Gilded Ashes-Chapter 264: Reason Not To Tell

Elin took a small breath. Raizen saw it in her shoulders. He saw that she didn’t enjoy saying this.

Then she said the last part.

"It’s as if the Eon itself..."

Raizen leaned forward for the missing piece.

...But the missing piece never came.

Raizen’s focus narrowed so hard he almost forgot he was balancing on a branch more than thirty meters up.

Elin said something... But Raizen couldn’t hear it. Or read it on her lips.

A sound rose at the wrong moment - a scrape of chair legs, a murmur swelling into overlapping voices, the faint hum of the cube still sitting on the table, inactive now, and the echo off marble walls. It all blended together and blurred the final words.

Raizen caught nothing. Not even a syllable.

Elin stopped. She bowed, short and formal.

And then the room exploded.

Questions came from every direction. Hands lifted everywhere. Concerned cloaks leaned forward or towards each other. The woman with the floating crown said something and pointed at the whiteboards. Someone else gestured weirdly in the air. A masked figure’s head moved in quick, impatient motions like they demanded proof, data, methods, timelines.

Elin tried answering every single one, but now it was too chaotic. Everyone was either shocked or still in disbelief.

Voices overlapped. The glass and round walls dulled sound, so nothing really reached Raizen. The distance turned words into a murmur. He tried watching mouths move and hands cut through the air, but he couldn’t follow it anymore.

His mind kept churning, trying to descipher what everyone was saying. And besides that, he kept replaying what Elin said in his mind.

Humans couldn’t be altered. Not mechanically. Conceptually. Eon refused it.

...And the Anathema behaved like awareness itself chained it.

Raizen finally turned his head slightly.

Hikari glanced at him. Just once.

And in that glance, Raizen understood what she felt. Because it matched what he felt, too.

They were way out of their depth.

And something was wrong with reality itself.

Raizen swallowed and looked back down.

Elin stood at the edge of the round table, answering question after question like she carried a burden she didn’t ask for. The Echelon members listened, argued, wrote, and demanded more, but none of them looked satisfied.

Because none of this sounded like a problem you solved.

It sounded like an eternal rule.

A rule nobody wrote.

A rule nobody could break.

For a short while, Raizen couldn’t tell how much time passed. Minutes stretched weirdly when you were holding your breath and your whole world was a glass dome under your feet.

The discussion began to soften.

Not because they ran out of questions - but because the first wave of shock burned off. Voices dropped. Gestures got smaller. The Echelon members stopped talking over each other and started talking to each other, arguing like blades sliding instead of clashing. People leaned close, murmured, pointed at specific lines on the boards, new ones now, then stepped back to think, just to come back after a few seconds with something else to say.

The crown woman turned one of the whiteboards inward and tried drawing a graph, but stopped midway, like something didn’t make sense. The masked figure stopped snapping their head around and settled into a still, tense posture. The one with mechanical arms folded them in tight, listening.

Elin stayed standing. She didn’t hurry. She didn’t fidget. She answered when someone asked directly, and when she didn’t want to answer, or when she couldn’t, she simply didn’t. No excuses. No softness. Just restraint.

Raizen tried to read what he could.

He caught words like "observation" "stability" "containment" "drift" and "reaction delay." He didn’t understand the equations. They were too far, too dense, too fast. But the tone did something to him.

It wasn’t the tone of people planning a battle.

It was the tone of people realizing the battlefield wasn’t even what they thought.

Hikari shifted again beside him. Not away. Closer.

Not much. Just a small adjustment of her foot on the branch, a careful re-balance. But she somehow ended up closer than before. Her shoulder pressed against his with no gap, like she remembered he was there too, and not just the mission mattered.

Raizen stayed still, eyes forward.

Then he felt it - a hesitation. A tiny pause beside him.

Hikari’s hand lifted slightly, almost like she meant to touch his hand. Her fingers hovered near his sleeve for half a second. But then she pulled back and instead pressed her hand against her own sleeve, like she didn’t know what to do with it.

Raizen didn’t look.

He kept watching the dome, the table, Elin’s mouth moving in calm, short answers.

