1. The Return
They came up the road as the sky was beginning to lighten at the edges.
Mukai, Najo, and Snake were outside. Sheu was slightly ahead of them. When the bike drew near enough for their forms to clear, Mukai moved toward them.
"Mom's going to be up any second. Get inside—"
He stopped.
As they got closer, shock caught him. Sukai was going completely limp at the back of the cycle, using Tanaka's back for support.
Tanaka brought the bike to a clumsy halt, and Mukai quickly caught his brother before he could slide off.
"Sukai? What happened to him?"
"One of the Creed threw a knife at him," Tanaka said, her hands shaking slightly on the handlebars. "I thought it missed, but looks like the graze was enough."
"Poison?"
Mukai quickly dissipated the defensive water bubble he had put over the house, redirecting his focus. He carefully covered the graze with water. Sukai suddenly began to cry out in pain as the wound forced itself wider under the pressure—enough for Mukai to let more water slip into the cut.
"Just hang in there," Mukai muttered, his face tight. "I'll get the poison out."
Najo stepped closer to the twins.
Tanaka reached into her gear and held out the note. Sheu took it first and read it in one pass. She dropped it instantly and moved.
"Sheu—" Tanaka started.
Sheu was already past the gate, already accelerating, the chain at her side rattling against her leg.
"Get Asher!" she shouted back, her voice cutting through the morning air.
Snake picked up the note from where it had fallen on the dirt. He read it, looked at the direction Sheu had gone, and then looked at Moto's absence.
"Y'all got this," he said to the brothers, trusting them to handle the immediate crisis. He turned and went straight after her.
Mukai extracted the foreign blood the quick and more painful way, ripping the fluid backward out of the tear. Once it collected in his palm—dark, cold, and rejecting—he saw that it had not traveled past the point of contact. It was a mere hairline scratch. Yet, the mere presence of that trace among Sukai's blood was enough to force the body to begin attacking itself from the inside.
If the cut had been any deeper...
"What is happening?" Mukai demanded of Tanaka, his voice raw.
Najo picked up the discarded note and began reading it.
Inside the beach house, Olivia heard the noise outside and came through the door. She looked at the group, her expression hardening.
"What is happening?" she asked.
Tanaka looked at her. "Okay, but please, you might want to sit down."
"No," Olivia said, her stride unbroken as she neared them. "Why is my son bleeding?"
Tanaka took a breath. Then she told them everything. The Creed. Douglas. What the note demanded. She didn't add any fluff or take anything away.
Mukai said nothing, his focus divided between his brother and Tanaka's words. Sukai sat on the ground, chest heaving.
Olivia stayed silent for a long moment after Tanaka finished.
Then: "Who did it?"
"A group called the Crimson Creed."
"From where?"
"Gehen."
She asked about his men. Tanaka answered each question. Olivia kept asking, each one more precise than the last, her voice completely level, until Tanaka finally told her Douglas had taken a hundred soldiers and they hadn't been enough to stop them.
Silence.
Olivia didn't say another word. She walked straight to the bike Tanaka had just vacated, stepping over the frame.
The lightning that took her down the road shook the windows of the beach house, a sudden white flash that left the air tasting like ozone. By the time anyone could even look up, she was already gone.
Meanwhile, Sukai was finally gaining his strength back, the ragged edge of his breathing slowing down.
Najo walked back from the porch with a bandage for Sukai, handing it directly to Mukai.
"We need to get back to Nyika," Najo said.
2. The Chest
The house was how they'd left it.
Everything in its place, the morning light coming through the same windows it always came through. Najo went straight down the hallway to check on his mother.
Mukai and Sukai sat down in the front room. A long moment of heavy silence settled over them for their father, both of them processing what they had just learned. They hadn't moved an inch from where Najo had left them.
Sukai's eyes eventually drifted toward the table, tracking a shadow. "What's that?"
There was a large chest sitting in the center of the wood. Locked.
Mukai looked at it. The chest was entirely plain, save for a single engraved line running perfectly across the surface—matching the exact pattern of the key he carried. He remembered exactly where he'd put it, recalling the sharp flare of annoyance he'd felt when he first received it, while others had been handed far more valuable family treasures.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out the plain key, and slid it into the lock. It fit without resistance. He turned it.
A golden glow spilled from inside.
A smaller box sat within the larger chest, with a note resting on top addressed in Douglas's heavy handwriting.
To Mukai.
My dear son, if you are reading this, it means my plan fell short. Knowing you, you are probably angry at me for putting you all through this. Please understand that I did it to protect you.
There is a greater threat on its way. Sango will mount an attack against us. They greatly outnumber us and will surely take the capital, but I left you the army.
I trust you, my son. You are the man I wish I was — strong in heart and power. Therefore, without a shadow of regret, I leave the rest to you.
Lead your people through the impending storm. Do not let them lose hope.
Mukai read it twice. His jaw was set rock-solid by the end of the first pass.
He reached down and opened the smaller chest slowly.
Douglas's crown sat inside it.
Brief flashes — the succession trials, Mukai moving through each stage with the focused anger of someone who has been told all his life he isn't ready. Douglas in the stands, watching, the expression on his face private and proud. A different day, Mukai telling his father to his face that he could do the job better, and Douglas laughing — not dismissively, genuinely — saying he'd have to pry it off his cold dead hands.
Mukai looked at the crown for a long time without touching it.
Then he closed the chest.
"We need to get ahead of the Sango situation," he said, his voice entirely even. "Before word spreads."
Something quick flashed across Sukai's face. He looked at his brother, but he didn't say anything.
