Dawn on Atlas doesn't start with light. It starts with temperature—the air slipping from night-cool to something with purpose—and with sound, the crickets turning their electric saws down a notch while the frogs keep time a little longer, like percussionists reluctant to leave the stage. At 04:24, the world around Rena held its breath in that hinge between dark and gray, the forest a cathedral of silhouettes.
She woke as if the island had touched her shoulder. No dream stutter, just eyes open and a clean inhale. Canvas above, the faint citrus of freshly washed fabric, the milky-soft squeak of her sleep mat shifting under her shoulder blade. She lay one heartbeat longer, taking inventory: ankles fine, shoulders loose, hamstrings speaking in glass whispers from the previous day's sprints. All normal. She pushed herself upright and her hair poured with her—white-silver, brushed smooth before sleep, the lower tips stained a quiet red like a sunrise soaking into snow. When she gathered it forward with both hands, it fell past the span of her rib cage, catching low light and returning it.
Rena swung her legs over the mat and found the robe by memory, black cotton that drank the darkness and made her skin feel brighter by contrast. She slipped it on, tied the belt with the efficiency of ritual, and listened. Nothing near. The little alarms she'd set—mana threads strung across the most obvious approaches, a leaf balanced on a twig that would fall if anyone brushed past—reported calm.
Outside, the world held that chill you have to meet with your lungs before your skin admits you're awake. She crouched and coaxed last night's ash into a neat cradle. A small flex of will and heat gathered in her palm. Phoenix-fire answered her like an old friend—no showy roar, just a faithful bloom—and the tinder gave up its damp in a whisper. Flame took. The smell of warm earth, char, a little resin. She fed it careful sticks until it earned a pot.
"Water's ready," she told herself, remembering her evening. She had been smart before the store, smart after it: gathered river water in that neat collapsible bucket, filtered it until the particulate count was a number her mind liked, then filled her pot so dawn would not cost her time.
She set the pot on the stones she'd arranged into a hearth and watched the meniscus go from glassy to inquisitive. Bubbles began their slow punctuation along the bottom. There was a peace to it she respected: heat assembling change without argument. She glanced toward the river's direction—just a smudge of darker dark between trunks—and for a flick of a moment thought she saw eyes there.
Red. Not a flash, not a lens glare, but a steady pair, low and still.
She didn't tense. She didn't turn her head. She let the flame hold her gaze while her hearing stretched, while her skin became the drum upon which the world played tiny weather. The eyes blinked—once—and the presence moved sideways into foliage and was gone with the same patience it had arrived.
Not mine, she thought. Not my reflection in someone else's mirror. The island was full of watchers—animals with better night, students with worse mercy, spirits that did not sign their names—so she marked the datum but didn't feed it fear. If anything wanted her at 04:24, it would have announced itself with more than two pinpricks.
The pot boiled. She picked it up with a folded cloth, poured half into a second pot where she'd already set cold water, testing with a fingertip until warmth matched skin. "Perfect," she said to no one and everyone, and carried the tempered heat into her tent.
Inside, she set the pot on a cloth and sealed the flap. She pulled the mat aside to reveal the little drain channel she'd carved yesterday—slender engineering that convinced water to prefer outside. Robe untied, folded, set aside. She undressed with a soldier's speed, not because anyone watched but because efficiency was a kind of respect. Steam rose when her hands lifted water. She poured it over shoulders, down spine, across calves, each ladle a small negotiation between heat and cool night air. Shampoo from the spatial bracelet—mint, a bright clean that made her eyes water pleasantly—and lather on scalp, fingers drawing conviction through hair that barely fit in a loop. She rinsed until no slick remained. The tent smelled now of mint and morning.
She dried off with a towel that had learned the shape of her work, then sat a moment wrapped in it, letting the last damp turn into the last steam. A thought nipped: I could have done this with conjured water., and the rebuttal, immediate: Mana water resists boil. She wore the reasoning like a ring she sometimes turned with a thumb. Conjured liquid was structure and intention, not lattice and molecule. Heat could move through it—yes—but it wouldn't obey the same phase transitions, not in any way that felt honest on skin. Good for rinsing grit. Bad for warmth.
She pulled on her mana suit and let it act like memory foam with opinions, settling to her lines, adjusting temperature in a way that felt like kindness from a machine. Outside, she rejoined the fire and transferred what remained of the boil into the big pot, setting it to the side. Useful later. The air was moving more now; a small breeze tested the camp like a curious cat.
Cooking was meditation. She liked the way it made her present in her hands and mouth. She pulled the dough from her bracelet—the plastic bag cool and dewy with yesterday's rest. The smell of it said yeast had earned its keep: a round, living tang. She dusted a plate with flour, pinched off a ball the size of an egg, and pressed it flat with her fingers until the disk had the thickness of a coin and the patience of a continent.