Beside him, Hikari’s lips moved. So quietly, Raizen didn’t even hear it.

"I... I shouldn’t have been like that today..."

The words were barely more than a simple breath.

But they landed anyway, not in his ears - in the space between them. In the warmth of her shoulder against his. In the way her posture stayed rigid like she was punishing herself for focusing too much on Alteea’s orders.

Below, Elin finally shifted her weight, paused for a few seconds before lifting one hand, palm raised up. A slow, calm gesture that asked for order without begging for it.

The room quieted, the Echelon trying to pull themselves back together.

The crown woman spoke again, smaller this time. She seemed to ask something.

Elin answered.

Raizen caught this part clearly.

"I will remain in Ukai until the Firefly Festival."

A few cloaks moved, reacting. Not dramatic this time, just acknowledgement.

Elin continued, voice steady.

"There are still things I want to do here. And when I return to the floating islands, I will continue to monitor. If anything happens or changes, you’ll be informed."

The masked figure leaned forward again, slower. The mechanical arms unfolded, then folded again like the person couldn’t decide whether to argue or accept it. He asked the crown woman something. The crown woman nodded once, quickly.

The meeting didn’t end. It didn’t resolve. It simply... Shifted into planning. Into tension, a bit more controlled now.

Raizen felt the weight of it settle deeper in his chest. Firefly Festival... Elin staying in Ukai...

His mind clicked. He remembered Alteea’s message, about something weird at the Echelon meeting. One person she couldn’t identify.

Of course, that was it. Elin was the "unknown."

He had seen enough. He didn’t know what Elin’s last sentence was, didn’t know what the cube truly did, or even why the Echelon looked like they were trying to argue with the laws of nature and completely break the physics.

Raizen shifted his weight slightly and leaned slightly toward Hikari, accidentally startling her.

"We should go" he murmured, with a low voice, almost a whisper.

Hikari didn’t answer immediately. She kept watching Elin. Then she nodded once.

They began to inch backward along the branch, careful not to shake leaves or snap twigs. Raizen moved first, testing each step. The bark was still slick from rain. His palms were damp. His whole body felt like a tense wire.

Hikari followed, dress and all, managing it with something Raizen could only define as "skill". She didn’t complain. She didn’t ask for help. She just kept moving, careful, precise, and quiet.

Raizen breathed out slowly when they reached a thicker section of branch, farther away from the dome.

Sighing, he turned his head, ready for the worst part of the way back down.

But his eyes met a face hanging upside down, inches from his own.

Raizen flinched so hard he almost slipped.

Pale green curls dangled toward him like vines. Two bright eyes stared into his with shameless curiosity. The girl’s grin was wide and delighted, like she just discovered a secret room full of candy.

Enya.

She was hanging from the branch above by a thick vine wrapped around her ankles, swaying slightly like she had all the time in the world.

Raizen’s mouth opened.

No sound came out.

Hikari’s posture snapped into alertness beside him, instantly stiff. Her hand drifted toward where her weapon would be - then remembered she wore a dress and had nothing.

Enya blinked at them, then smiled wider.

"Oh!" she whispered, like she was being polite. Like she cared about stealth. "You’re leaving already?"

Raizen’s heart hammered.

How long was she there?

How much did she see?

What did she hear?

Enya tilted her head, upside down, studying Raizen like he was the interesting plant in her greenhouse now.

Her voice stayed light. Playful, even. But her eyes didn’t feel harmless anymore.

"Wh- What are you doing here?" Raizen tried to ask. "How did you even get up here?"

Enya chuckled. "How did I even get up here? Raizen, dear... Did you really think you two were the only ones who could climb trees? Wake up! It’s me, Enya"

Raizen swallowed, forcing his lungs to work.

Behind the glass dome, the Echelon still debated quietly, unaware that three little dangers were right above them.

Enya’s grin softened into something almost sweet. "Don’t worry" she whispered.

Then she leaned closer, upside down, until Raizen could see tiny drops of rain clinging to her lashes. "I won’t tell."

But after a few seconds, Enya’s smile sharpened again.

"...Unless you give me a reason to."