Morning in the jungle was a strange thing.
It didn't arrive with soft birdsong or a sunrise slipping delicately over the trees. No. It came like a tired god shaking its wet hair, flinging dew across everything, drenching leaves, rocks, people alike in a cold slap of "You're still alive? Then move."
And move they did.
Well. Most of them.
Rakan was already awake. He sat beside the stream not far from their camp, hands submerged in water that shimmered with low Ka'ro resonance. His sleeves were rolled, and his breath moved slow, fogging faintly in the jungle chill. He watched the flow—not for secrets, not for threats, but for something quieter. Something internal.
A reflection of motion. Of stillness. Of what might become.
From behind him:
"You're meditating ," came Mazanka's voice. "That's dangerous. You'll start having thoughts for the first time."
Rakan didn't turn.
"It's either that or listen to you snore."
"That was Shugoh," Mazanka replied with mock betrayal. "Kid snores like a shrine spirit with hay fever."
"I breathe powerfully," came Shugoh's voice from behind a nearby bush. "It's intimidation through nasal assertion."
Mazanka stretched, yawning like a lazy cat, and flopped down beside Rakan, letting his limbs sprawl in four different directions.
"He's been awake since before sunrise," Mazanka muttered.
"Doing what?"
"Chasing a beetle that he swore spoke ancient truths."
"It did!" Shugoh called. "It told me not to trust frogs. That's wisdom!"
"You're a Kenshiki," Rakan said, deadpan.
"And you're half human. We're all cursed here."
Back in the camp's small clearing, Teruko stood with one leg raised on a smooth rock, tightening her boots with violent grace. Her uniform was half-buttoned, hair tied back in a high tail that swayed like a war flag behind her. She looked like someone about to challenge god to a rematch.
The pot beside her bubbled slowly with a broth that was somehow both suspiciously thick and colorless. She stirred it with the flat of her blade.
"If this is poison," she said flatly, "I'm feeding it to all of you equally."
"Democracy in death," Mazanka called. "Very noble."
"You want to cook?"
"I'd rather eat your betrayal than my own disasters."
Shugoh skipped into the clearing, twirling a thin stick between his fingers like a baton.
"I brought breakfast!" he declared.
Everyone turned.
It was a… fruit. Maybe.
Red. Misshapen. Faintly pulsing.
"That's not food," Teruko said immediately.
"It's alive!"
"That's worse."
"I named it Piko."
"I'm going to kill it."
"And thus the tragedy of forbidden romance."
Rakan smirked faintly despite himself. It had been days now—just long enough for routine to become something close to comfort.
They trained. They argued. They made bad food and worse jokes. Mazanka gave half-serious advice between naps, Teruko corrected every mistake with steel, and Shugoh made chaos seem almost like a strategy.
In some strange, broken way—they fit.
And maybe, just maybe, they were healing.
But the jungle remembered things people forgot.
And it had not forgiven anything.
Time slipped through the jungle like an apology.
It came slow and fast—varying hues of light trailing through the trees in gold-soaked threads, weaving across stone and skin and leaves with gentle precision. Dew clung to the moss like secret thoughts, and mist still curled between trunks like it hadn't yet remembered it needed to vanish. The world looked half-asleep, dreamlike, painted in quiet breath.
In the center of the clearing, Rakan stood with his feet dug into the soil, sweat already shining on his brow, Ka'ro humming in faint pulses from his spine. Across from him, Teruko moved like the air between strikes—measured, elegant, correcting him with a tap of her blade's sheath or a sharp flick of the wrist.
"No," she said, not unkindly. "Again."
Rakan reset his stance. Shoulders down. Core tense.
Shugoh sat cross-legged on a boulder nearby, chewing on a stalk of grass he'd decided was breakfast. His eyes trailed Rakan's form with the lazy interest of someone watching a cloud try to turn into a sword.
"Your footwork's decent," he offered. "But your Ka'ro's screaming like it just got dumped by a waterfall."
"That's not helpful," Rakan grunted.
"It's poetic," Shugoh replied. "Which is more important."
Teruko rolled her eyes, but didn't deny it.
On the outskirts of the clearing, Mazanka lounged beneath a sagging tree, his hands behind his head, a sliver of light caught across his chest like a badge. He looked relaxed. He wasn't. His eye—the good one—watched everything.
He didn't speak much that morning. But his silence had weight.
Something in the air had changed. He could feel it. Not just the Ka'ro—though that was fraying at the edges again, like threads tugged too long without snapping—but the shape of the forest itself. The quiet felt intentional, like someone holding their breath in a dark room, waiting for the sound of a lock clicking.
