Chapter 11 Kaia
Kaia
By the time we step out of the diner, Harbor’s Edge has cooled into that late-night quiet that makes everything feel staged.
The fog is thicker now, rolling low along the curb like it’s trying to seep into every crack in the town. The lantern frames still hang overhead, skeletal and patient.
Blaire walks ahead of us toward the parked car with sheer managerial purpose. Mr. Bane trails a few steps behind her, briefcase in hand.
I keep my gaze forward.
I don’t look back.
If I look back, I’ll see Evie behind the counter. Cold. Professional. Calling me Ms. Rhee like she’s filing me under stranger. It hurts worse than yelling would have.
Blaire’s phone lights up and she lifts it to her ear automatically. Her whole posture tightens like a leash just snapped taut.
“Yes,” she says, voice low. “I hear you.”
A pause.
Her jaw clenches. “No, I understand what you want.”
Another pause, longer.
She exhales through her nose like she’s trying not to swear. “With respect, it’s not ‘routine’ when you’ve got splinters slipping out through screens and a civilian exposure on the record.”
Jules whispers loudly, “Ooooh, Blaire’s doing the ‘with respect.’ Someone’s in trouble. I hope it’s Devin!”
Mina elbows her, hissing, “Shh.”
Remy doesn’t look up, but I feel the way she’s listening with her whole body.
Blaire’s eyes flick back toward us without turning her head. “Yes. I’m aware it’s festival week. That’s why I’m saying—”
She cuts herself off mid-sentence, listening. Then her shoulders drop an inch, resignation settling in like a cloak.
“Fine,” she says. “We’ll do the sweep.”
She lowers the phone, stops by the car, and turns to face us, expression flat.
“You’re going on patrol,” she says.
Jules’ face lights up like it's Christmas. “Yay!”
Mina’s eyes widen. “Now?”
Remy’s voice is calm. “Council order?”
Blaire nods once. “Council order.”
She points at Jules first, because of course she does. “No shouting.”
Jules puts a hand over her heart. “I never shout.”
Blaire’s gaze slides to Mina. “Stay close.”
Mina nods quickly. “Okay.”
Her eyes land on Remy. “You’re my brain tonight. You feel something, you call it.”
Remy inclines her head.
Then Blaire looks at me. Her stare is a loaded gun.
“Kaia,” she says. “No freelancing.”
My jaw tightens. “Understood.”
Blaire gestures vaguely at the sleeping town. “Low-level sweep. Boardwalk first. Then main street. Then loop back. Don’t get seen by civvies. If you get seen, you smile and pretend you’re four exhausted tourists who can’t read signs.”
Jules beams. “Perfect. I can’t read signs.”
Blaire’s mouth twitches despite herself. “That’s the only believable part.”
Mr. Bane steps forward, calm as a diagnosis. “There is residual cluster frequency detected near the boardwalk. Minor but unstable.”
Mina swallows. “So it’s… close.”
“Testing,” Remy murmurs.
Blaire lifts a hand, palm down. “Okay. Here’s how this works.
I’m not babysitting you down every alley.
You’re going as a unit. Clear whatever you can, then meet us at the intersection of fourth and Bass.
” She jerks her chin toward Mr. Bane and the car.
“I’m taking him the other way to check the secondary trace.
Different street. We are not circling back to the diner. ”
Her eyes flick to me like she knows exactly where my mind just tried to go.
“You check. You clear. We regroup. In and out.”
Jules bounces on her heels. “Blaire. Babe. You trust us.”
Blaire stares at her. “I trust Remy.”
Remy doesn’t react.
Jules gasps, offended. “Wow.”
Blaire points again, sharp. “And if you sense anything bigger than a splinter, you retreat and call it. We are not having another diner situation.”
My stomach twists at the words.
I nod anyway. “Understood,” I repeat.
Blaire looks us each in the eye. “Good. Then go.”
So we go.
It’s late enough that Harbor’s Edge feels like it’s been put away for the night—shops dark, booths shuttered, the occasional straggler drifting home after a long day.
Outside of festival season, Harbor’s Edge doesn’t have much of a night life.
Just a few silhouettes in the distance and the hush of a town trying to settle.
The boardwalk is a long strip of wet wood disappearing into fog, lit in patches by streetlamps that turn the fog into floating halos. The ocean is invisible, but I can hear it breathing—low, patient, endless.
I inhale, and my chest tightens with something old. Lantern night memories try to crawl up my throat.
I shove them down hard.
“Stay on me,” I murmur, letting my voice drop into the cadence that makes the team align without thinking. “We keep it quiet. We keep it clean.”
Jules grins. “Captain Kaia is back.”
“Jules,” Mina whispers.
Jules mimes zipping her lips.
