The training courtyard had that morning light that made everything seem more possible — the same light as always, in the same space as always, with the same three children who had spent weeks sharing that space and had reached the point where they no longer needed instructions to begin.
Ginjiro had the mana active in both hands — orange, more stable than three weeks ago, with that consistency that comes from sufficient repetition — and was moving through the pattern his father had taught him while Nori watched with the critical attention of someone who has a year's head start and uses it.
"The left elbow," said Nori.
"I know," said Ginjiro, without stopping.
"Then fix it."
"I'm working on it."
Sae was sitting at the edge of the courtyard with her legs crossed and the mana forming small patterns in her palms — not to attack but to keep it stable for as long as possible, which was the exercise Kana had left them to practise on their own.
"How long have your parents been away?" said Sae, without lifting her eyes from her hands.
"Mine went north," said Nori. "Four days now."
"Same as mine," said Sae. "Three."
"Mine to Tokyo," said Ginjiro. "Five."
The silence that followed was not uncomfortable but the kind that exists between people who share something — not the exact same situation but the same texture of situation, the same kind of absence that fills the space where certain people should be.
"Have you heard anything from yours?" Sae asked Nori.
"A message two days ago," said Nori. "That they were fine and not to worry."
Sae looked at her hands.
"Mine too. I think they're together."
Ginjiro lowered his hands and let the mana go out.
"Nothing from mine since they left," he said.
Nori and Sae looked at him.
"Kana told me it would be a week," said Ginjiro, in the tone of someone repeating something they were told and is not entirely sure they believe. "It's already been five days."
"Two more days," said Nori. "Don't worry."
"I'm not worried," said Ginjiro.
The way he said it was exactly that of someone who is worried, but has decided that saying so changes nothing.
"Let's continue," he said, activating the mana again.
Kana arrived when they had been going for an hour.
Not with the step of someone coming to correct but of someone coming to observe — quieter, more watchful, with that attention of hers that registered everything without appearing to.
"How are you getting on?" she said.
"Well," said Sae. "We've been practising a lot."
"Nori has the most stable flow of the three of us now," said Ginjiro, in the neutral tone of someone stating a fact without minding stating it.
Nori looked at him slightly surprised that Ginjiro had said it himself.
"Your activation speed still doesn't match mine," said Nori.
"I know," said Ginjiro. "That's why I said it."
Kana looked at all three of them with that expression that was somewhere between assessment and something closer to affection, even if she did not show it in a completely direct way.
She opened her mouth to say something.
And then she saw the man.
He was running from the trees — not the jog of someone in a hurry but the run of someone frightened, with that specific difference in breathing and eyes that means one cannot be confused about which of the two it is. He was a man of around forty, with clothes suggesting he had left without planning to, with the expression of someone who has seen something and needs someone else to know it.
"Maestra Kana," he said, reaching the edge of the courtyard. "They... they're here."
Kana looked at him.
"Calm down," she said, with a firmness that was not cold but the kind that anchors people who are losing their anchor. "Explain."
"The remnants," said the man, recovering his breath in fragments. "They're here already. In the town. They're..."
"Breathe," said Kana.
The man breathed.
The three children had turned towards him. Ginjiro had the mana still faintly active — halfway out, like when one interrupts something without quite deciding whether to resume it.
"Where?" said Kana.
"The entrance to the town," said the man. "There were people there. The shops, the street... I don't know how many died. I just ran."
Kana did not visibly change her expression. Inside she was calculating — how many, what kind, how much time she had, what she could do with what she had available.
"Children," she said, without taking her eyes off the man, "all three of you go together to Ginjiro's house. Now."
"But—" Ginjiro began.
"That is an order," said Kana, and there was something in Kana's order that was different from the usual instructions — more urgent, more personal. "Go."
Ginjiro looked at Kana for one more second.
Then he nodded.
"Let's go," he said to the other two.
The three of them began to move away. Kana turned to the man.
