(3rd POV)
They arrived in staggered frames, like a music video that kept skipping forward a beat.
Sable was already in the clearing, leaning on the First Star as if it were a walking stick and not a sword that could erase monsters, his compression shirt damp at the collar, grey sweatpants dusted with pine pollen. The morning had the color of steel and milk—sky pale, trunks dark, frost still holding on in the shadows. Birdsong came in cautious bursts and then went quiet again, as if even the wildlife was waiting to see what this was.
Jinu stood ten feet away from him, stolen-from-a-magazine handsome and radiating the exact energy of a man who would have preferred to be literally anywhere else. He kept his hands in his pockets and his chin tipped down, like eye contact might be legally binding.
Rumi entered first, boots whispering over needles, braid falling heavy between her shoulders. The white-tinged patterns curled across the backs of her hands and along the ridge of her neck—no longer the raw purple of panic, but an almost opalescent glow that caught the light and settled there, unashamed. She didn't hide them. Not this time.
Mira came next with a skeptic's posture—weight on one leg, pink twin ponytails pulled tight, the kind of flat stare that could sand paint. Zoey bounded in last, bright as a sticker sheet, buns bobbing, scarf too cheerful for the temperature. She waved both hands and whispered, loudly: "Secret forest meeting!"
Sable's mouth tilted. Not a smile—just an acknowledgment that the universe had provided him with an audience.
(Sable POV)
I let my gaze sweep them once, slow, like a scan line in an old CRT monitor.
Rumi's patterns were the first thing my eyes found. Almost white now, like frost writing itself along skin. They were calmer, the edges not jagged, the glow steady instead of pulsing in panic. She held her shoulders like a person who had decided to stop apologizing for existing. I felt a click of approval in my chest and looked away before it could turn into anything more complicated.
"Okay," I said, clapping once to cut the forest air. "Welcome to the part of the program where I prove I didn't lure you out here to sell you essential oils."
Mira lifted a brow. "Good. I left my pyramid at home."
Zoey gasped. "You have a pyramid?"
"She doesn't," Rumi said, deadpan.
Jinu exhaled through his nose like a disappointed teacher. He kept his eyes fixed a safe foot to the left of Rumi, which felt like a choice and a confession at the same time.
"I could be sleeping," Mira added.
"You could be," I agreed. "But then you'd miss my gift. And my gift is better than sleep."
Rumi's gaze sharpened at that word—gift. She didn't step closer, but the air between us tightened, as if curiosity had weight.
I raised both hands, palms cupped together as if I were sheltering a bird.
"Zoey," I warned. "If you scream—"
My fingers opened.
The cylinder lay across my palms, slender and matte, just under a foot long, engraved end to end with runes so fine they read like filigree. The metal had that strange, expensive color that wasn't quite silver—more like moonlight pressed flat. It caught the weak sun through the trees and gave it back softer.
Zoey inhaled like a kettle. Then pointed at me with her whole arm. "Magician!"
Three heads pivoted toward her in unison.
Zoey shrank half an inch and tried on a mortified smile. "I… meant… wizard? Sorcerer? Stage—"
"Magician works," I said, because rewarding the bit is sometimes better than scolding it. I turned my wrist, making the runes blink as they swept the light. "And for my final trick—"
"Please don't say you're cutting someone in half," Mira muttered.
"—think fast."
I tossed the cylinder at Rumi.
It was a gentle toss, objectively speaking. Subjectively, she had a fraction of a second to decide if she was going to fumble it and have all of us watch. She yelped—it came out smaller than she probably wanted it to—hand flashing up, then the other, braid swinging like punctuation. Metal kissed skin, rolled, slipped, came back—she caught it against her sternum and froze there, breath held, cylinder a vertical line clutched in both hands.
The silence after was delicate.
Rumi let out air like the last inch of a balloon. Then she turned that glare on me—the one that said she'd learned to be composed and would maybe make an exception.
I gave her a thumbs up. "Good hands, Fruit Roll-Up."
Her mouth opened, the beginning of a retort assembling on her tongue.
