When the last voices faded and no pursuers lingered outside, Skela and Neprah finally let the breath they’d been caging slip free like birds from a bamboo cage.

They gulped air like carp surfacing in rain, mouths working in frantic rhythm. The pampered second prince wasn’t built for this, cursing between gasps. Skela, lighter in lung, hacked and thumped her chest like a sparrow beating damp wings. It took a long aching minute before they scraped together composure, like hands gathering spilled grain.

On the run, they careened blind, toppling shop buckets brimming with foul water. They blundered through a chicken pen, setting off shrieks and a storm of feathers. A white-red plume still stuck in Neprah’s hood, like a dawn newsboy on Balad’s streets. If you ignored the oil-slick rainbow stains and the white smears married to chicken rumps.

They hadn’t blown their cover with magic, but the price was a look of mud-splashed disgrace, like warriors drenched after a monsoon skirmish.

Great. Now we’re wandering without a North Star.

Only because you stalled back there, dragging our feet through mud.

Annoyance flared in Skela’s foggy skull, a hot coal under wet ash. She opened her mouth to scold him, when a brittle clink hit the floor like ice snapping.

They dropped the quarrel in the same heartbeat, eyes sharpening like drawn blades, swinging toward the sound.

Uh… who… are you?

A dead-empty bottle rolled lazily to their feet like a tide-washed shell.

From the deepest shadow of the shack, an old man stirred, a reed in dusk. His drunk-clouded eyes opened and met theirs like stormlight finding a window.

This was bad, like a roof about to cave.

Skela picked this shack because it looked rot-soft and abandoned, a husk after winter. She’d misread the slum; here, houses ready to collapse still held lives like nests in broken eaves.

Now, one shout from the drunk could light the street like fire and send them running again.

Anxious heat churned in Skela’s mind, gears spinning like mill wheels. Before she chose a move, the man’s eyes widened, emotion surging like a spring flood.

Is… is that Little Mouse… and Kaka?!

Tears streamed like rain from his eyes. You came back to see me, you finally came back!

He tried to lever himself up, then the hangover dragged him down, dumping him into the heap of trash used as a chair.

Skela saw it then: a thick white film veiled his eyes, growth at the corners choking his sight like frost on glass. No wonder he mistook them for Little Mouse and Kaka.

Pity tugged at Neprah, a torn kite in wind, and relief sighed through him. He turned to leave, but Skela stood rooted like a willow.

Hey, what are you doing? Time to slip away like shadows.

…

Skela closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, like a diver tasting still water. Gods, keep justice from wearing a veil of fog; forgive what I’m about to do.

She traced a triangle over her chest, a sign of the divine, and opened her eyes steady as a drawn bow, walking to the old man.

Yes, yes, he opened his arms, tears brimming like a brackish tide. Little Mouse… Little Mouse, come, let Grandpa look at you.

Grandpa, I’m back, she said, her voice soft as silk.

She let the old man’s arms fold around her like winter sun on frost. It was warmer and gentler than she’d imagined, a hearth under thin clouds. She felt his trembling through her cloak like rain tapping leaves.

You… you were gone so long, he murmured, sorrow drifting like smoke. Grandpa thought you’d never come back.

Compassion softened Skela’s gaze, a moon over dark water. She ignored gaping Neprah and stroked the old man’s back, steady as a lullaby, until his tide calmed.

Listen, Dalahaman, in the Sarman ancient tongue means a small boat laden with fish. When I was young, I was a fisherman here; a year’s catch fed the family and more. We even bought the fine silks woven by the women of eastern Nu Haman—oh, slicker than bream scales, smooth as rain on jade.

He drew on his scar-scored pipe, white eyes gazing far, and he exhaled gray smoke like morning mist. Back then, this place earned that name, a harbor brimming like a full net.

For his tide of reminiscence, the two listeners reacted like opposite winds. Someday, this place will return to itself, Grandpa, like spring returning to a fallow field. You’ve told this story twice already, old man; we’re circling the same rut.

Skela nudged Neprah with a covert kick and pinned him with a hard stare, flint under silk. He held his tongue, but his face soured like spoiled wine.

Neprah knew Skela was posing as the old man’s child to glean intel, because they didn’t even know where they were. But his patience frayed like rope. He hated impersonation; his nature ran straight as a spear. And the talk had been circling the same puddle since they started.

Ha, Kaka’s still impatient as before. I was in the East District—

—when you found “me” in the trash heap, “I” kicked and punched, refusing to go— you’ve said that twice.

As Neprah said, whatever they asked, the old man looped back to his past, a river meandering, offering no useful water.

Seeing Neprah on the brink of snapping, Skela cut in fast, her calm mask hiding a quickened heart. This time she went straight for the knot.

Grandpa… have you heard anything about Hakadi?

At that name, his pipe drooped, surprise fluttering like a startled bird. You don’t know?

He said that, then something clicked, a lantern lighting behind the fog. Right, you’ve been gone a dozen years; not knowing is natural, like moss on a sealed door.

This old man knows?! Skela and Neprah widened their eyes like moons.

The boys of Hakadi are heroes of our Dalahaman, every last one. At Hakadi’s name, light sparked in his eyes, color washed back like sunrise. After the people of Balad came, this place became a dead land. Thanks to those boys’ hard work, we can eat again.

Is… is that so?

And your return means those brave boys’ plan worked, like nets finally drawing in silver fish.

…Plan?

His words veered beyond Skela’s expectations, freezing her like frost. She couldn’t stop Neprah at her side.

—What plan is it?