"Are they still at the entrance or have they come further in?"
"They're in the town," said the man. "Already inside."
"How many?"
"I don't know."
Kana nodded.
"Go with the children," she said. "You don't need to be involved in this if there's nothing you can do."
"Maestra Kana, I..."
"That's an instruction," said Kana, in the tone that admitted no discussion. "Go."
The man nodded and turned to leave.
The silence lasted exactly as long as it took to arrive.
It was not a sound — it was the absence of sound where there should have been a footstep, and then the sound of something completely different, and then nothing.
Kana turned her head.
The world slowed in that specific way it slows when something has happened and the brain is still in the process of processing what.
The man was not standing.
What remained of him was on the ground, split in two by something that had arrived with the speed of something that does not give warning because it does not need to.
In the tree at the edge of the courtyard, sitting on a branch with the casual posture of someone observing something they find mildly interesting, there was a figure. A metre seventy-three, a build that was somewhere between lean and muscular without being completely either. Instead of hands it had what at first glance appeared to be extensions — long, sharp, the kind of edge that is not made but grows from something that has it naturally.
"That inferior being was not worth leaving alive," it said, in that off voice that Kana recognised immediately as that of something that has learned the language in a way that did not include having lived it. "It would only have been in the way."
Kana looked at the man on the ground.
Then at the figure in the tree.
The mana appeared in her body with that activation that takes years of practice — not explosive but total, covering from her feet to her hands with the density of something that has learned to distribute itself evenly because a hunter who channels everything into one point has points left uncovered.
"I didn't know remnants could speak," she said.
"There are many things you don't know about us," said the figure, jumping from the tree with the lightness of something for which height is not a relevant variable.
"What are you looking for?"
The figure tilted its head with something that in a human would have been amusement.
"Do you think I'm stupid?" it said. "I'm obviously not going to tell you."
"It doesn't matter," said Kana. "When I defeat you I'm going to help the people in the town."
The figure looked at her.
And then it smiled in a way that had too much of something that was not joy.
"I doubt you can," it said. "They're already dead."
Something moved behind Kana.
She did not get to see what — it came as pressure first, before the eyes processed it, and then arms seized her from behind with a force that was not the force of something that thinks but of something that simply has more than it should.
The deformed remnant was short — a metre and a half, with a shape that corresponded to no recognisable symmetry — and did not emit words but sounds, the kind of sounds that something makes when the voice exists but the language does not.
"Companion," said the figure with sword-hands, addressing the deformed one, "kill her."
Kana struggled.
The deformed one's arms were strong in a way that did not correspond to the size — that specific density of remnants that have accumulated enough of whatever it is that makes them what they are for the body to be more than it appears.
Kana concentrated the mana in her elbows, her forearms, the points of contact with the deformed one — not to attack but to create enough outward pressure for the grip to yield enough.
It yielded enough.
She pulled free and turned in the same movement, putting distance between herself and the deformed one, with her attention already divided between the two.
"We have to go back."
Ginjiro stopped before the others reached the corner.
Nori turned.
"We just got here," he said, with the exhaustion of someone who has been running. "Kana told us to come here."
"Kana is alone," said Ginjiro.
"She's an adult hunter," said Sae. "We're ten-year-old children who have never fought a real remnant. We can't help her with anything."
"We can't leave her alone," said Ginjiro.
"If we go," said Sae, with the patience of someone telling someone something they do not want to hear, "we're going to be a burden more than a help. We can use the mana, but that's it, that's all we have. Against real remnants that's not enough."
"I don't know how," said Ginjiro. "But we have to go."
He paused.
"And if you two don't go, I'm going alone."
Nori looked at him.
Then he looked in the direction from which they had come.
"Kato's right," he said.
Sae looked at him.
"What?"
"We can't stay here while the remnants attack," said Nori. "We're hunters." He paused. "Or we're going to be."
Sae looked at both of them for a moment.
