Kairo stood just beyond the wargon, the warm earth beneath his boots squelching faintly as if whispering its own discontent. The heavy scent of wet leaves and something sweet and unfamiliar—like crushed petals laced with rust—lingered in the thick, unmoving air. The overcast sky hung low above them, painting the forest in a dull amber-gray that made every color feel slightly off. Even the trees, once proud pillars of green, now seemed muted, their bark glistening from the clinging mist that never quite turned into rain.
His eyes dropped to Vivy's book, lying closed on the soft earth. Its cover glimmered faintly with the golden lacquer that had stirred so many questions. The light caught along its edge like thin veins of sunlight trapped in paint, gleaming unnaturally beneath the clouds.
Kairo exhaled through his nose, slowly, his breath briefly visible in the dense air. Then, almost offhand but with a thread of weariness running through it, he muttered, "Can you answer Vivy's question?"
Almost instantly, a sharp, sudden squeeze coiled around his waist—not painful, but tight enough to feel intentional. The flower embedded there pulsed faintly beneath his shirt, as if agitated.
"If you don't want to answer," Kairo said with clipped irritation, his face contorting briefly in disgust, "you can just say it. You don't need to be so aggressive about it."
There was a pause—just a breath too long to be natural—before the flower replied, its tone light, amused, even patronizing."Nope, I was about to answer," it said, lilting as if grinning. Then came another pause. "I don't know about any of that. Well…" a chuckle, dry and curling like smoke, "maybe the others know."
Kairo furrowed his brow. "Others?"
"Other flowers, duh."
His shoulders tensed. "Then can you let the others talk? Please?"
"Hmph!" The flower made a sound like pouting. "Since you said please…"
And then, it was as if a dam broke in his mind.
A beat later, his vision didn't blur, but something behind his thoughts cracked open. Like the seam of a window that had always been there but never noticed. A sudden voice drifted in—young, listless, and impossibly disinterested.
The first voice came like a drag of a boot through gravel—apathetic, dry, and low-pitched."Ugh… You just did this to give me more trouble. As if being stuck in this dump with you wasn't bad enough already."
A second voice followed, warmer in tone but laced with fatigue. A young man, perhaps, perpetually tired, always just a breath away from sleep."Finally… Thought I'd never get a word in. You've no idea how cramped it is in here."
Kairo blinked rapidly, almost dizzy.
"Speak one by one!" he snapped, face contorting with frustration. "I can't focus if you're all talking at once—"
But they didn't listen.
The tired voice sighed."This is why I don't talk. Nobody listens to order—"
"Order? Ha! There is no order in chaos!" the old one cackled.
Kairo closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. His hand slipped down to his side and brushed the cool hilt of his dagger—his anchor.
He exhaled.
And let go.
Silence. The voices vanished like a fog dispersed by wind.
The moment was still, suspended. Then he muttered to himself, "After I pick up my dagger… can you tell me your names?" His voice was quiet, but deliberate. "Because without names… it's gonna be hard to know who the hell I'm talking to."
His hand returned to the hilt.
The metal met his skin.
And just like that, the voices flickered back into life—clearer this time, no longer overlapping.
The dry, sarcastic one spoke first."Call me Lurue. Don't wear it out."
Then came the tired voice, slower, but honest."My name is Xuran."
Then came the last voice—familiar, energetic, warm with mirth and madness all at once."And I'm Lalula! Remember it well hehe!"It was a swirl of mischief and music, like a tune played too fast on strings wound too tight.
Kairo inhaled deeply through his nose. His thoughts flowed, quiet and contemplative now, almost like internal murmurs echoing through dim stone halls:
So Lurue is the one on my left arm… the Nomadic Petal. That cold, drifting sense... makes sense now.Xuran, old as time, clinging like ancient bark on my leg—Abyssal Root. That weight... it always felt older than me.And Lalula… dancing vine. Twisting on my waist like laughter and threats wrapped in one.
His voice returned, quiet now, but steady."You already know what I want to ask."
Lurue responded with a voice like dust scattering in wind:"I don't know. Even if I somehow knew... I already forgot."
Xuran shifted within his thoughts, rustling like old roots:"Let me recall... my memory, boy... I'm an old man, and memories are like fog after rain—easy to rise... easy to fade…"He groaned again, long and pained, like memory itself was grinding in old gears.