We walk. At first, it’s just fog and salt and the creak of boards underfoot. Then my skin prickles. It starts as a thin pressure in my ears, like altitude change. A faint hum in the air that doesn’t belong to wind or ocean.
Remy slows. “There,” she says softly.
Mina’s eyes widen. “I see it.”
Jules’ grin sharpens into something hungry. “Finally.”
Then I see it too. The air ahead shivers—heat distortion, light bending. A smear forms near the railing, stretching upward like ink pulled through water.
Not a full Chorus body.
A splinter that broke off.
It doesn’t have a face. It never does. But as it coalesces, the first notes leak into the air—tinny, warped, and sickeningly sweet.
Come back, come back—
Jules makes a gagging noise. “Ew. Tourism jingle demon. Again.”
Mina’s breath catches, but she steadies. “It’s trying to hook into us.”
But her eyes dart to me. I’m the only one that grew up on that jingle.
Remy’s eyes narrow. “It’s weak.”
Weak means we do this fast.
“Formation,” I murmur.
We don’t need to discuss. We’ve done this in arenas and backstage corridors and hotel hallways when the world thought we were just girls in glittery costumes.
Jules moves first, because she always does. She steps forward, and in the same motion, her hands flick outward as if she’s snapping open invisible fans.
Voltstep answers. Two short swords flash into existence, sparking with kinetic energy like they’re hungry for movement.
Jules grins. “Miss me?”
Mina draws next, more careful, more precise.
Her hand rises like she’s lifting an invisible ribbon, and the air condenses into her translucent sword, Heartglass.
Its blade catches the fog and splits it into prismatic fragments, reflection shimmering along its length like a mirror that tells the truth.
Remy’s draw is almost silent. Her fingers curl as if gripping a pen, and then the black blade appears—Inkthorn—script-etched, leaving faint glowing runes in the air as she shifts her wrist. Spellwork encoded in her grip, her breath, her focus.
Then me.
I reach, not upward now, but forward, like I’m grabbing the shape of a note before it escapes. Light blooms. Aurora forms in my hand.
To the splinter, we are four frequencies it can’t swallow without choking.
It lunges.
Mina shifts, Heartglass angled, not just to block, but to reveal. The splinter’s smear sharpens for a heartbeat in the blade’s reflection, its true edges showing like a secret dragged into light.
“There,” Mina breathes. “Thread is exposed.”
Remy slides in, Inkthorn carving a rune in the air with a flick, the glowing script that hooks into the splinter’s pattern like a snagged sweater.
The jingle stutters.
Jules is already moving, Voltstep charging with each step she takes. She darts in and out like a dancer hitting beats only she can hear, blades sparking brighter as her momentum feeds them.
“Sorry,” she chirps, and slashes.
The splinter recoils, pattern fraying.
I step into the center, Aurora humming. I don’t sing a lyric. I sing a note, low, controlled, weaponized. The sound becomes force as I bring my blade down.
It hits the splinter like a wall, compressing the smear into a tighter knot.
“Now, Remy,” I say.
Remy’s already moving. She strikes. Inkthorn slices through the tightened thread, severing the pattern cleanly.
The splinter collapses in on itself. Static. Then nothing.
Fog rushes into the empty space, reclaiming the air. Silence drops so fast my ears ring.
Jules lowers her blades, grinning like she just finished a dance break. “That’s it? That’s all you had? Embarrassing.”
Mina exhales shakily, then steadies. “It’s gone.”
Remy watches the air for a beat longer, then nods. “Clean.”
I dismiss Aurora with a flick of my wrist. Light folds in on itself, vanishing into nothing. The others do the same—swords gone, bodies relaxed, posture returning to “normal girls on a foggy boardwalk” in the blink of an eye.
Jules stretches her arms above her head. “Okay, patrol was fun. Can we go back and tell Blaire we did a crime?”
“We didn’t do a crime,” Mina scoffs.
Jules winks. “We did a righteous crime.”
Remy glances back toward town, eyes sharp. “We should move. Before anyone recognizes us.”
“Back to Blaire,” I agree.
We head off the boardwalk in a tight cluster, boots quiet on wet wood, hoodies up, faces angled down.
Just four women in fog.
Nothing to see here.
Except the way my throat still hums with the aftermath of that note, and the way, even after killing a splinter cleanly, my mind is already drifting back toward one place.
The diner.
Evie.
The person I can’t stop orbiting, no matter how hard I try to walk straight.
But more than that, I’m worried.
Not in the abstract, mission-report way. In the ugly, personal way. Because splinters don’t stop being hungry just because you destroy one. The other splinters will test. They circle. They come back to whatever felt easy.
And last night, Evie became easy. She’s marked by proximity, by exposure, by my own stupid attachment lighting her up in whatever language demons can taste.