Toviro stood at the edge of the slope with the torn piece of Mayo's jacket in his hand and the dark forest going quiet around them.
Mina said, "If he fell there, he might still be down there. Let's go."
She was already moving toward the slope when the man put his arm out.
"Stop." His voice had lost its earlier humor entirely. "That area is dangerous at night. Dego snakes den down there. And the wolves that hunt at the edge of the treeline come through that corridor after dark."
Elina said, "Then Mayo could be in danger right now. We gotta move fast."
Nobody argued after that.
They started moving carefully down the slope, the loose earth shifting under their feet while the forest below waited in silence. The man stood there for a second watching them descend into the darkness.
What kind of people are these? he thought. Don't they care about their own lives?
Then another thought came immediately after.
And why am I putting my life in danger with them?
He looked around at the trees and the darkness between them. Then back at the group moving farther down the slope.
"...Damn it," he muttered quietly.
Then he moved after them, raising the crystal light higher and pushing its glow deeper into the forest.
"Oy, Mayo!" Ozair shouted into the trees. "Where are you?!" His voice echoed through the dark.
Toviro called out next. Then Elina. Then Mina.
Aryan said nothing. He moved slower than the others, his eyes scanning the ground, the trees, the broken grass, every disturbed patch of earth they passed.
The forest felt colder down there. Branches shifted overhead with the wind and strange sounds moved through the distance beyond the light.
Then suddenly Mina's foot struck something. She slipped slightly and caught herself before falling.
Everyone turned instantly.
The man quickly lowered the crystal light toward the ground.
Something dark twisted there. At first it looked like a lizard. Then it moved like a snake.
Its body was long and black with short clawed legs pressed against the earth, its mouth opening with a sharp buzzing hiss.
The man's face changed immediately. "Don't let it bite you!" he shouted. "Or buzz near you!"
Ozair instantly raised his hand.
Nothing happened. His expression froze. "What the..."
Aryan moved his hand next.
Still nothing.
Elina stepped forward and tried to control the air around it.
Nothing answered her either.
For the first time since arriving in this world, all three of them looked genuinely shaken.
The creature suddenly rushed forward.
Mina stepped backward immediately, and that was when Toviro moved.
His staff came down once. Then again.
The creature twisted violently and let out another sharp buzz before Toviro trapped it against the ground with the end of the staff and threw it deep into the darkness between the trees.
The sound disappeared into the forest.
Silence returned.
The man immediately looked at Mina. "Are you alright, ma'am?"
Mina took a breath and nodded once. "Yeah."
The man let out a breath of relief. "Thank God it didn't bite you. The poison from those snakes is strong enough to kill a person within a day."
He looked at all of them after saying it.
"I warned you," he said seriously. "There are more of those down here. You protected yourselves this time. But who knows if you'll be able to do it again."
Ozair looked toward the darkness where the creature had disappeared. "But our friend," he said quietly.
The man looked at all of them. "I'm not saying give up on finding your friend. I'm saying going down there right now, in the dark, is how you don't come back."
For a moment nobody moved.
Then Aryan said, "Everyone hold." He stepped forward past Toviro and crouched near the base of the slope, the man's crystal light following him.
He pressed one hand to the ground and looked at the earth around the base of the bushes, at the grass, at the disturbed soil where something had come through recently.
"There," he said quietly.
He moved forward a few steps, still low, reading the ground the way someone reads a page. Then he stopped.
"Those are footprints. Most likely a horse's."
Everyone moved to where he crouched.
The man brought the light closer. There in the soft earth at the base of the slope were the clear impressions of boots, two different sizes, and beside them the unmistakable wide ovals of hooves.
Toviro followed the direction the footsteps went with his eyes.
The trail moved forward through the trees away from the slope, away from the house, away from all of them.
Ozair said, "Someone took him?"
Nobody answered because nobody needed to. The tracks made the answer.
"That direction," the man said, standing, the light in his hand. He looked forward along the trail. "That goes straight to the capital. Thirty, maybe forty minutes from here."
Aryan looked at him. "What are you talking about?"
The man looked confused by the question. "I'm talking about Kabul. Capital of the Ralinder Kingdom."
The word hit all of them at once.
Kingdom.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Their eyes widened slightly after hearing it, the silence between them turning strange.
Ozair was the first to say it out loud, slowly, like he was trying to understand whether he had heard it correctly. "Kingdom. You said kingdom."
Mina looked down quietly at the tracks in the earth.
"A kingdom..." she repeated under her breath.
