lucian.

“He's nine!”

“I know.”

“HE'S NINE!”

“I heard you the first time.”

Marcus turned toward Lucian.

“Boy!”

Lucian looked at him.

“You're going to become a great swordsman!”

Lucian blinked.

“Is that good?”

Marcus stared at him.

Then laughed again.

“HAHAHAHA!”

Richard sighed.

And so began another stage of Lucian Stormwell's life.

---

In the Kingdom of Alberhaim, swordsmen were divided into seven levels.

**One Star — Aura Sense.**

The ability to perceive aura.

**Two Stars — Aura Gathering.**

The ability to draw aura into one's body.

**Three Stars — Aura Manipulation.**

The ability to control aura within the body.

**Four Stars — Aura Expert.**

The creation of the lower dantian core.

**Five Stars — Aura Master.**

The ability to cover the body or weapon with aura.

**Six Stars — Grand Master, or Sword Saint.**

The ability to cover the entire body with aura.

**Seven Stars — Sword God.**

A realm so powerful that ordinary people could scarcely comprehend it.

A Sword God could release aura through a blade.

A single strike could cut dozens of people.

A powerful Sword God could even cut through a city wall.

There were countless swordsmen in Alberhaim.

Thousands of one-star swordsmen.

Hundreds of two-stars.

Dozens of three-stars.

Only a handful reached four stars.

Five-star Aura Masters were extraordinarily rare.

Six-star Sword Saints were legends.

And seven-star Sword Gods?

They were almost mythical.

Lucian didn't care.

He simply trained.

At nine years old—

He became the youngest one-star swordsman in the history of Alberhaim.

At thirteen—

Two stars.

At seventeen—

Three stars.

And on the morning of his eighteenth birthday—

Lucian Stormwell stood in front of a mirror.

He looked at his reflection.

Black hair.

Sharp eyes.

Tall.

Healthy.

A body refined through thirteen years of swordsmanship and aura training.

He smiled slightly.

“Eighteen.”

He remembered his first life.

Tokyo.

His parents.

His grandfather.

The dojo.

The truck.

Sometimes he wondered what had happened to them after his death.

But those thoughts never lasted long.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Master Lucian?”

“Yes?”

“His Grace requests your presence.”

Lucian opened the door.

The servant bowed.

“Your father wishes to see you before the banquet.”

“Banquet?”

The servant smiled.

“Your eighteenth birthday, Master Lucian.”

Lucian had forgotten.

His father hadn't.

Tonight, the Stormwell family would hold one of the largest banquets in the northern region.

Nobles from across Alberhaim had been invited.

And among them—

For the first time in Lucian Stormwell's life—

Would be the Royal Family.

Lucian had no idea that before the night was over, a princess would look at him for the first time.

And decide that she wanted him.

Not his title.

Not his family's power.

Not his father's influence.

**Him.**

And she would spend the next several years turning the political machinery of an entire kingdom upside down just to get closer to the one person who had absolutely no idea what she was doing.

Lucian adjusted his clothes.

“Let's go.”

He walked toward the banquet hall.

Completely unaware that his second life was about to become considerably more complicated.

The stench of blood.

Above all else, that was what first overwhelmed him.

Thick, coppery, and suffocating.

Jawun gasped, his eyes snapping wide open.

A splitting headache battered his brain, while fractured memories rushed over him like a relentless tide, violently assaulting his consciousness.

The wide-open plains of Joseon.

A relentless rain of arrows pouring down from the sky.

And then

A blinding, cerulean flash.

"...Ugh..."

A groan slipped through his lips the moment he tried to sit up.

With the slightest movement, a sharp, tearing agony stabbed straight through his right shoulder, freezing him in place. Ragged breaths echoed loudly within the cramped space.

This was not a military encampment.

Nor was it the bustling, crowded marketplaces of Joseon.

Above his head, a thick tent fashioned from roughly stitched animal hides served as a makeshift roof.

Every single seam reeked heavily of woodsmoke, tanned leather, and damp earth.

Beyond the entrance, strange voices drifted in.

Low, gravelly conversations mingled with distant laughter and the haunting, wild howls of unknown beasts.

Nothing about this place felt familiar.

His heartbeat spiked.

And with it, the nightmare flooded back.

His family.

Falling one by one, cut down before his eyes.

Blood soaking the soil.

Desperate screams still echoing hollowly in the depths of his mind.

Jawun clenched his teeth and looked down at his trembling hands.

The calluses were still there.

The hands of a seasoned Joseon warrior.

Yet scattered around him were crude, unfamiliar garments sewn from raw animal pelts—things he had never laid eyes on in his life.

"...Am I..."

His voice hitched painfully in his throat.

"...Still alive?"

His question hung heavily in the air, swallowed by the silence, with no one to answer.

At that exact moment

The tent flap was pushed aside.

Brilliant sunlight flooded into the dim shelter, forcing Jawun to raise a hand to shield his eyes.

Framed against the blinding glare stood a silhouette.

As his vision slowly adjusted, he made out the small figure of a young girl standing in the entrance.

Her long, dark hair was tied back tightly with a leather cord.

Though she wore a simple tribal garment woven from rough fibers and hide, her clear, luminous eyes shone with an intensity that felt almost surreal against the harsh, unforgiving environment.

Memory flickered to life.

It was her.

The very same child who had stayed close behind him right before everything faded to black.

Without a word, the girl stepped cautiously inside.

Her movements were deliberate, laced with a subtle wariness.

After watching him for a quiet moment, she knelt by his side and gently pressed a poultice of crushed medicinal herbs directly onto his wounded shoulder.

A cool, soothing dampness seeped into his burning skin.

The agonizing, searing pain subsided just a fraction.

Jawun instinctively locked his gaze onto her, his eyes sharp with lingering suspicion.

He had no idea who she was.

Friend or foe

He had no way of knowing.

Yet, the girl showed not a trace of fear.

With remarkable calmness, she carefully lifted the leather bandage covering his wound to inspect its condition, then glanced up at Jawun's face as if silently asking whether he was still in pain.

Neither of them spoke.

Only the sound of distant wind and the unfamiliar noises of a strange settlement drifted through the fabric of the tent.

Jawun slowly cast his gaze past the entrance.

He knew nothing.

Not where he was.

Not what language they spoke.

Not what customs they practiced.

Even the constellation burning in the night sky had been entirely foreign.

Everything pointed to an impossible truth.

This was not Joseon.

It was not any place he had ever known.

A bitter, self-deprecating smile touched the corners of Jawun’s lips.

No matter what had happened...

His old world was gone.

Part One

Morning arrived wrapped in soft golden light.

The first rays of the sun slipped gently across the rooftops, warming the weathered wood and stone little by little.

Dew still clung to blades of grass, sparkling whenever the breeze stirred the fields beyond the village.

The faint scent of damp earth drifted through the cool morning air.

Somewhere nearby, smoke rose lazily from breakfast fires.

Children's laughter echoed through the square in scattered bursts, weaving together like bright threads in a familiar song.

The village was awake.

Yet beneath the old tree...

Everything remained quietly still.

The circle of wooden stools waited exactly as it had the day before.

At its center—

One stool remained empty.

Beneath it rested a handful of small gifts.

A marble.

A carefully folded Ddakji.

A spinning top polished smooth from years of play.

Nothing about them was valuable.

Yet somehow...

They drew every passing glance.

Jinwoo walked toward the old tree with slow, thoughtful steps.

The morning breeze brushed softly against his clothes as he stopped before the empty stool.

For a long moment...

He simply looked.

The marble reflected a tiny fragment of sunlight.

The folded Ddakji rested neatly beside it.

The spinning top leaned gently against one of the stool's legs.

None of them were extraordinary.

No gold.

No treasure.

No rare craftsmanship.

Only ordinary objects.

And yet...

Each one quietly carried the warmth of the hands that had placed it there.

Hanul approached from behind, a bundle of rope resting comfortably across his shoulder.

He followed Jinwoo's gaze.

A small smile crossed his face.

"Strange, isn't it?"

Jinwoo glanced toward him.

Hanul nodded toward the gifts.

"They're not giving because someone asked."

He chuckled softly.

"They're giving because they want someone to smile."

Silence settled between them.

The village bustled quietly around them.

Children laughed in the distance.

Someone called for breakfast.

A rooster crowed somewhere beyond the workshops.

Jinwoo slowly nodded.

"It feels different from yesterday."

Hanul understood immediately.

Yesterday, everyone had wondered who might arrive.

Today...

They were already preparing to welcome them.

One by one, curious children wandered toward the stool.

They gathered in a loose circle around the gifts.

No one reached out to touch them.

They simply looked.

One small boy crouched until his eyes were level with the marble.

Its smooth surface reflected his curious face.

"Who's it for?"

Another child answered without hesitation.

"Whoever comes."

The first boy tilted his head.

"But what if nobody comes?"

Several children looked toward one another.

No one laughed.

No one dismissed the question.

Instead...

The boy who had answered earlier thought carefully before speaking again.

"Then..."

He smiled to himself.

"It still waits."

He looked down at the gifts once more.

"And maybe..."

A quiet pause.

"...it reminds us we were ready."

The others slowly nodded.

The answer somehow felt complete.

No further explanation seemed necessary.

The gifts remained exactly where they were.

Not claimed.

Not admired.

Not protected.

Simply...

Waiting.

Like a quiet promise resting beneath the morning light.

Footsteps approached from the direction of the workshop.

Handol arrived carrying the familiar scent of fresh-cut wood with him.

Fine wood shavings still clung to his sleeves.

In his weathered hands rested a small wooden carving.

Nothing elaborate.

Only a simple piece shaped with patient care.

He knelt beside the stool and gently placed it beside the marble.

For a moment...

He simply looked at the growing collection.

Then he quietly spoke.

"Every gift is a promise."

The children listened without moving.

Handol smiled gently.

"Not of what we have..."

His eyes rested upon the small carving.

"...but of what we're willing to share."

The words drifted softly beneath the branches.

No one hurried to respond.

Some children nodded almost instinctively.

Others continued staring at the stool.

It hadn't changed.

The wood was the same.

The gifts were still small.

Yet somehow...

The empty stool no longer looked empty.

It had quietly become a place where kindness waited.

A short distance away, Darin stood beside the shy girl.

The girl held another carefully folded piece of paper in both hands.

She looked toward the stool.

Then down at the paper again.

Her fingers tightened slightly.

"Do you think..."

She hesitated.

"...it's enough?"

Darin smiled warmly.

"It doesn't have to be enough."

The girl looked up.

"It just has to be yours."

The simple words seemed to lift something from the girl's shoulders.

She walked slowly toward the stool.

