Gilded Ashes-Chapter 308: Distorted Sound

Raizen couldn’t stop looking at them.

The drawers were still open. Row after row of black lotuses - each one nested in its own fabric-lined slot, each one coated in the same thin shell of resin that his two were. They caught the shop’s warm light and held it in their dark petals, gold centers barely visible, like embers buried in ash.

They were all the same flower. The same species - if that was even the right word for something that shouldn’t exist. The same layered structure, the same impossible symmetry, the same un-dying perfection the vendor couldn’t explain.

But they weren’t identical. The more Raizen looked, the more the differences emerged. Small, microscopic ones. The distance between petals - wider on some, tighter on others. The dim light in the center - brighter in a few, almost invisible in most.

Each one was the same idea expressed differently.

It was breathtaking. And confusing. Why would Enya need this many? She’d made two for him - made with her Eon, right there in the moment, like it was the most natural thing in the world. She’d said they were made just for him. She made them sound special.

But here was a box with dozens more.

Something small and sharp flickered in Raizen’s chest. He recognized it before it had time to grow - a spark of jealousy, quick and irrational, the kind that flares when you realize the thing you thought was yours isn’t as rare as you believed. He pressed it down before it could become something more.

He looked at the two lotuses in his palm. The gold centers. The faint purple at the edges. The weight of them - heavier than flowers should be, even sealed in resin.

"Eh, who am I to ask?" Raizen thought.

He closed his fingers around them gently.

"Thanks again, Enya" he said. "Really."

Enya had returned to her usual self - or maybe she’d never left. The quiet awareness from a moment ago was gone, replaced by the bright, sharp-edged energy that seemed to be her default setting.

She leaned forward on the counter, chin in her hands, and watched Raizen with the kind of look that meant something was about to leave her mouth that he wouldn’t enjoy.

"Oh, get out already!" she said. "You’re going to scare the customers away with that somber face!"

She waved her hand toward the door - a shooing motion, like she was chasing out a stray cat that had wandered in and overstayed.

Raizen turned for the door. He pushed it open with his shoulder, and the cool morning air rushed in - the drizzle, wet wood and the distant sounds of the market. He stepped onto the threshold.

Then he looked back over his shoulder.

"I’d prefer to scare them off than have to survive another minute of your teasing."

Enya’s mouth dropped open in mock outrage. The vendor - her grandfather - made a sound that might have been a laugh, quickly covered as a cough.

Raizen let the door close behind him.

He stood on the walkway for a moment. A few big drops of clear water landed on his coat and beaded on the treated fabric. The lotuses were still in his hand - he’d been holding them the whole time without realizing it. He looked down at them once more. Then he slipped them carefully into his chest pockets, one on each side, where the fabric was thickest and the padding would keep them safe.

Saffi and Kenzo were waiting right where he left them, leaning against the railing of the bridge. Saffi had her arms crossed. Kenzo was mid-stretch again - one arm pulled across his chest, elbow locked.

"Took you long enough" Saffi mumbled.

Raizen fell into step beside them without responding. They resumed walking on the wide platform, boots splashing lightly in the shallow puddles that had collected in the grooves of the wood. The rain was barely there now, a few more drops falling from leaves. The sun’s rays came through the canopy in long, angled shafts that turned the wet surfaces gold and made the reflections shimmer where light met moisture.

Vendors called to each other across the bridges. Children ran along the walkways, boots loud on the wood. Someone was cooking something with sugar and oil, and the smell drifted through the mist like an invitation.

It was hard to believe that twelve hours ago, Raizen had been hanging underneath a platform in the dark, listening to guards talk about a crate more valuable than their lives.

Kenzo popped his neck. Groaned with satisfaction. Then he glanced at Raizen with the casual ease of someone making conversation.

"Hey, Raizen – so I heard that some kind of festival is coming in a few days."

Raizen looked at him.

"Firefly festival, or something like that" Kenzo continued. "Apparently it’s a big deal here. The whole city lights up." He rolled his shoulder. "Problem is, it falls a bit later than our scheduled stay. We’d need to extend."

He said it like it was a minor logistics question. Almost like an afterthought.

"Want me to talk to Alteea? See if we can arrange to stay a bit longer?"

Saffi’s reaction was immediate. Her eyes brightened instantly. The controlled, analytical focus that usually occupied her face gave way to something open and unguarded.

"Yes!" she said, louder than she should have. "Please."

Raizen looked at her. It was the fastest he’d ever seen her agree to anything. The girl who questioned every plan, challenged every assumption, and never accepted a proposal without running it through three layers of analysis had just said "yes please" to staying in Ukai for a festival.

He thought about what Sang had mentioned back in the ballroom. The firefly festival - the way his eyes had lit up when he talked about it, the warmth in his voice. Like it was something that really mattered, something worth seeing.

"Sounds interesting" Raizen said. He kept his voice even. Measured. The carefully constructed tone of someone who didn’t want to sound like he cared too much. "I wouldn’t mind."

Kenzo glanced at him. A half-smile - the kind that meant "I see through you, but I’ll let it slide."

"I’ll talk to Alteea tonight then."

Saffi was already looking ahead, but the brightness hadn’t fully left her face. Raizen caught it in the way she walked - slightly faster than before, slightly lighter, like the promise of something good had subtracted a small amount of weight from her. It was strange, seeing that on her.

They kept on waking. The path narrowed as it left the market district and wound through a section of older trunks - massive things, their bark thick and ridged, moss growing in the crevices. The wooden platforms here were newer than the trees they were bolted to, and in a few places, the bolts had been swallowed by bark that had grown around them over the years. Ukai absorbing its own infrastructure, making it part of itself.

The Academy was right up ahead - Raizen could see its outline through the trees. The large central structure with its curved roofs and wide training platforms extending from either side. Student silhouettes were already moving around its base, heading to early sessions despite the rain.

Then the sound hit.

It split the morning air like a crack in glass - sharp, high, distorted. Not quite a scream and not quite a roar but something between the two, twisted and layered in a way that made the hairs on Raizen’s arms stand straight up. It came from ahead. From the direction of the Academy.

The vendors on the bridge stopped mid-sentence. A child froze on the walkway. Somewhere to the left, a stack of crates toppled as someone flinched.

The sound came again. Longer this time. It started high and dropped - a descending wail that warped at the edges, like the thing making it didn’t have the right kind of throat for the sound it was trying to produce.

"Another beast gone wild?" Raizen asked.

Kenzo didn’t answer immediately. His body had changed - the lazy stretching, the easy posture, the relaxed shoulders. All of it was gone. Replaced by something Raizen had only seen a few times. The version of Kenzo that existed beneath the jokes, the groans and the casual warmth. The veteran.

He was listening. Head tilted. Eyes fixed on the treeline ahead.

"No" he said. His voice was flat. "It sounds worse. That’s not a normal beast."

Suddenly, without saying another word, Kenzo broke into a run.

No warning. No instruction. Just the immediate, automatic response of a man who recognized a sound that other people didn’t, and knew what it meant and how dangerous it actually was.

His boots hit the wet wood hard. Fast. The sound echoed off the trunks.

Raizen and Saffi looked at each other.

The look lasted half a second. Not long enough for words, but long enough for the question and the answer.

Do we follow? Obviously.

They ran towards Ukai’s academy.

...And the distorted sound.