I clapped a second time, louder. "What you're holding is why I called everyone out of bed."
"Dragged," Jinu echoed softly, like he was considering suing me.
I angled my body toward all of them. "I'm a foreigner."
Mira gestured at me with both hands, incredulous. "Duh."
I squinted at her. "Racist."
She choked. "How is that racist? You literally said—"
"Moving on," I said, because being insufferable is sometimes a professional choice. Mira's growl landed somewhere behind my ribs like a purr. I continued, voice even: "There is a place I belong to. A home. I have a responsibility to it. I don't know the route; I only know the direction. Which means I have to leave. For a while."
Zoey's smile slid sideways. "Like… vacation leave? Or… 'mix playlist called The Departed' leave?"
"Zoey," Rumi said in a tone that had comfort buried under annoyance.
I pointed to the cylinder in Rumi's hands. "That is how I find my way back."
Rumi looked down at it like it might bite. The runes didn't glow; they waited. "How does it… work?"
"anchor," I said. "Don't worry about what the word means. Worry about not dropping it in the Han River."
Mira stepped in first, curiosity winning over posture. She didn't ask permission. She never does. Her fingers traced an engraving near the top, eyes narrowing. "These aren't just decorative."
"Thank you for noticing," I said, because I am a petty, petty man.
Zoey leaned in from the other side, careful not to bump Rumi's elbow. Her eyes went glossy the way they do when she's looking at puppies or pyrotechnics. "It's pretty. Like… if a glowstick went to grad school."
"That's… not the worst description," I admitted.
"Do we shake it?" Zoey asked, already absolutely prepared to shake it.
"Please don't," I said, and meant it.
Rumi's thumb settled on the flat of the top cap, the only unmarked circle of metal. She glanced up, waiting for instruction. That was new. She usually moved first and asked questions never.
"Tap the top once," I said. "Not twice. Not five times. Once."
She tapped.
The runes woke like embers coaxed by breath—soft white lines blooming along the cylinder's length, then dimming, then settling into a pulse. The light didn't throw shadows; it seemed to fold inward, like it preferred the metal to the air.
The tug hit the center of my chest as neatly as a harp string being plucked. Not pain—more like a pressure change. A new gravity. There you are, it said.
I let my face stay neutral and my shoulders relax. 'Connection established.'
Zoey's hand flew to her mouth. "It's alive."
Mira, softer: "You felt that."
Rumi held the cylinder more carefully now, not afraid, exactly—more like reverent, the way you carry something that will matter to you in a week and also in ten years. A muscle in her jaw twitched. She didn't say the thing I knew she wanted to say—Don't you dare vanish with only a joke for an explanation.
"Keep it safe," I told them. "It is… not easy to make."
I let the sentence hang, and because I am a bad person with a specific sense of comedic timing, my brain replayed the making-of montage whether I wanted it to or not.
—flash—
(Dimly Lit Flashback – Sable POV)
The hotel room looked like a blacksmith failed a midterm. Cylinders everywhere. Dozens. Some bent, some charred, some split open like rotten fruit with stringy innards of wire and failed runes. The room smelled like hot penny and cooked ozone.
"Okay," I told the tabletop in a whisper calm voice that meant I was lying to myself. "We try again. Because the definition of insanity is… something something success."
The Tomb pinged in that neutral, librarian way: insufficient stabilization matrix.
"Insufficient stability in your face," I hissed.
I etched along the next cylinder, the engraving nib stuttering as my hand cramped. A proxy—tiny, translucent, round as a sparrow egg—sat in the corner behind the dresser pretending to be a wall decoration. Every time I looked at it, it scooted a millimeter deeper into the shadow.
"Runes one through three: nice and simple," I narrated, because if you don't talk to yourself, who will. "Runes four and five: polite suggestions to reality. Rune six: the one that explodes for fun."
The proxy made a microscopic peep.
I finished six. I did not explode. I laughed the laugh of a man who had gotten away with shoplifting from a volcano. "You see? We're friends, rune. We can do this."
