The miller was buried at dawn.
The ground was damp from the night's fog, each shovelful of soil sinking heavy as if the earth itself resisted swallowing him. There were no prayers, no songs. Only the scrape of wood and the dull thud of dirt striking the body of a man who had already been seen dead once before.
Children clung to their mothers, eyes wide. Men kept their heads low. Nobody dared say it aloud, but every whisper carried the same thought.
This wasn't death. This was something else.
Rei lingered on the edge of the crowd, arms wrapped tight against his chest. He couldn't look away from the grave. His Enso had flared when the miller fell yesterday, wild, violent, as though something in that husk had called to him.
Now the air itself felt wrong. He caught snippets of voices in the crowd.
"Plague?"
"No wound, no sickness…"
"Curse, it's a curse…"
But the word pressing on every tongue was one none of them dared speak.
Seal.
✦✦✦
Later, when the villagers scattered back to their work, Enid found Rei sitting alone behind the forge.
"You felt it, didn't you?" Enid's tone wasn't accusatory, it was searching. His pale eyes, calm but cutting, locked on Rei's face.
Rei stiffened. "Felt what?"
"The husk. It wasn't just empty. Something was inside it. Watching. Testing. Your Enso reacted, didn't it?"
Rei swallowed hard. Shame prickled at his skin. "It reacts to everything. I can't control it."
Enid crouched in front of him, voice firm. "Not like that. I've seen unstable Enso before. Yours wasn't fighting you, it was warning you."
Rei shook his head, voice breaking. "You don't know what you're saying."
"Then come with me," Enid said simply, as though it were the only answer.
✦✦✦
They walked until the huts thinned and the air grew heavier. At the far edge of Hurukoya, the forest loomed silent.
Rei felt it immediately, the seal. It wasn't visible, but the pressure was there, pressing against his skin, humming in the bones of the earth.
Enid extended his hand. His Enso poured from his palm in a smooth ribbon of light, wrapping against the invisible wall. Sparks scattered, rippling the air, but the barrier held firm, solid, unyielding. It shoved him back like a force older than him.
Enid clenched his teeth. "I can't pass it."
Rei stepped forward without thinking. The air shuddered. The seal trembled, then broke open like water parting.
Cold slammed into him. Air that wasn't air, thin, sharp, filled with whispers. He stumbled forward, falling onto ground that felt both solid and unreal.
"Rei!" Enid's voice echoed faintly from the other side. "Stop! Don't go further!"
But Rei wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing. He was staring.
Because beyond the crooked trees, the fog shifted. And inside it stood figures.
Tall. Faceless. Still.
They did not breathe. They did not move. They only turned their blank heads toward him.
And then came the sound, not from mouths, but inside his skull. A chorus of voices overlapping, too many to belong to one throat.
Found you.
Rei staggered back, heart hammering, eyes wide. His Enso flared violently, shaking the ground. But when he reached for the seal again, he couldn't force his way back inside.
✦✦✦
Night fell with chaos at the edges of the village. Enid dragged his father Reganu to the seal, though the man coughed blood into his sleeve with every step.
Despite his sickness, Reganu's Enso was precise, controlled. More than anyone else's. With a word and a gesture, light spread across the invisible wall, bending it just enough to form a narrow crack.
"Now!" Enid shouted. "Come back through!"
Rei lunged.
But something else slipped through first.
A figure in armor.
The villagers screamed, rushing to the square. The soldier stood tall, armor blackened and cracked, eyes glowing faint blue. He didn't attack. He didn't even draw a blade. He only stood, rigid, as though waiting.
Envelon arrived, staff striking against the earth. Shira followed, her white cloak stirring in the night wind, hand already on her blade.
"Speak," Envelon commanded.
The soldier's jaw opened wider than human, and a voice poured out. Not his own. Not even one. Many. A chorus that shook the square.
"On the twelfth night… Prepare your graves. Hurukoya falls. The Dark Elders remember."
Gasps, cries. Mothers pulled children close.
The soldier's body collapsed into ash.
✦✦✦
The square buzzed with panic, arguments spilling into the night.
"They found us!"
"The seal was broken!"
"Leave, flee now!"
Envelon raised his staff and slammed it down. The ground trembled, silencing the noise.
"You wonder why this village has no neighbors. Why no map holds our name. Why no outsider comes to our gates." His voice was low, gravel edged with truth. "Because long ago, one man Awakened his Enso. He rose to a power beyond gods. The Dark Elders feared him. And before he died, he carved a seal from his own flame. A cloak to hide us from their sight. That is why we lived. Until now."
He lifted his gaze, cloudy eyes hard. "The seal is cracked. They see us. And when the Dark Elders promise death, they deliver it."
Reganu stepped forward, weak but steady. "Then we fight. Not with fear. Not with prayer. With teeth, with blade, with every ember left in us. If this is our end, let it be an end that burns."
The villagers trembled, torn between terror and the fire kindling in Reganu's words. Shira's voice cut sharp through the crowd.
"On the twelfth night, we stand ready."
The people shouted, some in fear, some in defiance.