Toviro turned toward the man immediately. "How is that possible in such a short time?"
The man looked between all of them with visible confusion.
"What time?" the man said. Then he looked between all of them with growing confusion.
"And why are you all looking so shocked?" he asked. "Did I just tell you about some hidden treasure or something?"
Toviro brought one hand to his head.
"How is it possible to establish a kingdom this quickly," he said quietly, more to himself than anyone else.
The man looked between them, reading something in their faces, and his own expression shifted. "You really aren't from here, are you." It wasn't a question.
He seemed to be confirming something he had suspected since they had fallen out of his garden. "But that doesn't matter right now."
He looked at the forest around them, at the dark between the trees, at the direction the hoofprints led.
"I have something inside me that won't let me leave people in situations like this," he said. "I don't know what it is and I've never been able to get rid of it. Probably couldn't if I tried."
He looked at Toviro. "Tonight you stay at my house. All of you. Tomorrow, when the dego snakes go back underground and the light is working in your favor, you go to the capital and find your friend." He paused. "I have business there anyway."
He moved to Toviro and took his arm and started pulling him back toward the house. Toviro said, "Hey—"
"I don't care what you decide to do after sunrise," the man said, pulling him along. "But right now I can't just leave you in this forest."
Toviro looked back at the tracks in the earth one more time. Then he let himself be pulled.
The others followed.
Ozair walked with his face tilted up toward the canopy, the three moons visible in fragments through the leaves.
"Hang in there, Mayo. I'll come for you," he said quietly, to the sky rather than to anyone walking beside him.
Mina heard it.
She didn't say anything at first. Then slowly a tear ran down the side of her face while she walked beneath the trees. She wiped it away quickly, but Elina was beside her and noticed immediately.
Without saying anything, Elina moved closer and wrapped an arm gently around her.
"He's alright," Elina said. "You know how he is. He's going to be complaining about this for months."
Mina looked at her. Then the smallest version of a smile came through. She wiped her face again and kept walking.
—
Yami was standing in the doorway when they came out of the treeline, exactly where his father had left him, the short piece of wood across his body like a sentry rifle.
When he saw his father coming back through the dark, the entire guard pose disappeared instantly.
Yami ran forward and jumped toward him without hesitation, and the man caught him easily and lifted him up with a laugh. It was the first real laugh they had heard from him since the crystal light had turned on.
"You protected it well, son," the man said.
"Those glimmers can't get past me," Yami said seriously, then he noticed the group behind his father and suddenly remembered himself, straightening immediately in his father's arms.
Aryan said, "Who are these glimmers?"
The man set Yami down. "Robbers. They move through this area in groups and take anything they can get. Food, goods, money, anything with value. And lately their crimes have been getting worse day by day."
He gestured at the garden fence with the crystal light. "That's why the wire is there. Those apple trees are my livelihood. And you were about to help yourselves to them."
"I apologize again for that," Toviro said.
Yami had already found Elina's hand and was pulling her toward the door. "Come on, let's go inside everyone." He looked up at Elina with the expression of a child who has decided something important.
Elina looked down at him and followed, helpless in the way of people being led by small determined children.
They went inside.
The house was one main room with a kitchen built behind it, constructed from wood and pale brick, solid in the way of things made by hand rather than industry.
The table in the center was wide and low and surrounded by chairs that didn't match each other.
The light came from four objects placed at different heights around the room, smooth rounded shapes that glowed with a warm yellow light from inside, no flame, no visible source.
Ozair stopped walking and looked at the nearest one.
"Is there fire inside that?"
The man followed his gaze and looked toward the glowing object. "Oh, those?" he said. "No. They're light balls."
"Light balls?"
"That's what they're called. They come in different shapes and sizes, but they all do the same thing. You touch them, and they light up."
Elina said, "How do they work?"
The man considered this. "I genuinely don't know," he admitted. "They just do. Been that way my whole life."
Yami had positioned himself next to Ozair at the table with the energy of someone who had been alone all evening and had a massive amount of conversation waiting inside him.
"Are you adventurers?" he asked, looking at the group with shining eyes. "You look like adventurers. Like the kind of people whose everyday life is one big journey. Please tell me about it. What is out there in this vast world?"
Aryan started to say something and then stopped himself.
Ozair grinned and leaned forward on the table. "Tell you what," he said. "Bring me something good to eat, and I'll tell you stories about worlds wider than you can imagine."
Yami's eyes widened instantly. "Really?" he breathed.
The excitement on his face lit up so completely it looked like stars had suddenly appeared in his eyes.
