Haqi and Yami carried the dishes back to the kitchen, and the table sat empty for a moment with only the warm glow of the light balls and the sound of water running somewhere in the back.
Ozair pressed both hands flat against his stomach and leaned back in his chair. "That was genuinely one of the best things I've ever eaten."
"I've never had anything like it," Mina said, and she meant it in the specific way of someone who cooks well and recognizes when someone else has done something right.
A silence settled again. Not an awkward one. The kind that comes after a long day when the body is tired and the mind is still catching up.
Elina turned her water cup slowly in her hands. Then she said, "Toviro. Why couldn't we use our powers back there? When the snake came."
Ozair straightened. "I was going to ask that. Completely forgot."
Toviro looked at the table. He was quiet long enough that it was clear he was thinking rather than avoiding.
"I'm not certain. But the most likely answer is overuse. We pushed past every limit we had today. The powers are still there, but they need time to recover." He paused. "Like a muscle that's been worked past the point of function."
Aryan said, "Which means we're going into a capital city tomorrow, looking for Mayo, with no idea what we're walking into, and no powers to rely on."
"For now."
"That's a problem."
"It is," Toviro said. "Which is exactly why tonight we rest. Properly. All of us. The powers recover with us. By morning we should have something back, maybe not everything, but enough to work with."
He looked around the table. "We're not going in empty. We're going in rested. That matters too."
Aryan said nothing. He looked at the light balls on the wall and nodded once, slowly.
"We'll find him," Mina said quietly. She said it to the table rather than anyone specific, the way people say things they need to hear spoken out loud.
Haqi reappeared from the kitchen and showed them down the short hallway to the room they would sleep in.
The room down the hall was not large. But it was warm and dry. It smelled like wood and something vaguely like pine. There was enough floor space. That was what mattered.
Haqi stopped at the door. "Good night."
Yami appeared at his father's shoulder, grinning, and raised a hand in a formal wave. "Good night, brave warriors."
Ozair caught his eye and gave him a slow thumbs up, which Yami received with the seriousness of a military salute.
Then Yami reached in and clicked off the light ball by the door and the room went dark except for the moonlight through the window, and his footsteps went down the hall and faded.
For a long moment, no one moved. They arranged themselves across the floor—blankets pulled thin, jackets folded into pillows, bodies turned toward the ceiling as if the weight of the day pressed only on their backs.
Elina was the first to speak. Her voice came quiet, almost a whisper, like she wasn't sure she wanted to be heard.
"This world is strange, isn't it."
The moonlight traced the wooden beams up there, the small cracks, the places where the smoke from the kitchen had stained the wood darker.
Aryan answered without turning his head. "It really is." A pause. "I wonder what lies ahead."
Ozair let out a small laugh, his grin widening. "Whatever lies ahead, trust me, it'll be an adventure beyond anything we've imagined."
Another silence. Long enough that Elina thought maybe no one else would speak.
Then Toviro looked up at the ceiling and said, "But stranger than that is this thing called destiny."
His voice was different. Not louder. Just older. Like he had been holding these words for a long time and finally decided to let them out.
"From the moment I got my senses and became a human, I have been trying to understand it. But it just keeps slipping away. Like what will happen is simply going to happen."
He blinked slowly at the ceiling. "Think about Hanabira City. A world of glass towers. Quiet algorithms. The hum of technology solving everything before we even asked. No one, not even the cleverest mind among us, imagined that a day like that would ever come. But it did. They were all killed. They died."
He stopped. Breathed.
"We were supposed to die with them. But this destiny saved us and brought us here. Destiny chose us to meet Atsal and learn the truth."
His voice got softer.
"But the question is, what exactly is destiny? Did I choose it? Every step I took—was that me? Or was it already chosen before I even had steps?"
Elina was still awake. So was Aryan. But no one interrupted.
"And if it was chosen," Toviro went on, "then who chose it? It couldn't have been a name or a throne, but something older than naming. Something that knew I would be lying here tonight asking this, and still gave me the freedom to doubt it."
He turned his head slightly, just enough to see the others in his peripheral vision.