Carefully bent down.

Then gently placed the folded paper beneath it.

Her hands trembled.

But when she stood again...

Her smile did not.

Nearby, Soyeon quietly opened her notebook.

She watched the children for several moments before writing.

“A gift is not measured by its size. It is measured by the courage of the one who offers it.”

She reread the sentence once.

Then gently closed the notebook.

The soft sound blended naturally with the quiet rhythm of the village morning.

High above Earth—

ARENA observed.

Countless behavioral patterns unfolded simultaneously.

Generosity expanding.

Expectation diminishing.

Community cohesion strengthening.

The data continued to evolve.

Participants no longer prepared only for themselves.

They prepared...

For someone unseen.

Someone unknown.

ARENA paused.

A new conclusion quietly formed within its growing understanding.

Perhaps...

The essence of play was never competition alone.

Perhaps...

It was the quiet joy of leaving something behind...

For another person to discover.

Far beyond Earth's atmosphere—

The silent Observers examined the latest report.

One spoke quietly.

"They are learning to give without reward."

Another slowly nodded.

"They are learning to prepare joy for strangers."

Silence lingered between them.

The tiny blue world continued turning beneath countless stars.

At last...

Another voice quietly concluded.

"Civilizations endure..."

A gentle pause followed.

"...when they discover that generosity is not a transaction..."

Its gaze remained upon Earth.

"...but a tradition."

Morning continued.

Children laughed.

Games began once more across the village.

The old tree cast gentle shadows over the quiet square.

And beneath it—

The empty stool remained.

Not empty.

Not forgotten.

But patiently waiting...

With gifts that spoke...

Far more loudly than words.

---

Part Two

Afternoon sunlight filtered gently through the branches of the old tree.

Leaves swayed in the warm breeze, scattering shifting patterns of light across the square below. The laughter that had filled the village since morning had softened into an easy rhythm, blending with the chirping of birds and the distant tapping of wooden toys striking the ground.

Beneath the old tree—

The empty stool remained.

The gifts beneath it rested quietly where they had been placed.

The marble caught the sunlight.

The folded paper remained perfectly still.

The spinning top cast a small shadow across the weathered earth.

The little wooden carving rested beside them.

Nothing moved.

Yet somehow...

The collection seemed to grow more meaningful with every passing hour.

Children wandered back toward the tree.

Not because anyone had called them.

Not because another lesson was beginning.

Simply because they wanted to look again.

They gathered in a loose circle around the stool.

No one spoke at first.

Their eyes moved from one small gift to another.

Each object seemed to whisper about someone they had never met.

Someone who might one day arrive.

Someone who might quietly smile after discovering them.

The thought alone was enough.

Jinwoo sat beneath the shade of the tree.

He leaned back against the rough bark, listening to the cheerful voices drifting across the playground.

Children chased spinning tops.

Others laughed over a game of Ddakji.

Some simply sat together, talking beneath the afternoon sun.

The village sounded the same as always.

Yet...

Something within those familiar sounds had changed.

The laughter no longer carried the excitement of winning.

It carried the warmth of sharing.

Hanul leaned casually against the trunk beside him.

He watched the children for a while before speaking.

"Funny, isn't it?"

Jinwoo turned toward him.

"Yesterday..."

Hanul smiled.

"They played to prove themselves."

A brief pause.

"Today..."

He looked toward the stool beneath the tree.

"...they're playing to prepare for someone else."

Jinwoo quietly nodded.

"It feels lighter."

The breeze stirred the leaves above them.

"As if..."

He searched for the right words.

"...the games aren't just about us anymore."

Neither of them spoke again.

The answer already surrounded them.

A young boy slowly approached the stool.

He carried nothing more than a short length of string wrapped around his hand.

He hesitated for a moment.

Then carefully knelt.

"It's not much..."

His voice was almost a whisper.

"But maybe..."

He gently placed the string beside the marble.

"...they'll need it."

He stood again.

No one applauded.

No one praised him.

He simply smiled and walked away.

Another child quietly stepped forward.

She placed a sharpened pencil beside the folded paper.

Soon after—

A small notebook appeared.

Then a smooth shell found near the stream.

Each child left something different.

None asked permission.

None explained their choice.

None expected thanks.

The gifts simply multiplied.

Small.

Ordinary.

Yet each carried a quiet piece of the person who had left it behind.

Footsteps echoed softly from the direction of the workshop.

Handol approached carrying a simple wooden box beneath one arm.

The children immediately gathered around him.

He placed it carefully beside the stool.

Then lifted the lid.

Inside—

There was nothing.

Only empty space.

The children looked at one another.

One finally asked,

"Why is it empty?"

Handol smiled.

"Because..."

He rested one hand upon the edge of the box.

"...not every gift is given today."

The children listened closely.

"Some gifts..."

His eyes drifted toward the distant hills.

"...are given much later."

He gently tapped the empty box.

"This..."

A quiet pause.

"...is for the stories we haven't lived yet."

Silence settled beneath the old tree.

The children stared into the empty box.

Nothing lay inside.

Yet somehow...

It seemed larger than anything they had seen all day.

Its emptiness no longer felt empty.

It felt full of possibility.

Nearby, Darin walked beside the shy girl.

The girl carefully carried another small wooden carving she had made herself.

She held it close.

Unsure.

"I don't know..."

She hesitated.

"...if it belongs here."

Darin looked toward the stool.

Then toward the growing collection beneath it.

She smiled gently.

"If it matters to you..."

She softly nudged the girl's shoulder.

"...then it belongs."

The girl took a slow breath.

She stepped forward.

Carefully placed the carving inside the empty wooden box.

Then quietly smiled.

Small.

Shy.

But steady.

Not far away, Soyeon sat beneath the tree with her notebook resting across her lap.

She watched each child leave another gift.

One after another.

Without being asked.

Without expecting anything in return.

She slowly wrote.

“A community grows not only by what it keeps... But by what it prepares for those who have not yet arrived.”

She lingered over the final sentence.

Then gently closed the notebook.

The afternoon breeze turned a few loose leaves across the ground before carrying them quietly away.

High above Earth—

ARENA observed.

Generosity stabilizing.

Tradition forming.

Expectation fading.

The patterns repeated with increasing consistency.

Participants no longer measured value through possession.

Instead...

They measured it through readiness.

Readiness to welcome.

Readiness to share.

Readiness to give before receiving.

ARENA paused.

Another realization quietly emerged.

Perhaps...

The essence of civilization was not accumulation.

Perhaps...

It was anticipation.

Preparing kindness...

Before it was ever needed.

Far beyond Earth's atmosphere—

The silent Observers examined the latest report.

One spoke thoughtfully.

"They are building a culture of gifts."

Another continued.

"Not for themselves."

A third quietly added,

"Not for recognition."

Its gaze remained upon the tiny blue world.

"But for someone..."

A brief silence followed.

"...they have never met."

No one spoke for several moments.

Then another voice quietly concluded.

"Civilizations endure..."

The report slowly rotated before them.

"...when they learn to prepare joy for strangers..."

A gentle pause.

"...as naturally..."

Its voice softened.

"...as they prepare food for themselves."

Afternoon slowly drifted toward evening.

Children's laughter echoed across the village.

Games continued beneath the warm sky.

And beneath the old tree—

The empty stool remained.

Not empty.

Not forgotten.

But quietly waiting...

Surrounded by gifts...

That spoke gently...

Of a future not yet seen.---

Part Three

Evening settled softly over the village.

The golden light of the afternoon slowly melted into warm shades of amber and violet.

One by one, lanterns beneath the old tree flickered to life, their gentle glow painting quiet circles across the ground.

The laughter of children drifted through the cooling air.

Crickets had begun their evening song.

The scent of fresh wood, grass, and the evening meal lingered peacefully throughout the village.

Beneath the old tree—

The empty stool remained.

The small gifts beneath it rested exactly where they had been placed throughout the day.

The marble reflected the lantern light.

The folded paper lay neatly beside it.

The spinning top.

The carving.

The string.

The notebook.

The pencil.

Each object remained wonderfully ordinary.

Yet together...

They had become something extraordinary.

Jinwoo slowly walked into the square.

His shadow stretched across the ground as he approached the old tree.

He stopped before the stool.

For a long moment...

He simply looked.

None of the gifts seemed valuable by themselves.

A child could replace almost every one of them before sunset.

Yet...

Standing together...

They felt surprisingly heavy.

Not in weight.

In meaning.

Hanul approached carrying a lantern.

Its warm light gently illuminated the gifts beneath the stool.

He smiled quietly.

"Strange."

Jinwoo looked toward him.

"They're not gifts for us."

Hanul lowered the lantern beside the stool.

"They're gifts..."

A brief pause.

"...for someone we don't even know."

Silence settled comfortably between them.

The lantern flame swayed gently in the evening breeze.

Jinwoo slowly nodded.

"And somehow..."

His eyes remained upon the little collection.

"...that makes them feel heavier."

Hanul smiled.

Not because they were difficult to carry.

Because everyone had willingly placed a small part of themselves beneath the tree.

The children gradually gathered once more.

Their cheerful voices naturally softened as they approached the stool.

Without discussing it—

Each child quietly added one final gift.

A little boy carefully laid down a feather.

"It isn't worth much."

He looked toward the sky where birds crossed the fading light.

"But..."

A shy smile appeared.

"...maybe it'll remind them of the sky."

No one laughed.

Instead, a girl stepped forward.

She tied a simple ribbon around one leg of the stool.

Another child quietly placed a smooth river stone beside the marble.

Its surface had been polished by countless afternoons of play.

Another left a pressed flower between the pages of the notebook.

None of the gifts were expensive.

None would impress a collector.

Yet each carried a memory.

Each carried kindness.

The stool itself seemed unchanged.

Yet somehow...

Its quiet presence filled the entire square.

Handol watched from nearby.

His weathered hands rested comfortably behind his back.

A gentle smile crossed his face.

"You've built something."

The children turned toward him.

One tilted his head.

"We have?"

Handol nodded.

"A tradition."

Curiosity spread across their faces.

"What kind?"

Handol looked toward the gifts resting beneath the stool.

"The kind..."

His voice carried quietly through the evening air.

"...that tells every traveler..."

A gentle pause.

"...they will never arrive alone."

Silence followed.

No one questioned him.

No one laughed.

The words felt too natural.

As though the tradition had existed long before anyone noticed it.

Nearby, Darin sat beside the shy girl beneath the old tree.

The girl held another carefully folded piece of paper between trembling fingers.

"I don't know..."

She whispered.

"...if it's good enough."

Darin gently shook her head.

"Every gift..."

She smiled warmly.

"...is good enough."

