The forest swallowed the eight of them like a great green mouth.
Branches scraped their arms, roots snagged their ankles, the air thick with sap and dew, but at least the smoke of Kagekawa couldn't reach them here. They kept running until their lungs burned and their legs buckled, until the darkness of the trees was safer than the memory behind them.
When a cabin appeared between the trunks—small, crooked, half-eaten by vines—it felt less like shelter and more like a place the world had forgotten.
Perfect.
They pushed inside.
And for the first time since the screams began, they stopped.
The silence was unbearable.
It wasn't dramatic.
There was no shouting, no collapsing against walls, no names whispered through tears.
It was the small sounds.
The wet fabric of torn sleeves settling against skin.
The tiny, sharp inhale someone tried to hide and failed.
The soft thud of a knee hitting the floor because the strength simply wasn't there anymore.
And the breathing—eight uneven patterns, each one a reminder they were alive when she wasn't.
It was a long time before anyone moved.
When Ren finally lifted his head, something on the far wall caught his eye: a wooden plank nailed at an angle, the letters carved into it nearly swallowed by dust. He wiped it with the sleeve of his shirt, and the names surfaced like bones rising from old earth.
Sora.
Naoki.
Hana.
All three carved deep enough to survive years.
All three belonged to children who had vanished long before the purge.
A quiet settled over the room again, but it wasn't the same one they walked in with.
This one had teeth.
Ren didn't turn. He didn't need to.
He could feel the others reading the names too—the pause in breath, the shift in the air, the weight of recognition landing in eight different hearts at once.
These weren't random words on a board.
They were ghosts.
Harushiro wasn't their home—it was the town below their mountains, a place the Fiend children visited in secret when mother wasn't watching. A fishing town, peaceful and poor, built along the river that split the valley. Half the population depended on the docks; the other half on the little market that sat on a slope full of flowers in spring.
That's where they met Sora, Naoki, and Hana.
The three kids who ran barefoot everywhere, who swore they'd grow up to be "heroes" and "monster hunters" and "the first people to climb the Mistpeak cliffs."
Until one winter festival morning when the news spread quietly, like a sickness:
Three children gone.
No signs of struggle.
No one saw a thing.
And because the missing children lived close to the woods—close to the mountains where the Fiends' home stood—the whispers began.
Those kids were always playing with the mountain family.
Strange things happen up there.
You shouldn't let yours near them.
The Fiends were never blamed directly.
But fear doesn't need logic.
It just needs repetition.
Ren touched the name Sora, tracing the groove with his thumb, and the memory slipped back like a knife sliding between ribs.
The river in Harushiro always smelled like cold stone and pine needles. The kind of smell that stayed in your clothes for days.
Sora was the loudest of the three.
A skinny kid with hair sticking out in every direction, a grin too big for his face, and the most reckless courage Ren had ever seen.
"You guys are so slow!" Sora shouted, already halfway across the river stones. "Come on, or the crabs will get all the good spots!"
Ren yelled back, "There are no crabs here, idiot!"
Sora cupped his hands around his mouth.
"Then hurry before imaginary ones get them!"
Naoki—quieter, sharper, always thinking—rolled his eyes.
"If he slips and cracks his skull open, we're not carrying him home."
Hana, the youngest, laughed. "His skull's too thick. Nothing can get through that."
Ren remembered laughing too.
Not because the joke was especially good, but because back then laughter came easily.
Half the Fiend siblings were there that day.
Not all eight—some were sick, some were in trouble, some were pretending not to be afraid of being caught by Mother—but enough of them to turn the riverside into chaos.
Sora splashed water everywhere, Naoki tried pretending he wasn't enjoying himself, and Hana collected river glass like every piece was a treasure.
At some point, Sora had nudged Ren with a grin.
"Hey. Ren.
When we grow up… can we all still meet here? Every year? For something cool?"
Ren raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"
Sora spread his arms dramatically.
"I dunno. A festival? A mission? A secret meeting? Something heroic!"
Naoki snorted. "You can't even keep track of your slippers. You're not starting a hero club."
Hana beamed and spun in a circle. "I'll make the flags!"
Ren remembered smiling—a real one.
It was the first time he'd realized how badly he wanted a world where nothing bad happened to kids who dreamed.
But then winter came.
And one morning, the riverbank was empty.
Just the wind.
Just the water.
Just silence.
Ren let his hand fall from the plank.
The memories hurt more than the wounds.
He noticed something tucked beneath the plank. A folded sheet of paper, stiff with age, held in place by a splinter of wood. He pulled it free and opened it carefully.
It was a map.
Or the remains of one.
Crude lines. Shaky ink strokes. Torn edges.
But one place—far east of Harushiro—was circled over and over until the paper nearly broke.
No name.
Just two words scribbled beneath in a hand that had clearly been shaking:
"Save them."
The words didn't feel inspiring.
They felt like a warning.
The others in the room didn't surge toward Ren, didn't gasp dramatically, didn't shout about rescuing anyone. Grief had stripped them down to something rawer, quieter.
But the shift was there.
A silent pivot in the way they breathed, in the way the air tightened between them.
Hana's name was there.
Sora's. Naoki's.
People they lost long before they lost their mother.
Long before Kagekawa burned.
Ren folded the map slowly.
The forest outside was quiet, but the quiet felt alive. Like it was waiting for them to step back out.
Ren didn't move.
Neither did the others.
It wasn't fear holding them still — it was the exhaustion that lived in bone and blood, the kind that made every heartbeat feel borrowed. Their clothes were torn, their hands still shaking from running, and the deeper wounds — the ones they weren't talking about — pulsed beneath the surface.
Someone finally exhaled, slow and thin.
"Not tonight," a voice murmured. It didn't matter who said it. It was what all of them were thinking.
There were no plans made, no speeches, no vows of vengeance carved out of grief.
Just tired bodies sagging under the same truth:
If they stepped back into that forest now, they wouldn't be coming out again.
Ren slid the folded map onto the nearest table. It lay there like a promise waiting to be opened again.
"We heal first," someone whispered.
A quiet agreement settled across the room, heavy but firm.
"Just… long enough to stand."
Another voice followed, low:
"And then we go."
It wasn't dramatic.
It wasn't loud.
As Ren reached to straighten the map, the brittle corner of the page lifted — revealing something he hadn't noticed before.
A date.
Faded, almost rubbed out by time, but still just visible if the light hit it right.
20/03/302 S.E
Seven days from now.
His hand stilled.
Seven days.
A week until whatever this place was — whatever that frantic circled marking meant — came to pass.
The air in the cabin tightened again.
Not fear.
Not resolve.
Something between the two.
Something that said:
Rest while you can.
As things are bound to get worse….