"I've been thinking," Rakan said suddenly, breaking the rhythm of the lesson.
Teruko paused mid-step, blade still half-raised.
"Dangerous," she said.
He ignored her. His eyes flicked toward the horizon, toward something far and out of reach.
"What if… my Ka'ro never settles?"
Shugoh perked up.
"Oh, we're doing existential dread this early? Excellent."
"I'm serious."
Teruko lowered her stance slowly. The sunlight caught her cheek, making the tattoo along her collarbone shimmer faintly.
"It will settle," she said. "Or it won't. Ka'ro doesn't owe you anything. But if it's in you… it'll listen eventually. Just maybe not in the way you expect."
"Some Ka'ro listens in roars," Shugoh added. "Some in silence. Mine hums jazz."
"Yours screams nonsense," Teruko muttered.
"It's expressive!"
"It nearly flattened me yesterday."
"Which proves it works!"
Mazanka finally spoke from under the tree, voice low and mildly amused.
"You all think too much."
They turned to him.
"Ka'ro's not some obedient beast waiting for your approval. It's you, reflected. You think you're not ready? Then it won't be either. You learn who you are in motion. In failure. In bruises."
He stood then, stretching slowly, the morning sun tracing the bandage over his eye. For a moment, the warmth in him faded—just slightly—and a cold awareness surfaced. He faced the trees, gaze scanning the jungle with a frown that didn't reach his mouth.
"Take a break, eat something. Don't go far."
"Why?" Rakan asked.
Mazanka didn't answer right away.
Then—
"Because the forest forgot how to breathe again."
They stopped training by midday. Something had changed. The birds hadn't returned. The vines had curled tighter around the stones.
Soon, the group found themselves exploring away from the camp.
The path they found was old.
Not ancient in the way time made things crumble, but old in the way forgotten things clung to soil. Roots twisted overhead like knuckles from the grave. Moss clung to everything that didn't move—and some things that did.
"I've named this ridge 'Definitely Not Cursed,'" Shugoh announced, walking backward ahead of them. "So the forest knows we're not afraid. It's like reverse psychology for trees."
"You're going to get us killed," Teruko said, adjusting the grip on her weapon.
"Statistically, I've only endangered us."
"That's not any better, idiot!"
Mazanka strolled casually beside Rakan, one hand in his sleeve, the other holding what appeared to be a half-eaten rice cake.
"Don't let her fool you," he muttered. "She's warming up to him."
"I will decapitate you," Teruko called without turning.
"See?" Mazanka grinned. "She cares."
Rakan kept his eyes on the trees.
The Ka'ro here had been strange since morning. Not hostile—but… echoing. Like something invisible was keeping pace with them, whispering in a dialect too old for words.
They were here for supplies. Fruit. Herbs. Anything edible. But none of them moved like foragers. They walked like warriors pretending to be travelers. Joking to keep the silence at bay.
Then Shugoh stopped.
"Hey," he said, crouching. "What's this?"
Rakan moved beside him. At first, it looked like a root—thick, bark-wrapped, pulsing slightly with pale veins of Ka'ro.
But there were patterns beneath the bark.
Not natural ones.
Carved ones.
Circular glyphs. Faint. Incomplete. Like a ritual left mid-chant.
Mazanka stepped closer.
"Don't touch—"
"I'm just inspecting," Shugoh said.
He touched it.
The jungle exhaled.
And the root shifted.
Not twitched. Shifted.
The soil around them shuddered like it had just remembered how to breathe—and didn't like what it inhaled.
Ka'ro bloomed upward from the glyphs in a sudden surge—glowing in spirals, uncoiling from the root like it had been waiting centuries for someone stupid enough to poke it.
"Oh," Shugoh whispered. "I made a friend."
"You triggered a defense mechanism, you fool!" Teruko barked, already drawing her blade.
"I don't believe in defense mechanisms. Only misunderstood invitations."
The root split down the center.
What emerged wasn't a creature.
Not exactly.
It was construct and ritual.
A body made of earth and vine and old metal, rising in jagged harmony. It had no eyes. No mouth. Just a face of stone marked by a single tear-shaped glyph that pulsed like a heartbeat on its brow.
It didn't roar.
It just moved—too fast for its size, rising in a burst of Ka'ro that warped the light around it.
"MIMI?" Shugoh gasped, horrified. "IS THAT YOU?"
"You named it?!" Teruko spat.
"It felt rude not to!"