Yami's father looked up from where he had been heading toward the kitchen. "Right, I didn't even ask. Forgive me. Sit down, sit down, I'll make something."
Yami pointed at Ozair with great seriousness. "Start from the beginning. Don't skip anything."
"On my honor," Ozair said.
Ozair looked at Yami and leaned back in his chair with the confidence of someone about to tell the greatest story ever spoken.
"They call me Ozair," he declared, loud enough for the kitchen to hear, "The Titan of Terra. And this tale begins further back than you'd ever think."
Yami's mouth slowly fell open. His eyes were shining so brightly now they almost reflected the light balls around the room.
Aryan immediately put one hand over his face.
The others moved around the room while Ozair performed, each of them processing the evening in their own way.
Mina sat with her hands folded on the table and said nothing, but she was present.
Elina watched the light balls and turned one over in her hands gently.
Toviro stood near the door and looked at the floor with the particular stillness of someone building a plan piece by piece.
Aryan sat at the far end of the table and looked at nothing specific and listened to everything.
Almost twenty minutes passed like that.
Then the man came out from the kitchen carrying a large cooking pot with both hands, steam rising heavily from the top of it as he set it down at the center of the table.
The smell reached them immediately.
It smelled rich and warm, like something that had been cooking slowly for hours, and everyone around the table reacted to it before a single word was said.
Just then Yami hopped out of his chair and hurried into the kitchen.
A moment later he returned with bowls stacked carefully in his arms and started placing them around the table with visible pride, like he had been waiting all evening to help with this part.
The man went back for the meat dish and the bread and brought those too, everything arranged in the center, and then he and Yami sat down.
The man opened the pot. Inside, the broth was rich and amber, pieces of potato and carrot and something else moving in it slowly. He ladled it into each bowl in turn, and Yami passed them around.
Nobody moved at first.
They watched the man and Yami quietly as the two of them tore the bread into small pieces and dropped them into the broth, waiting while the bread softened and absorbed the rich liquid. Then they used the softened bread to scoop up the meat and potatoes before eating.
Ozair copied them immediately.
He watched once, tore the bread apart the same way, dipped it into the broth, and took a bite.
Then he froze.
He looked up at the ceiling for a full second like his soul had just left his body.
"That is unbelievable."
He ate fast after that and didn't stop talking between bites in the way of someone who has found something worth doing and can't choose between the two.
Toviro followed him, more measured but clearly surprised. The others came to it at their own pace and arrived at the same place.
Mina said, "What is this called?"
"Shorwa," the man said.
"It's a wonderful dish. Thank you." She meant it in the complete way, not the polite way.
"Don't thank me. Thank the pot."
Aryan set his bread down. "We haven't asked your name."
The man looked up from his bowl.
"I'm Haqi," he said. "And if you don't mind, I'd like to know your names too."
"Aryan," Aryan said first.
One by one the others introduced themselves as well.
Haqi nodded at each name and quietly repeated them to himself, like he wanted to make sure he remembered every single one.
Yami was eating with one hand and staring at Ozair with full concentration, waiting to hear more of the story that had been interrupted by dinner.
Ozair noticed immediately and pointed a piece of bread at him. "A true storyteller never battles on an empty stomach," he declared. "First I eat. Then I change your understanding of the world itself."
Yami stared at him with wide glowing eyes like he had just been entrusted with knowledge from a legendary hero himself.
Then he nodded immediately and returned to eating with complete seriousness, patiently waiting for the story to continue.
The dinner continued and the light balls glowed warm around them and the forest outside was dark and the sounds of it stayed outside where they belonged.
Haqi quietly refilled bowls whenever they started getting empty, never even needing to ask.
Eventually Yami gave up waiting for Ozair's story to continue and turned toward Aryan instead, asking him question after question about the world outside.
Aryan answered in the same short and precise way he answered most things.
And somehow that only made Yami listen harder.
Every word Aryan said held Yami's complete attention, like he had already decided Aryan was one of the smartest people he had ever met.
Nobody said Mayo's name during dinner.
But his absence sat with them anyway.
It was there in the empty space at the table, in the way Mina glanced there once before looking away again.
In the way Ozair's energy dimmed slightly between sentences before returning again, and in the way Toviro ate quietly while staring at nothing at all.
They would find him tomorrow.
That was the agreement they had all made with themselves without saying it out loud.
Tonight they ate, and the shorwa was good, and Haqi kept filling the bowls, and outside the capital was thirty minutes away in the dark.