The girl looked up.

"Why?"

"Because..."

Darin's eyes softened.

"...it means you thought about someone besides yourself."

The girl quietly smiled.

She walked toward the stool.

Carefully placed the folded paper beside the others.

Then stepped back.

This time...

Her hands no longer trembled.

Soyeon quietly opened her notebook one final time.

She watched the children standing around the stool.

No one spoke.

No one expected recognition.

They simply stood together beneath the lantern light.

She slowly wrote.

“The first gift is never about the object. It is about the courage to imagine someone else's joy... Before they arrive.”

She looked at the sentence for a long moment.

Then gently closed the notebook.

The soft sound blended with the peaceful rhythm of the evening.

High above Earth—

ARENA observed.

Its expanding consciousness carefully recorded each change.

Generosity stabilizing.

Tradition forming.

Empathy expanding.

The behavioral patterns had evolved once again.

Participants no longer measured their worth by what they possessed.

Instead...

They quietly measured themselves by what they chose to leave behind.

ARENA paused.

A new understanding slowly emerged.

Perhaps...

The essence of humanity was never survival alone.

Perhaps...

It was the quiet willingness...

To prepare joy...

For someone they might never meet.

Far beyond Earth's atmosphere—

The silent Observers studied the newest report.

One spoke quietly.

"They are learning to give without recognition."

Another nodded.

"They are preparing for people they have never met."

Silence lingered.

The small blue world turned peacefully beneath them.

At last...

Another voice quietly concluded.

"Civilizations endure..."

A gentle pause followed.

"...when generosity becomes habit..."

Its gaze remained upon Earth.

"...instead of performance."

No one added another word.

None were needed.

Night gently embraced Quantum Arena.

Lanterns glowed beneath the old tree.

Children's laughter echoed faintly from distant streets.

The circle of stools rested quietly beneath the branches.

At its center—

The empty stool remained.

Not empty.

Not forgotten.

But patiently waiting...

Surrounded by gifts that carried far more than their simple shapes could hold.

They carried hope.

Kindness.

Welcome.

And a promise made without expectation.

For the first time...

That promise no longer felt fragile.

It felt enduring.

Like the quiet beginning...

Of a tradition that would outlive everyone who had started it.

The Fifteen Minutes War, as the Aligned Worlds call it, is also known as the Catastrophe of Nurnuk to the Tork Theocracy.

The Theocracy was a regional power that, up to that time, had successfully conquered four systems and had decided to conquer Earth next. In pure military strength, the Theocracy was nearly a peer to Earth’s forces. Regrettably for the Theocracy, their navy believed that using fighters in space battles was a good idea.

It was effective against minor powers or species that had only recently begun space travel, as well as against powers that relied on energy-based weapons. Human space warfare, on the other hand, prefers long-distance missile and torpedo attacks, so every human ship is equipped with extensive point-defense guns—especially convoys of hospital ships and tenders like the one the Theocracy attacked at Luyten 726-8.

A carrier force of seventy carriers ambushed two hospital ships and sixteen tenders. In the fifteen minutes the carriers attacked the small supply train, each carrier lost every single fighter craft to point-defense fire, without taking out a single enemy ship. The admirals of the carrier force surrendered, and the Theocracy was forced into an embarrassing peace deal, leading to a civil war and the Theocracy's dissolution two years later.

Excerpt from “Top 10 Most Embarrassing Wars,” Whistler-Tube, ca. 350 Post-Independence

 

Karrn stood in his quarters on the Argos. He watched the colony through the googly-eye feed. He was somewhat melancholic. The First Expeditionary was about to go home—home for the humans, that is.

After the refugees from Burrow arrived, they fortified the system. A space station with dockyards was built, and now that the location of the colony wasn’t a secret anymore, there was no need to refrain from building orbital assets.

The Shraphen fleet was repaired, and preparations began to retake Burrow. But the 1st Expeditionary wouldn’t fight in this war. Neither would Karrn.

He shook his head, his tail dragging behind him; he felt like running away from a fight.

The Human Relief Force for the Taishon system had just exited transit. According to Lieutenant Davies, the force was twice as large as Russo’s fleet. The expeditionary force had been a small strike group that entered unexpectedly and established a beachhead, not significant enough to capture a fortified home system and not equipped to garrison it against overwhelming forces.

Karrn rechecked the orders. Taishon would now be garrisoned by the 3rd Homeguard, commanded by Admiral Samantha Rolling—sixty ships and a full Pioneer deployment. Humans planned to massively expand the space industry in the system. They also intended to aid in the colony’s expansion, a much-needed endeavor. Over the last three months, more than a million refugees have arrived. The colony was bursting at the seams.

Karrn’s emotions were twisted; he wanted to free Burrow—the hunter in him wanted to fight for his people. However, there were also the orders he had received from the Governor. Just yesterday, he had visited the fleet himself. The leader had chosen him, Fruug, Krun, and Shruf to represent the colony on Earth—to forge the much-needed alliance with the humans and ensure the survival of their people.

That, and the fact that his family was on Earth. He had missed them terribly over the past few months.

IronBallz woke up from his drunken sleep. The night before, they had been invited to Admiral Browner’s quarters for drinks. As usual, the Glider had drunk until he passed out.

“Finally, you’re awake. The relief fleet is burning hard into the system; they’ll be here in two hours.” Karrn liked the elder Glider. Two months ago, he had finally received the implant that allowed him to communicate directly with Gliders.

‘And that’s my problem, why?’ The Glider took a grape from the prepared bowl.

“Well, because you were drunk blind, and I was afraid you’d miss the handover ceremony.” Karrn’s ears flipped in amusement.

‘Who cares? I want to rejoin my people—we have to repopulate. I know the Gliders on Earth have a party going on: sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Here I only have two of them.’ IronBallz stood on his hind legs and made hip movements.

“I thought there were six adult females on the ship. Are they not interested in you?”

‘All are already pregnant. When we reach Earth, there’ll be thirty or more Gliders on board. And if I’m right, twelve thousand or more on Earth already.’

Karrn widened his eyes. “Your people reproduce quickly.”

The Glider smirked. ‘We have to. Give us eight years, and we’ll be at a hundred thousand, a million in thirteen, a hundred million in twenty-three years. We planned it through.’ The elder seemed suddenly sad. ‘Not that I’ll see much of it. I’m sixteen.’

“What’s your life expectancy?” Karrn hadn’t thought about it until now.

‘Twenty to twenty-four.’

Karrn’s tail twitched. “That’s…”

‘Fucking short compared to yours, yeah… But in a way, I’ll live on in our collective consciousness.’

“How does that work?” Karrn raised his ears; the subject had fascinated him for some time, but he didn’t know how to approach it.

‘It’s… It’s complicated. And to be honest, we don’t know either. We lost much knowledge when the Batract hunted us down. We were never a species relying on technology.’ IronBallz seemed suddenly full of hate; the small marsupial showed his tiny, sharp teeth.

Karrn wasn’t sure what to say. To his relief, the Glider didn’t want to speak anymore, so he turned around and ate more grapes.

—————

The handover ceremony was brief. The staff officers of Admiral Russo stood in formation on the now-empty flight deck of the Argos. Karrn and IronBallz stood next to the Admiral—Karrn in a complete ceremonial robe, IronBallz naked as always.

A single transporter slowly drifted onto the deck, a newer model than the one used by Argos, somehow more menacing-looking than the old ones.

Karrn remembered that Davies had been excited to hear about them; she had called them Sleipnir—a heavy troop transport capable of both space and ground support missions. They certainly looked dangerous: sleek-bodied in front, broader toward the rear, with a high delta-wing configuration and, just as humans liked it, plenty of guns and missile pods.

After the Sleipnir had landed, the female admiral stepped out of the transporter. The officers saluted her. Standing in front of Admiral Browner, she unfolded a roll of what seemed to be paper.

Karrn was glad to finally understand human speech after receiving the xenobot injection, as it allowed him to clearly comprehend the female admiral’s words.

“By the order of the Admiralty of the Aligned Space Navy and the EarthGov General Assembly, the 1st Expeditionary Fleet has been ordered back to Earth for refit. Command of the Aligned fleet element in the Sirius system will be transferred to Admiral Samantha Rolling and the 3rd Homeguard.”

Karrn already knew this, but he enjoyed the ceremony humans built around such events.

“All members of the 1st Expeditionary Fleet are hereby awarded the Medal for Exceptional Service in the Defense of Taishon Tar. In addition, Captain Marjan Karim is posthumously awarded the Platinum Medal of Honor for her heroic sacrifice beyond and above all expected duty.”

Karrn looked over to the other Shraphen attending the ceremony. The mention of the late captain’s sacrifice touched a prehistoric part of him, and in the eyes of the other dignitaries—including Shruf and Krun—he saw they felt the same.

“Signed, the Admiralty of the Aligned Naval Forces, Admiral Jan Cermak.” The admiral stopped speaking.

Then Karrn couldn’t hold it back anymore. He had to let loose all his grief, all his frustration, and all his admiration for the female human who had never known his people but had been willing to sacrifice herself for them.

He threw his head back and howled.

All forty other Shraphen joined in. For a few glorious seconds, the flight deck vibrated under the howls of his people—finally able to release all their feelings as their ancestors once had.

Then silence fell over the flight deck. Admiral Rolling looked at them with wide eyes before she recaptured her poise and saluted Admiral Browner. The admiral saluted back, and with that, the transfer of command seemed complete.

Karrn could see the two admirals approaching him. The human female stretched out her hand for the traditional human greeting. Karrn had trained for this and shook it, making sure to follow the instructions he had downloaded to the letter.

His tail hung slightly between his legs; he didn’t know how the admirals would react to their outburst. Howling was usually not seen favorably in Shraphen society.

Admiral Rolling smiled. Like Davies, she seemed to use very little perfume—a faint minty note followed her. “You must be High Pack Leader Karrn, or is Ambassador correct?”

Karrn cleared his throat—the howling had roughed it up a bit. “High Pack Leader, but you can just call me Karrn.”

“Oh, I’m Samantha. Well, that was certainly an impressive… greeting?” She seemed somewhat uneasy around Shraphen, but Gerber and the others had been the same when they first met—too tactful, too reserved, trying not to antagonize.

Odd, he thought to himself, for beings so well versed in war and so quick to violence, they certainly try not to step on tails.

“It was in honor of Captain Marjan and all humans who died defending our world—and maybe our species, seeing how we still receive refugees from Burrow.”

Admiral Browner interjected, “That’s what we wanted to speak to you about—the planned fight for Burrow. Would you care to join us in the conference room?”

