The world existed in shades of white and gray that morning.
Snow fell without sound, each flake drifting through the air like the ghost of something beautiful that had died long ago. It blanketed the fishing village in a silence so complete that even breath felt like an intrusion, like the living were trespassing in a realm meant only for memories and regret.
Rūpu Rīpā lay on a thin futon in the corner of a fishing persons shed, his body wrapped in bloodstained bandages that had been changed three times since dawn. His horns caught the pale morning light filtering through the gaps in the wooden walls, casting twin shadows across his face—shadows that made him look older than his years.
His eyes were open, but they stared at nothing. Or perhaps they stared at everything—at every moment that had led him here, bleeding and broken in a stranger's shed, saved by friends who now felt like strangers themselves.
The wound across his torso burned with each shallow breath. Not the sharp pain of fresh injury, but the deep, persistent ache of flesh trying to knit itself back together, cells struggling to remember what wholeness felt like. Hanae had cauterized it with her flames three days ago, and the smell of his own burnt skin still haunted his nostrils, mixing with the salt-tang of the sea and the mildew of rotting wood.
But physical pain was nothing compared to the other wound—the one that had no name, no shape, only an endless hollow where trust used to live. Isshun's blade, trembling in the blizzard. The weight of it pressing against his ribs. The moment before steel bit flesh. The betrayal in those eyes—no, not betrayal. Something worse. Surrender.
Rūpu's fists clenched against the thin blanket, his nails digging into his palms until they bled. But he didn't loop. Couldn't loop. His ability—that cursed blessing that had saved him a thousand times—had become unstable, flickering like a dying candle. Every time he tried to reach for it, his consciousness would slip backward into nightmares instead of checkpoints, reliving Cherry Hills over and over in fractured, distorted sequences.
In one loop, Isshun smiled as he drove the blade deeper. In another, Rūpu's own hands were the ones holding the weapon. In another, they were all already dead, buried beneath snow that would never melt. He didn't know which version was real anymore. Didn't know if any of them were. As the only real one was betrayal through Isshun's heartbreak in general.
The door slid open with a whisper of wood against wood, and Hanae entered carrying a wooden bowl of fish broth. Steam rose from it, curling in the cold air like smoke from a funeral pyre. Her purple kimono was stained with his blood—she hadn't taken good care of it, hadn't washed it, as though she needed to carry the weight of his near-death on her skin as penance.
Her eyes met his for only a moment before sliding away.
"You need to eat," she said, her voice so soft it was almost lost beneath the sound of waves crashing against the distant shore. "The fishers wife made this. It's good. It'll help you heal."
Rūpu didn't move. Hanae knelt beside him, setting the bowl on the floor. Her hands trembled—not from weakness, but from the effort of holding herself together. Her short horns glinted red in the dim light, and for a moment, Rūpu was struck by how much smaller she looked now in emotion. How diminished. As though Cherry Hills had carved away pieces of her soul and left only the outline of who she used to be.
"Please," she whispered, and the word broke in the middle like a bone snapping. "Please eat something. I can't... I can't watch another person I care about waste away."
Her father. She was thinking of her father, executed and cursed with his dying breath. Rūpu could hear it in the hollow spaces between her words, could see it in the way her fingers clutched at the fabric of her kimono as though it were the only thing anchoring her to the world.
Slowly, painfully, he forced himself to sit up. The movement sent fire racing through his torso, and he bit down on a scream hard enough to taste copper. Hanae's hands shot out instinctively to steady him, but stopped inches away, hovering in the air between them like a question neither of them knew how to answer.
Can I still touch you? Are we still friends? Did Cherry Hills destroy even that?
He took the bowl with shaking hands and brought it to his lips. The broth was warm, salty, thick with fish and kelp. It should have tasted good. Should have tasted like life, like recovery, like hope. But all Rūpu could taste was ash and blood and the metallic tang of betrayal that had settled on his tongue since that night.
They sat in silence, the only sound the soft scrape of the bowl against wood and the distant cry of seagulls hunting in the morning fog. Hanae watched him eat with eyes that glistened but refused to spill over, as though she'd made some private vow not to cry again until she'd earned the right.
When the bowl was empty, Rūpu set it down and finally spoke, his voice rough from disuse.
"Where's Giru?"
Hanae's jaw tightened. "Out. He's been... stealing. Medicine. Food. Anything we need." She paused, then added with a bitterness that didn't suit her: "He doesn't sleep in here anymore. Says he can't stand the smell of your blood. Says it reminds him of—"
She stopped herself, but Rūpu finished the sentence in his mind. Of Isshun. Of what he did. Of what we lost. Her silence was answer enough.
The whispers had already started. He could feel them in the way she held herself, hunched and defensive, as though expecting stones to start flying any moment. The witch's curse, reborn. The princess of ruin. History repeating itself in crimson flames and broken promises. Through sheer effort from Isshun's betrayal. Of course nobody was actually going to do it. But she felt they were going to do so through sheer trauma, all from that very betrayal.
Rūpu's hand found hers before he could stop himself, fingers wrapping around her trembling knuckles. The touch was silence, uncertain—they'd never been good at comfort, any of them, too broken by their own pasts to know how to mend someone else's. But it was something. A thread connecting them in the wreckage.