"I'm not staying alone in a house that isn't even mine," she said at last, in the tone of someone who has made a decision and prefers to frame it a certain way. "So I'm going."
Ginjiro nodded.
They ran.
What they found when they arrived was what Kana had feared they would find.
The deformed one had Kana cornered against the edge of the courtyard with its arms extended blocking both side exits — not in an intelligent way but in the way very large things block spaces, with the body as an obstacle rather than a tactic. The figure with sword-hands was advancing from the front with that unhurried pace of something that is not in a hurry because it has already calculated that the result is not going to change.
"Kana!" shouted Ginjiro.
The figure with sword-hands stopped.
It turned towards the three children with something in its expression that was not exactly surprise but the registration of a variable that had not been in the original calculation.
"I didn't know there were more hunters in the area," it said.
"Get out!" shouted Kana, with an urgency that had nothing of her usual calm. "Now!"
"We're not leaving," said Ginjiro.
He turned to the other two.
"Are we, you two?"
Nori and Sae looked at him — with their eyes slightly wider than usual, with that specific rigidity of the first time that something one has trained to face is really in front of one and turns out to be more real than training can fully prepare for.
"W-we're staying," said Sae, in the voice that stutters when the body is not yet completely in agreement with what the mind has decided.
"Yes," said Nori.
The figure with sword-hands looked at all three of them. Then at Kana.
"It seems you raised some brave hunters," it said, with something that in a human would have been appreciation. "A shame that bravery alone is not enough." It turned to the deformed one. "Kill them."
Kana stepped towards the figure with sword-hands.
"No..."
The strike came before she finished the word — not from the blades but from the free hand, an impact that made her step back two paces.
"You," said the figure with sword-hands, placing itself between her and the children, "fight with me."
The deformed one advanced towards the three of them.
Not with the speed of the remnants they had faced in the temple — slower, heavier, the kind of movement that does not need speed because it has enough force for speed to be secondary.
All three activated the mana at the same time.
Orange all three — different intensities, different stabilities, but present in all three with the consistency of weeks of practice.
"Flanks," said Nori, in the voice of someone calculating as they speak. "Don't face it head on."
The deformed one arrived.
Ginjiro threw himself to the right and responded with a charged fist to the deformed one's side — the impact was like hitting something denser than it appeared, with the mana absorbing part of the shock, but the arm protesting all the same. Nori came in from the left at the same time, using his elbow on the shoulder, and Sae launched a burst of mana from behind that was not a strike with a specific shape but pure energy sent in a direction.
The deformed one shuddered.
It did not fall — it absorbed all three impacts with that remnant density that does not correspond to the size — but it shuddered, and that second of imbalance was enough for the three of them to reposition.
"Again," said Nori.
The deformed one swept them with its right arm in a wide arc — all three read it, but Sae read it half a second too late and took the impact on her shoulder, which sent her into the courtyard wall.
"Sae!" said Ginjiro.
"I'm fine," said Sae, pulling herself up with her arm protesting. "Keep going."
The deformed one turned towards Ginjiro — perhaps because he had struck hardest, perhaps on instinct, perhaps for some reason a remnant without language could not articulate. It charged with the full weight of its body, with no available dodge in the direction Ginjiro had.
Nori came in from the side and struck the deformed one's knee with concentrated mana — not enough to bring it down, but enough to alter the axis of the movement, making the deformed one's heavy body turn slightly.
Ginjiro used that turn.
The fist arrived at the deformed one's neck with all the mana he had available in that moment — not the controlled thirty seconds of training but the kind of strike that comes out when one is no longer thinking about the flow but only about the strike landing.
The deformed one went still.
One second.
It dissolved.
The three of them stood in the courtyard with breathing that was louder than usual and mana that had dropped to levels none of them wanted to fully verify.
Sae looked at the space where the deformed one had been.
"We killed it," she said, as though still finishing believing it.
"Yes," said Nori.
"We killed it," Sae repeated.
"Yes," said Ginjiro. "We killed it."