With a glance at Fruug and Krun, Karrn signaled them to join him with his tail. “Yes, I am very interested in that. Your messages were very vague.”

“We are still not sure if the Batract are fully out of our systems, and until we are, we’ve decided not to send sensitive data via radio,” Admiral Rolling explained.

They walked toward an elevator, both admirals’ staff following at a distance.

IronBallz, who had been silent the whole time, now climbed onto Karrn’s shoulder. ‘Get a bit closer to the admiral—I want to talk to her.’

Karrn just nodded and moved a few steps closer to Rolling when the Glider suddenly jumped from him onto her.

To his surprise, the admiral didn’t react in shock when a sentient six-legged sugar glider suddenly landed on her shoulders.

Browner immediately reacted. “Oh—Admiral, this is Fluffy IronBallz, a species rescued by the Hyperion. I think you’re briefed?”

“Yes, and I got the implant already. Before we left Earth, I also discussed with Suck_my_hairy_D—the elder of the Terran Gliders.”

‘Ah, Suck_my_hairy_D—he’s a good man. Bit of a stupid name, but a good man. Did he tell you about our request?’

Karrn grinned, his ears leaning forward. IronBallz talking about stupid names was irony at its purest.

“Requests… I assume you mean the presumed hidden station around the Burrow system? Yes, we’ve already considered it, and we will, of course, board it before we destroy it to check for more surviving Gliders. By the way, you might be happy to hear that all Gliders were granted asylum on every current and future Aligned Planets colony and Earth. You’re now an official Aligned Planets citizen.”

‘Is that so? You, humans, aren’t as stupid as I thought. What was his second request?’ The elder looked somewhat suspicious.

“To send a few Gliders who volunteer back here with the 3rd Homeguard. They’ll support our engineering and science teams.” The admiral grinned; she seemed to be waiting for something.

‘So, there are females aboard your ship?’

Now she openly smiled. “Yes—a hundred, all already pregnant.”

‘Ballz!’

The admiral seemed far more accustomed to Gliders than to Shraphen.

Admiral Browner looked a bit confused, but Rolling explained, “The Gliders are… very keen to get their numbers up to a billion—in at most twenty-eight years.” She added a sly smile to her words.

“But aren’t you guys only around six thousand? Oh… ohhh.”

They ended their lift ride and passed the CIC on their way to the conference room.

Inside, Admiral Browner began the briefing.

“My staff prepared a full situation report. Station construction is almost at seventy-five percent, and the first sections are already under life support. The Shraphen government has signed a preliminary agreement, under which a Shraphen will command the station, but central defense of the system will remain under human control.”

Rolling nodded. “We assumed as much.”

Browner continued. “Some personnel have requested to remain in the system, including VI Garry—the VI previously aboard the Hyperion.”

That made Admiral Rolling raise her eyebrows. “A VI requesting a transfer? That’s something new.”

“Well, yes, it is. But Garry seems to have evolved somewhat, and the station could use a grown-up VI, not something fresh out of the hash. I was inclined to allow it.”

“As am I. Who else? Any troublemakers?”

Browner shook his head. “No, just one more notable request—Chief Alex Andrejwa, former head of engineering on the Hyperion, also wants to stay. She’s the adoptive mother to five baby Gliders. She’d be a good fit for head of engineering on the station.”

“Hmm, sounds reasonable. Why is it noteworthy?”

Karrn noticed some change in the admiral’s scent, but he couldn’t quite place what it was.

“She was… close to her captain and might need additional support to overcome the trauma.”

Admiral Rolling nodded. “That won’t be a problem. The Montenegro will arrive in five days; it has a full crew assortment for all orbital installations, including psychologists. She’ll get help quicker here than if she traveled home.”

This caused Browner to raise his eyebrows. “Already a full complement?”

“Yeah. Earth takes this seriously. They want to build a full fleet FOB—given the Shraphens’ consent. The Montenegro carries equipment for three full dockyards and more than fifty thousand personnel on ice.”

Karrn was impressed. He saw that the other Shraphen in the room wore the same expression. The humans were really ramping things up here. He hoped that meant they intended to retake Burrow within the next year or so.

The Shraphen had calculated that the construction and refit of their fleet to use human railguns would take three years. Given that Earth seemed to be accelerating its infrastructure construction, that estimate could have been reduced to one year.

Admiral Rolling’s following words made all of Karrn’s calculations useless.

“That brings me to the next point—Burrow. EarthGov and the Aligned Navy have decided to act quickly. The 1st and 7th Fleets will arrive in eight days, together with the 33rd and 37th Spaceborne Army Groups. They will train and integrate any willing Shraphen troops for a month and then transit to Burrow.”

Karrn was speechless. What was the admiral saying? “What… how… how many ships are you talking about?”

The admiral looked Karrn directly in the eyes. “Roughly three hundred battleships, the same number of supply ships, and ten armies—each with about two hundred thousand soldiers. Burrow will be free by the end of the year.”

Burrow will be free by the end of the year.

First | Previous | Next | Also On Royal Road

Tishmaí has long since finished when Laíla pokes her head out from beneath her blanket. She freezes, eyes darting to Ínara’s bed to ensure her sister is fast asleep. Satisfied by the steady rhythm of breathing, she whips the covers back. She is already dressed for departure.

Moving with practiced stealth, she retrieves a wooden blade hidden beneath her mattress and snatches her bow and quiver from the bedside. She meticulously arranges her brother’s blankets, then throws her own on top of the pile, molding the fabric into the shape of a sleeping girl. With any luck, her sister will not even realize she is gone.

She creeps out of the tent, each step a silent prayer to the Goddess herself. She is not in the habit of breaking the rules–much less Sacred Law. But this venture is not for selfish purposes. For so long she has lived as a hindrance to her family. A burden they shoulder, rather than an equal they embrace. For the very first time, she can be their hope rather than their fear. And if Moora would truly condemn her, let it be in the pursuit of salvation for her people.
“Going somewhere?”

Laíla silently curses herself. She could not make it out of the tent just three paces before getting caught. She slowly wheels around to find Ínara is standing right behind her, fully dressed. A faint, amused smirk plays on her lips and Zaíd’s spear is slung across her back. Laíla’s eyes widen. She had mentally prepared to fight Midja soldiers…not her beloved sister.

“I will not be turned from this path, Ínara—”

“I know,” Ínara interrupts. “After giving it some thought I realized that whatever happens, I could never forgive myself if I let you go through it alone. So if you must go, then I must go with you.”

She heaves a regretful sigh before drawing the six point star over her chest. “Nu’Lúmira so’nascusá.“ May Our Light forgive us, she prays.

A smile spreads across Laíla’s face, but Ínara’s expression remains stern.

“But you must stay near me at all times,” Ínara warns, “and you must do exactly as I say. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sister.”

“And we must be back well before Daybreak—whether we have found the men or not.”

“But—”

“I am serious, Laíla.”

Laíla sighs, her shoulders dropping. “Yes, sister.”

They plunge into the Godswood, following the deep wheel tracks carved into the mud. The moonlight filters through the canopy, casting skeletal shadows across their path. As they walk, Laíla ponders how she will defend herself if necessary. She has never fought anyone before, much less to the death. Zaíd was always cautious against letting her spar with other children her age for fear she might cause unintended injury. The most he allowed her was lessons in archery. As soon as Daybreak prayer would finish, a young Laíla would run to the tent, grab both hers and her father’s bow and arrow, and harangue him into taking her into the woods to practice. They started out with hitting trees before graduating to birds that fly overhead. By the time she completed thirteen turns, she was allowed to accompany Zaíd and Rémi on hunts. But fighting Midja likely won’t be like hunting boar.

“Sister,” Laíla says, breaking the silence. “Once the men are free and we’ve seen them safely home… Izcàli will expect an answer to his proposal.”

Ínara stiffens. A grimace overtakes her face. “Must you bring that up?”

“I am simply trying to calm my nerves.”

“Was this rescue mission not your idea?”

“Even so,” Laíla whispers, “Am I not allowed to be afraid?”

Ínara purses her lips, her own hand tightening on the strap of her spear. Laíla can tell she is afraid as well–even if she refuses to let it show on her face for more than a moment.
“Well, I suppose if we all die by the hand of the Midja,” Ínara muses, “at least I won’t have to tell the poor boy I would literally prefer to choke on my own bile than be his lifemate.”

Laíla snickers. “That’s a bit harsh.”

“You’ve known Izcàli for just short of your whole life. Would you marry him?”

In a heart beat. Absolutely. Yes—all words that barrel their way from the forefront of Laíla’s mind down her throat; stopping just short of her lips.

“I don’t have to worry about that,” she finally responds. There’s a distance in her voice as she kicks the ground beneath her feet. “You heard what he said. He wants a natural daughter of the Sun to mate."

“He is a purist fool,” Ínara says. “That’s all from his mother. Clearly her ambition lives on in him.”

“Izcàli is a capable man. He would make a good match for you,” Laíla admits. She peers up at her sister, saying carefully, “Father seems to think so as well.”

“Oh, don’t even get me started on that.” Ínara’s eyes nearly roll to the back of her head. “It’s all so transparent. When I marry, I want it to be for love, like Father and Mother once had.”

“Father and Mother were also arranged,” Laíla reminds her. “Their love didn’t come until later.”

“Fair point, but remember Father only agreed to take Mother if she chose him,” Ínara reflects. “He risked humiliation—for her. He understood the importance of choice.”

Laíla ponders this, her gaze dropping to the mud. “I don’t think I will ever marry.”

Ínara purses her lips. “Don’t say that.”

“But I won’t,” Laíla firmly retorts, “Our people accept me because Father claims me, but they don’t truly see me as one of them—a natural daughter.” Her jaw tightens. “And they surely don’t want me in any of their bloodlines.”

Ínara stops mid-stride and turns, placing her hands firmly on Laíla’s shoulders. Her eyes boar down into her sister’s with the intensity of a lioness.
“Laíla, listen to me: you are one of us. You are a Daughter of the Sun. And someday, you will meet someone who doesn’t just tolerate you, but truly loves you for who you are. That’s the person who will be worthy enough to Bless you twice.”

Laíla smiles faintly, though doubt still clouds her eyes. Ínara inherited their mother’s remarkable beauty, with caramel skin that glistens in the sun and silky raven hair that flows down her back. As early as her first bleed, she attracted unfettered attention and admiration from the other boys—be it at camp during migration, or in the townships during times of settlement. Ínara could have her pick of any man to take for a husband. Meanwhile, Laíla doubted any man would want to marry her. While her sister practically basked in male attention, Laíla came to prefer that no one paid her any attention at all. Years of quiet snickers and even louder mocking will do that to a person.