3. Najo and Tanaka
On his way back, Najo found Tanaka outside.
He told her she'd have to go to Zen alone. No other way to get there fast enough, and they needed Asher moving before the Creed's deadline made itself felt.
Tanaka looked at the sky.
"I know," he said. "You only did it properly once."
"Najo—"
"You pulled me out of that building in Sango," he said. "When it actually mattered. You did it then." He looked at her directly. "You can do it again."
Tanaka was quiet for a moment.
"I trust you," he said.
She looked at him. The distance between them had something in it that neither of them was going to name right now, with everything happening, but it was there and they both knew it.
"Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone," she said.
She pushed off the ground, found the air under her, and went up.
She stayed up.
They went their separate ways.
4. The Truck
Moto came back to himself slowly.
Voices first — someone talking before he'd opened his eyes, confident and easy, the voice of someone who had no particular concerns about their audience.
"—man y'all are just haters. Ashy's just built different."
"Stop glazing the enemy," Seven said.
Moto opened his eyes. Seven was directly in front of him. He kicked him out of the moving truck.
Kangetsu laughed. Simba's fist came over the seat and hit Moto in the stomach, efficient, and the world went dark again.
"Keep your nasty feet off my brother," Simba said.
"Ease up, bait is useless when it's dead," Liam said.
"If he's really Asher's brother, he can take it," Simba said, facing forward.
When Moto came back the second time, Seven was back in the trailer. The truck was moving steadily, Simba driving, Liam in the passenger seat. Flint's feet were on Moto's chest.
"Not so feisty now," Liam said.
Moto looked at the roof of the truck and took inventory of his situation.
"You're probably wondering why you're here," Kangetsu said.
Moto said nothing.
"You're Asher's brother," Liam said. Not a question.
"Why are you asking?"
"Answer it," Simba said.
Moto thought about what Kangetsu had told him. He thought about what confirming it would mean.
"Never heard of him."
"You look like him," Liam said.
"Must be the Afro."
Seven leaned in. "You fight like him."
"Coincidence."
"I didn't mention what kind of hair he had," Liam said.
Moto went still.
Kangetsu grinned as if he didn't already know: "Busted."
The truck hit a bump. In the front seat, Simba's shirt shifted — and for a moment the scar on his back was visible through the window, jagged and old, running the wrong direction for someone who'd been facing the fight.
Liam continued from the passenger seat, not turning around. "He was one of us once. Before we had all of this. Before we were anything." A pause. "Then he turned on us."
The truck went over another bump.
Moto was still listening but his face wasn't showing it.
"Moving on," Kangetsu said. "We're here. Sit up, kid."
"I wasn't finished," Liam said.
"He zoned out anyway."
In the distance, a figure stood directly in the middle of the road. She was a short, pitch-black woman with alien-like white eyes. Formerly known as Dawn of the Holy Ten in Pasi, her name was now Darkness of the 10 Plagues.
The truck did not slow down, driving straight at her.
She ripped off her white cloak and whirled it through the air. A massive portal tore open across the road. The truck drove directly through the void, and she stepped in right after it, leaving the highway empty.
5. Gehen
Moto looked out the window.
The city was destroyed in the way that happens gradually over years — building debris that had become part of the landscape, structures held up by other structures leaning against them. But the people in the streets weren't moving like people in a disaster. They were loud, unhurried, eating from stalls and arguing and laughing, and when the truck came down the main road they cheered.
Seven climbed out somewhere near the edge of the square, heading toward a cluster of women without breaking stride.
Simba watched them cheer and something in his face settled.
"Where people eat until they can't move," he said, almost to himself. "And everyone acts on their own terms. Just like the temples described it."
"Don't," Flint said.
"C'mon, a little trauma never hurt anyone," Kangetsu said.
"I'm cringing at how we dressed back then," Flint said. "If I met old me I'd kill him."
"Exactly my point," Simba said, and he was smiling now, proper. "We can't forget. Or we stop building it."
Moto looked at the people and felt something shift in his chest that he hadn't expected. Not comfort — something older than that, something that lived in the particular way Gehen people moved, loud and alive and occupying whatever space they were in completely.
He'd seen Zen welcome people home. This was louder. But something underneath it was different in a way he couldn't immediately name.
The truck stopped outside the city hall.
Moto knew the building. His father had worked here — meetings for the Gehen natives, shelter for people ravaged by the violence that never quite stopped. The hall used to have guards at every entrance.
Now it had none.
Simba pushed him inside, hands still tied. The people in the hall were different from the people outside. They heard the door and moved to the walls — slowly, without running, the practiced movement of people who have learned not to draw attention. The hall was high-ceilinged and dark, light coming through broken windows in long dusty columns.
Simba walked him to the far wall and chained him to it.
"We don't have power-blocking chains," Simba said. He looked at Moto directly. "But if you break out, I'll kill you."
He left.
The door closed.
Moto looked at the chains, at the hall, at the people pressed into the shadows along the walls, watching him.
He looked at the ceiling and thought about what Asher had said about the Creed. About being prepared to kill.
About what that look in Sheu's eyes had meant.
He started thinking.
6. Water, Wind, and Lightning
Snake and Sheu cut across the water in the craft she and Asher had used from Nirvana — wind-powered, Sheu working the sail, Snake sending a wind snake into the impeller and watching it accelerate as her current fed into it.
Snake watched the mechanism for a moment.
"Our wind works well together," he said.
Sheu adjusted the sail without answering. But she'd noticed it too.
Behind them, somewhere on the open water, a flash of lightning split the horizon.
"Was that—" Snake started.
"Don't slow down," Sheu said.