The northern side of Atlas woke like a great animal rolling in its sleep—one long breath through the trees, then another. Crickets combed the dark with their teeth; night frogs traded last jokes across the creek; somewhere far inland a slow owl wound up the final note of its patrol and let it fall. The air had that pre-dawn cool that never quite became cold: a thin, minty edge on a mouthful of warm, wet air. Breadfruit leaves—huge, glossy, and lobed like giant hands—clicked softly against one another whenever a breeze nosed past, as if the grove were counting down the minutes to morning.
Inside her tent, Rena's watch pulsed a discreet alarm against the inside of her wrist. She surfaced from sleep without a flinch, sat up, and rubbed the grit from the corners of her eyes. A yawn unrolled, slow and honest. Her hair—silver-white with those ember-red tips—had wandered everywhere in the night and now spilled around her like a fallen banner, threads gleaming faintly in the dimness. For a moment she just sat, letting waking arrive fully: the tiny creaks of the inflatable bed equalizing under her shift in weight, the hush of the canvas, the patient murmur of the creek beyond the rocks.
She reached toward the low, folded blanket she used as a shelf: tablet, spatial bracelet, the watch face she'd set aside while sleeping. The little constellation of tools made a comfortingly ordinary arrangement next to her pillow. She thumbed the watch awake, glanced at the time—04:00, a shade earlier than necessary—and rolled her shoulders once. The day hadn't opened yet. That was fine. She would.
Rena slid a finger down the tent's zipper and parted the flap just enough to get her head outside. The grove breathed on her: damp earth, green sap, the faint bread-sweet scent of ripe fruit somewhere above, and, underneath it all, the clean mineral smell of the creek sliding over stone. She narrowed her attention, and mana answered. A pulse of power, neither showy nor large, threaded forward from her core and up behind her eyes. The world brightened as if a thin veil had been lifted. The shadows were still shadows, but they had texture now; edges sharpened; distance organized itself into layers she could read. Her dragon sight—the little trick she'd named Dragon Eye when she first realized the change wasn't a fluke—ran outward and outward and outward until the grove wasn't a smear of dark but an instrument panel, clear to two kilometers: trunks, understory, a fox-faced civet nosing at fallen fruit, a band of hermit crabs commuting at absurd speed, a tangle of lianas unmoving where they ought to be moving if a student were pushing through. Nothing human nearby. No heat-hum of breath where it shouldn't be. No students trying to make mischief or steal points before breakfast.
She let the mana fall away from her eyes until the world softened again into ordinary dim. The night insects had shifted from sawing to sanding; a few hardy cicale still filed down the darkness, but most of the chorus was resolving into the quiet before birdsong. She closed the flap and re-seated the zipper, careful with the teeth so they didn't chatter and carry sound farther than she intended.
From the bracelet she produced a collapsible bucket—black, tough, the sort of simple tool you trusted because it had only one job and did it. She also pulled a long bathrobe, more for modesty in case she did run into someone than for warmth. The island air didn't permit chills for long. She shrugged into the robe, tied it loose, and slipped outside barefoot.
The path to the creek was what she had made of it yesterday: three flat stones set to save the damp ground, a brush of ferns pushed aside by a short staff and now remembering the shape of the world without it. She walked light. Frogs peeped once, twice; a skink scrabbled up a breadfruit trunk and froze into a coin of shadow. The creek itself was a thin, lively ribbon only as wide as her arms spread, braided over black rocks and rimmed by sand where it slowed. She knelt and let the bucket drink until its base rounded with fullness and weight tugged her wrists. The water smelled like stone and leaf, and underneath, very faintly, the metallic hum of island minerals migrating sea-ward. She carried it back careful and straight-armed, letting the surface slop only once when a root tugged at her heel.
Back at camp, she set the bucket down, stepped into the tent, and began building the tiny architecture of a morning fire. A few limestone pavers she'd scavenged yesterday made a low twin-pillar cradle. She fed it palm fronds that had died honestly and crisped in the sun, laid a lattice of sticks, then set one of her travel pots atop the stone supports. The first match failed; the second took and ran along the fronds with a satisfying rush. The smell of burning palm was sweet and a little waxy. As the flames found their work, she poured the creek water into the pot, watched it settle against black metal, then left it to gather conviction while she went again to refill the bucket. The second trip went faster. The grove had accepted her now as morning noise.