A slick of oil into the pan. When it showed the first shimmer, she set the dough down. It kissed the heat and puffed in places, small bubbles making topography. She let the underside sear toward toasted, then flipped. The sound was what she wanted: a paper-soft hush. A second later she lifted the bread and rapped it with a knuckle—done.
Tomatoes next. She cut them into red coins, their seeds sticky and gleaming, the smell fruity-acid sweet. Oil again, thinner this time. The slices met the pan and sighed. Salt fell from her fingers like a spell. The tomato's flesh slackened, blistered, the sugars browning at the edges into something with authority. She cooked four slices to softness and set them on the bread, juice soaking in, making a small sunrise on a white plate.
She ate without theories: bite of hot bread that tore exactly where she wanted it to, the tang of tomato, salt lightning on the tongue. The forest pressed itself closer, interested in the sizzle even if it wouldn't approach the source. A gecko clicked like a metronome. Farther off, something with long legs and long opinions—maybe a heron—stepped through reeds and announced each step to the night like a lecture.
When the first slice was gone, she cooked another. Her mind was emptier now. Not blank; simply clean. The thought of Jin walked across it anyway—because thoughts, like cats, find laps even when you pretend you're working. Fifty-five days, she reminded herself. She said it aloud because sound made it more real, and because hearing her voice meant she existed in a world with other voices.
"Fifty-five," Rena said, and the island took the number like a tithe and didn't say what it would do with it.
She didn't allow herself the indulgence of imagining his face fully; that was a hole she knew better than to fall into before dawn. Instead, she touched the black ribbon he'd given her—the one she wrapped around her hair sometimes just to feel a tether—and let the thread of missing become a tether instead of a tear. You're not here to watch me crush Sarafina, she told the absence with a wryness that belonged to her and nobody else. So watch from wherever you are. I'll aim high so you have something to see.
The forest rotated. That's how it felt as birds found their voices and tuned them, one species at a time. First a thin, questioning call from a warbler. Then a three-note phrase from something hidden, repeated with evangelist certainty. The frogs dimmed. In the east, the sky learned gray. A breeze from the sea brought in the mineral lick of brine and the secret carry of kelp.
Rena cleaned as she cooked and cooked as she cleaned. Oil bottle capped. Knife wiped and slid back into its sleeve. Pan off the flame to spare the oil any bitterness. She fed the fire two more sticks so it would not feel abandoned, then sat and stretched, toes flexing, calves lengthening, the simple joy of anatomy cooperating. When tension showed itself—little knots in the trapezius, a line across the lower back—she breathed into those places. Her breath tasted like tomatoes now, basil-shaped from some long-ago memory of proper kitchens.
By 05:10, the clearing was less a hole in the dark and more a pallet of shadows. Leaves had edges again; distance began to exist. She walked the perimeter. The mana threads were intact. The leaf on the twig still balanced. She tapped the leaf anyway and watched it see-saw itself back into its precarious calm. On the far side of the camp, near the line of breadfruit trees, she found a print she hadn't made—a pair, in fact—soft dents as if someone had stood and watched and then shifted weight. Not student boots. Not deer hooves. The shape was long, narrow, pointed at one end, the pressure map shallow but crisp. No claw marks.
She touched it once with the back of two fingers. Cool. The soil hadn't warmed. The visitor had come and gone during the cold part. Red eyes, low to the ground, unafraid of near-fire heat. She filed it under Later with a crisp mental label and a small underline. If it was a student: curious and careful. If it was Atlas: an introduction, not a threat.
At 05:30, pale light threaded the canopy like lace. Moisture lifted from leaves and made a halo that turned breath visible. She put the bread and tomato where the sun couldn't bully it—shade of her tent flap—and set another pot on to boil, this time for cleaning cloths. The day would sweat; better to start a step ahead.
She took her time with teeth, using the filtered river water instead of conjured—the mint paste enough magic for one mouth. She eyed the small salvadora sapling she'd noticed yesterday (the old texts called it toothbrush tree), stripped a twig of its bark and chewed the tip until it frayed into a brush. The taste was peppery, green. She ran it gently along gums and felt absurdly pleased by the ancientness of the act. The twig went back to the earth when she was done. Let it become something else.
Having worked, she allowed five minutes to think. She sat with knees drawn up, chin on forearm, and opened her tablet. The screen ghosted her reflection in red and white and then turned into maps. Her dot glowed at the northern fringe, a breath inland from the coast, a hand's reach from the river's silver thread. Enough traffic would eventually find this spot—not today, if she kept quiet. She traced routes with her mind: one to the western court grounds, one to the inner stealth course, one to the eastern rise that promised a vantage point if she could be bothered to climb before the world heated.
Points, she reminded herself, and slid to the team's ledger. The number waiting was a small, proud drumbeat: 214 Achievement. A daily trickle would put another ten into her palm at eight. Trade points stayed where she'd left them: 8. She opened the store for a moment, not because she planned to buy, but to remind herself she could. The listings were familiar now—staples, luxuries, traps for the unwary. She closed it before want could name anything.
