For a long moment, none of them spoke.
They'd made it out of the ruin and into the trees, but the hush still clung to them like dust. Evening light sifted through the canopy and broke on the bundle in Kenji's arms. Inside, something glowed—soft, steady, green.
"The Rhinomega is… gone," Aiko said, as if saying it might convince the world to agree.
"Not gone," Kenji answered quietly. "Returned."
Pulsebun set his paws on his hips, trying for bravado and not quite making it. "Returned as what? Breakfast?"
Kenji peeled the cloth back just enough for the light to paint their faces. An egg, smooth as glass, rested within. Not stone. Not shell. It breathed light the way a pond breathes fog at dawn.
"The cycle," Kenji murmured, more to himself than to them. "There are theories—old ones—that V-Monsters reinitialize after death. That their essence condenses and… starts over."
Pulsebun whistled low. "Reinitialize. Nice word. Still terrifying."
Aiko leaned closer despite herself. Warmth touched her skin without touching her, a hum under the hum of the forest. It reminded her of the circle's light and of the whisper that had crawled through her mind. Identity verified. Access granted. Now something inside the egg pulsed as if answering the same call.
"What happens next?" she asked.
Kenji adjusted his glasses with a hand that finally stopped shaking. "In the accounts I've seen—scattered references, nothing conclusive—an egg like this is nurtured, protected. If conditions are right, it hatches. The form it takes may echo the previous one, or… it may not."
"So we keep it warm and hope it doesn't come out angry," Pulsebun said. "Good plan."
"We should inform the Guild," Kenji added, because of course he did.
Pulsebun's ears flattened. "And watch them lock it in a vault? Or take it apart while writing a very long, very boring report?"
"They might protect it," Kenji countered, but his voice lacked momentum even as he said it. The egg's light had caught in his lenses, turning his eyes green. It was hard to argue with a heartbeat.
Aiko tightened the cloth again, nesting the egg more securely. The decision she wanted—go home, bake bread, pretend this was a story—didn't exist anymore. The ruin's whisper still echoed somewhere behind her ribs.
"Let's get off the path," she said. "We can't stand here arguing until dark."
They found a small clearing under a cedar the forest had decided to spare from climbing vines. Pulsebun cleared leaves with dramatic efficiency, then collapsed on them with less efficiency, suddenly and deeply tired. Kenji knelt and set the egg on his folded coat. He took out his notebook, the small one with pages that began to fray at the corners, and started to write.
"Observation," he muttered as his pencil moved. "Machine-type V-Monster—Rhinomega—disintegrated post-defeat into luminous particulate. Particles coalesced into oviform structure. Continuous low-frequency pulse. Heat… warm to the touch without radiative discomfort."
"Translation," Pulsebun said without opening his eyes. "It's glowing and cuddly."
Aiko sat cross-legged, hands around her knees. The green light seemed to slow the air and calm the clearing. "Does it… remember?" she asked. "What it was?"
Kenji paused. "If memory is data, and data can be carried, then maybe some echo persists. But identity might not. Or it might. We don't know."
Pulsebun cracked an eye. "That was a whole lot of yes, no, and maybe for one sentence."
"Welcome to research," Kenji said.
Aiko reached out and let her fingertips hover a hair's breadth above the egg. The not-quite-warmth reached for her again. Something—pattern, rhythm, nothing like words—touched the edges of her thoughts and receded before she could chase it. If the ruin had looked at her and seen a key, the egg looked at her and saw… a doorframe. A place to rest. A promise.
She pulled her hand back. "If we tell the Guild, we lose any choice we have. If we hide it, we're lying to people who are supposed to protect everyone."
Pulsebun sat up, ears angled. "We're people too. And we were there. That counts."
Kenji's pencil stilled. He looked from Aiko to the egg and then to the trees that were already thinking about night. "There's a middle path. We secure it for the night. No announcements. Tomorrow I speak to someone I trust at the outpost, off the record. We decide after that."
Aiko considered. It wasn't the safety of a clean answer, but it was a handrail. "All right," she said. "Tonight we keep it safe."