"That's the strange part. I am both the author and the character. I write my choices with my own hand. I feel the weight of every step. And yet—the answer and the result was already there. It already knew what I would choose or what I would write. And that proves, the beginning and the end were already known by something, which is called destiny."
He looked back at the ceiling.
"So is destiny a living being? A nonliving being? Or is it most likely a notebook of plans."
His voice dropped even lower.
"Then it pushes the question even further. If there is a notebook of plans, then there must be a writer too. Then who is the writer?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know who that is. I don't know if that means I'm free or I'm not."
Toviro smiled, just a small one. Then he looked back at the ceiling and closed his eyes.
He was almost asleep, almost gone beneath it, when a voice came out of the dark.
"As long as I can remember, I was only ever told one answer, that God is the almighty writer."
Toviro's eyes opened. He turned his head.
It was Aryan, still awake. "But I never thought about the question that deeply, Toviro."
Aryan did not look at him. His voice was quiet, almost full of wonder.
"Now it really does feel strange."
The moonlight remained where it was. Ozair still snored softly. Somewhere above the wooden beams, above the roof, above the clouds themselves, something older than naming listened, or perhaps did not listen at all, while the question lingered in the air like smoke that refused to disappear.
Morning arrived quietly.
A single bar of sunlight slipped through the window and stretched across the wooden floor, pale gold in the early hour. Dust drifted lazily through it. Nobody moved. The room remained wrapped in sleep.
Then the door burst open.
"Rise and shine," Haqi announced at full volume. "Time to move."
Aryan opened his eyes immediately. He sat up with the look of someone who had already been awake in his thoughts and was only waiting for the world to catch up.
"You're up early," Aryan said.
"Every day," Haqi replied. "Business doesn't wait. Wake your friends. I'll get ready." He turned toward the hall. "By the time you're done, I'll already be finished."
Aryan leaned over and shook Toviro's shoulder. Toviro surfaced from sleep evenly, calm as ever. Then Aryan grabbed Ozair by the arm. "Wake up. Time to go."
"Five minutes," Ozair mumbled without opening his eyes.
"No."
"Five very small, peaceful, beautiful minutes."
Toviro grabbed his arm and pulled hard enough that Ozair nearly rolled across the floor with a protest loud enough to wake Mina and Elina as well.
At the exact same moment, Yami appeared in the doorway like he had been standing there waiting for this specific chaos.
"Good morning, everyone," he said brightly, showing no evidence of having slept at all. "I'll make breakfast. Get ready."
Then he vanished again.
Toviro watched him leave. "He functions like someone twice his age."
Aryan answered quietly, "He is."
Ozair was still lying half sideways on the floor, one eye barely open as he stared at the ceiling. "You know who he reminded me of last night, Aryan?"
Aryan already sounded tired. "I know I'm going to regret asking."
"You. The first time I met you."
Aryan slowly turned his head toward him. "You really wanna start this now?"
"I'm just saying."
"I know exactly what you're saying."
Elina stood and brushed her hair back. "Both of you, stop." She said it with the exhausted certainty of someone who had interrupted this exact conversation many times before and fully expected to do it again. "We actually have somewhere to be."
Outside, Haqi was already working.
A donkey stood patiently in the yard beside a small handcart, calm with the kind of experience that came from years of carrying other people's burdens without complaint.
Haqi moved around it efficiently, loading baskets and crates onto the cart behind it. Fresh apples from the garden.
Grapes wrapped carefully in cloth. Bundles of vegetables tied neatly together.
He checked every rope twice, adjusted the balance, stepped back, then nodded to himself with the satisfaction of a man whose routine had survived years of repetition.
Breakfast was simple and warm. Bread, fruit, and something sweet Yami placed on the table with obvious pride.
They ate wherever space existed, standing, leaning, sitting against walls. Nobody talked much.
The morning already felt like it was pulling them somewhere.
When they stepped outside again, Ozair noticed the donkey and stopped walking.
"That," he declared while pointing dramatically, "is the single most normal thing I have seen since we got here."
Elina glanced at it. "Some things remain unchanged."