The seventh rune glanced up from the tabletop, locked eyes with me, and chose violence.
There was a spark, a fizz, and the whole cylinder made the sound of a soda can meeting a garbage disposal. I swore in three languages, two dead. The cylinder belched smoke and rolled off the table. I stomped on it with the heel of my foot, because sometimes applied pressure therapy is old school.
The Tomb pinged again. vector misalignment.
"Vector misalignment in your mother," I said, and threw the etching tool across the room with the kind of restraint that still chips plaster. The proxy in the corner hunched into an orb and made itself as flat as a rosary of fear.
Cut to twelve hours later. The desk was a battlefield—scorched circles, scratched-in math, a ring of coffee that had become a sigil. I had drawn seven different versions of rune six in the hotel notebook and labeled them things like "cowardly" and "diva." My hair escaped its tie; the silver threads looked like wiring ripped out of a spaceship.
"Okay!" I announced to no one, and to the trembling proxy, and to God. "Take number thirty-nine."
The metal sang under the engraver. The hum rose when the lines intersected—only a little—like a voice catching on a note before finding it. The last curve closed. The runes held. The cylinder didn't burp. I didn't cry, but only because the proxy was watching.
I kissed the top of the cylinder like it was the head of a child I was pretending not to love. "Don't tell anyone this took me two days and a minor breakdown," I whispered at it, and the proxy in the corner nodded like a hostage.
—flash—
(Back in the forest – 3rd POV)
Sable's smile in the present was too smooth around the edges, the type you put on to cover a bruise. The left eyelid twitched once, the faintest static under the calm.
"Don't lose it," he said, to the group, to Rumi, to anyone who would listen and to the universe which would not. Under his breath—so soft only the trees heard—"I beg of you, please don't."
Rumi's fingers flexed over the cylinder, as if to answer, I won't.
Silence fanned out in a circle, not awkward—just a clean pause where people decide what shape to make next.
Sable clapped his hands a third time, gentle. "That's everything. You can go home. Or to brunch. Or to your deeply unhealthy relationship with your own expectations."
Zoey brightened. "Brunch!"
Mira set her hands on her hips, narrowed her eyes, and let sarcasm distill to a fine spirit. "So you called us all the way out to the woods… to give us a glowstick."
Inside Sable's head, a thousand tiny versions of him fell to their knees and screamed to the sky. On the outside, he achieved a look that said "wow, you're fun at parties."
He sniffed. "What else would I call you here for? A confession?" He dropped his shoulders, tilted his head, and pressed his index fingers together near his chin with nauseating bashfulness. "Senpai notice me," he said in falsetto.
Mira blinked once in pure astonishment, pinched the bridge of her nose, and sighed loud enough to shiver the needles overhead. "I hate that you're funny."
He cackled, because triumph tastes like someone else's exasperation. He slid the First Star off the ground and into its bracelet with a whisper of metal. The air around his wrist tightened, then settled.
"Alright," he said, stepping back into the clearing's center where the fold would catch cleanest. "Be good. Don't touch unknown portals. Hydrate."
He angled his weight, shoulders turning, the air around him already beginning to distort with the muscle memory of vanishing.
Then he paused, the way a cat pauses when it spots a glass on the edge of a table.
He turned. Slower. Smile uncurling like a ribbon of smoke. "Oh—Rumi?"
Her eyes lifted, instinctive. "Yes?"
He pointed at Jinu with the delighted cruelty of a child tattling to a teacher. "Before you go, you should know: he tried to seduce me."
All three girls' heads snapped to Jinu so hard the group made a synchronized neck crack.
"What?" Jinu said, color draining so fast it could have qualified as time travel. He looked at Sable like betrayal was a species and Sable had invented it.
Sable put a very serious, very injured hand over his heart. "I've never felt so objectified."
"You—" Jinu sputtered. He actually sputtered. "You liar. You—!"
"Gotta run," Sable said cheerfully, and lifted a hand in a tiny, innocent wave. The fold took him at the wrist, then elbow, then shoulder, until the last thing in the clearing was his grin.