Then Lalula, of course, giggled. The voice flipped like pages in a frantic wind."I already told you. Looks like you'll have to wait for that old sack of moss!"
Kairo fell silent. The tightness between his brows relaxed ever so slightly. Then—"Fine... Well, I have other questions anyway."
A sigh. Long and labored.Lurue's voice returned, just barely above a breath:"Why… why must you always talk?"The hoarseness of it made Kairo's skin itch like thorns under cloth, but he pushed through.
His eyes half-lidded now, he continued, voice soft but insistent:"If Xuran can tell me something about that golden lacquer… or even the book. Even just a bit…"He paused, his gaze drifting."…it makes me wonder… where are you really from?"
Lurue didn't answer. Or maybe it simply chose to disappear again, to drift into the background like it never cared in the first place.
Lalula, though—Lalula laughed. Loud, unhinged, but almost... gentle underneath.
"You really know nothing, huh?"Then her voice dropped, a sudden shift—low, whispering with ancient weight:"Fine... I'll tell you. But in a dream. Hahahaha heehee!"
Kairo exhaled with a tired grunt, shaking his head slowly, yet despite everything—despite the confusion, the tension, the voices clawing in his mind—he still spoke "…Alright. I agree."
His body slouched back against the wall of the Wargon. He pulled his knees slightly up, arms draped across them. Eyes half-closed. His chest rose and fell once, slowly. Sleep tugged at him, and this time, he didn't resist.
A few paces away, Luke sat still on the beast. His shadow stretched long in the late light slanting in through the grated viewport. He said nothing.
But his hands moved. Slowly, deliberately, he reached into the inside of his coat and pulled out an old, battered pocket watch. Its face was cracked, and the second hand moved in uneven ticks.
Luke stared at it. Not watching time—just remembering something.
The voices were gone. But the silence wasn't peace.It was weight.Echoes.
Luke closed his eyes, his expression unreadable. His lips parted slightly, as if he were about to speak… then he didn't.
He simply leaned back against the cold wall and exhaled.
A moment passed.
Luke's fingers trembled slightly. Not from weakness, but from a kind of pressure building behind the ribs—an emotional weight that was impossible to exhale. His right hand slowly curled around the battered pocket watch, fingertips tightening, the cold metal imprinting its old, familiar grooves into the flesh of his palm. The soft click of the closing latch whispered in the silent Wargon, almost inaudible, but to Luke, it sounded thunderous—like the tick of time grinding against memory.
His jaw set. He closed his eyes. A slow inhale dragged itself into his chest like something heavy being pulled from underwater. And when he exhaled, it came with a sound—a breath that was half a sigh, half a groan, as though the act of remembering physically hurt.
Elene.
The name floated in his mind like a leaf on still water, but it carried weight—the kind of weight that dragged the soul downward.
"Mother…" Luke whispered the word so softly it nearly vanished in the metal-clad air around him.
But the name Elene—that one he never forgot.
He never could forget.
Even after all these decades, through dust, war, disappointment, endless motion, and hollow trading—her name remained intact. A tether. A root. A vow.
The beast beneath him rumbled in its slow, rhythmic stride—its enormous paws pressing into the charred dirt with an animal patience that defied the landscape. A low mechanical hum radiated from its chest cavity, breathing like a distant engine. The air was cold, metallic—touched by the tang of rust and old stone. And Luke sat perfectly still upon it, like a statue welded to its back, like a monument meant to endure.
His hand clenched tighter around the pocket watch.
Not a sudden grip, but a slow, curling motion—one that grew more deliberate with every breath he took.
His thumb pressed over the seam in the casing, feeling the tiny notch. The metal felt warm now, or maybe his skin was just too cold. The groaning of bone and gear below him mixed with the wind, like a lullaby made from steel.
A faint shiver passed through his shoulders.
Then, his voice.
Low. Raw. Half-exhaled.
"...Elene."
He said her name aloud.
Quietly, yes, but not in the way one whispers to the air—more like how a man says something to anchor himself, to remind himself that he's still here.
Still breathing.
Still bound.
Still hers.
The Spires.
He remembered the jagged skyline—high, labyrinthine towers of silver-gray stone stacked into the clouds like the bones of some divine creature. The air was always thin up there. Too clean. Too sterile. Too white.
