Daigen Hollow – Late Afternoon
The village had fallen into the kind of quiet that made shadows feel heavier. The harvest was done, frost hadn't come, and something sat in the silence like a held breath.
Ren Kisaragi sat near the old fence behind the boarding house, watching gold light slide across rooftops. Beside him, Zarno poked at dirt with a stick, humming to herself, painting a rhythm on the world that only she could hear.
The pen in Ren's coat twitched again.
It wasn't violent—barely more than a shiver—but enough that he gripped it tighter. It had been reacting strangely. Not to danger, not to threats, not to lies. But to... moments. Places. Something in between logic and instinct.
He opened his notebook and began sketching Daigen Hollow: the bakery, the old well, the crooked alley that always smelled like thyme. The shape of a village revealed its heart.
Zarno trotted up, cradling something.
"You're going to hate this," she said.
"What is it?"
She opened her hands to reveal a glossy beetle the size of a thumb.
"He's a spy," she whispered.
Ren smiled faintly. "Then we're doomed."
She let the beetle go and watched it disappear into the weeds.
Then came the hoofbeats.
Slow. Heavy. Out of place.
Ren stood. On the main road, six riders approached—gray-cloaked, dust-worn, and armoured. The sigils on their shoulders were unmistakable: the sunwheel of Haldrith.
Zarno froze. "Those aren't Khorvayne," she whispered.
"No," Ren said, already pulling her behind the fence. "They're not supposed to be here."
The knights dismounted in the village square.
Their captain was a pale man with steel-colored eyes and a voice like broken glass. The villagers gathered, uncertain. Some stared, some averted their gaze. Haldrith's crest didn't belong here.
"This is not a raid," the knight announced. "We seek outsiders. Insects. Foreign beings who do not belong."
He began to walk.
Deliberately.
House by house, the knights searched.
They kicked in doors. Questioned elders. Ripped open sacks of grain and peeled back floorboards.
Ren and Zarno watched from an attic window in the boarding house, crouched low and silent.
"They're looking for us," Zarno said.
Ren didn't answer. His pen pulsed in his hand like a second heartbeat.
Later – Nightfall
Eventually, the knights gathered again in the square. Their captain looked displeased.
"No sign," he muttered. "They've hidden them."
He turned to the innkeeper, to the baker, to the old man with the cane.
"You are harboring them. Maybe not knowingly. But ignorance is not protection."
Then, to his soldiers: "We report to the crown. For now… we withdraw."
The knights rode off into the night.
Ren didn't relax.
He didn't trust an easy retreat.
"They'll come back," he murmured.
That night, in their room, Ren sat at the desk, Zarno asleep behind him. He stared at the notebook, breathing slow.
The pen began to move in his hand. Gently. Reluctantly.
And wrote:
"I watched them search. I stayed silent."
"I told myself it wasn't time. That I wasn't ready."
"But maybe I was just afraid."
Ren closed his eyes.
Zarno shifted in her sleep.
He looked down at the pen. Still. Waiting.
It only wrote what he couldn't say aloud.
He whispered, "They'll come back."
And this time, he wouldn't be quiet.