Jinu moved. He lunged. Air closed on empty space where an annoying man had been, and Jinu caught a pine branch instead. It whipped back and smacked him in the cheek. The sound it made was undignified.
"What a beautiful sight," Sable said to nobody, on the other side of the city.
— — —
(Hotel Room – Sable POV)
The world reassembled as quiet wood and cheap art. The runes I'd carved into the floor winked in the low light—concentric ring, eight-point pattern, a latticework that bent the room imperceptibly toward its center. The scent here was cedar, coffee, and scorched memory.
I stretched until my spine popped. The ache low in my back answered with a little electric curse.
"Let's get started," I told the air.
The Chalice came to my hand like a secret I was allowed to keep. Silver. Constellations picking themselves out along its lip. The metal was cool and heavier than it looked—like water in a frozen cup.
I knelt and set it down in the middle of the circle, exactly on the mark the Tomb had suggested and then smugly refused to elaborate about. The engravings along the floor hummed in their bones, and a ripple moved through the room so faint you'd miss it if you weren't the thing causing it.
I exhaled, slow, sifting my thoughts like flour until only the fine left. The anchor's new thread hummed in my chest—white, taut, true. There you are, it said again, and for the first time in days the idea of leaving didn't feel like stepping off a cliff in the dark. It felt like building a door.
"Okay," I said to the Chalice, to the runes, to the work. "Show me what awaits the veil."
— — —
(Rumi POV)
We stood in the clearing with the sound of his exit still bending the needles. The cylinder warmed against my palm as if it had a pulse.
Zoey looked at me with eyes as big as her buns. "He was kidding, right? About Jinu? Right?"
Mira didn't look at anyone for a beat. Then she turned her head, deadpan. "I don't know. He has… a type."
"What type?" Jinu demanded, scandal and mortification fighting it out on his face.
Mira counted on her fingers. "Tall. Broody. Residual criminal energy."
"That's— I—" Jinu ran out of consonants and switched to breath. He looked at me. Then away. Then back at me. "I didn't— That's not— You know that's not true."
I didn't intend to laugh. It slipped anyway, thin and unwilling and real. "I know," I said.
His shoulders dropped a centimeter. Relief made him younger for a second.
Mira stepped close to me, her voice pitched low enough for just us. "You okay?"
I looked down at the metal. The runes glowed at the edges, not bright—certain. "I will be."
Zoey scooted in under my arm and peered at the cylinder from below. "I vote we don't lose the glowstick."
"anchor," I corrected softly.
"Glowstick," Mira said, because she's like that.
We started back toward the city in a loose line. Leaves whispered. The wind smelled like iron and sap. Jinu walked parallel to me but half a pace behind, which used to make me feel like a leader and now just felt like something we needed to fix.
He cleared his throat. "Rumi."
I kept my eyes forward. "Yes?"
"I am sorry," he said, simple as a stone.
"I know," I said, and let us both sit inside the silence after. It didn't ache the way it used to.
A minute later, Zoey hopped to match my stride. "Do we, um… tell people we have a glow—l anchor? Or is it, like, secret secrets?"
"Secret," I said.
Mira's mouth tilted. "You mean we don't announce to the demons, 'hey, please steal this and strand our pet magician'?"
"He's not—" I started, and stopped. He isn't ours. He isn't mine. But the refusal didn't come with heat. "We keep it safe."
Zoey nodded like she was promising a puppy a very good life. "We'll keep it safe."
I believed her.
— — —
(Mira POV)
Picking a path out of a pine stand is like lowering yourself out of a group chat—slow, careful, don't step on the wrong thing. We made it to the road with only one Zoey trip (caught by Jinu, which he handled like a bomb tech defusing humiliation—no jokes, no flourish, just steady hands and a "got you"). Rumi tucked the cylinder into the inner pocket of her jacket like it was a fragile rib.
"So," I said, because somebody has to be the one to push the conversation into useful shape, "he drops a 'by the way, I'm leaving' like a post-it note and expects us to be fine?"
