The moment I stepped off the ferry onto Eryn's docks, the noise hit me.
Merchants calling out prices under waterproof awnings. The clatter of cart wheels on wet cobblestone.
Distant bells ringing the hour. The ever-present drumming of rain against rooftops, against the enchanted barriers, against everything.
They did say the rain wasn't permanent, but mostly you'd only see rain in Eryn.
Some kind of localized weather phenomenon that had been going on for centuries.
'It's amazing.'
The city created this weird atmospheric pressure that made everything feel... enclosed.
Like the storm had wrapped Eryn in its own little bubble, separate from the rest of the world.
I adjusted my grip on the briefcase and started walking.
The streets of Eryn were narrow and winding, built for foot traffic and small carts rather than anything larger.
The enchanted barrier overhead shimmered faintly, a network of translucent domes connected at their edges, creating covered pathways between buildings.
Step outside one, and you'd be drenched in seconds. Stay under them, and you stay dry.
'Alright, so where should I go?'
It was my first time on land. Maybe I should go eat something.
'Maybe something fancy.'
I did have a bag full of money. Ten crimson coins.
The currency used in Sodor was the same as that of most domains. One pale coin could get you a kilogram of apples.
A hundred pale coins equaled one verdant coin. Ten verdant coins made an azure coin. And five azure coins were a single crimson coin.
These coins were made of a special alloy with the respective tier's core fragment embedded in the center, actual crystallized power.
which made counterfeiting nearly impossible and gave the currency intrinsic value beyond just metal.
That's why obsidian and prismatic coins were so rare. They were meant for international trade only, the kind of transactions that involved nations rather than individuals.
Anyways, ten crimson coins were twenty-five thousand pale coins.
I stopped in my tracks.
'Isn't that... a lot?'
Suddenly, the gloomy feeling I'd had inside me started to evaporate.
Unknowingly, my lips started to curl upward.
'Praise the Admiral, most generous of all.'
With this much money, I could easily live in luxury for almost two years. Maybe three if I were smart about it.
"Hehe! This is the best."
It seemed the days of my happy life were finally going to start.
"You! Creepy smiling boy!"
I froze.
'What?'
I turned around.
A woman was striding toward me through the rain-covered street, one hand pointing directly at my face with the kind of confidence that suggested she'd never been told 'no' in her entire life.
She wore a scholar's uniform, deep gray robes with silver trim, the kind you saw on academics and clergy.
But what stood out wasn't the uniform. It was the embroidery.
Storm clouds and birds stitched in white thread across the shoulders and sleeves. Intricate patterns that seemed to shift slightly when you looked at them, like they were alive.
The symbol of a Walker.
'?? Is that...'
I did my research before coming here.
Walkers of Sodor were... well, they were the religious fanatics of Novara.
Preachers, missionaries, devotees of the Three Spirits of Sodor.
The Weather Bird. The Diviner. The Puppet Master.
Three ancient spirits that had supposedly watched over the islands since before recorded history.
Each one represented something fundamental: cycles, fate, and control.
And each one had a devoted following that ranged from 'mildly enthusiastic' to 'will absolutely corner you on the street to talk about your spiritual inadequacy.'
This woman looked like the latter.
She had sharp features, pale skin, and blonde hair tied back in a severe bun. Her eyes were a strange amber color, probably a side effect of whatever contract she'd made with her spirit.
She looked to be in her late twenties, though with Walkers, it was hard to tell. Some of them aged weirdly.
She stopped directly in front of me, hands on her hips, and looked me up and down like I was a particularly disappointing specimen.
"That smile," she said flatly.
"That was the smile of a man who just discovered he has money and immediately started fantasizing about wasting it on frivolous nonsense."
I blinked.
"I... what?"
"Creepy," she continued, as if I hadn't spoken.
"Unbecoming. The kind of expression that suggests spiritual emptiness and a lack of meaningful direction in life."
"Excuse me?"
"You're excused." She nodded, as if she'd just granted me a great favor.
"But only if you listen to what I'm about to tell you."
'What's her problem?'
I knew where this was going.
"Your worries," she said, spreading her arms wide in a gesture that was probably meant to be welcoming but came off more like a bird trying to intimidate a rival, "would be gone if you became a Walker of the Weather Bird."
I stared at her.
She stared back, completely serious.
"The Weather Bird represents the changing of weather, the flow of life and death, and the inevitable passage of time," she continued,
her tone shifting into what was clearly a rehearsed pitch. "All things pass. All things return. Rain becomes sun. Sun becomes rain. Winter becomes spring. Life becomes death becomes life again."
She paused for dramatic effect.
