As they stepped into the heart of the *Moon Gorge*, the preceding silence shattered as if it had been a lie all along.
A lamentation was welling up from the *Ice Tiers*.
Each time the lanterns hung at the street's entrance flickered, particles of information drifted down like falling snow. The sharp clack of wooden clappers bounced off the cobblestones, filling the air with a resonance far removed from the sounds of daily life.
Koyoi paused, gauging the distance of the sound. The shadows were thin, yet the presence was thick. Beyond the entrance, something was swaying.
With every pulse of light from the lanterns—positioned specifically to mark the *Boundary*—a white mist crawled out from the cracks in the paving stones. The mist clung to his ankles as if trying to seize them. It was an indescribable sensation; less like simple cold and more as if the very silence at the foundation of the world was pressing directly against his skin.
Koyoi placed a hand on the drawstring pouch at his waist, feeling for the faint pulsation of the gods slumbering within.
The pulse was weak, but it had not broken. That very weakness spoke eloquently of the sheer weight of the *Natural Laws saturating this place. Each time his fingertips brushed the fabric, the warmth of the Droplets* shifted slightly; with every shift, the wailing voices leaking from the Ice Tiers receded by a single note.
Careful not to miss even the smallest change, Koyoi steadied his breathing. He endured the chill of the cobblestones as it pierced through his soles and sank into the very bone of his feet. The cold crawled up to his knees, swirling inside his body as it vied for dominance against the warmth of the pouch. Koyoi pressed his lips together, testing the shape of words against the back of his teeth, his consciousness tethered to the mourning voices.
The lament was not a single entity.
Countless layers of voices rose like bubbles from the depths of the ice, only to pop and vanish the instant before they touched the stones. In their wake remained a faint, sweet scent—the fleeting fragrance of flower nectar released when frozen prayers melt.
Kuon sat with the *Catalog spread across his knees, the pale blue luminescence of his Artificial Eye* casting a glow onto the pages. As the blue light crawled over the script, the edges of the paper trembled; the ancient fibers were fraying, unable to withstand the pressure of the Laws. His profile betrayed a hunger unique to those who devour knowledge, yet it sat alongside a deep-seated dread of approaching the truth. His thin lips were clamped shut as if suppressing a secret.
The strings of characters in the Catalog seemed to writhe atop the yellowed paper. Each time Kuon’s eye caught them, the intensity of the blue light deepened. The fine veins at his temples throbbed. His breath was a thin, white thread that fell toward the stones and vanished instantly. The pages of the Catalog were edged in a nameless color—neither gold nor silver—that emitted a faint sound whenever the blue light touched it.
It wasn't the sound of paper chafing. It was a deeper resonance: the sound of the records themselves creaking.
Asahi kept his right hand on the hilt of his sword, his gaze fixed on the furthest depths of the street. He gripped the hilt so tightly his knuckles turned white. His feet were shoulder-width apart, his center of gravity low and steady. Beneath his clothes, the muscles of his back shifted slightly, maintaining a posture that allowed for an instantaneous draw while he read the flow of the cold air with his entire body.
"...Do not give it voice. If you call a name at the edge of the *Sand Boundary*, even the name inside you will be taken away."
The blue light from Kuon's eye wavered for a moment. In that flicker, a faint afterimage of something he himself had once lost seemed to shimmer through. He slowly closed the Catalog, keeping his fingers on the leather cover as he stared at his own shadow on the stones. Bathed in the chill of the Ice Tiers, the shadow was unnaturally thin, as if his very existence were being bleached away.
Koyoi did not miss the slight tremor hidden in the depths of Kuon’s voice. He wasn't just warning his companions; he was warning himself.
The impulse to call out a name swirled in the throats of everyone present. Kuon traced the corner of the Catalog with his frozen fingertips, running a nail over the old scars on the leather two, three times—as if each mark were a record of a boundary he had crossed in the past.
"...I know. But, somehow... I can hear their voices coming from the bottom of the ice. It sounds so desperate."
Koyoi spoke the words as if wringing them out. His voice was thin, yet the core of it remained unbroken. Inside the pouch, a Droplet pulsed, sending a heat through his palm that reached the depths of his chest.
The voices echoing from the Ice Tiers were a succession of fragments that couldn't quite become words. Shards of names, the dregs of prayers—memories of gods that had been chipped away by *Observers* over thousands of years were reaching out for one another beneath the freezing Laws.
Koyoi understood the temperature of those hands.
Because he understood, he wanted to call to them. Despite knowing he shouldn't, the shapes of names formed and dissolved repeatedly in the back of his throat. He bit his lip, using the pain to suppress the urge.
The heat of the pain mingled with the chill, and his white breath scattered in short bursts. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes and began to freeze; before their weight could carry them down his cheeks, he wiped them away with the back of his hand. The moisture left behind turned cold immediately, numbing his skin.
Yet, Koyoi was beginning to realize that within that numbness lay the very silence required to hear the voices of the gods.
Asahi leaned his back against a wall, listening to their exchange in silence. With his arms crossed and his eyelids half-closed, he appeared indifferent at a glance, but the slight movement of his fingers on his sword hilt was proof of his tension. He leaned into the coldness of the stone wall.
The cold sharpened the senses, and sharpened senses could pick up the footsteps of an approaching threat a second earlier. He heard the desperation in Koyoi’s voice and the self-restraint hidden in Kuon’s warning. He heard it all, but he had long ago decided that his role was one of action, not words.
He pushed off the wall and planted his feet firmly on the cobblestones once more. The sound of his boots gripping the frozen stone rang out—a single note that echoed through the street, drawing their eyes to him.
"...Let’s go. I’ve already left the answers behind."
Asahi spoke quietly but with certainty. His voice was unadorned, and for that reason, it rolled straight across the stones, momentarily silencing the lamentations of the Ice Tiers. Koyoi looked up and saw the flickering lamplight reflected in the side of Asahi's face.
Light and shadow took turns tracing his silhouette, and in both, a steadfast will was etched. Kuon tucked the Catalog into his robes and turned the blue light of his eye toward the end of the street. Their three sets of footsteps overlapped, the sound of them striking the stones blending with the rhythm of the wooden clappers.
Step by step, they crushed the layers of grief rising from the Ice Tiers as they ventured deeper into the Moon Gorge. The walls of the ancient buildings lining the street caught their footsteps, echoing and magnifying them until it felt as though a great many comrades were walking alongside them.
Inside the pouch, the Droplet pulsed quietly. That warmth was the final flicker of light, pushing back the chill of the ice as it carried Koyoi's feet forward.