Zoey puffed her cheeks. "He said he'd come back."
"He didn't say when."
Rumi's mouth pressed into a line. "He told us enough."
"Did he?" I asked, as gently as I know how, which is to say not very.
Her fingers pressed the metal through the fabric, a reflex. "He trusted us."
I nodded. I could feel the runes through my own sleeve where I'd touched them earlier—clean work, precise, obsessive. It was the kind of object that told you more about its maker than their words did. "He did," I conceded. "Which is why we don't drop it, we don't wave it on stage like a lightstick, and we don't let Zoey shake it."
Zoey made a small offended noise. "Once! I shook things once!"
"You shook the incense burner," Mira reminded her. "We couldn't smell for three days."
I snorted. "It was… memorable."
Jinu looked at Rumi again, then away. Tried again. "You really… seem more comfortable."
She glanced down at her hand, where the pale patterns curved like frost. She didn't hide them under her sleeve. "I am," she said, and the words carried a weight I didn't expect. "It helps to have someone say 'you're not a curse' and mean it."
Jinu's mouth softened. He didn't reach for her; that was smart. "You never were," he said, and it didn't sound like a line.
I looked ahead so they could have a second that didn't include my commentary, because occasionally I can be a person.
— — —
(Jinu POV)
The trees gave way to road, road to guardrail, guardrail to concrete. City air picked up: damp, distant cooking oil, exhaust. I walked beside them and told myself to keep my shoulders loose. The cylinder had looked wrong in Sable's hands—like it belonged to hands that didn't tremble—but right in Rumi's. She held it like a promise.
He'd lied, obviously. Not about leaving. About me. About seduction. The accusation had been ridiculous and purposeful and precise—an arrow that made everyone look at me so he could leave without being the only thing anyone watched. Annoying. Effective.
"Why do you think he gave it to you?" I asked Rumi before I could stop the question from being a question.
She blinked, surprised at the shape of it. "Because I won't drop it," she said, and then, after a beat, "and because he knew I'd understand why he has to go."
My mouth twitched. I didn't want to ask the next thing. I did anyway. "Do you… want him to come back?"
Mira made a noise like she'd just spilled water on herself. Zoey's head swiveled between us, delighted and alarmed.
Rumi didn't flinch. "Yes."
I nodded once, pressing the word down until it didn't cut. "Then we don't lose it."
Her eyes met mine. She smiled a small, armed smile. "We don't."
— — —
(3rd POV)
They reached the bus stop with the world settled into its daytime noises—delivery scooters, a radio from a shop, a dog complaining into a window. The four of them looked like a mismatched group in a commercial for a product that didn't exist: leader, blade; anchor, blade; chaos, knives; reformed disaster, claws he didn't show.
Rumi lifted her phone, typed out a message, and paused with her thumb over send. Mira watched her not send it. Zoey peeled a clementine and distributed wedges into three hands with an air of priestess ritual. Jinu stood half a step away and didn't pretend he wasn't listening to the silence.
"Don't text him," Mira said, without judgment. "Make him sweat."
Rumi huffed a laugh. "He doesn't sweat."
"He does," Zoey offered brightly. "I saw."
Jinu made a sound that might have been a laugh if it weren't wearing a mask.
The bus pulled up and knelt. They climbed aboard like soldiers after a skirmish, paying fares, finding seats. Rumi tucked the anchor in close. The city rolled by.
Behind them, in a quiet room with carved runes and a silver cup, a man who wouldn't stay, couldn't stay, bent over a circle he'd made with his hands and his hunger and said to an empty room that was full of the future: Let's get started.
—————
A/N: And that concludes volume 1!! Let's go!!!🥳🥳
So how was it was it rushed? I think it was but I'll continue the story anyway 🤷♂️
Soon I'll post sables states so hold on till then. Also I'm already done with the first few chapters of volume 2 just have to polish some things
Now leave a comment leave a review and…..
SSSEEE YYYAAA NNNEEEXXXTTT TTTIIIMMMEEE !!!!!!!!!