Najo slipped in quietly, the way he always did, like he was hoping the house wouldn't notice him.
His mother was already in the room. That was the thing about Naomi — she was always already there, settled, composed, as if the world arranged itself around her rather than the other way around. Same ginger hair as him. Same stillness.
"I think someone saw my lightning today," he said.
She turned. The concern was there, but it didn't move the way he expected it to.
"Does this mean I can't go back?" His voice came out smaller than he wanted it to.
He braced for it — the familiar closing-in, the list of reasons why outside was dangerous, why the walls were safer, why waiting was the only plan worth having. Naomi had spent years perfecting that argument.
Instead she was quiet for a moment, something complex turning behind her eyes.
"I've kept you from living your life for too long already," she said. "There's nothing more for you within these walls. The world is out there. And if your father is still coming for you — then you'll have to face him. He was always afraid you'd surpass him."
Najo's hands closed into fists at his sides. Fear and something that wasn't quite the opposite of fear moved through him at the same time.
"Got it," he said. "And I won't let him hurt you either."
Naomi smirked. It was a cold thing, precise. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. I'm not worth the effort to him."
"What did you even see in him?" Najo burst out.
She laughed — not unkindly, just without any intention of answering — and turned back to whatever she'd been thinking about before he came in.
"Keep up your earth training," she said. "You'll need it."
Moto found him at the school gate the next morning.
He had been finding him every morning, a fact Najo was beginning to accept the way you accept bad weather.
"Tell me," Moto said, falling immediately into step beside him, "what are your powers?"
"Back off," Najo said, walking faster. "You're not even my friend."
"Fine." Moto jumped ahead and planted himself directly in the gateway, grinning. "Let's be friends then."
Najo stopped short. "Y-you don't just—" He gestured vaguely at the space between them, at the concept of friendship, at the general situation. "That's not how—"
"She can be your friend too, right Sheu?" Moto called back.
Sheu, who had been standing quietly a few feet behind, shifted her weight. "Um."
"No," Najo said, and tried to push past.
"Fine." Moto leaned in, something sharpening in his eyes. "Be my rival then."
Najo stepped back until he hit the wall. "Look, I can't, okay?"
"Why not?"
A shadow fell across them from above.
"That's because he's in a completely different league of power compared to you, boy."
The voice came from the top of the wall. A man in dark blue, half his face masked, looked down at them with the relaxed expression of someone who had never once been in a hurry. Behind him, three others rose over the wall's edge, cloaks settling around them as they landed.
"Sir Nawick sent us to retrieve you," the masked man said, his eyes on Najo. "Young man."
For a half-second, no one moved.
"Run!" Najo screamed.
They ran.
The masked men were fast but the streets were narrow and Moto knew every one of them. He ran slightly ahead, reading corners the way other people read faces.
"Left!" he shouted as they hit a bend.
Najo hesitated.
"Trust him!" Sheu said, grabbing his arm, and then they were around it.
Moto's smoke rolled out behind them, thick and immediate. On the other side of the cloud, Sheu didn't break stride — she twisted, threw a burst of wind sideways, and a heavy rubbish bin launched itself into the haze. A crash. Someone went down hard. A second man tripped over the first.
Najo looked between them. The bin, still rocking. Moto already scanning ahead. Sheu adjusting like none of it was unusual.
Is this what having friends is like?
Two more were still coming. Moto reached for another smoke bomb and this time Najo moved without thinking — his hand cut through the air and a chunk of the earth wall tore free and flung itself backward into the dark.
One runner down.
"You have earth powers?!" Moto's voice went up like he'd just received a gift.
The masked man from the wall came through the settling dust, unbothered, fists wrapped in crawling lightning.
"Crap," Najo said quietly.
The man looked at Moto with the disinterest of someone finishing paperwork. "You might be an imposter anyway," he said. "This'll end it either way." He threw the bolt straight at Moto.
Najo stepped in front of it.
The crack was sharp and brief. His own lightning met it and scattered it apart, and he stood there, exposed now, breathing hard.
"And lightning too?!" Moto said, from directly behind him, sounding genuinely delighted. "Amazing!"
Najo turned to look at him. Moto's eyes were bright. He looked like he'd just watched something wonderful.
The spy studied Najo for a moment. "So it is you," he said, flat. "Lord Nawick will be pleased."
He stepped back into the shadows and was gone.
Moto led them to an alley he seemed to consider his. It was quiet, the kind of quiet that had been maintained on purpose, and they sat against the wall while their breathing settled.
Then Moto and Sheu looked at Najo.
He lasted a few seconds under it.
"I'll tell you," he said, "but this is for your safety. You can get seriously hurt if you keep following me around."
Sheu said nothing. Moto waited.
"My father, Nawick, is after me."
Sheu's breath caught. "Nawick's son?"
"Who's that?" Moto asked.
"Son of Ginimbi," Sheu said, turning to him quickly. "Leader of the Lightning Village. The wealthiest man in the world. They say he's above the King."
"I don't know much about the old man," Najo said. "But my mother told me Nawick fears what I might become. The firstborn of our family carries an ability called Storm — purer than regular lightning, stronger with the right training. Real lightning. Thunder with it." He paused. "He was always afraid I'd surpass him."
He looked at the ground. "I've spent my whole life hiding. But a life like that isn't worth living." He said it simply, like he'd arrived at it a long time ago and stopped arguing with it. "Now that he knows about me, I can't go back. It'll put my mother in danger."
Moto nodded. Staying away was the obvious call — and Sheu too, he said. He said it like it was simple, and then went quiet, and the alley went quiet with him.
Outside, the city continued. Inside, in the dark, Moto didn't sleep. He sat still and listened and watched the entrance and didn't say anything about it.
The spy stood before Nawick in the dining room.
He explained what had happened. He explained what had gone wrong. He appeared to be building toward an explanation involving his memory.
Nawick looked at him.
"Dementia," the spy offered.
"You're twenty," Nawick said.
"It's quite—"
"You're just stupid." Nawick's fist came down on the table hard enough to rattle the cutlery. "I'll go myself."
He was already standing. Already thinking about which men to take. The spy's continued presence was no longer relevant to him.
It didn't take long to find Naomi. It never did when he actually looked.
He spoke to her warmly, the way you speak to someone you're pretending to have missed. Naomi looked at him the way stone looks at the weather.
"How can you expect my trust," she said, "after you tried to have our son and me killed?"
Nawick smiled. The smile didn't reach anything above it.
"Anything for the throne."
His men moved, and she didn't have time to do much about it. He watched them take her with the same calm he brought to most things.
"The boy will come for her," he said. "Take us to the outskirts of the Earth Village. Somewhere, Ginimbi won't think to look."