When she returned, the first pot was threaded with steam. Bubbles ticked the bottom like a drum. She sat on a smooth stone and listened: fire, water, the white-noise hush of tiny bubbles releasing their arguments into air. She watched the lobed breadfruit leaves above her shift from black to olive to green as the sky behind them acquired its first thin wash of color. The crickets slowed. A distant heron croaked once, the sound like an old hinge. Rena swept the grove again with ordinary sight, as much out of habit as caution. Nothing but the usual choreography of small, hungry lives.
She dipped a ladle into the hot pot, poured half a second pot with water that had just come off a boil, then tempered it with a measure from the cold bucket until the steam didn't bite her knuckles. That, she carried into the tent carefully, set it on a square of folded cloth, and rolled up the tent's groundsheet where she'd cut a neat channel to direct water out into the sand. A small, practical luxury: bathing in privacy without turning the area into a mud-wrestling ring.
She untied the robe and set it aside, then slipped out of yesterday's underthings. The ritual of washing wasn't for anyone else's eyes or thoughts; it was mechanical, efficient, and quiet. She dipped, poured, soaped, rinsed—hair first with of shampoo worked into a lather that smelled faintly of citrus and herb, then scalp, then neck, then arms, torso, legs. The warm water ran down the channel she'd carved and ticked cheerfully into the sand outside. No lingering. No indulgence in the heat. Not here. Not now.
Towel. Dry. New underthings from the bracelet, soft and clean. She touched the collar of the mana suit and it woke, flowing up and around her once more in that eager, obedient way—black-silver panels knitting themselves along her limbs, sealing with invisible seams, hugging but never squeezing. It felt like being acknowledged by something that liked serving a purpose.
The second pot boiled on the little fire when she stepped out. Dawn had advanced another brushstroke; the sky sat pale and blank, a sheet waiting for the first bird to write on it. She crouched by the bucket and fished out a tin of toothpaste and her brush. The island air made mint taste sharper, cleaner. She rinsed with cool water from the bucket, spat neatly into the sand where the creek's pull would tidy it away, and then, on a whim, glanced at the edge of the grove where she'd noticed a little arak sapling yesterday—miswak, the old stories called it. She had read about it in a textbook long ago, the way people in a pre-mana age had carried twigs to make their mouths honest and clean.
She walked over, cut a small twig with a steady hand, peeled the end with her belt knife, and chewed the fibers into a brush. The taste was pleasantly bitter, a little peppery, with a sapwood sweetness underneath. She worked it around each tooth and along the gums, then spat again and rinsed. The twig went into the fire. The smell changed for a moment—green and a little almond-like—then vanished into smoke.
Breakfast.
She rummaged the bracelet, inventorying like a quartermaster. Frozen chicken (not for today). Two one-liter bottles of well water cleared by the proctors. A parcel of rice gifted by the kindly old proctor yesterday. And—aha—a carton of eggs. Twelve. She smiled despite herself. "You and me, then," she told the carton as if it were an opponent on the training floor.
Which is how she found herself, three minutes later, flat on her backside in the sand, blinking at the exploded remains of two eggs she had optimistically tried to roast whole in their shells over the fire. The bang hadn't been loud so much as surly; it had kicked her center of gravity out from under her with pure surprise. Yolk and white painted a comedy across the hot rock and began to scorch immediately, releasing a smell like toast burned by someone too proud to admit they were multitasking badly.
Rena stared, then snorted once, a sound that contained equal parts amusement and mild self-recrimination. "Pressurized steam inside a sealed calcium container," she said aloud, because narrating the physics helped reclaim pride. "Of course. The water heats evenly and buffers the shell in a boil—why hard-cooked works. Dry heat? Uneven expansion and nowhere to go. You detonate breakfast."
