The hunt became a labyrinthine ballet, a silent chase through the stone veins of the monastery where the quarry seemed to be in many places at once.
Emily and Souta found their path leading to the Scriptorium. The air was alive with the soft thrum of data crystals. As they entered, a flicker of movement caught Emily's eye. There, between two shimmering waterfalls of light, stood Ember. But she was… different. Her form seemed to blend with the projected scripts, her pink hair catching the gold and blue hues, making her look like a glitch in the monastery's visual symphony. She held a finger to her lips, her mismatched eyes wide and knowing, then turned and skipped through a solid wall of light, vanishing. Where she had stood, the holographic scripts swirled into a new, temporary pattern—a perfect, spiraling galaxy that hadn't been there a moment before.
"She is not just leading us," Emily whispered, her storm-grey eyes tracing the fading starlight. "She is… conversing with this place. Showing it something."
Souta's brow was furrowed. "Or it is showing her. That glyph she appeared within… it translates to 'forgotten song'." He pointed to the now-fading spiral. "And that… is a map. She is being given directions."
Luke, Kuro, and Daniel pursued the sound of giggling into the deep service tunnels. The scent of grease and ozone was stronger here. They rounded a corner to see Ember's legs, from the knees down, disappearing into an open ventilation shaft far too small for a normal person.
"Hey! Get out of there!" Daniel barked.
A giggle echoed from the duct, followed by the sound of something metallic being dragged. A moment later, a single, brightly colored hairpin—one of the explosive ones she kept in her space buns—clattered to the floor at their feet. Then, from a different duct grate ten meters away, her voice sang out, "You're getting warmer!" followed by another fit of laughter.
Luke grinned. "It's like hide-and-seek!"
Kuro bent down, using a stylus to carefully nudge the hairpin. "It's inert. A taunt." He looked at the maze of ducts. "She is herding us. Using our own pursuit to guide her."
Daniel's eye twitched again. "She's using the ventilation system. She's treating my monastery like her personal playground."
Jane, Aurélie, and Bianca were led on a chase through the silent, tapestry-lined halls of the living quarters. They saw no full figure, only glimpses—a flash of a pink bun around a corner, the whisper of a tattered Lolita dress skirt vanishing behind a heavy woven hanging. But Jane, with her custodian's intimate knowledge, saw the evidence.
"This tapestry is crooked," she stated, her voice flat. She pointed to a nearly invisible scuff on the smooth stone floor. "And this mark was not here yesterday. She is touching everything."
They turned into a dead-end corridor containing only a single, ancient-looking door made of dark, iron-wrought wood, banded with tarnished silver. As they entered the corridor, the door at the end swung shut with a soft, definitive click. Bianca rushed to it and tried the handle.
"Like, it's locked. Or, like, stuck."
Aurélie placed a hand on the wood. It was cold and unyielding. "She did not go through here. There is no scent, no disturbance of air." She turned, her gaze sweeping the empty corridor. "She wanted us to see this door. To know it is here."
Dara, Charlie, and Gianna descended the shadowy stairwell into the Luminous Catacombs. The air was cool and still, smelling of dry stone and a faint, sweet, fungal scent. The only light came from the patches of soft-glowing moss on the walls and the countless, silent Whisper-Moths that clung to the ceiling like a living, breathing constellation.
They saw her standing at the far end of a catacomb, surrounded by resting niches. The moths around her stirred, their wings shifting to create a shimmering halo around her head. She wasn't giggling. She was humming a discordant, childlike tune.
"Ahem! Young lady!" Charlie called out, his voice swallowed by the vast space.
Ember turned, and in the moth-light, her expression was unreadable, almost serene. She raised a single hand and pointed not at them, but at the wall beside her. Then she simply stepped backwards into a deeper shadow and was gone.
When they reached the spot, Gianna gasped softly. The wall she had pointed to was not a resting niche, but a smooth, sealed stone slab. Carved into its center was a single, complex symbol.
"I… I have never seen this chamber," Dara murmured, running her fingers over the cold, unmarked stone around the symbol.
Charlie was already sketching frantically. "The symbol! It's a composite! Part Wano calligraphy, part… part something else! It speaks of 'silence' and 'awakening'!"
