Kaiden Grey left the Moon-Thread estate for Hozumi at first light, the morning after Sonoda brought its file to dinner.
He rode out of Tokyo with a full well of mana and a stance he could point, more or less.
The hip worked too. Alexandra had spent the evening after dinner with both palms over the seared hole, pouring her gold into it until the last of Kawanami closed under her hands.
Hozumi was a hill town two hours north, with a single street of shops along the river at the bottom of its mountain.
Six broad rice terraces climbed behind the town, each one a flooded paddy held up by a stone retaining wall. A wide service stair divided them down the middle and ran from the road below the first terrace to the violet gate burning above the sixth.
The Circle's cordon stood at the foot of that stair. The first two paddies remained clear. At the retaining wall below the third, irrigation water turned violet, rice stalks blackened, and the cedar trees above bent uphill toward the gate.
