The wagon’s wheels creaked as they rolled it back onto the half-frozen dirt road. To their surprise, it was intact—untouched by the chaos of scarecrows. Only faint ruts in the snow and cracked barrels that had just shaken the countryside.

  Still, none of them relaxed. Kana’s eyes scanned the treeline, every heartbeat pressed with the memory of scarecrows tearing themselves back together, stitched by foreign mana. Boris kept his spear beside him.

  Suri, though, sat as if nothing at all had happened. Staff across her knees, legs dangling lazily from the wagon bed. She leaned back, red hair spilling like fire over her shoulders, eyes lidded in an almost playful calm.

  But when she lifted her staff, Kana noticed the faint shimmer as Suri spread her senses outward, probing the land for remnants of mana. Whatever had animated those things, it was gone now.

  “Clean,” Suri said softly. “Not a trace left.”

  Kana exhaled through her nose and signaled to Boris. He gave a grunt and moved out, circling. They found only the road—empty but for a few travelers in the distance, moving in quiet clusters toward the graveyard.

  Once they returned, Kana broke the silence. “How did you end up choosing that skill, Suri? [Disrupt Senses], you called it?”

  Suri’s lips quirked. “Mm. Like I said before, the list looked… different. Not what I’d seen before. The bottom-most entry is different. So I chose it.”

  Kana frowned. “That’s… a strange way to choose.”

  “Strange, but it helped me defeat the smiling man,” Suri said, sing-song, brushing frost off her sleeve. “Besides, don’t you get bored picking the safe options every time?”

  Kana didn’t answer.

  Boris shifted, his tone gruff but curious. “So what does it do, exactly?”

  “I’ll try it on you later.” Suri’s grin widened, a spark of mischief slipping through the frost of her usual mask. “Hard to explain. Better to feel it.”

  Boris stiffened. “Feel it? It’s not going to… kill me, is it?”

  Suri tilted her head. “Perhaps.” Her grin lingered, sharp, before softening into a playful lilt. “Depends how much you annoy me.”

  Boris muttered something under his breath.

  Kana and Suri both swayed their heads at him in unison, like disappointed teachers correcting a slow pupil.

  After a moment, Boris cleared his throat. “And the smiling man? What happened to him?”

  For just a beat, silence. Then Suri shrugged, looking down the road as if the question were little more than an idle curiosity. “Ah. Not sure. Last I saw him, he was in the river. Drowning.”

  Boris blinked. “That far? You fought him at the riverside?”

  Suri nodded absently, twirling her staff between two fingers. “If he knows how to swim, maybe he’s still alive. If not…”

  Kana cut in, tone sharper. “Even if he could swim, your [Disrupt Senses]... Drowning while your senses turn against you? He’d be gone for good.”

  Something flickered behind Suri’s smile. Forced. But she held it anyway. “Perhaps.”

  Boris grunted. “Still. That’s quite the distance.”

  Kana reached into her [Inventory] and withdrew a folded scroll, its paper worn, edges fraying. “He used one of these. Same scroll type. I’ve seen them before in guild stockpiles, but no one in the guild could explain how to set the destination. Even their receptionists were not sure.”

  “Right,” Suri said, her tone thoughtful now, less playful. “Not random. He was facing me directly when we suddenly appeared. He must know how to use it.”

  Boris leaned back in the driver’s seat, the wagon creaking under his weight. “Then maybe he’s still alive. If so, we might ask him. Or whoever sent those scarecrows.”

  Suri’s grip tightened slightly on her staff. Her smile returned—but thinner, sharper. “I don’t think we’ll see him again.”

  Kana caught the falseness in her tone. She let it pass—for now.

  “Then we’ll need another way to track who’s behind this,” Boris said. “What about that guy—Pit? The tracker from the guild?”

  Suri’s eyes narrowed immediately. “Do you want us exposed? He was sniffing around for us. Remember?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Then blackmail him,” Boris said with a shrug. “You two are strangely good at that.”

  Suri didn’t laugh. Didn’t giggle this time. Just looked out at the road, eyes flat again, voice low. “That… sometimes works.”

  ….

  The wagon rumbled to a stop.

  The orphanage looked… different. Where once it had been little more than a worn-down house with patched walls and crooked fences, now a tower stood near the entrance. Not tall—barely two stories—but its silhouette cut against the gray winter sky like a watchful eye. Around the property stretched a wall of sharpened logs, taller than a grown man. Primitive but effective. It reminded Kana of Saltrain Village, with its desperate defenses raised against wild beasts.

  “Fortifications,” Boris muttered under his breath. His hand lingered near his spear. “That’s new.”

  “More than new,” Kana said softly. Her eyes swept across the entrance. A lone figure worked there—a man with long, slick brown hair, draped in a cloak of pure white. He knelt in the snow, tracing deliberate symbols across the frozen earth with a stick of unknown metal or stone. Each line glowed faintly before fading, as though refusing to let the world forget it had been drawn.