They walked back toward Kyoten as the sky leaned from gold to blue. Birdsong thinned. The first evening lamps in the village would be lighting, the paper lanterns pulling tiny islands of color into the dusk. Aiko thought of her father checking the ovens, of the way the bakery door stuck if you pulled instead of pushed. She thought of the egg in Kenji's arms, a piece of something ancient that had found them and asked a question by simply existing.
At the edge of the trees, they stopped and listened for voices. None. Kenji adjusted his hold and they ghosted along the quieter lanes, avoiding the square. Pulsebun trotted ahead, scanning corners like a guard with a badge that read Very Official and Totally Qualified.
The outpost door yielded to Kenji's key with a soft click. Inside, the library smell rose—paper, ink, wood, the faint ghost of tea. He cleared a space on a low table and spread folded blankets in a shallow nest. Aiko set a kettle to heat without thinking. Habit filled the parts of a person that fear left empty.
The egg went into the nest. Its glow steadied and then softened, like a lantern hooded for the night.
Kenji wrote again, slower now, as if every letter should count. On the page, he underlined a phrase twice before closing the notebook: Digital rebirth. Re:Alive.
Pulsebun leaned his chin on the table edge. "What if it hatches and comes out swinging?"
"Then we don't stand in front of the swinging," Kenji said. "We show it calm. Food if it eats. Silence if it doesn't. We let it decide what we are."
"You make it sound easy."
"It isn't," Kenji said. "It's just the only way I can see that isn't wrong."
Aiko poured hot water over leaves and watched steam bloom. The sound was home. She carried three cups back and set them down. "We should take turns. One of us stays awake."
"I'll go first," Pulsebun said instantly. "Electricity pairs well with insomnia."
Kenji didn't argue. He set his cup aside and drifted to the shelves to pull reference volumes that might, maybe, mention anything like this. Aiko crouched by the egg. The green reflected in her eyes made her look like someone else—someone the ruin might recognize even in the dark.
"Hi," she whispered, feeling ridiculous and not caring. "You scared me. But thank you for not hurting us."
The egg pulsed, a fraction brighter. Aiko felt the hum touch the inside of her wrist like a cat brushing by.
"See?" Pulsebun said, trying to sound casual and missing by a mile. "It likes you."
Aiko smiled, small and true. "I don't know what it likes. But it's here."
Later, when the outpost had settled into the sort of quiet that only old wood can make, when Kenji slept sitting up with one hand still on his notebook and Pulsebun sat guard pretending his eyes weren't drooping, Aiko woke to a change she couldn't name. The room felt closer. The light had shifted.
She turned.
Hairline patterns had appeared under the egg's surface—faint circuits of pale gold threading the green, like frost on a winter window. The rhythm had changed too. Not faster. Deeper. Each pulse felt less like a heartbeat now and more like a thought taking shape.
"Kenji," she whispered.
He surfaced from sleep at once, because his mind never truly stopped. Pulsebun snapped awake with a quiet yelp and immediately claimed he had not been asleep.
Kenji leaned in. "It's stabilizing," he said after a breath. "Or evolving."
"Becoming," Aiko said.
They watched until the lines dimmed again, until the pulse returned to soft and steady. The kettle had gone cold. The moon had climbed past the window and left. Outside, the village slept and did not know that something impossible was learning how to exist on a table two streets from the square.
"We can't keep this secret for long," Kenji said finally. "Even if we wanted to."
"We don't have long," Pulsebun said. "Look at it. It's doing that thing where it looks like it's thinking. Eggs shouldn't think. That's a hatching face."
Aiko didn't laugh. She couldn't. The fear from the ruin hadn't left her, but it had changed shape. It felt less like falling and more like standing on a dock while a boat noses in, ropes and cleats and hands reaching. You could step on, or you could watch it leave. Either way, the water wouldn't be the same after.
"Tomorrow," she said. "We decide tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," Kenji echoed.
Pulsebun nodded, ears relaxing. "Tomorrow."
The egg pulsed once, as if acknowledging the appointment.
And somewhere beyond the village, in a place of rust and lines and sleeping light, the old world turned in its dreams and listened for its name.