Kana's fight with the figure with sword-hands was different from anything the children had seen in training.
Not in technique — in scale. In the way every movement of Kana's had a purpose that was simultaneously defence and preparation for what came next, in the way the mana she used was not explosive but constant and distributed in a way that only comes from decades of real use.
The figure with sword-hands was fast — more so than its build suggested — and the extensions in place of hands created angles of attack that a sword or a fist would not have, arriving from above, from the sides, from below in arcs that Kana had to read before they arrived because if she waited to see them it was already too late.
She read most of them.
One reached her left side — superficial, a line of pain she registered and filed away because there was no time for more than that.
She responded with her elbow to the figure's neck, with the mana concentrated at that point, and the figure stepped back two paces with something in its expression that had not been there before.
"Not bad," said the figure.
"You weren't expecting this," said Kana.
"I was expecting less," it admitted, with that direct honesty that some thinking remnants had. "But it doesn't matter. I have more than this."
The extensions activated differently — not as arms that strike but separating slightly from the body, moving with more independence, covering a wider area of simultaneous angles.
Kana assessed them in the second she had available.
Then she did something the figure did not anticipate — she advanced instead of retreating, closing the distance to the point where the long angles of the extensions lost efficiency and the movement space of the body itself became the field of combat.
The strike that arrived at the figure's torso with all of Kana's mana concentrated in her right fist sounded different from the previous ones.
The figure stepped back three paces.
Kana did not give it time to recover — two more strikes, to the same point, with the mana that was still active with that consistency of someone who knows how to manage it because they have had to in situations that allow no margin for error.
The figure went down on one knee.
It looked at Kana with those eyes that held something that was not fear but the recognition of something it had not expected to find.
"More than expected," it said.
"Yes," said Kana, with the mana still active. "Much more."
The figure dissolved.
The courtyard fell silent.
Kana looked at the space where the figure had been. Then at the space where the deformed one had been. Then at the three children standing at the edge of the courtyard with the look of people who have come out the other side of something and are still processing that they are on the other side.
She walked towards them.
She looked at them one by one — at Ginjiro, at Nori, at Sae — with the attention of someone verifying the state of something that matters.
Sae's shoulder. Nori's arm. The way Ginjiro was holding his right hand.
None of them were exactly all right.
None of them were seriously hurt either.
"You disobeyed an order," said Kana.
All three lowered their gaze.
Kana watched them for a moment longer.
"And yet... you did well."
She did not say it with the enthusiasm of someone celebrating — she said it with the weight of someone who knows what those words mean in this context and says them precisely because they mean that.
"All three of you," she continued, "without any real training, having never faced a remnant before, without anyone telling you that you were going to have to do this... you fought. And you won."
Sae looked at the ground with something that was between pride and the specific exhaustion of those who finish something that cost them.
Nori nodded once — his version of everything he was not going to say aloud.
Ginjiro looked at her.
"Are you all right?" he said, gesturing towards Kana's left side where the extension's cut had left its mark.
"I'm fine," said Kana.
"You need to treat that."
"I'm fine, Ginjiro."
Ginjiro looked at her for one more second with that expression Kana recognised — of someone who is not completely convinced, but accepts the answer because there is no other available option.
Kana looked in the direction of the town.
She could not allow herself to go there yet.
But she also could not stay with three children in the middle of a place that had just stopped being safe.
"After this," said Kana, looking at the three of them, "the best thing is to go to Tokyo."
All three looked at her.
"Tokyo?" said Sae.
"The central headquarters," said Kana. "It's no longer safe here. And there are things you need to learn that I alone cannot teach you in these conditions."
Nori nodded.
Sae nodded slowly.
Ginjiro smiled.
Not the smile of someone who is happy because the situation warrants it — the smile of someone who has heard something specific within what has just been said, and who, for the first time in five days, has a concrete direction for whatever comes next.
Tokyo, he thought.
Where my parents are.