  Kana felt it immediately. His aura. A pressure that wasn’t oppressive, but heavy in another way. Familiar, too. Divine. Like Elle York.

  “Who’s that?” Kana whispered, slowing her pace.

  Before Boris or Suri could answer, the sound of a bell broke through the cold.

  Ring! Ring!

  She looked up. A figure waved from the top of the tower—Aldo. His broad grin hadn’t changed. Relief bloomed in Kana’s chest at the sight of him. She raised her hand in return, and the trio waved together. The small gate creaked open, snow scattering as children poured through like floodwater.

  “Sis Kana!”

  The first boy—the boy, the reason Kana had started all of this—was at the front. Clean now, wearing thick shirts that hung slightly too big on his frame, a heavy towel draped about his neck. He looked… different. There was no sign now that the boy came from the Slum district.

  Kana dropped to one knee and patted his head. The boy pressed into her hand, smiling.

  Other children swarmed around them. Two barreled straight at Suri, tugging at her cloak. She only half-smiled, allowing them to cling to her while her eyes roamed the walls, cataloging every angle, every height. Others scrambled up Boris’s back with gleeful shrieks. He groaned under the weight but didn’t shake them off, trudging forward as though resigned to being a climbing post.

  “Careful!” he rumbled, though a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  From the doorway came Shar and Lily.

  Kana glanced back once, at the man in white. He hadn’t lifted his head, hadn’t greeted them or introduced himself.

  The chief emerged then, bundled in thick furs. His smile cracked lines into his weathered face. He followed Kana’s gaze and nodded knowingly.

  “That one’s from the Church that you hired through the adventurer’s guild,” the chief said. “Name’s Monde. He told us the process takes almost a week, he said. Should be finished by tomorrow.”

  “He doesn’t like to talk while working,” the chief added. “But he’s a likeable man. You’ll see.”

  Kana wasn’t sure. His aura pulled at her instincts like a stone, steady yet holy.

  The chief clapped his hands together, rubbing at his arms. “Now, enough gawking. Let’s get you inside. Winter in the capital’s trying to kill me.”

  Kana let herself be pulled along with the others, but her eyes lingered one last time on Monde. White cloak bright against the snow, hair gleaming like polished wood, his rod worked like a chalk scratching sigils no one else could decipher.

  …..

  “What?” Lily’s voice cut sharper than the cold outside. “You want me to teach them how to read and write? At their age?”

  The living room of the orphanage hummed with chaos. Children darted between benches and shelves, chasing each other in improvised games of hide and seek. Their laughter echoed against the timber walls, colliding with the thuds of small feet.

  Boris, for some reasons, had joined them. A half-dozen children clung to his arms and legs, dragging him across the floor as though he were some kind of oversized beast in need of taming. His booming laugh joined theirs.

  Suri, on the other hand, was wedged in the corner, chewing contentedly on something she’d scavenged—flatbread? Jerky? Maybe both. Her cheeks puffed as she munched, eyes only half-focused on the conversation, as though her mind hadn’t yet left the battlefield.

  Kana sat straighter, her gaze steady on her mother. “Yes. Reading. Writing.”

  Lily pinched the bridge of her nose, shaking her head. “You must be thinking every child is like you. But not all are. Boris and Suri barely pass. Some don’t have the patience. Some don’t have the mind for letters. I can teach those who can keep up, but—”

  “No.” Kana’s voice was sharper this time. She swayed her head, “This is the best time. Just the basics—enough for them to recognize words, to string sentences together. You’ll be surprised what a few months can do.”

  Her mother studied her.

  Kana forced a smile. She couldn’t explain it, not fully. The conviction had struck her like instinct, raw and absolute. She knew the children could do it—every single one of them. That the difficulties adults warned of weren’t walls, but simply illusions. That given the chance, the children would run through them as easily as they chased each other across the floor now.

  But why did she know that?

  The thought unsettled her. It wasn’t logic, it wasn't training. It was deeper. Something else speaking through her. Like the pasta she made last time. Like how she understood the language of the so-called the text of god.

  She sighed softly, pushing the doubt down.

  Lily finally relented with a grunt. “Alright. It’s part of the contract, after all. I’ll teach them. But I won’t promise miracles.”

  Before Kana could answer, a scent wound its way through the room. Rich. Savory. Warm enough to cut through the draft seeping in from the walls.

  Every child froze mid-motion, nostrils flaring like hounds catching a trail. Then, as one, they bolted toward the dining room, laughter and shouting colliding in their rush.

  “Lunch is ready!” Shar’s voice rang out from the kitchen.

  Suri nearly leapt from her seat, crumbs scattering from her lap. “Finally!” she declared, bolting after the children with startling speed for someone who had just eaten snacks.