CHAPTER 128: WARMEST NIGHT

Obi’s smile turned kind for a rare second. "That’s fair" he said. "And also disqualifying, because it means we have to ask the worst person near the last."

Everyone looked at Raizen.

The part of him that can give orders and not mind leaned forward automatically. The part of him that had watched a light go out and had been late stacked sandbags against his ribs and hoped the flood would be polite.

His parents’ faces are never clear in his head. They come like warmth and then like smoke. Takeshi is too clear. He had learned to look at it and not fracture. It still steals air.

He could have said a football field of things. He picked the smallest sentence that wouldn’t lie.

"I wanted revenge" he said. The fire popped. No one flinched. "And then I got someone else killed because I wanted it."

The circle adjusted itself around the weight of that with casual grace. Someone shifted a mug. Someone poked the fire. Hikari’s hand stilled on her cup.

"I don’t want that anymore" he said. "I want to keep everyone safe. That’s... enough for me."

Obi couldn’t help himself. "That’s it? No dramatic vow?"

"Yeah, we’ve heard that one" Esen said, smirking, trying to put the world back on two feet.

Raizen let his mouth lift. "Guess I’ll need a better speechwriter."

He glanced sideways. Hikari’s eyes were on him, steady and blue, the kind of looking that doesn’t ask for anything back. He looked away before he did something dumb like become honest on purpose.

Keahi had listened to all of it without changing the speed of her whetstone. Now she paused and wiped the blade with a cloth the color of patience.

"Your turn" Feris said. "What drives the quiet one with the famous sword?"

Keahi set the blade across her knees, and for a moment it looked like the fire belonged to it, not the other way around.

"My family hunts Nyxes" she said. "Always has. Very far east from here. Different rules. Fewer people. More land." She watched the blade and not them. "They aren’t... dramatic about it. It’s a job you do well, or it kills you. You don’t take pictures."

Obi leaned in, conspiratorial. "So why Neoshima?"

"Better teachers" she said simply. "And... I wanted to see what danger looks like up-close."

Esen lifted his mug. "It looks like me."

Keahi ignored that efficiently. "But the danger there has been... Inactive. The lines hold. Less movement. My parents call it a blessing."

She hesitated, which for Keahi might as well have been an opera.

"I heard a myth" she said, so plain it made the fire quiet. "A small island off the southern edge. People go and don’t come back. They say that not even signals return. They say it feels... wrong. As if the world forgot a rule."

The fire cracked like an old book opening.

"Do you believe it?" Hikari asked.

"Nah, not yet." Keahi said. "And if I ever do, I’ll pretend I don’t."

Obi - because Obi is gravity for trouble - couldn’t leave it in peace. "What if it’s a Nyx that thinks it’s an island?"

"Or an island that thinks it’s a Nyx" Esen offered, excited to be useful.

"You two are banned from geography" Feris ruled.

"Joke’s on you" Obi said. "I failed geography twice."

"You failed school" Arashi said.

"Not that bad... But hey, I never failed metallurgy!" Obi let out a laugh.

The heaviness that had considered staying packed its bag and left. Someone threw another stick on. Sparks lifted and arranged themselves into a temporary constellation no one recognized. The ring tightened a little; shoulders bumped without asking permission.

"Alright" Raizen said eventually. "We survived the illusions. We survived skiing. We survived Obi’s questions. We don’t need to tempt fate by becoming poets."

"You’re just afraid I’ll ask about your first crush" Obi said.

"I will bury you in snow" Raizen said politely.

"I accept this fate" Obi said, not moving.

Stories got smaller and sillier after that, in the way they do when the big ones have been told. Arashi tried to teach Toma (that listened to everything, not being able to sleep) to whistle with two fingers. Toma proved he could already do it so loudly Obi fell over. Esen did an impression of Kori that made Keahi almost smile, which they logged as a national holiday. Feris explained, at length, why levitating should count as a disability when chores were assigned.

Hikari tucked her notebook away entirely and leaned back against the crate shoulder-to-shoulder with Raizen for exactly three breaths while passing him a cup. He did not move. Not because he froze, because not moving felt like moving in a direction he could live with.

Alteea pinged them once, not to scold this time, but to be counted among the living.

"You sound alive" she said. If anyone suggested she’d left her mic on to listen to the laughter, she would have denied it under oath. "No new spikes. The mountain is either sleeping or pretending. Both acceptable."

Kori slid onto the line with her version of approval: "Good. Keep doing nothing. I’ll know if you do something."

"Yes, ma’am" Obi said. "I will not romance the ridge."

Sometime after second cups and before someone told a story about a Warden who had mistaken a bush for a Nyx hit it, the clouds above them thinned into suggestion. The moon’s glow sneaked through, only visible if you stared hard enough.

Raizen let the sound of the fire replace all the other sounds that like to rent space in his head. There were no voices imitating him. No hum under the breath. Just the practical music of wood becoming heat.

"Alright" he said again, softer. "We close this before someone tempts the weather."

Obi made finger guns at the sky. "Don’t you dare, weather."

They stood the way people stand when they don’t want to admit they were warm and want to keep being so. The circle opened. Boots scuffed. The fire settled to a low song, enough to keep watch without needing a story.

"Hey" Toma called from the edge of the light as he and his father passed by, heading for their own small circle of sleep. "Thanks for letting us watch you be terrible at skiing."

"You’re welcome" Esen said. "We’re professionals."

Toma pointed at Lynea’s sleeve. "Keep that" he said, and meant the handkerchief.

She tapped the pocket with two fingers. "I will. Thanks." she replied.

They drifted into their tents with the particular exhaustion that only laughter brings. Feris, drifted sideways and declared: "If I wake up under the bed, leave me there." Keahi set her claymore within reach and lay down with both hands folded as if she were keeping the quiet honest. Ichiro banked the fire like he was tucking in a child. Hikari curled on her side and watched her breath fog the air and then disappear as if being alive were the oldest trick she knew.

Raizen waited a moment at the edge of the light and did not step over it. He wasn’t afraid. He was letting the night have the last word if it wanted it.

It didn’t. The mountain held the silence like a bowl. Somewhere behind a face of stone, a room full of Luminite had decided to be bright in color and quiet in voice. It was hard not to read that as mercy.

The lamps hummed. The generator complained and was forgiven. The fire clicked the way fires do when they are remembering wood. The night held.

Laughter stayed in the cold air longer than it had any right to and then went to sleep with the rest of them. It was... The warmest night in a long, long time.