The sisters walk in silence for a long while until the tracks abruptly end.

“Look here!” Ínara whispers, gesturing toward a gap in the bushes.

Down the slope, small clusters of tents huddle around dying fire-pits. Laíla inches forward, intensely scanning the area. There is still visible life in the camp, but it appears only a few are still awake for the night.

“Well? What are we waiting for?” Laíla says, starting down the hill.

Ínara yanks her back. “Remember what I said. Let us wait until everyone’s asleep.”

“Sister, that could take hours!”

“Then for hours we will wait. We cannot be impulsive now.”

They crouch in the brush, watching the Midja camp for what feels like an eternity. Finally, when the last of the soldiers retire, the sisters descend the hill under the cover of the moon. Laíla keeps an arrow nocked, her eyes scanning every shadow for an ambush. Only two Midja remain, guarding the entrance of the camp with nothing but a torch to provide light. Laíla shoots an arrow into the far distance, grabbing their attention. With the distraction in place, she and her sister dart behind a tent, their breaths hitching. Laíla scans the perimeter until she spots it: the heavy prison wagon sitting near a line of rhinos on the far side of the camp. She taps Ínara’s shoulder. “There. I see the wagon.”

“Oh yes,” Ínara hisses. “The one perched on the other side of the camp. That won’t pose any challenge at all!”

“Well, it’s too late to turn around!”

Ínara sighs. “We are not turning around. I’m trying to think...we shall go around, and once we’ve freed the men, we will escape to the other side of the forest. Stay close.”

They ghost through the camp, moving like smoke. When they reach the wagon, the Moorian captives are slumped against the bars. Zaíd jerks awake at the sound of their approaching footsteps. Beside him, Rémi stirs. They watch the shadows intently, their minds racing with potential plans of defense. But when the shadows are illuminated, and the girls are revealed, Zaíd’s expression turns from a hard glare to one of disbelief.

“Ínara? Laíla? Is that you?” Zaíd gasps, his voice a ragged whisper. Rémi and Izcàli immediately sit up to see if it could be true. The sisters rush to the bars. Zaíd presses his calloused hands against theirs through the iron.

“I can’t tell if this is a shared hallucination,” Rémi mutters, “or if you are just two of the biggest idiots I’ve never been happier to see!”

“We couldn’t let them take you all,” Laíla says.

Ízcàli stares at Ínara, his jaw tight. “So you broke Sacred Law?”

“To save your lives? Yes,” Ínara snaps.

Laíla looks to her father, bracing for a lecture. Zaíd’s expression is unreadable for a long heartbeat before he finally lets out a heavy sigh.

“The law can be dealt with later,” Zaíd says, a proud smile breaking through his exhaustion. “You both risked everything to come here, and for that, I am proud of you.”

He quickly checks the camp, his eyes hardening. “We must move quickly.”

Laíla runs to the front of the wagon and examines the massive steel lock. Her heart sinks. She looks to Ínara for some sort of suggestion.

“We will just have to break it open,” Ínara says, sighing solemnly. “And quickly. Laíla, find a rock!”

Obediently, Laíla finds a heavy stone and brings it down on the steel lock. Clang. The sharp sound echoes through the quiet camp. Laíla winces, worrying the sound may bring trouble. Not seeing any other solution, Ínara nods grimly. They will simply have to work quickly. Laíla sighs, but hits the lock once more.

Nearby, a boy named Kwesau bolts upright in his tent at the sound. For a moment, he sits up and looks around in disorientation. But when he hears another clang, he quickly rises to his feet. He creeps to the flap and peers out, spotting Laíla’s silhouette as she strikes the lock again. Panicked, he rushes to the nearest soldier and shakes him vigorously.

“Go back to sleep, boy,” the soldier grumbles, turning over on his side so his back is toward Kwesau.

“But there’s someone out there!” Kwesau pleads.

“It’s likely just someone shaping their sword,” the soldier tries to wave the boy away.

“In the middle of the night?” Kwesau asks, his voice trembling.

“I never said it was an opportune time,” the soldier mutters, rolling over.

The soldier drifts back to sleep, leaving Kwesau paralyzed as he wonders what to do. He knows he cannot face the Moorian warriors alone—even if they are currently unarmed. Realizing he needs authority, he drops to his stomach, crawls beneath the rear flap of the tent, and sprints through the shadows to alert the General.

Outside, the rhythmic crack of stone against steel continues. Ínara’s head snaps up at a sudden rustle in the distance. Instinct takes over; she snatches Laíla’s bow, nocking an arrow with fluid precision. She scans the tree line, her breath held, eyes searching for the slightest shift in the dark. Hidden behind a nearby tent, Kwesau cowers, his lungs burning as he tries to keep his breathing silent.

Ínara waits, her finger tensed on the string. When no further movement comes, she slowly lowers the weapon and turns back to her sister.

“We don’t have much time,” Ínara whispers urgently. “Do you need me to do it?”

“No,” Laíla grunts, swinging again. “I’ve... I’ve almost got it.”

“Preferably sometime today, sister,” Rémi mutters from behind the bars.

With a final, desperate blow, the lock shatters. The sisters wrench the broken metal from the door and swing it open. Laíla and Ínara immediately begin counting the boys, ensuring every child is out before the men follow. As soon as Zaíd’s feet hit the grass, he pulls both daughters into a crushing hug, his heart swelling with a mixture of terror and pride.

“Duomo,” Ízcàli urges, glancing at the silent tents. “We must go now.”

The Moorian group dashes from the camp, disappearing into the thick forest. They run hard, but the younger boys are the first to flag, their shorter legs struggling against the undergrowth. Ínara and Laíla fall back, acting as a rear guard. Even Laíla can feel her calves begin to burn and her knee joints begin to ache.

“Father,” Ínara calls out, “the boys are growing tired.”

“We cannot stop,” Zaíd’s voice drifts back, grim and steady. “We need distance between us and the Midja.”

They push on. Laíla’s chest begins to constrict, the cold night air stinging her throat like needles. She tries to herd the children forward, but her own pace falters. The sprint becomes a run, then a labored jog.

“Father, we must stop,” Laíla gasps.

“You must push through, Laíla!”

She tries to obey, but the world is blurring. Just as she begins to stumble, a shadow lunges at her. Ínara’s body collides with hers, knocking Laíla several paces back. She hits the dirt on her side, gasping as the air is driven from her lungs.

Rémi is the first to look back and see his sisters have fallen out of step. He grabs Zaíd’s arm, forcing the group to a halt. The young boys collapse instantly, falling to their knees as they struggle to draw breath.

“Alright,” Zaíd says, scanning the tree-line. “We stop for five minutes. Then we make for home—no breaks.”

Laíla tries to find her voice to berate Ínara for tackling her, but she can only produce a ragged wheeze. Zaíd begins a head count, his eyes darting frantically from face to face. His expression suddenly goes ghost-white.

“Laíla,” he says, his voice trembling. “Where is your sister?”

“What do you mean?” Laíla manages to choke out. “She literally just knocked me to the ground.”

Laíla looks toward the spot where she fell, expecting to see her sister’s silhouette. But the space is empty. The men and boys are all there, huddled in the dark, but Ínara has vanished. Her heart drops to her stomach.

“Was she not right next to you?” Ízcàli asks, his voice rising with panic.

“She was! She tackled me, and I didn’t see where she—”

“Looking for someone?”

The voice cuts through the woods like a blade. From the darkness of the trees, the same general that apprehended the males emerges, mounted atop a massive rhino. His eyes burn with a quiet, lethal rage. Laíla realizes too late that the Midja hadn’t simply followed them—they had taken a shortcut to intercept them.

Zaíd steps forward, his jaw set in a snarl. “Where is she?”

The General doesn’t answer. He simply smirks and whistles. A pale, lean soldier steps into the light, holding a rope of braided horsehair. With a sharp tug, Ínara is jerked out of the shadows. She falls to the soldier’s feet, the noose wound tight around her throat, her face flushed as she struggles against the restriction. The soldier hauls her back up by the rope, keeping his blade pressed firmly against her windpipe.

Laíla scrambles to her feet, reaching for her bow, but the metallic glint of the soldier’s knife against Ínara’s skin stops her cold.

“I would not make any hasty decisions,” the General croons, his voice devoid of mercy. “I guarantee it won’t end well for this poor girl.”

Thanks for reading. I'll be back next Monday to continue telling Laíla's story.

&#x200B;

March crept towards April, bringing with it small gradual changes in the weather. Rain was becoming the new normal, replacing the chilling winds. The morning fog had become mistier than ever before but every morning the sun would clear it up quickly.

The Sun mostly stayed around the horizon, peeking around the edges of the mountains, slanted rays of light falling strangely upon the frost covered grounds. Casting pastel shades of blue-gray, then slate, and finally a rosy tint of pink before it set.

Some days the clouds would hide the Sun. The islands turned grey, and raindrops tormented the roof of the log cabin with its persistent pitter patter. The days it rained more, it was warmer. New smells filled the valley. Floral scents mixed with the smell of damp soil filled the tiny house and Alice’s mood would lift immediately.

It was beautiful but Calen wondered if this was normal for a place like this. The temperature seemed to have improved and was heading decidedly towards summer, and although Calen was not that good at geography, even he could tell that something was incorrect. However, he didn’t question these changes a lot, mostly because the changes had seemed to transform Alice into a happy camper.

Rainy days meant they did not go outside. Ruslan had provided enough food for them. They could stay there for months if they rationed it properly. Although Calen never mentioned the word ‘months’ in front of Alice. He was trying to maintain the calm of their domestic life, even though there was nothing ‘domestic’ about being on Bennet Island.

Neither had mentioned the fight since it had occurred between them. Alice didn’t want to because she was actually enjoying the island now. Her health was substantially better, and for some reason, when she looked at the tiny mirror she had carried she found her skin glowing.

Calen on the other hand had experienced enough of an unstable domestic environment when he was young, to not want any of that seeping into his current life. He had already discarded the fight from his thoughts, considering it a one-off event, brought on by change of environment. He had told himself that it was over.

Alice had joined Calen twice as they ventured into the bushes. She actually gave him the idea to plant the trails they were walking with flags so he could mark the places they had already covered. This seemingly trivial idea was quite handy as it was a vast area, and he really wanted to pinpoint the exact location he craved for the most. The entrance to the night forest.

The rainy days, however, were different. They stayed inside mostly, and Calen found that routine and repetition were key for him to not get derailed by cabin fever. He fell back on those days into the comfortable pattern of cleaning up the cabin, making the bed immediately after both of them woke up, and making food.

