The rain began as a suggestion.

Not a downpour—not yet. Just a thin, patient drizzle that threaded itself through the canopy and found every exposed inch of skin like a quiet accusation. It dampened the leaves without flattening them. It darkened the moss on the stones. It made the air feel heavier, as if the jungle had decided to keep everything close.

Shika Nozomi felt it first through her boots.

The ground had changed.

Not in shape, not in slope—but in intent. The soil beneath the roots was no longer resting. It held tension the way a muscle holds tension when something approaches in the dark. The valley, as Yue had said, was listening.

And now, after the shrine spoke, it was doing more than listening.

It was responding.

They moved in a tight line down the old steps, away from the altar they had awakened and the voice that had spoken through stone. The path was half-buried, swallowed by ferns and creeping vine. Their shoulders brushed wet leaves, and the jungle seemed to make room only for the next step, never the one after.

Miyo kept looking over her shoulder.

She tried to do it casually—eyes flicking back like she was checking the weather, checking the ridge, checking for nothing. But her sparks betrayed her. Pale-blue static kept catching at her fingertips, brightening whenever she turned as if the air behind them was charged with something that refused to let go.

“Stop doing that,” Shika said without turning.

Miyo’s mouth tightened. “Doing what?”

“Looking back like you’re waiting to see yourself.”

Miyo gave a short laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. “If I see myself, I’m leaving.”

Yue said nothing. She walked with her eyes forward, but her attention was elsewhere—threaded into the damp air, into the warmth that pulsed faintly beneath her skin. Her sigil, hidden under her sleeve, still burned with a steady ache that had not dimmed since the shrine spoke.

Three awakened.

One missing.

The words had not left Yue’s mind, but neither had the way they were spoken—not a warning, not a greeting, but a tally.

A count.

Shika broke a thin branch in her hand as they moved, not to clear the path but to feel the snap of something certain.

“What if it was just…” Miyo started, then stopped.

Shika waited.

Miyo swallowed. “What if it was just the shrine being dramatic? Old spirits like to speak in riddles.”

“It wasn’t a riddle,” Yue said quietly.

Miyo glanced at her. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” Yue’s voice was soft, but it carried a stillness that made even Miyo’s restless energy hesitate. “Riddles are meant to be solved. That voice wasn’t asking us to solve anything. It was telling us what is.”

The drizzle thickened. A drop slid down Shika’s temple, cold as river stone. She wiped it away with the back of her wrist, then slowed just enough to let her fingertips brush a tree trunk as they passed.

The bark felt wrong.

Not rotten, not diseased—wrong in the way something feels when it has been touched by a hand that doesn’t belong.

The earth beneath the tree vibrated faintly, and Shika’s sigil responded with a slow, golden pulse under her skin.

She pulled her hand away.

“Something’s following us,” Miyo said, and for once there was no bravado in it. Only the quiet certainty of someone who could feel the air shift before lightning struck.

Shika didn’t deny it.

Instead, she listened.

The jungle had its own language—wind through leaves, insects under bark, birds calling across branches. When something moved, the forest usually spoke around it without thinking.

But now, there were gaps.

Small, deliberate silences. Places where the usual noise simply stopped, as if something had turned its head to watch them pass.

Their tiger moved at Shika’s side, silent as a shadow. It had not growled since the altar, but its ears kept rotating, catching sounds that didn’t make it to human attention. Its tail flicked once, twice—controlled. Measuring.

Miyo adjusted the strap of her pack, though she didn’t need to. Her fingers shook.

“We shouldn’t have come,” she said again, almost to the trees. “This is exactly why they sealed it.”

“They didn’t seal it,” Yue replied. “They buried it. There’s a difference.”

Miyo shot her a look. “You’re really leaning into the ‘elders are liars’ thing.”

Yue’s expression didn’t change. “They are.”

Shika stopped.

Not abruptly, not with a shout—she simply ceased moving, and her stillness forced the others to halt with her.

The tiger stopped too, its paws sinking silently into wet leaf litter.

“What?” Miyo whispered.

Shika lifted her hand, palm down, as if pressing against an invisible surface.

The ground beneath them… held.

Not physically, not like mud or stone—but in a way Shika had never felt before. The soil felt tight, constrained, as if a net had been drawn under their feet and pulled closed.

A boundary.

Her grandmother’s lullaby returned without warning—soft and low, a melody Shika hadn’t thought of in years. It came with the scent of smoke and the memory of warm hands braiding her hair.

Four voices bound to the land.

Four paths intertwined.

Not three.

Shika’s breath caught.

She had always thought of it as an old story, something sung to children so they’d sleep without asking questions adults didn’t want to answer. But now—

Now she could feel the places where the song had been edited. Not the words, but the meaning. Like a tapestry where one thread had been cut and re-woven in a different color so no one would notice the missing shape.

Yue’s eyes narrowed. “Shika.”

Shika didn’t look at her. “We crossed something.”

Miyo frowned. “Crossed what? The path?”