Neprah rose, and in the cramped hut his robust frame loomed like a mountain. I won’t ask a second time, old man.

Ka—Kaka? What’s wrong…

I’m no damned Kaka!

Eyes blazing, Neprah flung back his hood before Skela could intervene. His gold hair fanned free, a banner blazing even in the dim.

I am the Sarman Empire’s second prince—now tell me if those “heroes of Dalahaman” planned to poison a defenseless man.

Emotion surged, a tide breaching its banks. He wasn’t favored like his elder brother Samir, nor doted on like the youngest. Rebellious, he rarely spoke to his father, closer to his brother and the Red Orchid Society.

Even so, the hint of his father’s killer nearby set fury blazing. His muscles knotted like ropes, pressure rolling off him like thunder.

But the old man showed no fear. He stared at the gold strands floating in the air, eyes wide, mouth parted like a cracked shell.

You’re not Kaka… Gold… Demon… It’s you—!

The old man lunged, power exploding from his gaunt frame, and he tackled Neprah, a giant felled by a whip of wind. His hands bit into Neprah’s shoulders like iron clamps, eyes veined red like cracked coral.

Give them back, give them back! Give me Little Mouse and Kaka, you thief, you demon!

What are you talking about—

—Why! Why did you seize our children? Was pillaging our wealth and ruining our fields and harbor not enough for your blood-greedy hunger, demon? You dragged Little Mouse and Kaka to your hellish dungeons, made them live worse than death, turned them into raw-meat monsters—why!

He fell from the sudden strike, and could have broken free with ease. But the old man’s words stunned him like a winter bell. What was this old man saying? Wild delusion? Yet the pain and despair carved on his face were real as stone, and the fury in his clouded eyes mirrored Neprah’s own storm.

His children… hadn’t abandoned him; they’d been stolen?

Neprah stalled, and Skela faltered, unsure. The old man howled like a beast losing reason. Help, help, the golden-haired demon is here—!

Alarm bells clanged in Skela’s chest like temple gongs. One more breath, and they’d be exposed. But the old man’s stick-thin limbs looked ready to snap like dry twigs; she dared neither force nor magic.

The situation knotted again, a dead end like a blocked alley. As panic watered Skela’s eyes, the door exploded inward with a kick.

sercë tur (rudder of blood) — úlévima (paralysis)

A spell not native to this place rang out, and a jade-like finger touched the old man’s brow. In the next heartbeat, his hysterical body slackened, and he slumped silent, like a puppet with cut strings.

What… what did you do! Her voice cracked like thin ice.

Skela stared at the sudden intruder, shock fluttering like sparrows. She thought she’d witnessed murder again. But the newcomer calmly turned and closed the door, sealing shadow like a lid, then answered.

Just a calming technique. I also treated his alcohol-swollen liver and those previously broken ribs. He’ll wake in half an hour, won’t recall your foolishness.

Sure enough, the old man breathing against Neprah leveled, and the anger-flushed face smoothed into peace, like ripples fading. It shocked Skela even more.

She’d watched the High Sister heal petitioners with water magic. Because of that, she understood what the newcomer’s casual words meant—manipulating a man’s blood to induce anesthesia in a blink, knit bone, regrow organs, and even layer on hypnosis.

From the magic wave she felt, the woman was a high-affinity water mage. Yet her medical art outstripped anyone Skela had seen, including their instructors.

You’re…

Neprah recognized the famous brown curls from school, but a year hardly seeing her left the name on the tip of his tongue. But Skela, not even a semester into enrollment, spoke.

Hazel…?

Ever since Skela met her at that corner shop, she’d kept the memory tucked close, like a talisman under cloth.

She learned the name from Lady Adelaide, then kept searching, like a moth chasing a lantern, to pin down the misaligned feeling she’d felt.

Just as Lady Adelaide had warned, Hazel rarely showed at school; the corridors became an empty shoreline, and Skela never saw her again.

Skela hadn’t imagined their next meeting would be in a storm-torn scene, shards of fate glittering like broken glass.

No—not quite; from the first moment a thin premonition tugged like a cold thread under her skin.

"You pulled their eyes off us, like smoke in wind… didn’t you, Hazel?"

Skela didn’t even notice; formality sloughed off like old bark, though it was only their second meeting.

The brown-haired girl angled her gaze away; silence pooled like rainwater, and at last she nodded.

"You saved us twice, like lightning finding us twice… why?"

Skela watched her, a hearth-warm aura she could lean on; when memory reached for it, needle-flashes of pain broke across her mind.

"Just happened to pass by; lending a hand was nothing."

"'On the way'? From the capital to Dalahaman, on a whim? You think I’d swallow that like river-stones?"

Neprah kept Hazel in his sights, wary as a guard dog; an avalanche of revelations had flipped his world and muddied his thoughts.

He had no time to think and his tone bristled; Hazel’s face stayed stone-calm as she slid out a moss-green vial, liquid glinting like dew.

"What’s that glinting bottle?"

"miquelis, the Sweet Kiss."

Hazel’s voice carried no warmth, a winter wind over still water.

"A pretty name, but it’s a killing poison."

"With the right dose, it makes death arrive to the second, like a clock’s last tick."

"Legend says Kasi warriors took it before doomed battles, accepting a set sunset for their breath."

"Like a wife who knows her husband won’t return, she leaves him one last, sweetest kiss before he marches."

She finished and turned; Neprah’s face had gone storm-cloud blue, iron pressed under skin.

"Yes—this is what killed your father, Prince Neprah; and this place, Dalahaman, is the Kasi’s last campfire under the mountains."