Takahiro opened his eyes to sunlight and stillness.

  The air was sharp with morning cold, and a breeze filtered through the crumbling stones of the old shelter, brushing his skin like the edge of a blade. There were no curtains. No doors. Just gaps between rock and wood, letting in the light whether they wanted it or not.

  He hadn't slept.

  The others, probably not either.

  Before dawn, he had heard the quiet, strained sound of Serenya crying. Not loud. Not desperate. Just the kind of soft, stifled weeping of someone trying hard not to make a sound. And failing.

  He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t said anything. What was he supposed to say?

  Later, after the silence had stretched too long, he’d heard Kana stir. She slipped out barefoot, her steps light but deliberate. A few minutes after that, he heard the familiar rhythms of her training—short, controlled breaths and the occasional shift of gravel underfoot as she moved through her forms.

  He stayed where he was, eyes open. Watching the sunlight crawl across the stone.

  There was no fire, no blanket, no warmth aside from their own bodies and the clothes on their backs. The meat from the deer—what little they’d managed to carve the day before—was all they had. No pots, no knives, no packs. Not even salt.

  When he finally sat up and stepped outside, he saw Kana finishing her last form, body glistening with sweat. Her uniform was torn at the sleeves and stained with dust, but she moved with the same fierce focus she always had.

  She turned as he approached, wiping her brow with the edge of her sleeve.

  “About time,” she said, grinning. “The sun’s halfway up already. You planning to sleep through the whole apocalypse?”

  Takahiro gave her a dry look. “Didn’t know this was a competition.”

  Kana laughed. “You didn’t win, if that helps.”

  Near a small clearing, Serenya was crouched beside the remains of their kill. What was left had been wrapped in large leaves and laid out on a flat stone. She was carefully turning a piece over the bare coals of a makeshift fire, trying to coax heat without flame.

  She looked up as he approached and offered a faint smile.

  “Morning,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.

  “Morning,” he echoed.

  She studied his face for a moment. “You look like you slept even less than I did.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  Kana dropped down beside them, stretching her arms behind her with a groan. “I’m dying for a bath.”

  “You wouldn’t be so sweaty if you didn’t train like a lunatic before breakfast,” Takahiro muttered.

  “If I don’t move, I start thinking,” Kana said, eyes closed. “And if I start thinking, I get angry.”

  That shut him up.

  Serenya flipped the meat again using a stick. “There’s a river along the route today. If we’re lucky, it won’t be dry. We’ll need water. And a place to wash.”

  “Assuming we don’t freeze to death getting in,” Kana said.

  Takahiro looked at their surroundings. Trees stretched out in every direction, and the dirt path they’d taken yesterday was now just a vague trail of flattened grass. No signs. No markers. Nothing man-made anywhere in sight.

  He sat beside them and took one of the cooked pieces from the stone when Serenya nodded. It was hot, barely seared, but edible. The meat was stringy and uneven, and bits of ash clung to it. But it was food.

  They ate in silence, chewing slowly.

  “We really don’t have anything left,” Takahiro said after a moment, breaking the quiet. “Not even a canteen.”

  Serenya nodded. “I left with what I was wearing. That’s it. My sword was already on me. I didn’t have time to gather anything else.”

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  Kana spoke through a mouthful of meat. “You had time to grab a deer, though.”

  Serenya glanced down at the charred portion she was holding. “It found us. I just made sure we didn’t starve.”

  Takahiro finished his portion and leaned back on his hands, staring up at the pale sky. The trees creaked above them. Somewhere in the distance, a bird called out—sharp and shrill—and was answered by another.

  No other signs of life.

  “I hate this,” Kana said quietly, after a long pause. “I hate walking around in a warzone with nothing but hope and raw meat.”

  “You wanted adventure,” Takahiro said.

  “I wanted to help.” She kicked a pebble near her foot. “Not... whatever this is.”

  Serenya stood, brushing ash from her knees. “We need to keep moving. The river should be no more than a few hours away. If we’re lucky, we’ll find shelter nearby.”

  “And if we’re not?” Takahiro asked.

  Serenya looked at him. “Then we’ll survive anyway.”

  They fell into a rhythm.

  After that first morning, nothing much changed. They walked when the sun was up and slept when it wasn’t. It wasn’t a decision—it was survival. Every hour of daylight was another chance to put distance between themselves and the castle, between themselves and whatever might be following.

  They ate what they could find. Roots. Berries. Wild mushrooms—though only after Serenya had confirmed they weren’t poisonous. Once, Kana found a pair of squirrels tangled in a hunter’s old snare and managed to kill them cleanly. They cooked them over a smoky fire and tried not to think too hard about it.