“No.” Shika’s voice came out hoarse. She pressed her palm to the ground, ignoring the wetness seeping into her skin. “A line.”

The tiger’s ears flattened.

The jungle went quiet.

A low rustle came from above them, somewhere in the tangle of hanging vines and branches. Not the sound of an animal leaping or a bird taking flight.

A slow shift.

As if something had moved its weight to see better.

Miyo’s sparks flared involuntarily, thin veins of pale blue tracing her fingers. “Tell me you heard that.”

“I heard it,” Shika said.

Yue didn’t speak. Her gaze had lifted toward the canopy, tracking nothing visible, but her sigil warmed beneath her sleeve like coals being stirred.

The rain became steadier, a soft percussion on leaves.

And then—

A footstep.

Not on the path in front of them.

Not behind.

To the right, where the jungle grew thick with ferns and shadowed roots.

It was faint. A soft press of weight into wet ground.

But it was too deliberate to be a falling branch. Too controlled to be an animal.

Human.

Miyo’s eyes widened. “That—”

Another footstep.

Closer this time.

The tiger’s head turned toward it, and for the first time its lips curled back, exposing white teeth. Not a roar. Not yet. A warning held in muscle.

Shika rose slowly, keeping her hands open. Her heart hammered, but her voice stayed low. “We’re not here to hurt anyone.”

Miyo hissed, “Shika—”

“Hush,” Yue murmured.

She wasn’t looking at the shadows anymore.

She was looking at the leaves.

Because the leaves were wrong.

A cluster of hanging vines near a thick tree trunk trembled—only slightly, only at the edges. Not from wind. There was no wind. Not from rain. Rain didn’t make vines move like that.

Something was behind them.

Watching.

Breathing.

Miyo’s voice dropped to almost nothing. “Is it… is it her?”

Shika didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The soil under her feet thrummed with a feeling that wasn’t fear but recognition.

Yue took a step forward, then stopped.

Her eyes were steady, but her jaw was tight. “If you’re listening,” she said into the foliage, “we don’t know where you’ve been. We don’t know what they did. But we heard the shrine.”

The jungle did not answer.

For a long moment, only rain and distant thunder existed.

Then, from within the leaves, a sound—so quiet it almost wasn’t there.

Not a voice. Not a word.

A breath.

The kind of breath someone takes when they’re trying not to be heard.

Shika’s skin prickled.

Miyo lifted her hands, sparks dancing along her fingertips. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t either,” Shika whispered.

The tiger stepped forward, one paw placed carefully on the path. Its shoulders rolled with controlled power. It wasn’t charging.

It was offering itself between them and the trees.

The vines trembled again.

This time, Shika saw it.

Not a face.

Not a body.

Just the briefest shift of darkness—like hair falling forward, like a shoulder pulling back.

A human silhouette. Small. Real.

And on the stone at the base of the tree—

A mark.

Three vertical strokes, smeared into the moss with something dark and wet. Not blood, not paint. Something between—like crushed leaf mixed with ash.

Face paint.

Old ritual paint.

Shika’s breath caught. “That’s—”

Yue crouched, her fingers hovering over the mark without touching it. Her expression changed for the first time—something like grief flickering behind her eyes.

“It’s valley paint,” she said. “Not outsider.”

Miyo shook her head slowly. “No… no, that doesn’t—”

Another sound from the jungle.

A branch snapping.

Not above.

Ahead.

The direction of the temple.

The tiger’s head whipped around. Its ears pointed forward.

Shika stood quickly. “Someone’s moving.”

Miyo’s eyes darted. “That was her. That has to be her.”

Yue didn’t argue. She looked down the path, beyond the ferns, where the jungle opened faintly and the ancient steps rose toward the distant ruin.

The temple was barely visible through the haze of rain and sunbeams—stone swallowed by green, doorway like a dark mouth waiting to speak again.

Shika’s sigil pulsed, warm and heavy.

The line they had crossed beneath their feet tightened again, as if the ground itself was holding them inside it.

A boundary.

A trap.

Or a promise.

Miyo’s breath came shallow. “We should go back.”

“We can’t,” Shika said quietly.

Miyo stared at her. “Why not?”

Shika looked down at the mossy stones and felt the earth’s answer in her bones.

“Because the valley doesn’t open twice,” she said. “Not once it knows you’re here.”

The tiger took another step forward.

Yue stood, her gaze fixed on the path ahead, where the rain shimmered in sunlight.

“We’re being guided,” Yue said.

“Guided where?” Miyo whispered.

Yue didn’t take her eyes off the temple.

“To her,” she said. “Or to whatever took her.”

Another faint movement came from the right—vines parting, leaves shifting—but when Shika turned, nothing was there.

Only wet green.

Only shadow.

Only the mark on the stone, dark against moss like a signature.

Miyo swallowed hard. “Shika…”

Shika’s voice was barely audible. “She’s close.”

And somewhere deeper in the jungle, the forest made space for a fourth set of footsteps—quiet, patient, and no longer hiding.

Not lost.

Not forgotten.

Waiting.

‍