The camp slept under a heavy gray sky. Faint embers glowed in the fire pits, the air filled with the distant shuffle of guards changing shifts. Moss sat awake, staring into the dark.
He couldn't shake the unease, the memory of the tremor, the way the earth had felt alive beneath his boots. It called to him, faint but insistent.
Bran stirred beside him, feathers rustling.
"Quiet," Moss murmured, running a hand over the chocobo's neck. "We'll just take a short ride."
He moved silently, careful not to wake anyone. No armor, no torchlight, just his cloak, his pack, and the soft kweh of Bran's breath as they slipped through the edge of camp and into the mist beyond.
The frontier forest was still. The only sound was the crunch of frost beneath Bran's talons and the distant whisper of a river ahead. The deeper Moss rode, the colder the air grew.
When they reached the riverbank, dawn was still an hour away. The water moved slow and glassy, carrying the pale reflection of the half, moon. Moss dismounted, crouching near the edge.
Bran dipped his beak into the shallows, rippling the surface.
Then the air shifted.
A subtle pulse, like a heartbeat in the ground, followed by a sudden drop in temperature. Moss froze, his breath fogging. The river began to still again, its motion grinding to a halt as frost spread along its surface.
And then he saw her.
Across the water, half, veiled by mist, stood a woman. Her skin was pale as the frost, her hair drifting like threads of silver in the faint wind. Tracing along her body were thin, luminous lines of blue aether that pulsed in slow rhythm, alive, almost breathing.
She didn't move, only stared at him with eyes the same color as the frozen river.
Moss took a hesitant step forward. "Can you hear me?"
No reply. The glow of the lines along her arms brightened. Ice began to form outward from her feet again, crawling across the river toward him.
He backed up a step, heart hammering. The girl's gaze didn't waver.
Then he saw it, not her reflection, but something behind her, in the water itself.
A vast shape rippled to life beneath the surface: an elegant face sculpted from frost and light, eyes closed in ancient calm. Moss could feel its presence pressing against him like the weight of the air before a storm. Shiva.
Her reflection lingered for only a moment before the surface cracked. The frost shattered, scattering mist into the air, and both image and girl vanished.
Silence followed.
Moss stood there, alone, the river flowing once more as if nothing had changed. Bran gave a soft, uneasy kweh beside him.
He stared into the water where the figure had stood. His own reflection looked back, pale, drawn, but his.
"Was that…?" His words caught in the cold. "A warning? Or something else?"
The frost clung to the edge of his boots, already melting back into the river. He could still feel the faint echo of that heartbeat through the ground, fading slowly.
Moss ran a hand over Bran's feathers. "Let's go, boy."
The chocobo ruffled his wings and turned back toward camp.
As they disappeared into the fog, the river's surface stilled once more. For a moment, in the rippling water, a faint glimmer of blue light flickered, then went dark.