The wind was blowing the wrong way.
The train was racing east, yet no breeze came from the west. Instead, it lashed against them from the east—straight from the train’s own destination. The carriage groaned. The windowpanes shuddered, pelted by what sounded like a fine spray of grit against the glass.
Koyoi curled into his seat. The pressure of the wind vibrated through the frame of the car, causing the back of his chair to tremble faintly.
“Something’s wrong,” Asahi muttered, glaring out the window. “The wind is coming from exactly where we’re heading. That’s not natural.”
Kuon turned his prosthetic eye toward the glass. A pale blue light filtered through the lens, illuminating the particles drifting in the gale. It wasn't sand.
“Letters,” he said.
“What?”
“The wind is thick with letters. Not grit. These are fragments of names, caught in the current and swept away.”
Koyoi pressed his hand to the window. He could feel the vibration through the glass—a rhythmic, intermittent thumping, like a heartbeat.
“The names are trying to go back,” he whispered.
Kuon opened his Ledger to the page of the Sea Chart. The lines were wavering, but not with their usual motion. The tips of the lines were pointing backward, away from the train's heading.
“The names stolen from this region are trying to return to where they belong,” Kuon explained. “The wind is the force of that homecoming. The sheer momentum of names trying to find their way back is creating a headwind against the train.”
Asahi crossed his arms. “Well, isn't that a good thing? If they’re returning on their own?”
“They can’t.” Kuon’s voice was cold. “The names seek to return, but there is nowhere for them to go. Their Records have been erased. They are like letters without an address—even if they want to be delivered, the destination no longer exists.”
The train lurched. The wind grew even more violent, its pressure warping the rhythmic clatter of the wheels into a high-pitched metallic scream.
Koyoi clutched his drawstring bag to his chest. Beneath the fabric, the God of Droplets pulsed faintly. Its heartbeat was quickening, as if in sync with the tremors of the wind.
“The names are close,” Koyoi said. “So many of them.”
Kuon fixed his prosthetic eye on the darkness outside, narrowing the blue light to pierce through the distance.
“I see it.”
“See what?”
“The Rift.”
Koyoi leaned toward the window. Far ahead, at the end of the tracks, the sky was torn open.
There was no other way to describe it. The color of the heavens was split in two. To the right lay the sky they had grown used to—a heavy, grey expanse of liquefied Records. But to the left, it was blue. A clear, piercing azure, cloudless and bathed in light.
A single line ran between the two—a straight vertical seam stretching from the earth to the very peak of the firmament.
“A Rift in the Record,” Kuon said. “The world is split in two right there.”
Kuon closed his Ledger and clasped his hands over his knees. For once, the light in his eye flickered unsteadily.
“To the right of the Rift is the world where the Observer erased the names. To the left is the world where the names still remain. They are two versions of the same place, existing simultaneously. One has names; the other does not. That discrepancy has manifested physically as a Rift.”
“Then… if we go to the left side, the names will be there?” Koyoi asked, leaning forward.
“They are there. But we cannot go.”
“Why not?”
“The Rift is a border, not a passage. The two versions overlap, but they do not connect. You can only exist in one or the other. And we are on the side where the names have been deleted.”
The wind roared, and the train began to lose speed, buckling under the sheer atmospheric pressure.
Koyoi stared out. As the Rift drew closer, the blue sky on the left expanded, revealing the silhouette of a town. He saw rooftops. He saw plumes of smoke rising. He could even make out the faint shapes of people walking.
It was the town as it should be—the version that hadn't been erased.
On the right side, there was nothing. A wasteland. Flat earth. Not even a trace remained to suggest a town had ever existed there.
“It’s the same place,” Koyoi’s voice trembled. “The same town. But on one side, everything is there, and on the other… there’s nothing at all.”
Kuon stood up, bracing himself against the ceiling to keep his balance in the swaying carriage.
“Use the wind.”
“The wind?”
“This wind is the force of names trying to return. The names themselves cannot cross the Rift, but the wind can. If you expose the Transcripts to the gale, the 'Originals' on the other side of the Rift may resonate with the 'Copies' we have on this side.”
Asahi threw the window open. The wind surged into the carriage, whipping their hair into a frenzy. The pages of the Ledger snapped and fluttered, and Koyoi’s Transcripts nearly took flight.
Koyoi held the papers tight with both hands and thrust them out into the gale.
The paper vibrated. Tiny grains of light—the letters in the wind—brushed against the Transcripts, dancing over the ink. For a moment, the characters grew dark and bold, then faded, then darkened again.
They were pulsing.
Through the medium of the wind, the Originals behind the Rift and the Transcripts on this side were breathing in unison.
“Number thirty-seven,” Kuon read, his eye fixed on the paper. “The name has been restored.”
The missing syllables had been filled in. The fragments of letters carried by the wind had adhered to the empty spaces on the Transcript.
“Another one!”
Koyoi held up the next sheet.
The closer the train got to the Rift, the stronger the wind became. But he wasn't afraid. This wind wasn't trying to take anything away. It was a wind that wanted to return, that couldn't return, and yet kept blowing anyway.
A wind that carried names. A wind searching for a home.
Koyoi stood in the heart of the storm, holding his Transcripts high toward the sky.
The train came to a halt just before the Rift. It could go no further; the tracks were severed at the seam.
Looking up from the window, the Rift stretched into the heights of the atmosphere, shimmering like a thin membrane of light, separating the two worlds.
The wind died down, just a little.
Koyoi pulled the Transcripts back to his chest. Across the three sheets, five new names had been completed.
On the other side of the Rift, the town under the blue sky was being dyed in the colors of the sunset. Smoke drifted upward, and lights began to flicker on, one by one. It was an ordinary evening in a world that still had its names.
Koyoi stood there for a long time, watching the light.