"By walking the path of the Weather Bird, you accept the impermanence of all things and find peace in the cycle. No more anxiety. No more fear of the future. Just... acceptance."
She smiled.
It was not a comforting smile.
"So?" she said. "Will you join us?"
I looked at her.
Then, at the storm clouds above.
Then back at her.
Part of me wanted to just walk away. Politely decline and disappear into the city before this gets weirder.
But another part of me, the part that had survived ten years on a warship by learning when to just go along with things, recognized an opportunity.
'How could I let anyone outsmart me in drama?'
"Okay," I said.
She blinked. "...Okay?"
I let a beat of silence pass.
Then I grabbed her outstretched hand with both of mine and squeezed it like a man who had been wandering a desert and had just found a well.
"Lost," I said, my voice cracking on cue. "I was so lost."
She blinked. "...Pardon?"
"Years." I shook my head, eyes going a little distant, aimed somewhere past her shoulder like I was staring at a wound only I could see.
"I've spent years wandering, sister. No path. No anchor. Just... drifting. The sea took everything from me and gave back nothing, and I thought, I thought maybe that was all there was. Just the grey and the water and the not-knowing."
Her mouth opened. Closed.
"And then..." I took a breath that trembled on the exhale. "...and then I stepped off that ferry. And the rain hit me. And something shifted."
I pressed a fist to my chest, just above the heart, hard enough to be visible. "Right here. Like a key turning in a lock I didn't know I had."
"That's..." she started.
"The Weather Bird," I said, leaning in slightly, voice dropping to something reverent.
"It was always the Weather Bird, wasn't it? I just didn't have the words for it yet. The cycles. The impermanence. The way nothing stays, not pain, not grief, not the grey. It all passes." I exhaled.
I let my shoulders drop, like a man setting down a very heavy pack.
"Do you know what I felt, stepping onto this dock just now? For the first time in years?"
She was staring at me. Amber eyes wide, hands still loosely caught in mine.
"What?" she whispered.
I smiled.
"Hope, sister. That smile you called creepy? That was hope. That was a man who finally, finally, arrived somewhere he was supposed to be." I glanced up at the rain drumming against the barrier overhead.
"I didn't know why I chose Eryn. Out of every port, every city, I chose here. The city of storms. And now I understand."
I looked back at her. "It wasn't me who chose. Was it?"
The silence that followed was the loudest I had heard in quite some time.
Her expression had gone through several stages in rapid succession: shock, confusion, something that looked briefly like suspicion, before landing somewhere I hadn't expected.
Moved.
She looked genuinely, completely moved.
'She is good.'
"I..." she started. Then stopped.
Composed herself with visible effort, blinking hard like she was resetting something behind her eyes.
"Yes," she said, a beat too late. Her voice was slightly unsteady, and she clearly hated that.
"Yes, well. That is, precisely, the nature of the Weather Bird's guidance. The paths we think we choose are merely the paths we were already walking."
"Beautifully said," I agreed.
"I know." She cleared her throat. Squared her shoulders.
Looked at me with the expression of someone who had come here to convert and was now recalibrating because the target had somehow converted himself before she'd finished the pitch.
For a moment, she just stared at me, as if she couldn't quite believe what she'd just heard.
Then her face lit up like someone had told her she'd won the lottery.
"Excellent!" She clapped both hands together. "Oh, the Weather Bird will be so pleased!"
She grabbed my arm, my good one, thankfully, and started pulling me down the street before I'd finished processing what was happening.
"Come! We must go to the church immediately!"
'Wait, there's a church?'
Most spirits didn't have churches. Dedicated churches were rare, reserved for the most reverent ones.
"You have a church?" I asked.
"Of course, we have a church." She looked almost offended.
"The Weather Bird is one of the Three Spirits. We are not some fringe cult operating out of a basement."
'That is exactly what a fringe cult would say.'
But more importantly, a church. A dedicated church. With infrastructure. With members.
With, presumably, records and hierarchies and people who took things very seriously and did not appreciate newcomers who had wandered in off the street five minutes ago and fabricated a spiritual awakening for the sake of winning a conversation.
"W-Wait, I think-" I tried to clarify.
"No waiting!" she interrupted, tugging harder when I slowed.
"The Weather Bird does not wait! Time passes whether you're ready or not, that's the entire point!"
I looked at the woman's iron grip around my arm. Looked at the direction we were heading.
Looked at the expression on her face, which was the expression of someone who had just acquired something and had absolutely no intention of letting it go.
I was going to a fancy restaurant. Instead, I opened my damn mouth.
'I should have kept walking,' I thought.