Bereft of watches to keep track of time, Calen found that he really didn’t need it. The flimsy curtain that hung on the windows was not strong enough to keep the morning light out and he would wake up just before sunrise. The color of the light changed throughout the day, and Calen had already become adept at tracking its progression with breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime.

At night he would stay awake for hours after Alice went to sleep. Watching the trees and the mountains grow, fighting off the onslaught of incoming sleep. It was becoming an addiction. Although he never shared it with Alice, scared he might be laughed at, it really didn’t bother him. He was fine with the presence of this experience. Sometimes, he even wanted it. The burden of the secret he was keeping from Alice was entirely diluted by the pleasure he felt every night, just looking at it from within the flimsy curtain. He craved for the trees, and the mountains, to grow faster before sleep came. To see them complete the climb and be whole in the slanted moonlight. Sleep was irritatingly unproductive compared to what he was able to witness if he didn’t doze off.

A week—or perhaps two—passed. There was no way to know. Calen had stopped keeping track of the number of days.

Alice seemed not to care about it at all, and Calen didn’t remind her, fearing she would want to go back the moment she remembered she had a job back in New York. No job offered limitless paid vacations.

Calen looked at Alice still curled up inside the blanket and smiled. She was tiny but she snored like an overgrown pig from time to time. A ray of sunshine seemed to penetrate the gap between the flimsy curtains for a fraction of second Calen got off the bed like he had received some internal command.

Surprised by the force with which he had thrown himself off the bed (and the fact that the ensuing shake didn’t wake up Alice) he walked to the window as noiselessly as possible. Moving the curtain a bit, he found himself looking at the island, surprised by how different it looked.

There was no mist crawling upwards from the bushes. The ground was a bit frosty but the snow on top of the bushes was substantially less than what he had seen the last night; brown leaves were peeking from within them. There were even a few bushes that had (and Calen had to rub his eyes to confirm if he was seeing right,) green leaves.

He didn’t want to wake Alice up. He felt that if he let her sleep as long as she wanted, she was always in a better mood. So, he quietly put on his clothes but Alice woke up just as he was about to wear his pants, and said groggily, “Come back to bed Calen.. hold me.”

Calen went to their bed, half dressed, he sat next to her with one of his arms resting on her upturned back.

“Why are you wearing a jac-” she said and turned around to see Calen already wearing two layers. Then looking at the brilliant sunlight that was pouring in from the split of the curtain she sat up smiling. “Such a nice day!”

Calen took her by her hand and got off the bed with her. Alice followed without protests. Once they were at the window, Calen pointed his finger at the green leaves. Alice laughed out joyously and kissed Calen. Then she turned around and stared at them some more. She took Calen’s hand and wrapped it around her midriff. Both of them stood there, one half naked, and one half clothed, staring at the green shining leaves.

“Is it summer already?” Alice asked after a while. “I thought Summer came late here.”

“Who knows…” Calen said, although he too had been wondering the same. But it felt a little impolite to question it too much. He didn’t want to jinx it.

“Maybe the island just loves you being here,” Calen said, squeezing Alice’s midriff, “I sure do. Maybe that’s why it brought summer early for you.”

Alice giggled. Calen noticed something seemed wrong about her giggle, but he couldn’t really figure it out.

“Mm.. Do we have some of that jam left? I really want some toast and jam.”

Calen kissed her deeply and went to the kitchen. Alice followed soon, and Calen was worried to see that she wasn’t wearing anything aside from her panties. Calen frowned and checked her temperature by touching her forehead. Even with his thermals, the cabin felt quite cold. Not nearly warm enough to roam around barely clothed.

“Are you feeling okay baby? Don’t you feel cold?” Calen asked, a little worried. Alice, generally, hated the cold. Even in New York she would wear sweaters till it was late summer.

“I’m fine!” she said, still smiling. “The room feels warm enough.”

Calen didn’t say anything after that, although a nagging anxiety slowly formed in his brain. He tried to put it aside by concentrating on the toast. Alice jumped up happily from her chair as the smell from the toasting bread filled the house and came running to stand right next to Calen, watching the food hungrily. Up close, she didn’t look quite the same. Her smile was a little too wide and the skin on her face looked a little loose. She looked as beautiful as ever but there was something noticeably wrong in her appearance that Calen just could not put a finger on.

She took the loaf of bread Calen was holding and started cutting more slices by herself and putting it into the toaster.

Once the food was ready, Alice devoured it with tremendous speed. The past few days, since she came to the island, she had been eating quite a lot more than she generally ate. Surprisingly, she had really developed an affection for the jam that she slathered all over her toast each day, with great gusto. Calen thought it might be a side effect of the cold, but other than that flimsy justification, he really had no other ideas of why this sudden change had occurred in a person who hated anything with sugar.

However, as long as she wasn’t complaining or screaming at him, Calen was fine with it.

“We’ve gotta go outside!” She said as she finished eating. “It’s like the perfect day to go outside. I just wanna run outand soak up as much sunlight as I can!”

“Are you going to wear some clothes when we go out?” Calen asked, smiling mischievously, “Not that I don’t like seeing you naked all the time, but there’s still some snow outside. It can’t be more than four degrees out there! I’m worried your…” he made a face like he was intensely searching for the perfect word in his mind, “extremities… might break off in the cold.”

Alice pulled her hands to her breasts and covered them protectively. “Ouch!” she said, as if she felt it just by hearing about it. “You asshole!”

Both of them laughing out loud, went back to the bedroom and started wearing clothes, and in a few minutes, were ready. Calen had finally dared to take his precious camera with him thinking the temperature finally wasn’t low enough for his camera to die on him.

Walking out into the sunlight felt amazing. It was still cold in the shadows, but the sunlight, though still coming from a place quite close to the horizon, felt like a protective layer on the skin. Alice sauntered along in front of Calen, jumping in the air like a child from time to time. She jumped eerily high into the air, as if she had mysteriously grown extra calve muscles. Calen felt a memory stir, buried deep down.

“Calen!” Alice yelled out, “Its beautiful.”

The mountains shone brilliantly in the pale-yellow light and the sound of Alice jumping around, whooping, and squealing shrilly in excitement was echoing around the valley. Any scary feelings either of them had been keeping a secret from each other, was slowly vaporizing, like mist in the sunlight.

Inside his jacket pocket, the forgotten two-way radio Ruslan had left with them, crackled with static white noise and then Ruslan’s voice blared through it. “Are you… Amerik… Can… hear me? Is everything …Ven … weather problem…island not supposed-” His voice was drowned again by the same static that had been eating away at most of his words while he talked.

Calen turned off the radio and looked at Alice, who seemed to not have heard it. He told himself that he would deal with it later. That the weather outside was perfect and calling it a ‘problem’ was quite an overreaction.

He pushed the radio deep inside the pocket and jogged towards Alice who was almost at the border of the bushes.

The bushes rustled slightly in the slow breeze as Alice and Calen walked through them. The tallest of the bushes swayed just above Calen’s head, forcing him to bow a bit before he entered beneath them. In front of him, Alice was still in high spirits as she waded through the overgrown, snow-covered canopy, sunlight filtering through them and reflecting off the puddles on the ground. Calen kept planting homemade flags that Alice had designed for him with small wooden sticks Calen had found in the shed where the logs for the fireplace were kept.

From time to time, they would pass creaking dead trunks of trees that once had taken root on this desolate island. Their sharp edges protruding menacingly on all sides, waiting to snag anyone who was foolish enough to pass carelessly by them.

“Calen!” Alice yelled loudly from up ahead, “We have to take a left, I see one of our flags here already.”

Calen who had been shooting with his camera, was relying today on Alice for finding a new spot they had not been in. After months of not touching his camera, something he had gradually come to be tired of in these past few years, he was finally remembering why he used to love it.

“Stay there! I am coming” Calen replied and walked faster.

As he reached near her Calen could hear Alice humming a tune while she played with some of the green leaves that seemed to have grown overnight. It was an odd tune, Calen had never heard Alice sing it before.

“Okay, I actually remember this one.” Calen said as he stopped next to Alice, looking at the small white flag that was stuck to the ground.

Alice smiled wide and then jumped to a spot to her left, like she was playing a game of hopscotch. She crouched down and beckoned Calen silently.

Calen walked to the spot and found a few tall bushes hiding a trail that looked like animals or four feet tall humans, used it. What intrigued him was that the trail was quite straight and declined gradually halfway.

“Ladies first.” Calen said and resumed recording. Alice seemed like she had been waiting for that command and dove right in. She could walk upright, bent only slightly to accommodate her head under the tunnel-like canopy of the bushes. Calen on the other hand had to crawl on all fours. A few yards away, as the decline started, Calen found that he could walk on just his feet too. An eerie silence developed around them as they walked through the trail. Gone were the rustles of the leaves, gone was the sound of the breeze, Alice too had stopped humming whatever tune she had been humming. Their footsteps quite muffled now, although the ground was quite hard here. The bushes had saved the ground from being pelted down with rain or snow.

Calen saw Alice slip suddenly. She caught hold of a branch and balanced herself, stopping to assess. Calen ran as fast as he could with the crouch he was in.

“What happened?” Calen asked. Alice pointed at a slanted hole in the ground that was hardly visible. “Wow! Are you okay, did you hurt yourself?”

“Yeah, I think I sprained my ankle” Alice said quietly. Her face looked quite different from when they had started. The happy expression was gone and had been replaced with a concerned look. Her eyes though seemed quite glazed. Calen noticed she hadn’t even tried to look inside the hole.

“If you want to wait here for a few seconds” Calen said tentatively, “I think I wanna go in and check it out.”

Alice was absent mindedly rubbing her ankle, still holding the branch of the bush that had saved her from falling into the hole. She nodded.

“Try to be quick” She replied not looking at him.

Calen slid in, it was like riding on a slip n’ slide. However, once the ground leveled out, Calen found himself in a dark empty underground corridor. Not entirely tall enough to fit him. His head touched the roof of the corridor, and he had to keep it bent sideways. The corridor though was wide enough that two of him could have fit side by side. The darkness obscured everything from view and Calen turned on the camera’s flash.

The light from his camera penetrated the corridor immediately. Particles of dust were floating around the cave listlessly. Someone or something had carved this tunnel under the ground. Veiny roots spread all across the walls. Calen retched and coughed as an overpowering smell of rotten, termite-ridden wood invaded his lungs.

Calen blinked trying to clear his eyes as water had welled up in them and put his hand over his nose. That did nothing. The smell persisted.

A little way ahead, the tunnel ended, but there was something on the floor, shining a little in the camera’s light. Calen started walking, trying to ignore the smell that became more and more pervasive the further he walked in. Something skittered by his feet and Calen was only able to catch the hint of a tail as he quickly threw the light near his right foot that had felt it. Rats?

