When the Mist Train shuddered to a halt, only the long, lingering groan of its iron frame remained. The hiss of venting steam followed as the doors slid open, and air thick with the scent of metal and grit rushed in.
It was bone-dry.
Koyoi stepped out, his eyes falling to the ground at the sensation beneath his feet. Sand. Fine grains that worked their way into the crevices of his soles. Everything here was a world away from the frozen cobblestones of Shimosato. The wind was lukewarm, parching the back of his throat and chapping his lips in an instant.
Asahi didn't move.
He stood frozen before the open door, staring into the distance. Low hills sprawled across the horizon, their ridgelines planed flat, punctuated by a sparse scattering of withered shrubs.
"Do you know this place?" Kuon asked.
Asahi didn't answer. Instead, he took a deep breath. The scent of parched grass, sun-baked stone, and a faint, sweet hint of earth filled his lungs.
"...I’ve walked here before," he said.
His voice was low, its usual roughness stripped away to leave a sound as raw as unhewn stone.
Koyoi watched his profile in silence. A single muscle in his cheek twitched. His hand gripped the hilt of his sword so tightly that his knuckles showed white.
Behind them, the Mist Train lurched. With a huff of steam and a metallic screech, it began to pull away, leaving the three of them behind. The station was nothing more than a roofless platform with a single, rusted signpost, its lettering scoured illegible by the wind.
Asahi set off first.
His stride was certain. The path ahead branched in two: the right path curved gently around the base of the hill, while the left descended straight into the heart of a dry ravine. Asahi stopped and pointed left.
"This way."
He offered no explanation, and Koyoi didn't ask for one. His back told the story—these were paths his feet remembered.
Kuon opened his Register. The blue glow of his prosthetic eye swept across the pages.
"The records are thin. The names of this entire region have mostly evaporated."
"Evaporated?"
"Not frozen. Dried by the heat and scattered. Along with the sand."
A gust of wind blew. Grains of sand stung Koyoi’s cheeks. If fragments of names were mixed into that sand, then this wind was the wreckage of someone's memory.
Koyoi pressed his hand against his drawstring pouch. Through the fabric, he felt the warmth of the Droplet. Its pulse was quieter than usual—not asleep, but as if it were holding its breath, listening.
Asahi’s stride was long. Koyoi hurried to keep up, while Kuon followed silently behind, closing his Register.
The floor of the dry ravine was paved with stones—ancient ones with rounded edges and gaps choked with sand. Long ago, someone had laid this road, but it had been ages since it was last used.
Asahi slowed his pace.
He didn't stop, but with every step, he seemed to be confirming the sensation of the stones beneath him, as if his boots were unearthing a well-trodden path from memory.
"Asahi," Koyoi called out.
He didn't turn back. "I used to run here when I was a kid," he said. "Barefoot."
His voice was dry, but not in the way the sand was; it was the dryness of someone holding something back deep in their throat.
The wind whipped through the ravine, the shifting sand beginning to bury Asahi's footprints like a name fading away.
Koyoi stared at his broad back—shoulders squared, sword strapped on, facing straight ahead. Yet, for just a moment, he looked small.
The pouch gave a single, quiet thrum.
Beyond the ravine, a series of collapsed stone walls came into view. Only the foundations of houses remained—the skeleton of a nameless village, silent in the arid wind. Asahi didn't look at them; he kept his eyes fixed on the stones beneath his feet.
Withered vines clung to the gaps in the stonework. At the base of a vine lay a shard of a broken jar, bleached white by the sun and so brittle it looked as if it would crumble at a touch. Remnants of lives lingered, half-buried in the dirt.
As they walked, Kuon scanned the walls with his prosthetic eye.
"The record retention rate is nearly zero. Not a single name of the people who lived here remains."
Koyoi placed his hand on one of the stone walls. The rock was dry and warm, holding the heat of the sun. But within that warmth, there was no trace of human presence—only the heat of the stone itself.
Asahi came to a halt.
At the exit of the ravine, the path narrowed. Rock walls pressed in from both sides, and through the gap, a thin ribbon of light from the other side illuminated the ground. Asahi looked down at that band of light and let out a long breath.
"Let's go," he said curtly, squeezing his body through the narrow opening.
Kuon whispered softly to himself, "A homecoming, then?"
Asahi didn't answer.
Only the sharp crunch of footsteps on stone echoed briefly through the ravine before being swallowed by the sand.