Chương 96: Old Names for Old Hunger

Dororo found it on the fourth night, buried in a cross-reference between his own fifty-year-old fragments of memory and a manuscript Rethven had finally located deep in Blood Moon Sect's oldest archive — a text neither sect had thought to properly compare against the other until now.

"I have a name," he said, gathering us into the archive well past the hour he'd usually have sent everyone to bed.

"Not a full explanation. But a name, and a name is considerably more than we had yesterday." He spread the manuscript's translated pages across the table, ink faded nearly past legibility in places, Rethven's own scholars having worked through the night to render what remained into something readable.

"The old texts call them the Unmoored," Dororo said.

"Beings that exist, as best I can piece together, in whatever space actually separates worlds from each other — not demons, not spirits, not anything native to Chronos or Apros or any world with a proper name of its own. They're drawn to fractures. To shatterings. To exactly the kind of scattered, incomplete fragments Kromitos represents." He looked up, something grim settling into his expression.

"The text is careful never to explain what they actually want with what they find. Only that once they begin hunting a particular fragment, they rarely stop until they've either claimed it, or been driven off by something considerably more powerful than a scouting party willing to hold still and hope." [STATUS — Len Fan] Cultivation: Heaven-Reaching Realm, Sixth Leaf Synchronization: 51.

40% Avatar (Kromitos): Heaven-Reaching Realm, First Leaf — hums almost continuously now, low and wary, since the tree-line encounter Kromitos pulsed hard at the word itself, the guardian's presence arriving so sharply I nearly lost my footing standing at the table.

"Unmoored," it repeated, something old and pained coloring the single word.

"Yes. That is the correct name, or close enough to it that I recognize the shape immediately. I have not spoken that word aloud, even to myself, in longer than I can properly measure. I had hoped, foolishly perhaps, that I would never need to again."

"You know them," I said, more statement than question.

"I have lost pieces of myself to them before," the guardian admitted, quieter now, something raw beneath its usual ancient composure.

"Long ago. Before you, before your bloodline, before most of what your kind would recognize as history at all. I do not know why one has crossed into Chronos now, hunting along this particular network, at this particular moment. But I do not believe it is coincidence, and I do not believe it will be satisfied with anything less than exactly what it came here searching for."

"Can it be stopped?" Ellia asked, once I'd relayed enough of the exchange for the room to properly absorb it.

"Driven off, the way the text mentioned?"

"Yes," the guardian said.

"Though 'considerably more powerful than a scouting party' is not encouraging phrasing, and I will not pretend otherwise to comfort any of you. It requires either overwhelming force, which none of us currently possess, or — and this is the part I suspect matters considerably more — understanding exactly what it wants clearly enough to either deny it or negotiate around it. The Unmoored are not mindless. They hunt with purpose. Purpose can sometimes be reasoned with, where raw strength alone cannot."

"Has anyone ever actually negotiated with one?" I asked.

"Successfully, I mean."

"Once, that I know of," the guardian said, something distant and careful in the admission.

"Long before your time, in a fragment of my own memory I do not often revisit. It cost the one who attempted it considerably more than they expected to pay, even in success. I tell you that not to frighten you further, but because I think you deserve honesty over comfort, given everything else you have already earned the right to hear plainly from me." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Rethven, who had been quiet through most of the exchange, finally spoke.

"Whatever it costs," he said, "I don't believe any of the three sects standing here tonight intend to let this creature simply take what it wants unopposed. Blood Moon's resources remain fully committed, regardless of what the manuscript ultimately reveals about the price."

"Nightsky as well," Kalio said immediately.

"And Chronos," Dororo added, something quietly fierce beneath his usual measured calm.

"For whatever that alliance is worth against something this old. I suspect, given tonight's revelation, it's about to be tested considerably sooner than any of us hoped." Dororo was already turning that over carefully, his exhaustion visibly warring with the sharp, focused energy of a genuine breakthrough.

"Then our priority shifts," he said.

"Not simply tracking its movements. Understanding its purpose. If the manuscript offers any further detail on what these things actually do with fragments once they've claimed one, I intend to find it, however long it takes to translate properly."

"And if you can't find an answer before it finishes searching the network?" Kalio asked, the question landing heavier than he'd clearly intended. Nobody had a ready answer for that. The silence stretched long enough that Serel finally broke it, quiet and careful.

"Perhaps not an answer tonight," she said.

"But a plan, at least. Sect Master Rethven will want the manuscript's remaining pages translated as quickly as our scholars can manage it. I'll return with whatever we uncover the moment it's ready, day or night."

"Chronos will do the same with anything our own archive turns up," Dororo said.

"I'd rather three sets of eyes moved through this urgently than one set moving carefully. We no longer have the luxury of carefully, I think." I found the guardian again that night, alone in the training yard, needing more than the fragments of urgency it had offered in front of the others.

"You lost pieces of yourself to these things before," I said, not quite a question.

"What happened to them? The pieces it took?" A long silence followed, heavier than any pause the guardian had offered me before.

"I do not know," it finally admitted.

"That is the honest, uncomfortable truth of it, child. I have never recovered a fragment once an Unmoored claimed it. I do not know if they are destroyed, or transformed, or simply carried somewhere I have never managed to follow. I have spent longer than your entire bloodline's existence not knowing, and I have made a kind of uneasy peace with that ignorance over the centuries." Something shifted in its tone, quieter, more resolved.

"I am not at peace with it tonight. Not with Kromitos this close to one of them. I would ask, again, that you trust the growth I asked of you back at the very beginning of all this. I believe it is about to matter more than either of us expected it to, this soon."

I stood there a long while after it withdrew, Ember pressed silent and watchful against my collar, Kromitos humming low and unbroken beneath my ribs, and understood, watching the stars settle properly over Baskerville's quiet grounds, that whatever training I'd done across two years of steadily escalating danger, none of it had ever carried quite this particular weight before — not simply fighting to survive, but fighting, for the first time, to keep something ancient and fractured and quietly, desperately hoping from losing one more piece of itself to a hunger it had never once managed to properly understand.

Dororo found me there eventually, a fresh cup of tea in each hand, offering me one without a word before settling onto the low wall beside me.

"You should be resting," he said, though there was no real reprimand in it.

"So should you," I pointed out.

"You've barely slept in four days."

"Old men sleep less than young ones," he said, a familiar deflection worn smooth from repetition.

"Or perhaps I simply find sleep less appealing than useful work, most nights." He studied me a moment, something gentler than his usual measured composure surfacing.

"You're carrying this heavily, child. More heavily than I think you're letting the others see."

"I keep thinking about what the guardian said," I admitted.

"That it's never recovered a fragment once one of these things claimed it. That's not just a threat to me. That's a threat to something that's trusted me with more honesty than it's apparently shown anyone in longer than I can properly imagine."

"Then let that be your reason to grow faster, rather than your reason to despair," Dororo said.

"You've never once let a hard truth stop you before. I don't expect this one to be the exception, whatever it ends up costing either of us to face properly." He set a hand briefly on my shoulder, steady and certain.

"Finish your tea. Then sleep, properly, this time. Tomorrow's training will need you rested, whatever else tonight's news has left unsettled in you." I did as he asked, eventually, though sleep came slower than I would have liked, Kromitos's low, watchful hum accompanying every uneasy hour of it, right up until exhaustion finally, mercifully won out over everything the night had asked me to carry.