"We'll leave soon," he said. "Before the people in this cottage, before they might turn on you after they might see your flames from your sheer trauma. Before they—"
"Before they kill me like they killed my father?" Hanae's laugh was sharp enough to draw blood. "It's fine, Rūpu. I'm used to it. Being hated for things I can't control. Being feared for a name I didn't choose. This is just... another city. Another crowd of people who'd rather see me burn than give me a chance to prove I'm not a monster."
Her voice broke on the last word, and finally—finally—the tears came. Silent at first, just tracks of moisture down her cheeks, but then her whole body began to shake, sobs tearing from her throat in gasps that sounded like drowning.
Rūpu pulled her close despite the agony it sent through his wounds, wrapping his arms around her as she broke apart against his shoulders. Her horns pressed against his shoulder bones, her tears soaked through his bandages, and he hugged her through it all, whispering words that meant nothing and everything.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
He didn't know what he was apologizing for. For being too weak to stop Isshun's father. For not dying when the blade cut him. For living when maybe they all should have fallen together in that blizzard and ended the shared trauma once and for all.
Outside, the snow continued falling. Inside, two children clung to each other like shipwreck survivors clutching driftwood, knowing the storm was far from over but hoping—desperately, foolishly hoping—that they could somehow weather it together.
The afternoon brought Giru.
He entered the shed without knocking, his fox mask pushed up onto his forehead, his crooked horn catching light from the doorway. His arms were laden with stolen goods—cloth for bandages, dried fish wrapped in paper, a small vial of something that smelled medicinal and expensive. He dumped them on the floor without ceremony, his movements sharp and angry, every gesture an accusation.
"The merchant quarter was easy," he said to no one in particular. "The guards are fat and lazy. The locks are a joke. I could have cleaned out the whole district if I'd wanted to."
His words were casual, but his eyes were storms—dark, churning, barely contained. When his gaze finally landed on Rūpu, something in his expression twisted, and he looked away quickly, jaw clenching hard enough that the muscles jumped beneath his skin.
"You're sitting up," Giru said flatly. "Good. Means you won't die on us after all." There was no warmth in the words. No relief. Just statement of fact, delivered like a merchant tallying inventory.
Rūpu studied him carefully, noting the way Giru's hands trembled slightly as he organized the supplies, the way his smirk sat wrong on his face—too wide, too sharp, a mask worn by someone who'd forgotten how to take it off.
"Giru," Rūpu started, but the bandit cut him off with a harsh laugh.
"Don't," he snapped. "Don't say his name. Don't ask me how I'm feeling. Don't pretend this is something we can just talk through like it's some minor disagreement over where to set up camp."
He spun to face them fully now, and the rage in his eyes was bright enough to burn. "He cut you open. He chose his father—his monster of a father who beat him and chained him and made his life hell—over us. Over you. And you want to what? Forgive him? Pretend it didn't happen? Act like we're still some happy little family of broken kids?"
His voice rose with each word until he was nearly shouting, the fox mask slipping down over one eye. "I've been betrayed before, Rūpu. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like. And I swore—swore—I'd never let it happen again. But here we are. One of us bleeding. One of us burning. One of us stealing just to keep us alive. And him?"
Giru's fist slammed into the wall hard enough to crack the wood. Blood welled up from his knuckles, but he didn't seem to notice.
"He's probably dead already. Frozen in that cursed city with his father. And you know what? Good. Better that than having to look at his face and remember that everything we built together was just... just..."
His words failed. The rage crumbled, and beneath it was something rawer, more vulnerable—fear so profound it made him shake.
"I can't do this again," Giru whispered, and his voice was suddenly small, childlike, stripped of all pretense. "I can't lose people and pretend I'm okay. I can't watch friendship die and laugh it off. I can't—"
He stopped himself, biting down on whatever confession was trying to claw its way out. Instead, he yanked his mask back into place, buried his bleeding hand in his sleeve, and turned toward the door.
"I'll be back before nightfall," he said coldly. "Try not to die while I'm gone. I'm running out of places to hide my anger towards damned Isshun's stupid betrayal."
The door slammed shut behind him, and the silence that followed was worse than any storm. Hanae stared at the cracked wall where Giru's blood stained the wood, her expression hollow. "He's right, you know," she said quietly. "About Isshun. About everything being broken. Maybe... maybe we should have just stayed broken from the start. Maybe trying to be whole was the mistake."
Rūpu wanted to argue. Wanted to say that bonds were worth fighting for, that friendship meant enduring even the worst betrayals, that they were stronger together than apart. But the words wouldn't come. Because deep down, in the place where his loop ability used to burn bright and certain, there was only darkness now.
And doubt. And the terrible, creeping suspicion that maybe Hanae was right. Maybe they'd been doomed from the moment they'd dared to hope for something better than the cruelty the world had shown them.
Outside, the snow fell heavier, burying the fishing village in white. And inside the shed, two children sat in silence, mourning a bond that might already be dead, killed not by blades or storms but by the simple, devastating weight of broken trust.
They didn't know if there was anything left of what to think.
The dawn stretched on, gray and cold and merciless, and the fragments of their friendship lay scattered in the snow—sharp enough to cut, too broken to put back together, and precious in a way that made the loss hurt even more.
TO BE CONTINUED...