The camp smelled of iron, sweat, and oil. Yuzuriha crouched low behind a stack of crates, her breath shallow, her palms damp against the rough wood. Lanterns burned at the perimeter, their orange glow flickering across the strange metal towers the soldiers had erected. Each one hummed softly, a rhythm too precise to be natural—like the heartbeat of a machine.
She waited. Counted.
One soldier's boots crunched the gravel. He paused, muttered something into a device strapped to his shoulder, then moved on. When his shadow disappeared beyond the tents, she darted forward, her sandals whispering against the dirt.
Too loud. She winced and flattened herself against the nearest wall. Her chest rose and fell, and she swallowed down the panic trying to claw its way up her throat.
"Focus, Yuzuriha," she whispered.
The camp was a labyrinth of canvas and steel, so unlike the wood and stone of their village. She traced her fingers lightly along one of the walls—it was cold, lifeless, yet pulsing faintly beneath her touch. The same thrum she'd felt yesterday when Yoshiki and Hikaru were scanned.
She made her way toward the largest tent, where the glow was strongest. The hum grew louder as she approached, vibrating up her arms, until she felt as though her very bones were resonating.
Peeking through a narrow opening, she froze.
Inside stood one of the machines. Towering, covered in panels of polished black metal that reflected the lamplight like water. Wires snaked from its sides into the ground, pulsing faintly with that same eerie light she had seen in the forest vines.
And there, attached to its core, was something that made her blood run cold—stone fragments. Familiar ones. The kind she'd collected years ago when she first began noticing the island's anomalies. Except these weren't lying forgotten in the dirt. They were slotted carefully into the machine, as though they were fuel.
Yuzuriha's throat went dry. They know about the island's energy. They've been studying it all along.
Her heart pounded so loudly she thought it would betray her. She slipped further inside, ducking behind a workbench stacked with papers and tools. She skimmed the documents, but the writing was foreign, filled with symbols and numbers she didn't understand. Still, she picked out one word repeated often enough for her to grasp its importance:
"Resonance."
She reached for one of the fragments, her fingers trembling. The closer she got, the stronger the vibration became—until, with a sudden jolt, the shard pulsed against her skin.
Light bloomed in her palm.
She gasped and yanked her hand back, the glow vanishing as quickly as it had come. Her chest heaved, panic and awe warring inside her.
It reacted to me.
Before she could think further, voices rose outside the tent. Two soldiers, their boots striking the ground in sharp rhythm. Yuzuriha shoved the papers into her satchel and ducked under the table just as the flap opened.
"…Director Shiga wants this unit operational by morning," one soldier said. His voice was clipped, efficient. "No mistakes. The readings from today already confirmed the subjects. We can't afford errors now."
Subjects.
Her stomach knotted. She pressed a hand over her mouth to muffle her breathing, every nerve screaming as the soldiers moved about the room. Tools clattered, boots scraped. One of them cursed quietly about a faulty connection.
Minutes stretched like hours before they finally left.
Yuzuriha exhaled shakily, crawling out from her hiding spot. She dared one last glance at the machine—the stolen stone fragments thrumming within its core—and felt a surge of fury she had never known before.
"They're not here to save us," she whispered. "They're here to use us."
She slipped out into the night, her satchel heavy with stolen papers, her pulse racing faster than ever.
And for the first time, Yuzuriha felt the island watching her back.