I woke to a sound that did not belong to morning.
It was not loud—just insistent, like something repeating itself because it had forgotten whether it had already been said.
The space beside me was empty.
"Zinnia," I called, already standing.
The shrine grounds were wrong.
Birds—too many to count—covered the courtyard. They perched on beams, on stones, on the ground itself, as if the earth had grown feathers overnight. They were not fighting. They were not singing. They were waiting.
"Mommy," Zinnia said, appearing at my side and taking my hand, small fingers cold. "What's with the birds?"
I looked at them properly then. Sparrows beside crows. Gulls where there should have been none. Species that did not share skies now shared silence.
"I don't know, dear," I said, and meant it in a way that felt heavier than ignorance.
The sun had not yet risen, but the sky was already pale—like parchment scrubbed too many times.
"Good morning, Miss Hazel," Himitsu said, sweeping the walkway as if nothing at all was amiss.
"Good morning," I replied, watching a crow tilt its head, one eye fixed on us. "Did you hear anything strange last night?"
"Only the usual," she said lightly. "Dreams where the ending keeps changing."
I paused.
"…What about the birds?"
She stopped sweeping, finally looking at them as though noticing ink stains on a page she'd already read.
"Oh. Those," she said. "I haven't the slightest idea."
Danpung shuffled past us, hair half-tied, suppressing a yawn. "Heiwa and Victoria left earlier," she said. "Master Mumei-shi too. Miss Li Hua went with them."
"Did they say where?"
Danpung shrugged. "Somewhere important. Everywhere is lately."
That answer sat badly in my chest.
"Shouldn't we go to the cemetery?" she added, blinking sleep from her eyes. "That's where trails usually end."
Or begin, I thought.
After breakfast, we left Zinnia at the shrine. She clung to my sleeve longer than usual.
"Don't step where the ground feels thin," she said solemnly.
I knelt. "What do you mean, sweetheart?"
She hesitated. "The places where people forgot something."
Before I could ask more, Himitsu called us on, and Zinnia was already retreating—surrounded by birds that parted just enough to let her through.
We paid for the house on the way out, the transaction feeling strangely ceremonial, like sealing a paragraph rather than signing a deed.
Then the cemetery gates rose before us.
The graveyard was quiet in the way libraries are quiet—not empty, but attentive.
Some headstones were neat and polished. Others leaned, half-swallowed by grass. Names blurred by time—or perhaps by correction. I found myself rereading the same inscriptions, uncertain whether the letters were changing or my memory was.
"What exactly are we looking for?" Danpung asked, peering around.
I glanced at her. "Shouldn't I be asking you?"
She laughed weakly. "Touché."
Dōngzhì smacked the back of her head without breaking stride. "Focus."
Himitsu crouched by a grave marked with a date too recent to be comforting. "Let's start with those claimed by the disease," she said. "The ones that were… revised."
That word lingered.
Even here, the birds followed us. Perched on headstones. On mausoleum roofs. On the iron gate behind us, which closed with a sound that felt final in a way gates should not.
We examined grave after grave. No disturbed soil. No broken wards. No obvious necromancy.
Too clean.
Too polite.
"What is that—" Danpung began.
The birds exploded into motion.
Feathers filled the air as if the sky itself had been crossed out. The sudden silence afterward was absolute—so complete my ears rang. In that rupture, day finally broke.
"Interesting," Himitsu murmured.
Then came the sound.
A bell.
Not nearby. Not far. It rang as though distance itself had been miscalculated.
Dōngzhì raised her hands immediately. "We leave. Now."
The mist rolled in before any of us could argue.
It wasn't fog—not really. It moved with intent, erasing paths, softening edges, blurring the names on the stones until dates bled into one another.
Another chime.
This one closer.
Danpung's bell chimed in response—sharp, undeniable.
She swallowed. "So it's not an illusion."
We stood back to back instinctively, a small circle of certainty in a place that no longer respected sequence.
"I don't see anything," I said, straining my eyes. "But it feels like we're being… indexed."
"That's because we are," Himitsu said quietly. "This place isn't summoning anything."
Another bell toll.
"It's checking its records."
The mist thickened.
Names whispered—not aloud, but somewhere behind the eyes. Some I recognized. Some I felt I should.
"So," Danpung said, forcing steadiness into her voice, "what do we do?"
I looked at the graves. At the softened inscriptions. At the ground that felt thinner with every breath.
"We don't run," I said slowly.
Another chime.
"We read carefully," I continued. "And we don't let it decide what we mean."
Somewhere, beneath the bells and birds and rewritten earth, something listened.
And waited for us to make a mistake.