  Takahiro discovered that he was oddly interested in the local flora.

  Not because he loved nature—but because knowing which plants wouldn’t kill him felt like the most useful information he could gather in this world.

  He followed Serenya closely whenever she foraged, asking questions, taking mental notes. Which leaves stung the tongue. Which berries made you dizzy. Which roots were bitter but nourishing. Serenya, to her credit, never brushed him off. She answered him with the patience of someone who had grown up in these woods and was only now realizing that such knowledge could be life-saving.

  Kana, meanwhile, dreamed of rice.

  Every time they sat down to eat something scraped off bark or barely cooked, she’d mutter under her breath:

  “God, I’d kill for a bowl of white rice. Just plain. Even dry.”

  The nights were worse than the days. They slept curled on the ground, using cloaks as blankets and each other as windbreaks. Whenever they found a cave, they’d linger as long as they dared—warming themselves, sharing body heat, trying to stretch sleep just a bit longer.

  Whenever they left a cave, Serenya would always glance back.

  Once, Kana caught her doing it and said, “You look like you’re leaving home.”

  Serenya didn’t deny it. “It feels like we are.”

  They passed close to only one town. A small outpost on the edge of the valley, visible from the treeline. Smoke from chimneys, faint voices in the distance. But they didn’t enter. Serenya had warned them back in the castle: someone in the court had betrayed them. She didn’t know who, or whether they were acting alone. Every populated place was a risk.

  They only skirted the edge of the town under cover of night, using shadows to avoid attention. The only thing they managed to acquire were three used canteens—left to dry outside a building. They didn’t ask who they belonged to.

  They filled them with stream water and moved on.

  Takahiro asked once if they could learn magic.

  It had been a quiet afternoon, and they were walking beside a ravine lined with dead trees. The sky was grey, and the air smelled like coming rain.

  “Is it something anyone can do?” he asked.

  Serenya had looked thoughtful. “Some people are born with talent. Others have none at all. But even those with potential... it usually takes years of training. Books. Teachers. Tools. We don’t have any of that.”

  Kana chimed in. “So how do you do it?”

  “I was trained from the time I could read,” she said. “And even now... I only know a few spells. Mostly healing.”

  “But they help,” Takahiro said. “Without them, I’d probably have collapsed by now.”

  Serenya gave a tired smile. “You’ve been strong.”

  “No,” he said plainly. “I haven’t. You just fixed the damage before it became unbearable.”

  They didn’t talk about it more after that.

  And then, after nearly two weeks of walking, the storm hit.

  It started with clouds. The kind that sat low in the sky, swollen and slow-moving, the air heavy with tension. Then came the thunder—soft at first, like a warning growl.

  They picked up their pace. But there was no shelter, and no time.

  Rain hit like stones. Cold, relentless. It soaked through their clothes, into their boots, their hair, their bones. There was no fire that would catch, no branches dry enough to use. The wind howled through the hills and bent the trees sideways.

  They found no caves. No cliffs. Not even a decent outcropping.

  They walked until it was too dark to see, then huddled under the thickest tree they could find, shivering and silent.

  By morning, Kana had a fever.

  She didn’t say anything at first. But her face was pale, her hands shaky. Her body swayed as they walked, and she didn’t finish the bit of raw root she chewed for breakfast.

  Serenya noticed it first.

  “Stop,” she said, catching Kana’s arm.

  Kana tried to wave her off, but nearly stumbled. Takahiro caught her.

  “I’m fine,” she muttered.

  “You’re not,” he said.

  Serenya placed a hand on her forehead. Her mouth tightened. “She’s burning.”

  “Can’t you heal it?” Takahiro asked.

  “I can’t cure sickness. I only know how to close wounds. Mend bones. Restore stamina. This is different.”

  Kana sat down against a tree and exhaled slowly. “I’m just tired. We’ll keep going after I rest.”

  “We need to find shelter,” Serenya said. “Now.”

  That was when the plan broke.

  They hadn’t wanted to enter any towns. They had been careful, cautious. But now, with Kana’s skin slick with sweat and her breaths growing shallow, they didn’t have a choice.

  Serenya led them down a forgotten trail, off the path they had been following. It twisted through underbrush and broken stone fences, past old shrines and overgrown fields. They saw no people. No lights. But after two hours of walking, they spotted rooftops in the fog.

  A village. Small. Hidden.

  And just quiet enough to take a chance.