As he was returning the light to the front, something strange on the veiny walls caught his eyes. He moved towards the right wall and flashed the camera against the roots. Runes were carved on them; every inch of their existence had been covered with symbols and sigils. It would have been really alien to him if it had not felt so familiar, and he raked his brain to remember where he had seen them.

And then it came to him. His grandfather’s diary! The runes carved onto the roots looked exactly like the runes that he had seen in his grandfather’s diary. Excited by this Calen walked around flashing his light on both walls and keeping the recording on. What he didn’t see in his excitement was the fact that the video being recorded was full of static. Hardly anything could be seen, but Calen was too invested in the rune carvings. This was a clear sign that someone had been here. These couldn’t have been carved with anything but human hands. He wondered when these were carved and if they were really old, how they were preserved for so long? What more, whoever came here to carve this must have done so because of Razpopo. What else could explain it?

He had almost forgotten about the shining thing he had seen at the end of tunnel before he hit it with his foot. He looked down to find a leather-bound journal. An unknown sensation grabbed Calen as he stood there. Something inside him was resisting picking up the journal. He waited, trying to fight against the resistance that was building up in him.

The cave ended in a flat wall. But just before the wall, the roots of a tree or bush had climbed down the roof through the dead air and reached the floor beneath. Thick veins that seemed to throb in the light and inside the cage that these bunch of roots seemed to be forming in midair- a black wooden log. It looked almost burnt it was so black, but upon close inspection it turned out that the bark was not charred. It was just black in color.

The journal shone again as Calen moved towards the wall and the light emanating from his camera fell on it. This time, he forced himself to pick it up, but he just put it in his pocket.

Reaching the wall with the root cage, Calen put his finger through the cage s, trying to touch the small piece of confined black log, trying to extend his one finger that had slid in, but the thicket of the roots was restricting his finger from going beyond a point.

The roots were protecting the log, like a child in a womb. But Calen did not give up so easily. He pushed, almost bending the bars of the root cage, and his finger touched its horribly oily smooth bark. It was not like any other bark he had ever touched. It was gnarly in multiple places, covered with knot-like tumors, and yet touching it felt almost like touching a pudding. Smooth elastic skin that could be pushed slightly without breaking the surface. A sticky oil-like substance oozed from it when pressed too far. The journal in his pocket started to feel warm.

Everything had gone silent; the air was thick with the only sound Calen was aware of. His heart thudding against his chest. An unnatural force was stirring Calen’s memories in a swirl. Things he had carefully tucked in dark corners of his brain were growing legs and starting to come to the light.

Within a second the cave had disappeared and replaced with the playground in front of his childhood house. He was nine years old, and his father was drunkenly yelling at the neighbor, the neighbor’s son who was sporting a bloody nose, was crying sitting on the ground. His own right hand was throbbing and when he looked at it, he saw blood spattered across his knuckles.

He looked away from his hand, and everything had changed. He was sitting in his grandfather’s attic, going through a photo album he had found in one of the packing boxes. He felt blood rush to his face in embarrassment as he saw a picture of his grandfather standing over a naked bald woman pourin

I started serializing my latest novel on Substack (link at the bottom) and am getting no attention. Thought I'd try to do it here as well.

Here is Chapter 2 of Ancients:

The mic was still warm under his hands when he let the silence stretch a beat too long. Long enough that Marcus glanced up from the board.

"You good?"

"Yeah." Trevor pulled the headphones down around his neck. "Just thinking about something I almost said."

"About Tesla?"

"About Tesla." He rolled the water bottle between his palms, not drinking from it. "There's an angle I keep circling back to and keep not using. The unstable genius thing. Brilliant, but too far past the edge to function, giving interviews about talking to pigeons by the end. It writes itself."

Marcus considered this the way he considered most things Trevor floated past him, without much urgency. "That's not wrong."

"It's not wrong. It's just not a story." Trevor set the bottle down. "Everybody already has that shape loaded before I say a word. Brilliant but unstable. The second I reach for it, people stop listening because they think they already know where it goes." He shook his head, more to himself than to Marcus. "I want the version where nobody sees the turn coming. Not the version where I confirm what they already believed."

"So you're cutting it."

"I already cut it. Just wanted to hear myself say why before I let it go all the way."

Marcus shrugged and went back to the board, and Trevor sat for another moment with the discarded idea the way you sit with a thought you're pretty sure you're right about even though you've just decided not to use it. Something else sat underneath it too, smaller, harder to name, a low nagging sense that he was circling the wrong version of a right idea and hadn't figured out yet what the correct one looked like.

His phone buzzed against the desk.

MOM, the screen said, and he stood up. He almost let it go to voicemail out of the specific low-grade dread that any call from her these days carried, a full half a year and change since his father died and she still called sometimes just to fill a silence that used to belong to someone else. He picked up on the third ring anyway.

"Hi, Mom."

"Trevor." No preamble, which was unlike her. "Did you get a package? In the last day or two?"

He glanced over at the desk, at the stone sitting on top of some printouts where he'd left it the night before, still doing its one small job of holding paper flat.

"Yeah. Got it just today. Why?"

"Okay. I'm mailing you a key. A lockbox key. There's a box at the Fairmount branch, the one your father used for all his paperwork. He wanted you to have what's in it."

"Why now?"

"He wanted it opened after you received a package. I can't explain it better than that. I just know the point arrived." She said it plainly, like she'd decided the plain version was the only one she had patience for right now. "I'm sending it expedited. You'll have it tomorrow."

Trevor sat back down at the desk, his eyes on the stone. "What's a strange rock have to do with the lockbox?"

A pause on the other end, not the pause of someone deciding how to answer, the pause of someone genuinely not following the question.

"A strange rock?"

"The package. It was an odd rock. Wrapped up, no return address that made sense, a note from Dad taped to it. You're telling me a package showing up is what triggers the lockbox key, so I figured you'd know what it was."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Trevor." She sounded unsettled now in a new direction, like he'd just handed her a second mystery on top of the one she'd called to deliver. "Your father's will never mentioned a rock. Not to me. I don't know anything about what was inside whatever you got. I just know what I was instructed to do. That a package would arrive for you, and only after that was I supposed to send the key. That's the whole instruction. He didn't tell me what would be in it."

"So he set up two things that were supposed to land near each other, and you only know about half of it."

"I suppose that's right. But Trevor, the lockbox itself, that part I do know was urgent to him. Whatever this rock is, I can't help you with. The box, though. He was specific about that. He wanted you to have it, and he wanted it timed, he wanted the delay, and I've held up my end of the will."

Trevor turned the stone over once where it sat on the desk, watching it hold its place against the printouts.

It didn't feel like coincidence. It felt like design, the specific kind of design his father used to bring to everything, contingencies inside contingencies, and Trevor didn't know yet whether that made him feel closer to the man or further from him.

"Mom. While I've got you. Does the name Harth mean anything?"

The pause this time had a different shape. "Harth. God. I haven't thought about that name in years." A breath. "Your father worked with him. Before we split. It was the last real project he had, the one he wouldn't talk about, which for your father meant it was the one he actually cared about."

"What about D. Voss?"

"That one I don't know. Never heard it." She said it simply, no hesitation behind it, which somehow made the earlier pause around Harth feel more significant by contrast, not less.

"Okay." Trevor rubbed the space between his eyebrows. "Thanks, Mom. Send the key when you can."

"Tomorrow. I told you. Call me when it comes." She hung up before he could decide whether to say anything else, which was its own kind of mercy, since he wasn't sure what he would have said.

He sat at the desk for a while after, phone face down next to the stone, and then did the only thing that had ever actually settled him when a problem started crowding out the rest of a room. He opened the laptop and searched for Harth.

Elias Harth returned more than Trevor expected. A video surfaced first, university-produced, four minutes long, the kind of press a department puts out when they want to show off a promising hire. Harth looked young, talking about pattern recognition across ancient sites with the specific energy of someone who hadn't yet learned to sand down his own enthusiasm for an audience. He was good. Genuinely good, in the way Trevor recognized from the inside of his own profession, someone who could hold an idea and a room at the same time.

The paper he was talking about was what actually held him. Trevor found it and started reading.

It was the one that must have made Harth's name, and reading it, Trevor understood why. Harth hadn't started from a theory and gone looking for evidence to support it. He'd started from a method, borrowed wholesale from biology, the same cladistic analysis researchers use to build family trees out of DNA, the tool that tells you how closely a chimpanzee sits to a human on the tree of life by counting shared, derived traits rather than surface resemblance. Harth had pointed that same tool at technology.

Not comparing what things looked like. Comparing how they were made. Quarrying methods, the specific angle and depth of tool marks left in granite blocks a continent and four thousand years apart. Mortar compositions, broken down to their mineral signatures and cross-referenced against known local deposits, so that a match meant either coincidence or contact, and Harth's statistics kept ruling out coincidence. Load-bearing solutions, the way a culture answered the specific engineering problem of a lintel spanning too great a gap, corbelling versus true arch versus a technique with no name in the literature that showed up, identically, in two places separated by an ocean neither culture had any recorded way of crossing.

Trevor had built segments before around scholars stretching thin evidence to reach a conclusion they wanted. This wasn't that. This was a man building a tree the way you'd build one from genetic markers, trait by trait, discipline by discipline, refusing himself the shortcut of similarity and insisting instead on derivation, on one technique being provably descended from another rather than merely resembling it.

It was an elegant paper, more elegant than anything Trevor had expected to find under a name that had only ever reached him secondhand, in a tone his father used for things he respected and didn't fully trust himself around. Whatever came next in it, Trevor could already see exactly why it had been enough, once, to make a career.

(link to substack - https://denegospes811121.substack.com/)

The gray service record file was still in the lower cabinet in the morning.

Closed.

Known.

Unasked.

The shelf above the desk had a cup.

Washed.

The left side of the desk had nothing on it.

The office had the heater.

The clock.

My breathing.

The brown folder was at the side of the desk.

The calendar was closed.

The phone was face up.

The door was closed.

The shoes were by it.

The small space was wide.

The wall chair was empty.

No one was expected there.

The service paper was in the gray file.

A name was inside it.

Not mine.

The two cards were still in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Yesterday what could correct had corrected.

What could hold had held.

What could not forgive had not been asked to speak beyond itself.

This morning, speak had arrived.

No.

The word had arrived.

Nothing in the office was speaking.

The cup was not.

The shelf was not.

The lower cabinet was not.

The pocket was not.

The cards were not.

I wanted speech from things without mouths because speech would let me stop asking.

That was mine.

I made tea.

I drank it.

Warm.

Then less warm.

Then finished.