The construct slammed a clawed arm into the ground, releasing a wave of Ka'ro like a shock pulse. The trees trembled. The sky dimmed. The ridge beneath their feet cracked at the edges like it wanted to run.
Mazanka cursed softly, eyes narrowing.
"To think this day couldn't get anymore exciting."
He stepped forward, flicking his wrist.
"Ikū-Ka'ro: Hibashira Kōdan! Fire Column Sermon!"
A line of flame erupted from his palm, arcing toward the creature in a spiraled blast. But the construct absorbed it—tendrils of its body shifting like water, folding the Ka'ro inward, glyphs glowing brighter.
"It ate my techniques," Rakan breathed, astonished.
"Then don't feed it," Mazanka said, stepping back.
Teruko leapt forward, blade glowing with her defensive glyphs.
"Shintei-Ka'ro: Gōshun no Tate! Shield of Honored Spring!"
She struck its side, the impact ringing like metal on stone—but it barely flinched.
"It's not responding to damage," she hissed. "It's observing."
Shugoh, off to the side, was already drawing in the air with his fingers, Ka'ro trailing like ink through water.
"Improvised Ka'ro Technique #46: Bouncing Ripple Elegy!"
He slammed his palms into the dirt. A shockwave of offbeat, looping Ka'ro energy ricocheted off trees, skipped like a stone across air, and hit the construct from three sides at once.
It flinched.
Staggered.
But didn't fall.
Rakan was already moving.
"Ikū-Ka'ro: Jinrai Seiyaku! Thunderclap Covenant!"
He dove in with an electrified strike, fists glowing with sheer force—blasting the creature's leg, shattering the stone there. It stumbled backward for the first time.
Then it paused.
The glyph on its brow shifted.
And suddenly—
It spoke.
Not in words.
In memories.
The sky blinked.
Rakan's mind unraveled for a heartbeat—
He saw fire.
A child crying.
A door never opened.
And man's voice saying a name he'd never heard in waking life. His father, he didn't know how he knew but he knew that voice belonged to his father.
Then it stopped.
The construct froze.
And crumbled—stone by stone—into a pile of ash.
Silence.
Even the wind didn't speak.
Rakan fell to his knees, panting. Teruko stood with her blade lowered, watching the pile.
Mazanka stared at the ash, his expression unreadable.
"That wasn't a guardian," he said finally. "It was a messenger."
"What the hell kind of message does that send?" Teruko muttered.
Mazanka bent down, drawing in the dust.
A faint symbol remained in the earth beneath the ash—the same one they saw days ago.
"It means someone's watching."
He stood.
His voice dropped.
"And they know we're here."
The air didn't settle.
It just… hung.
Like Ka'ro caught in mid-ritual. Like a sentence spoken, but not finished. Like a scream whispered through cotton.
No one moved.
Not for a long while.
Even the birds hadn't returned.
The construct's remains had scattered into fine grey powder—streaked with tiny veins of pale-blue light that pulsed faintly and then dimmed, like something alive giving in to death far too politely.
Rakan's breath slowed. His hand was still clenched from the strike—his Ka'ro still humming with aftershock. But the chill in his spine wasn't from exhaustion. It was from recognition.
That memory.
That voice.
He had heard it once before.
In a dream.
A dream with fire.
And a man standing at its edge, face blurred by the blaze, whispering a name through clenched teeth.
A name he still couldn't remember.
Mazanka crouched over the glyph beneath the ash, fingers dragging a slow circle around it.
Teruko knelt beside him, blade still drawn, eyes scanning the perimeter like the trees might speak again.
"That mark," she said, voice low. "It's the same as the one back then."
Rakan nodded.
"It was etched into that man's cloak. It looked like it was burned in using Ka'ro. I remember."
Shugoh tilted his head.
"What man?"
Mazanka didn't look up.
"The Shujikō."
The word landed like a wound reopening.
Shugoh blinked.
"The myth?"
"No," Teruko said sharply. "Unfortunately, not a myth."
"One of them nearly killed us some weeks ago," Rakan added, voice like smoke. "He said he was a Shujikō. His Ka'ro was wrong. Too fluid. Too… certain."
Mazanka rose slowly, brushing ash from his palm.
"People like this don't move without intention," he murmured. "And they don't leave signs unless they want to be followed."
"So this was never an accident," Teruko said. "It's a trail."
"To what?" Shugoh asked, more curious than afraid.
Mazanka turned to face the jungle's far reach—where the mist crawled low and the roots curled like closed fists waiting to be opened.
"To whoever's been watching."