Fine. Pan, oil, sensible method. She set the small skillet, sluiced a thumb's worth of oil, cracked two eggs with quick knuckle taps. The whites caught with a hiss and a lace of bubbles; the yolks settled like gold coins. She let the edges crisp, salted them from the pinch tin, and slid them to a thick slice of camp bread. The first bite was a perfect, ridiculous luxury—fat, salt, heat, a hint of smoke. The second did the practical work of putting fuel in her legs. By the last, the sky had collected its first birds: bulbuls with their curious helmeted heads, a couple of mynas already debating propriety on a branch, a kingfisher on the far rock pretending not to watch her with its entire soul.
She cleaned the pan with a splash of hot water, a twist of leaf, and a final rinse. The fire she let smolder down to a disciplined core. From the bracelet she drew yesterday's laundry, those underthings she'd worn while trekking the island—cloth that would think about growing mildew if she let it. She ladled a little hot water across a flat rock, laid the garments there, sluiced again, and then worked a small amount of camp detergent through the weave. The rock scorched her palms if she pressed too long, so she learned the rhythm of flip, rinse, flip, rinse. When she was satisfied, she stretched a line between two tent pins and a low branch, wrung each piece, and pegged them in the new sun. The wind would do its slow, honest magic.
Out of the corner of her eye, a snail made an earnest expedition up a grass blade, leaving a thread of shine so fine it might have been imagined. A line of ants argued about a crumb she hadn't noticed drop. On a distant log, a monitor lizard lifted itself into a stretch that made it look, briefly, like an old gentleman arching his back after a long sit; then it sank back into its own lizard concerns. The island's morning traffic restarted in lanes, orderly in its chaos.
Rena checked her points while the last of the fire's steam wrote itself into the air: Achievement 90, Trade 6 from yesterday's work. She glanced at the time. The system would issue the daily +10 survival stipend at eight sharp, but that was a different ledger; the accomplishment meter was what her challenge with Sarafina would live and die by. "A hundred by the hour," she murmured. "It'll do."
Thinking his name would have been a mistake, so she did not… and then did anyway. Jin. The memory didn't arrive as a picture at first but as a feeling—that inconvenient wring in the sternum that hot, independent people like to pretend they don't suffer. She could almost hear the laugh he used when he'd said something outrageous and was waiting to see whether she'd clap back or smile. The kitchen at the manor came next, that first stupid collision of assumptions; the karaoke night followed, the taste of a decision landing on her mouth. Her jaw tightened. She slapped her own cheek with a small, firm pop, not to punish herself, but as an audible period on that sentence. "Not now," she told the air. "Work first. Then pride. Then whatever else."
The grove accepted the boundary without argument. It had its own business. A breeze came down from the interior, combing the breadfruit leaves into a soft clatter. The humidity stepped back a single pace, letting the ridge tops breathe. Rena wiped the skillet again, nested the pots, and stowed them in the bracelet. She doused the fire's smallest coals with a final dip from the bucket, watched the steam bulge and vanish, then spread the stones so no ember would be tempted to remember its job without supervision.
She walked the camp's perimeter like a captain on a new ship, eyes falling on the small correct things: the tent's lines taut but not straining; the food bag hung high and neat; the latrine trench discreet, far from the water; the laundry fluttering in a line that would catch maximum sun without advertising itself to the world; the flat stones she used to keep her feet clean by the entrance, aligned. She gathered the bits of eggshell from her earlier experiment and crushed them to powder to scatter in the soil at the edge of camp; the plants would take the calcium, and no crow would get sick on shards.
Noise changed. She felt it more than heard it: the long night-sounds thinning, the daytime ones clearing their throats. A low boom from the beach as a wave shouldered a notch in the reef. The first bee of the morning bumping into her tent, confused and committed. The soft kettle of doves. Distant, the little engine-hum of a proctor's drone running a grid—high, noninvasive, a promise and a warning. The air smelled suddenly and particularly like warm rope, which meant the fisherman birds were out over the lagoon scissoring for bait.