In the service tunnels, Daniel's communicator crackled to life, each group reporting their phantom sightings and cryptic discoveries in increasingly bewildered tones. The pieces of the puzzle were scattered all over the monastery, and Ember, the chaotic spark, was the one holding the map. She wasn't just lost; she was conducting a tour of her own, leading them all to a secret the monastery itself had hidden away.
*****
The heavy oak door of The Honest Blunderbuss swung inward, and Vesta appeared, backlit by the fading Alerian sky. She was a small figure straining against a monstrous, overstuffed backpack that seemed to have swallowed her whole, its bulging form wider than her shoulders and taller than her head. She took a determined step forward, and the doorframe instantly became her nemesis.
The pack jammed solidly, wedging her in the entrance like a cork in a bottle. The comfortable, low hum of activity inside the tavern stuttered to a halt as all eyes turned toward the spectacle.
From a table where he was deep in conversation with Geo Mercer, Galit let out a long-suffering groan. "Really?"
Vesta, her face flushed with effort, planted her feet and pulled against the straps, her knuckles white. "It'll fit," she grunted through gritted teeth, her voice strained. "I promise."
Atlas, who was methodically working his way through a mountain of smoked cloud-mutton, chuckled around a mouthful of food. "You sure you need all of that, songbird? Looks like you packed the whole apartment complex."
Bracing her legs, Vesta gave another mighty heave, the pack groaning in protest. "Yes! It all has to come!"
Jannali, who had been practicing a new disarming maneuver with Marya, let her head loll to the side, blinking in bewildered amusement. "What the hell is all that, mate?"
As if in answer, the strained fabric at the top of the pack gave way. With a soft foomp, a cascade of colorful posters and plush dolls erupted from the opening, spraying into the tavern like a burst of confetti. Posters of the skeletal musician Brook and the grinning Jolly Roger of the Straw Hats fluttered through the air. A plush Luffy doll bonked Jelly on the head, and a small, stuffed Chopper landed neatly in Aokiji's lap.
With the pressure released, Vesta finally stumbled forward, landing triumphantly inside the tavern as her belongings settled around her like festive, papery snow. Aokiji, who had been reclined with his eyes closed, cracked one lid open. A poster of Brook playing a violin drifted down and adhered itself to his chest. He looked at it, then at the breathless, beaming Vesta, and let out a quiet, rumbling chuckle.
Vesta placed her hands on her hips, surveying the scene of her victory. "It is all important! I couldn't leave any of it behind."
Galit simply shook his head, while Geo Mercer, leaning against the bar, let out a warm, genuine laugh. The spell broken, everyone gradually returned to their activities. Kathy poked her head out from the kitchen, where the smell of herbs and roasting cloud-mutton wafted, and tossed a cleaning rag at Vesta with a wry smile. Eliane, who had been watching with wide eyes, giggled and went back to examining a jar of sky-cabbage spice.
As Vesta began gathering her scattered treasures, Geo turned back to Galit, his voice a low murmur. "As I was saying, the main thing to watch for with the Rainbow Currents is a sudden shift in the Chime Dial's harmonic. If the tone goes sharp, it means the Prism-Crystals ahead are destabilizing. You'll want to adjust your bearing by at least ten degrees to the port side." He took a sip of his drink. "You do know where you're headed, right?"
Galit sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Our guide," he said, with a meaningful glance toward the girl now trying to peel a poster of Zoro off the floor, "just got here."
Vesta, finally having corralled most of her belongings into a haphazard pile in a corner, retrieved her guitar, Mikasi. She sat, strumming a soft, hopeful melody that wove through the tavern's comfortable noise.
"So," she asked, her voice bright with anticipation, "when are we leaving?"
Marya, who had been observing the entire scene with a faint, amused smirk, finished sheathing her kogatana. "The Guard cleared us to go. We leave at first light."
Vesta nodded, a brilliant smile spreading across her face. Her fingers found a new rhythm on the strings, and she began to play an enthusiastic, soaring song, her voice clear and full of dreams as she sang about a bright future and all the adventures waiting for them on the vast, endless Blue Sea.
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