Chapter 3
Chapter three
“We must be close,” Kazuma’s voice sounded behind her—dry, unhurried, and far too calm for someone being towed across a mountain.
Aimee started at the sound, looking down at the rocky path she’d been staring at for what felt like days.
Shale crunched beneath her boots as she finally looked up, blinking against the muted gray light.
The slope had been unrelenting for the last two hours, too steep to run, too narrow to fall out of step, and it had demanded every ounce of her attention.
“He speaks.” She looked over her shoulder. “Finally got the gag out, then?”
All she could see of Kazuma was the messy black topknot of his hair, bouncing with each tug of the makeshift sled.
Turning her face forward again, she slowed her steps. The dense, damp hush of the forest had been replaced by a cooler draft and the distant, rhythmic roar of water smashing against stone.
“Did you really think that wad of fabric had lasted this long?” His voice was clearer now, amused.
“No.” She adjusted the grip on the handholds. “I imagine it chose freedom the moment your annoying mouth stopped moving.”
Her eyes tracked the horizon, and there, barely visible through the rising mist, a spire breached the ridgeline. Its silhouette bled into the cliffs behind it, the same color as the rock, the same weatherworn texture. Nothing glinted. Nothing shone. But it was there, tall, silent, and watching.
“I wonder…” Laughter barked from behind her, followed by a wet cough. “Just what else that mouth of yours can do besides sling insults, Aimee.”
“In your dreams, pal,” she answered without missing a beat, ignoring the treacherous fluttering in her stomach.
He didn’t answer, and soon the path widened as they crested the rise. The wind shifted, and below, the mountain opened into an uneven hollow in the rock, ringed with jagged cliffs.
“Who says you haven’t already been there?” he said at last, barely audible.
“Huh?”
She stopped, staring now. Structures clung to the inner walls of the crevasse, carved into the stone in staggered layers, their curved roofs covered in lichen and tangled with vines.
Rope bridges stretched between crags, swaying over deep ravines.
The buildings looked less built than grown, as if the mountain had shaped them itself and simply let them stay.
She stared.
Wind cut through her damp hair with the scent of crushed ferns and cold stone, and for a single heartbeat, the world felt still, like something was watching.
Something old.
“Have we found it?” Kazuma’s voice broke the quiet, lower than usual, and faster, the syllables clipped like he hadn’t meant to speak them out loud.
She shielded her eyes with one hand, scanning the broken trail ahead. Faint movement caught her attention—shadows weaving between trees, too upright and steady to be animals.
“I’d say so.” She squinted. “And it looks like they’ve found us, too.”
She stepped to the side and swung the stretcher around until it faced forward. Then, without ceremony, she let it drop.
It hit hard, wood slapping the dirt with a dull thwap. Kazuma jolted, a quiet hiss jerking out of him as his shoulders stiffened.
Ignoring the man, Aimee reached for the bamboo tube she’d taken from him earlier, yanked out the stopper, and lifted it to her lips.
“Was that…entirely necessary?” Beside her, Kazuma strained, trying to lift his head enough to see.
She took another drink, letting the silence hang as she rolled the cool liquid across her tongue.
Then she adjusted her stance and lowered herself onto the ground beside him.
One hand brushed through the mist-damp grass for balance as she sank to her seat, crushing a mountain bloom beneath her heel while crossing one leg over the other. Only then did she glance his way.
“Why are you sitting?” Kazuma’s brow knit, the lines between his eyes deepening as he twisted his neck toward her. “We need to get to the village.”
Aimee closed her eyes, letting the sun warm her cheekbones.
“Whoever they are.” She screwed the cap back onto the shoot. “They clearly like their privacy.”
She reached behind her and drew both short swords from the veiled sheaths on her upper back, then set them carefully on the grass beside her. “We can’t look like a threat if we want them to invite us in and give you a healer.”
Kazuma snorted. “Have you seen yourself?” His shoulders pushed against constraints as he tried, and failed, to reposition himself. “Or me? We don’t exactly scream ‘friendly travelers.’”
“There is no we.” She bent over and loosened the ties across his arms and waist, just enough to relieve the tension.
“Much better.” Kazuma exhaled through his nose, sagging into the frame.
“Besides,” she added, wiping grass from her hands, “you’re tied down, poisoned, and bleeding out.”
“Fair.” His tongue flicked out—longer than it had any right to be, thick and sinuous as it licked the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
“And you?” His head turned just enough to eye the blades beside her. “Planning to impale yourself with one of those pretty gold swords before they arrive? Truly commit to the image of a harmless traveler?”