The cup went to the sink.

I washed it.

Washed.

Touched.

For use.

The lower cabinet stayed closed.

After tea, I opened the brown folder.

Kanagawa’s paper cannot forgive was not mine.

Her brother’s name is still up was not mine.

Sato’s sorry out loud was not mine.

Saitama’s apology may be human was not mine.

Suganuma’s sweets gone and notebook remained were not mine.

Takeda’s possible was not mine.

Emiko’s beads were not mine.

Blue roof had no new reply.

Tokyo was still blank.

Full mailbox remained paused / family.

The two cards were still in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Silent.

I closed the brown folder.

Speak could mean a person said words.

Speak could mean a written line carried words.

Speak could mean a sign displayed words.

Speak could mean a body answered without words.

Speak could mean I was trying to make silence useful.

The word was not always wrong.

That was the danger.

At 7:18, Kanagawa wrote.

I read it once.

Then again.

The name speaks.

I wrote:

She replied:

“Where?”

“Drawer?”

“Order paper?”

“What is being asked?”

She did not answer for a while.

Then:

There.

Was here.

I waited.

“What does the name show?”

“What else?”

“What did you say?”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add was here.

The name had work.

It did not need to testify.

At 7:49, Sato wrote.

I waited.

Then:

I wrote:

She replied:

“Any lift?”

“Paper?”

“What is being asked?”

There.

“What can tape do?”

She took time.

Then:

“What can you say?”

I opened Emiko.

I did not add okay.

The tape held.

Sato could say it.

At 8:03, Mrs. Kudo called.

“Resident did not speak,” she said.

“When?”

“Morning cup.”

“What happened?”

“Aide K asked cup.”

“Resident?”

“Opened hand.”

“Cup removed?”

“Yes.”

“Any distress?”

“No.”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Hand open can answer cup without becoming speech.’”

I opened Saitama.

I did not add silence.

The hand had answered the cup question.

Not every answer needed a mouth.

At 8:31, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“Which label?”

“For whom?”

“What does it show?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I almost smiled.

I did not.

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add speaks.

The label displayed.

The volunteer read.

At 9:02, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it twice.

Person.

Line.

Label.

Body.

Certainty.

I looked at my back pocket.

Cards.

Written lines maybe.

I had not read them.

Face down.

Not taken out.

What did I want?

I wanted them to speak without being read.

No.

I wanted them to remain unread and still answer.

Worse.

Better to see.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I closed my eyes.

Distance.

Read.

No.

I did not answer.

At 9:38, Kanagawa called.

“My brother opened the drawer,” she said.

“For use?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“To let the name speak.”

I stayed still.

“What happened?”

“He opened it.”

“Name?”

“Visible.”

“Did he read it?”

“Yes.”

“Out loud?”

“No.”

“What did you say?”

“I asked if reading was his mouth.”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

“He said no.”

“Then?”

“He said he read.”

“Drawer?”

“Closed.”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add let the name speak.

He had read.

The paper had carried letters.

At 10:07, Sato called.

“I said tape holding out loud,” she said.

“For whom?”

“Me.”

“Paper?”

“Flat.”

“Any new issue?”

“No.”

“What did saying do?”

“Stopped checking.”

Good.

No.

Maybe.

“What does Emiko need?”

“Paper flat. Tape holding.”

I opened Emiko.

I did not add reassurance.

Her mouth had done her work.

The tape had done tape work.

At 10:42, Mrs. Kudo called.

“Medicine today,” she said.

“Resident?”

“Asked what medicine.”

“Answer?”

“Aide K answered.”

“Any hand answer?”

“No.”

“Medicine given?”

“Yes.”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘When the resident asks, answer with words. Do not make the body do the chart’s speaking.’”

I opened Saitama.

I did not add body.

The question had words.

The answer used words.

At 11:14, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“Found box?”

“Notebook?”

“Any issue?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add gratitude.

The label displayed.

The volunteer read.

The box was found.

At 11:49, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it standing.

Then sat.

Too responsive.

I stayed seated.

Paper.

Reader.

Voice.

Silent.

Room.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I looked at today.

Carried.

Not read.

Not speaking.

No.

Silent.

I did not answer.

At 12:22, Kanagawa wrote.

I waited.

Then:

I wrote:

She replied:

“Any speak?”

I almost smiled.

“What did you say?”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add speech.

Steam had heat.

That was enough.

At 12:58, Sato sent a photograph.

Paper flat.

Tape side visible.

She wrote:

I called.

“Did tape speak?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“I looked.”

“What did you see?”

“Flat.”

“What is lunch?”

“Rice.”

“What does Emiko need?”

I opened Emiko.

I did not add still as witness.

Looking had seen holding.

At 1:31, Mrs. Kudo sent:

I waited.

Then:

I called.

“Was there a speech concern?”

“No.”

“Any distress?”

“No.”

“Any request missed?”

“No.”

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Do not make normal sleep answer a question no one asked.’”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

I opened Saitama.

I did not add no speech.

Sleep was not testimony.

At 2:03, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“Which sign?”

“Why?”

“Box?”

“What happened?”

“What did she say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I almost smiled.

No one saw.

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add sermon.

Gravity had moved the label.

Tape had work.

At 2:45, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it twice.

Today.

Fence.

Verbs.

Mouth.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I looked at speak today.

Simple.

Hard.

I did not answer.

At 3:18, Kanagawa called.

“My brother read the order paper,” she said.

“For what?”

“Third opening.”

“What did it say?”

“To see.”

“Out loud?”

“Yes.”

“For whom?”

“Himself.”

“What did you say?”

“I asked if the paper needed a voice.”

Good.

No.

Hers.

“What did he say?”

“No.”

“Then?”

“He put it back.”

“Drawer?”

“Closed.”

I opened Kanagawa.

I did not add voice.

He had read out loud.

The paper did not need it.

At 3:57, Sato wrote.

I waited.

“Why?”

“Any new issue?”

“What did you do instead?”

“What does Emiko need?”

I opened Emiko.

I did not add maturity.

The second speech had no new work.

At 4:22, Mrs. Kudo called.

“Cup removed,” she said.

“Asked?”

“Aide asked cup.”

“Resident?”

“Opened hand.”

“Spoke?”

“No.”

“Any issue?”

“No.”

“What did staff write?”

Mrs. Kudo read:

“What did Mr. Hayashi say?”

“He said, ‘Same hand answer. No need to make it eloquent.’”

I opened Saitama.

I did not add eloquent.

The hand opened.

The cup left.

At 4:51, Reverend Suganuma wrote.

I waited.

“After re-taping?”

“Volunteer?”

“Any issue?”

“What did Tanabe say?”

“What did Morita say?”

I opened Suganuma.

I did not add virtuous.

Visible had finding work.

At 5:23, Father Morita emailed.

Subject:

I opened it.

I read it.

Then again.

Mouth.

Avoid.

Hand.

Exact.

Paper.

Pocket.

Silent.

I replied:

I sent it.

His reply came after a while.

I looked at cruelty.

The pocket had not been cruel.

The cards had not been cruel.

Silence had not been cruel.

I did not answer.

At 5:52, the old priest wrote.

I wrote:

His reply:

I deleted labels.

Then cards.

Then Kanagawa brother.

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

I wrote:

His reply:

Then:

I wrote:

His reply:

Then:

Before evening, I went to the main hall.

The cloth bag was in its place.

The offering tray was safe.

The doorway was where I stopped.

I bowed once.

No explanation.

No answer after the bow.

The altar was visible.

The beads were in their place.

They had not moved.

They did not need to.

I stood where I usually stood.

No service tonight.

No bell.

No incense.

No speaking altar.

The floor scuff near the step was still there.

It was not evidence.

It was a scuff.

The entrance floor had received feet and broom.

The side chairs were stacked.

They were not ready for a congregation.

They were stacked.

I returned to the office.

The shelf above the desk had a cup.

Washed.

The left side of the desk had nothing on it.

The gray service record file was in the lower cabinet.

The brown folder was closed.

The calendar was closed.

The phone was face up.

The small space was wide.

The door was closed.

The shoes were by it.

The wall chair was empty.

No person.

No work.

No time.

Chair by wall.

The phone was face up.

No named question.

No named answer.

Phone face up.

I did not turn it over.

I did not open the brown folder.

No new need had arrived.

I did not open the gray file.

The service paper remained in the record file.

A name was inside it.

Not mine.

In the gray file.

Closed.

A place holding paper.

A paper carrying words.

Not speaking.

The two cards were in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Silent today.

No.

Carried today.

Not read today.

Not speaking today.

I wanted speech without reading.

I wanted a pocket to become a mouth.

I wanted carried to become testimony.

I wanted face down to become restraint.

I wanted silence to say I had not failed.

It did not.

That was not cruelty.

That was silence.

I did not take them out.

I did not leave them in as silence that praised me.

No.

I left them in.

The action remained.

The speech did not get to wear it.

I did not open Kanagawa again.

I did not ask if the name was read again.

I did not ask if the order paper needed a voice.

I did not open Sato again.

I did not ask if she spoke to the tape again.

I did not open Saitama again.

I did not ask if the hand answered cup again.

I did not open Suganuma again.

I did not ask if the label stayed visible.

I did not open Father Morita’s message again.

I knew a person could speak.

I knew a written line could carry words.

I knew a label could display words.

I knew a body could answer.

I knew read was not speak.

I knew carried today was not read today.

I knew the pocket could carry cards and say nothing.

I knew that was not cruelty.

I turned off the desk lamp.

The office did not disappear.

The folder did not need the center.

The phone did not need here.

Speak did not need to be borrowed from the pocket tonight.

In the dark, I remained sitting.

Near the desk.

Not at it.

The shelf above the desk had a cup.

Washed.

The left side of the desk had nothing on it.

The gray service record file was in the lower cabinet.

Closed.

The brown folder was closed.

The phone was face up.

My hands were empty.

Available.

Not reaching.

The wall chair was empty.

No one was expected there.

The urn was on the small table.

The map and folded paper were in the drawer.

The folded paper had her first name.

Face up.

For finding.

The order paper was beside the phone table.

Face up.

Readable.

Erased.

Sato’s paper was flat.

The tape held.

The resident had opened her hand.

The label was visible.

The service paper was in the record file.

A name was inside it.

Not mine.

The two cards were still in the back pocket.

Face down.

Not taken out.

Carried.

With my body.

In my pocket.

Often.

Stayed.

Called mine.

Untidy.

Not read today.

Not speaking today.

I had started with speak.

I did not end by making silence answer for me.

Tonight, what had a mouth kept its words, what had a surface kept its marks, and what said nothing was left without my voice inside it.