At 06:00 the light flipped a coin and became day. Atlas opened its throat. Bulbuls took the lead, their flute-bubbled calls stitching between trees. Kingfishers made metallic trills from the riverbank. The undertone of insects rose again, not the urgent thrum of night but a workday buzz, busy and unconcerned with aesthetics. Far out, over a break in trees, the sea flashed a coin of blinding silver and then took it back.
She cooked one more round of bread. She didn't need it now; she would need it later when effort stole appetite. She slid the extra into a cloth and then into her bracelet, where it would wait in the cool shadow of its pocket.
07:12. Time folded quietly. She braided her hair—not the show braid that made her look like a weapon with poetry, just a clean line to keep it sensible—and tied the end with Jin's black ribbon. The gesture made something tight in her chest close its eyes and relax for a moment. She stood and moved through a series of warm-ups: neck, shoulders, scapular control, spinal waves, hips that popped softly and then cooperated. Ankles, knees, feet. The forest watched her like a teacher who likes her student but won't say it.
A hummingbird appeared as if conjured, paused in front of her as if to say you're doing it wrong and then zipped off in a line that made geometry jealous.
Rena laughed, softly. "I'll try to keep up."
At 07:45, the first skit of cloud began to gather in the east, small and pink like someone had breathed on glass. The air thickened one degree. She put the camp into day mode: fire banked so it would relight easily; pot cleaned, inverted; knife put away; robe hung to air, black against green; trip thread refreshed with a whisper of mana; leaf replaced with a new one in case the old had decided it would rather fall as a philosophy.
Her watch gave two polite taps at 08:00, as promised. The small chime afterward sounded like success wrapped in restraint. She glanced at the face: +10 Achievement. The number clicked up to 224 in that crisp font and made her want to earn more just to see it change again. Trade stayed 8. She acknowledged receipt with a thumb. The system liked this loop, and so did she.
She took exactly sixty seconds to honor the ritual of tally: What did I do to earn you? What will I do next to deserve more? It wasn't that points mattered more than breath, but breathing on Atlas required points. And she had more than one reason to make the ledger sing. Sarafina's shadow crossed her thoughts, not as an eclipsing but as a target reticle—a thing to be lined up, compensated for wind, timed, and answered. She felt the new strength in her tendons—the small increments that came after sleep—and nodded once, an agreement with herself and the day.
She turned off the tablet and the world got bigger. She stood there one full minute doing nothing but sensing: the faint damp in the fabric of morning, the sweetness rising from crushed wild ginger somewhere underfoot, the tang of her cooled fire, the thread-thin smell of ocean. Her eyes took a long walk across the mid-distance and found nothing out of place. Only when she'd decided the only danger was the ordinary kind did she move.
She didn't forget the eyes. Red, still, low. If it had been a student, they'd have moved like arrogance or fear—both of which are loud. If Atlas itself had peered in, it would do it again.
"Later," she told the print in the mud. "Later, I have questions."
For now, she slung the bracelet's weight back to her wrist with a click, slid the tablet into its slot, and let the mana suit smooth itself one more time against her skin. She stood at the edge of camp and chose a direction, not by whim but by a little calculus she couldn't have explained if someone asked: wind from the northeast, river to her right, sun low enough to make glare in one corridor and shadow in another. She went where the shadows moved like allies.
Her footsteps on the leaf litter made a sound like someone thinking. The forest accepted her presence as part of the math. Skinks darted; ghost crabs tucked themselves into their excavations and watched with eyes like polished beads; a mongoose flickered across the path and gave her a scandalized look at being up so early. Coconuts hung like planets, shaggy moons around their crowns. The breadfruit leaves above her were bigger than her face; when the wind leaned into them, they played slow applause for whatever the day decided to do.
Rena didn't hurry. She let the morning pour itself in. Her mind was a deep channel she could dive into when she wanted—today she kept to the surface, not to avoid thought, but to hear it better when it came. When it did, it was clean: Do the work. Choose the harder honest thing. Keep the promises you make to yourself out loud. She touched the ribbon in her hair and added one she never said aloud: Come back in fifty-five days with enough good in your hands that he sees it first thing.
Behind her, at the exact edge where the shade of her camp met the light of the waking day, the place where red eyes had watched was just earth again. The dents were softening under the small thermal shifts that come with sun and breath. A breeze slid through and troubled the surface. A single pale petal—maybe frangipani, maybe something Atlas had made to resemble it—tumbled down and landed where a foot had been.
The island kept its secrets. Rena kept moving. The first task would announce itself soon—somewhere in the code of her watch, the schedule wound tighter toward its next release—and she would answer with motion and with math. Morning had found her ready. The rest would take care of itself if she did.