Rena sat cross-legged on her flat stone and opened the tablet, not to chase tasks yet—it was early—but to pre-flight her head. Map: where she'd been, where she hadn't. Resources: water, rice, the last of the bread, two eggs less than a carton. Health: fine. Mood: steady, with one flaw she wasn't going to feed. Objectives: stay mobile but not frantic; sample tasks from different categories to keep the score sheet rounded; avoid combat unless it paid and didn't risk an injury that would burn time. She scrolled through a handful of task types likely to populate near eight: a logic puzzle at a coastal outcrop (+20, quick); a marksmanship challenge using clay bolas and mangrove posts (+20–30, variable); a team obstacle course (pass); a "forage or trade" pop-up at a mobile kiosk (+? trade). She bookmarked two. The numbers would shift as the system balanced inflow and participation, but she liked having a plan even if it would be betrayed by the first interesting noise.
The sky wasn't white yet, but it was deciding to be. On the far edge of the breadfruit grove, a sunbittern unrolled its wings and wrote two eyes into the world with feathers. Rena watched it, then stood, stretching her arms overhead until her spine chimed. The suit moved with her, whisper-quiet. The red at the ends of her hair caught the earliest ray and for a heartbeat looked nearly molten, as if the night had left a coal and the morning had found it.
She checked the laundry—already half-dry in this greedy air—then took down the line and stowed the pieces neatly in a zip bag inside the bracelet, the habits of tidiness arriving not from nobility but from having camped in far worse places and paying the price for laziness with sand in everything. The tent flap she re-rolled and fixed with a neat tie. The bucket she left full in the shade, covered with a cloth against the curious and the careless.
A last look around: the breadfruit grove with its broad leaves reflecting the new light; the lianas hanging like ropes in a pirate's dream; the ferns fractaling down to tiny fishbone shapes near the ground; the peppering of wild ginger with its tight spirals promising scent later in the heat; the invisible architecture of spider silk catching dew at weird angles, making geometry practice for small gods. She breathed deep through her nose and let the island write itself into her the way you let a poem do its work.
"Alright," she told the day. "Let's make you count."
The watch ticked 05:35. She had time to tune herself further if she wanted. She took it. Ten slow squats, ten clean pushups, a minute of planks; a handful of mobility drills that made her hips feel like responsible ball joints rather than decorations; three lines of breath-work she'd learned from a stern woman who had never smiled and had saved Rena's body twice by knowing where to press. She didn't sweat; she warmed. The half-dragon engine under her ribs idled higher, smooth as a well-mannered cat's purr.
Her thoughts drifted once to Naoko—that cold permission, the simple way the older woman had waved off the length and Talking in the palace handed Rena what she needed without commentary or smothering. Don't use the Rotschy name for this, Naoko had said, not unkindly Just cold, indifferent, empty. Win or lose, let the ledger belong to Emberhart. Practical. Clean. A way to fight a feud without dragging the wrong banner across the sand. Rena appreciated clarity.
A pair of parrots clattered overhead like a spilled jewelry box, distracted by their own brilliance. The east brightened quickly now, the way it always does when you stop staring and then look back. In the creek, a school of tiny fish jittered like silver confetti where an overhanging leaf bled sweetness into the water. The breadfruit grove switched fully to day shift. Somewhere, a student laughed—distant, harmless, a reminder that the island hosted a hundred stories today and not all of them were hers.
Rena tightened the wrist cuff of her suit, slid the tablet into its sleeve, and stood easy at the edge of camp, watching the light run like water through the understory. If Sarafina haunted the west ridge at this hour, Rena could not see her and did not need to. The quiet was a tool, not an emptiness. The island did not ask for oaths. It asked for attention.
She gave it, the way she gave everything now: completely and without apology. And Atlas, pleased, finished lifting the sun into the breadfruit leaves and began the serious work of the day.
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Heat: Support me with an energy stone and thank you very much for reading.
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[information]
Rena fell to the ground because she was surprised that the eggshell had exploded.
Eggshells are made up of 97% calcium.
!!!!(Note: Do not try this at home. Do not try to put the eggs in the oven or on any heat source because they will explode and you may get hurt.)
Use boiling or frying ok