He sat hunched slightly forward, not slouched—compressed. His tall frame coiled in itself, like the weight inside him had made him smaller somehow. His cloak, thick with soot, shifted faintly in the wind that swept across the beast's wide back.
Elene's voice.
He could still hear it.
"You're everything I have left."
She said it once—not during a quiet moment, not when she was trying to comfort him. No.
She said it during a storm.
He was just a child then. Not even waist-high to her. But the memory burned clear as glass
His father, Roggkan, towering and wild-eyed, had just thrown open the door. The outside wind howled into the stone house, carrying dust and the smell of dry pine from below the spires.
Roggkan's voice was booming, unrelenting, full of the kind of passion that knew no planning.
"Elene, the world is out there! Why are we wasting our lives up here, trapped in a tower of nonsense and legends?"
Elene stood at the far end of the room, clutching young Luke to her chest like a shield, like a treasure.
"Because this is where we're safe! Because you don't think ahead!"
Her voice cracked—not from fear, but from strain, like a string being pulled too tight.
"There's nothing for us down there! Just stories and dirt and cold blooded lies—"
"Better that than living in a cage built on worship!" Roggkan roared.
Luke remembered it all—the shouting, the clatter of a bowl falling from the shelf, the way his sister Lomiju hid her face in the shadow of their father's leg, her eyes glowing with something hungry... a curiosity that burned.
It was the same look their father had.
Reckless. Wandering. Unanchored.
"Then go, Roggkan!" Elene shouted, tears finally breaking free and running down her cheeks.
Her grip around Luke tightened. Tightened so hard he couldn't breathe for a second.
But he didn't mind.
Even then—he understood.
He was the last thing she had left.
And she—she was his whole world.
He remembered nestling his face into her shoulder, the scent of moonberries in her hair, the trembling in her arms.
"I'll make her happy. I'll make her smile again."
He made that promise to himself as a child.
He etched it into the bones of his mind.
Luke let out another low sound—a mixture of a sigh and a grunt as he leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees, the pocket watch still held tightly in both hands.
His thumbs ran over its surface, feeling the fine grooves, the old dent near the edge, the small moon engraving at the top—a symbol Elene carved into it herself with a thin blade.
"Happy 100th, my little starlight," she had said that day, wrapping the pocket watch in a scarf embroidered with skyflowers.
Her voice had been tired. She worked too much then, always helping the others, always keeping herself too busy to cry.
But that day—she smiled.
Just for him.
Luke's mouth tightened slightly, the corners twitching as though caught between a grimace and a sorrowful grin.
His eyes remained downcast, and he spoke—not loudly, not softly. Just steady.
"After they left… the Spires never felt like home anymore."
He shifted, turning the watch slightly, his fingers tracing the small inscription etched inside the cover
"Time only flows for those who forget their roots."
Luke's voice came again, this time softer—almost like an echo of his younger self.
"And I never forgot. Not once."
His dark skin—it always made him an anomaly. A soft mark of difference that the others in the Spires never let him forget.
Among the Ruka, skin as pale as snow was seen as divine—a sign of purity, of the Moon's favor.
But Luke? His skin was the color of polished obsidian, of night stone. And though Elene never once let him feel less, the others…
They whispered.
They avoided.
They stared.
The story passed down through the Ruka told of a time when their ancestors formed a sacred bond with the Moon Goddess—Thalune, they called her. A being of ice and shadowlight, of silver tears and eternal wisdom. Her blessing was what kept their bloodline thin and pale, radiant and close to the stars.
No one really knew if it was true anymore. Even the elder priests admitted it might just be a story.
But Luke?
He still remembered it.
Every word of that legend still hung in his mind, echoing like a cold prayer whispered into the wind.
He opened his eyes.
And with that opening—his face changed.
A flicker.
First confusion. Then resolve.
His jaw tightened. His brow furrowed.
His pupils dilated slightly, catching a hint of low amber light filtering from the rusted slats above. The edge of his mouth twitched, his hands slowing in their motion over the pocket watch.
His voice emerged again—lower now. Focused.
"...So why now?" he muttered to himself.
"Why does all of it come back today?"
His fingers finally stilled.
The watch sat in his palms like a sleeping heart.
His eyes turned slowly toward Liora.
But he didn't say anything.