The whistle blew.
It was a thin sound. Until now, the Mist Train’s whistle had been a deep bass that vibrated in the pit of one's stomach, but this sound was high and reedy, reaching them like a thread pulled from a distant place.
Koyoi remained in his seat, gazing out the window.
The mist was thin.
It wasn't the fog of the Sea of Oblivion, nor the ashen grey mist that clung to the Scripture Repository. Outside the glass, a faint white spread out like a single drop of watercolor dissolved in water.
Then, a shadow emerged from beyond the white.
A mountain.
Koyoi pressed his forehead against the window. The chill of the glass seeped into his skin, but he didn't care. The mountain’s ridgeline floated within the mist. Its silhouette was hazy, but it was unmistakably a mountain. There were undulations, slopes, and a peak.
"Kuon-kun, look—"
"I see it."
Kuon looked up from his catalog and turned toward the window. The blue light of his artificial eye narrowed.
"The mist is thinning."
Kuon adjusted the focus of his prosthetic eye. The blue glow pierced through the glass, straining to capture what lay beyond the mist.
"It’s not just mountains. There are valleys. Something is growing on the slopes."
"Growing?"
Koyoi moved to Kuon’s side and looked out the same window.
Trees.
They were living trees, not withered husks. They had leaves. It was too far to distinguish colors, but the branches were swaying in the breeze. There was wind. The air was moving.
Near the Scripture Repository, the air had always been stagnant. Wind simply didn't exist there. Yet here it was, rustling the branches.
Asahi walked over from across the aisle.
"Did you see outside?"
"We did. There are trees growing."
Koyoi turned around.
Asahi stood by the window, arms crossed as he stared out.
"...There’s color," he said softly.
Koyoi looked out the window once more. Asahi was right. There was color on the mountain slopes. A hue that was neither ash nor white. Something close to green. He couldn't tell for certain from this distance, but it was a color that had never existed around the Repository.
"This is a territory where the reign of the Principles does not reach," Kuon said, flipping a page in his catalog. "The power of the Freezing has its limits. It couldn't encompass the entire world. In the frontier, there are places the Freezing never reached. We are near the boundary."
"If the Freezing didn't reach it, does that mean it hasn't been bleached either?" Asahi asked.
"Most likely. Even the Observers' detection network only functions within the range of the Freezing. If we continue forward, there’s a chance we can slip past their surveillance."
The whistle blew again.
It was even thinner than before. The train was slowing down.
The mist outside the window thinned once more, and the mountain's silhouette sharpened. The ridgelines were jagged, revealing bare rock. Yet, from the crevices in that rock, grass sprouted, and among the grass, flowers bloomed. Tiny, white flowers.
Koyoi squinted.
Flowers.
How long had it been since he’d seen a flower on this journey? In the realm of the gods, flowers existed only as ornaments of the Principles. They were soulless things, arranged in the shapes they were meant to take, in the places they were meant to be. But these white flowers outside the window swayed in the wind, blooming in whatever direction they pleased.
They were flowers managed by no one.
His drawstring pouch trembled.
The Droplet was reacting. Koyoi pressed his hand against the pouch. Its pulse had quickened. It wasn't the rapid beat of fear, but the rhythm of sensing something. It was feeling the air of the outside world—the air that had not been frozen.
"The Droplet... it’s feeling something."
Koyoi looked down at the pouch.
Kuon directed the blue light of his artificial eye toward it, the glow piercing the fabric to illuminate the Droplet within.
"It’s activating. Reactions that were suppressed under the influence of the Freezing are being unleashed here. The Droplet’s true power is returning."
"Its true power?"
"I don't know. But the gods who entrusted the Droplet to us knew the world before the Freezing began. Those memories should be etched within it. Once we step outside the Freezing's reach, those memories may be reawakened."
The train lurched violently.
The condition of the tracks had changed. Near the Repository, the rails had been smooth, but here, the jolts of the rail joints shuddered through the wheels. These tracks were unmaintained. Yet the train did not stop. It pushed forward, rattling and swaying as it went.
The scenery outside continued to shift.
Every time the mist thinned, something new appeared: water flowing at the bottom of a valley, ivy clinging to cliffs, the shadow of a bird crossing the sky.
There were birds.
"A bird!" Koyoi cried out.
A small, black bird flew alongside the train, skimming the glass before vanishing back into the mist.
Asahi snorted. "If there are living things, then this place isn't dead."
"Don't say 'not dead.' Say 'not frozen,'" Kuon corrected. "But the meaning is the same. There are things here living outside the control of the Principles. A fragment of the world as it was before the Freezing still remains here."
The whistle blew for a third time.
This sound was different from the first two. It was still thin, but there was a certain brightness to it, as if the train itself were reacting to the air of this place.
Koyoi took his hand off the window and settled back into his seat. He placed the pouch on his lap. The pulse of the Droplet merged with the vibration of the train, transmitting a strange rhythm into his palm.
He wasn't afraid.
The vanishing letters he’d seen at the Repository, the bleached records, the presence of the Observers—that terror still lurked at the bottom of his heart. But the vista unfolding outside was something else entirely.
The whole world hadn't frozen over just yet.
Koyoi closed his eyes.
The train's vibration rocked his body. The rhythmic clatter of the wheels against the track echoed steadily. In the gaps between those sounds, he heard the wind—the sound of a real breeze brushing against the glass.
If they went just a little further, would the mist finally clear?
It wasn't a certainty, but a prayer he held close to his chest.