“No.” Aimee leaned back into the grass, arms braced behind her as she looked up at the clouds. “But unlike some people, I can be respectful.” A slow-moving drift overhead snagged her attention. “They’ll extend an invitation.”
They always did. When she was in the right place, they came.
She let the quiet sit a moment longer, watching as another cloud blew past the peak of the tower.
“So…what were you doing out here anyway?” she asked, her voice casual as her fingers lifted to count. One. Two. Three. “Chasing that monster of a snake?”
For once, Kazuma said nothing.
She reached seven, then eight. “Have it your way.” Her shoulders rose in a shrug as she kept counting, eyes flicking from one cloud to the next.
Thirteen.
“She’s not a monster.”
“Oh?” Aimee’s brows arched. Her eyes stayed fixed on the sky, but her fingers tensed in the grass, tugging at a blade until it broke away. “Oh!”
It’s none of your business. She swallowed, then turned her head, nose wrinkling.
“Well…” She’d seen stranger pairings when shifters were involved. And Kazuma…well. The way he moved. That tongue. “I see.”
“What?” The word snapped out of him.
His arms flexed against the bindings as he strained to turn his head toward her. The effort cost him, but he kept twisting until he could see her expression.
“What—no. Not like that.” Then his eyes widened. “Great elements, woman. What kind of…”
He blinked, brow furrowing deep as his mouth opened, closed again, and finally settled into a line that twitched at the corners.
“It was research. For the war.” He sounded almost offended. “The logistics would be…impossible.”
But his voice dipped slower on the last words, and his mouth stretched into a wide grin.
“Though I must say I’m intrigued by how you got there. Your mind must be absolutely…filthy.”
She didn’t answer, grin fading from her lips.
War.
She’d barely heard anything after that. The word rang through her like a struck bell, clear and cold.
“Tell me about this war.” Snake fucking and clouds forgotten.
Kazuma’s eyes narrowed as he studied her, searching, before turning toward the sky.
“Well…”
A pause.
“What’s there to tell?” He exhaled slowly. “Everyone knows the lull won’t hold. The Havens will be at each other’s throats again soon enough, sending their younglings to die for grievances no one remembers and advantages none of them understand.” His voice thinned at the end. Not quiet, just worn.
Aimee kept her face unmoving, but her thoughts moved fast.
Havens. That made it plural—probably political. Factions, maybe. She filed it away, just more pieces she didn’t have yet.
“Are you unaligned?” he asked. “You bear no Haven marker.”
He lifted one hand as far as the ropes allowed and grazed two fingers along the cuff of his sleeve, where a stylized flame was stitched in faded thread.
“You haven’t used Mana in the last two days. Not even on the climb. But you move like a shinobi.”
Mana. Another new rule in this world, probably magic-shaped. Something else she didn’t understand but needed to pretend she did.
“I’m not affiliated with any of the Havens.” Her voice didn’t waver.
Honest. And vague. Her specialty.
“A mercenary, then.”
“You could say that.” The corner of Aimee’s mouth twitched.
“Well.” Kazuma glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “I assume, like myself, you weren’t wandering about these mountains looking for a giant snake to screw? Unless…”
“Oh, for shit’s sake.” She shoved him hard in the shoulder.
Gasping, his body jerked against the ropes.
“No, Kazuma. I am not here to fuck snakes.” She eased forward, casting a long shadow over him.
“Gods…” Kazuma sank back against the stretcher, squeezing his eyes shut. “I could die at any moment, and here you are…”
When they opened again, they found hers.
And something shifted.
Pressure pulsed at the base of her throat, a hush inside her skull—as if everything else, even the sound of the wind, had stepped aside.
She didn’t blink.
Neither did he.
His expression wasn’t guarded or searching. Just…still, like he saw something he recognized without understanding why.
The space between them stretched thin, and for one long, impossible second, the world paused.
“Then why?” His throat bobbed. “Why were you here?”
“I go…” She looked away. “Where the Pattern takes me.”
“Exasperatingly vague.” Kazuma shook his head. “You’re either a shinobi speaking in riddles, insane, or halfway through a very underwhelming haiku.”
Aimee opened her mouth to respond but was cut short.
Voices.
The tread of boots over grass. A murmured command. Then another.
She faced the ridge just below them, where the trail wound out of sight, resting her hands palm up on her thighs.
They weren’t alone anymore.