Haqi lifted Yami onto the donkey between the stacked crates. Yami settled himself there with the confidence of someone taking his rightful throne. The donkey didn't react in the slightest.
Haqi grabbed the lead rope and looked back at them.
"Coming?"
They followed him.
The road toward the capital curved through the edge of the forest, and the morning unfolded around them slowly as they walked.
Sunlight filtered through the branches in long golden streaks. Leaves rustled softly overhead.
The handcart rattled behind the donkey with a steady rhythm that blended into the sounds of birds and distant wind.
Ozair eventually stepped beside Haqi, unable to leave a mystery alone for longer than ten minutes. "You've really never heard of the recast?"
Haqi looked at him. "The what?"
"The recast. The merge. The thing that changed everything."
Haqi thought seriously about it. "No. Never heard that word."
Ozair exchanged a glance with the others.
Toviro spoke carefully. "Did anything unusual happen recently? Shaking ground perhaps. A strange light in the sky."
Haqi paused again.
Then Yami spoke from atop the donkey. "Dad. The light. Remember? The huge white light from the sky. Everything got quiet after."
Haqi snapped his fingers. "Right. That happened yesterday. Earthquake first, then the brightness. What about it?"
Aryan frowned slightly. "And you weren't concerned?"
"It passed." Haqi shrugged easily. "Things like that happen sometimes. Been happening since I was a kid. Probably weather."
"Probably," Aryan repeated.
They continued walking.
The realization settled over them quietly.
The people of this world had no framework for what had happened. No concept of worlds merging or realities colliding. To them, the earthquake was simply the earth moving. The white light was weather. Life continued because life always continued.
Elina broke the silence before it grew too heavy.
"If the capital is the center of the kingdom, why live this far away from it?"
Haqi smiled, genuine and uncomplicated.
"Because living inside the capital is expensive. Renting alone would ruin me." He patted the side of the cart beside him. "Better to bring my goods to the city than lose everything trying to live inside it."
Elina nodded and left it there.
Yami, meanwhile, had begun enthusiastically naming every tree they passed as though he were guiding tourists through a legendary forest.
Oddly enough, none of them knew these trees either, so the effort was not entirely wasted.
The forest slowly began to thin.
The trees spaced farther apart. Sunlight spilled wider across the ground. The breeze carried something fresher now, softer.
Then the path curved once more, and the world opened.
Everyone slowed.
Not intentionally. Their bodies simply forgot to keep walking.
Before them stretched an endless sea of green hills rolling across the land like waves frozen in motion.
Wildflowers covered the grass in vast drifting patches of color, blue so deep it almost glowed, soft silver petals that moved like water in the wind, red flowers bright enough to look painted beneath the sunlight.
The hills rose and folded into one another endlessly, warm and alive beneath the morning sky.
A river shimmered in the distance, cutting through the grasslands like liquid glass. Beyond it stood groves of pale trees swaying gently in the breeze, their leaves flashing silver whenever the sunlight touched them.
The air smelled impossibly clean.
Rain. Flowers. Fresh earth. Living things.
It was the kind of air city people forgot existed.
And above all of it, dragons flew.
Not one or two.
Dozens.
White wings crossed the sky at different heights, catching the sunlight until they almost disappeared into it. Some glided low above the hills while others soared so high they looked like drifting stars against the blue. Massive shadows drifted silently across the fields below them.
The sight stole every remaining word from the group.
Toviro spoke first, almost under his breath.
"Those are dragons."
"Yes," Yami answered casually from the donkey, like he was confirming birds.
Toviro stared upward. "They fly freely like that? They don't attack people? Nobody's afraid?"
Haqi laughed.
Yami laughed too in exactly the same way, perfectly synchronized, which somehow made it worse.
Ozair narrowed his eyes. "What's funny about almost dying?"
"Those dragons aren't dangerous," Haqi said, still smiling. "They protect these lands."
He looked up at them with unmistakable fondness.
"In Ralinder, dragons are honored. They've lived beside us for generations. This kingdom is known as the Land of White Dragons."
Aryan kept watching the sky.
"Generations," he repeated quietly to himself.
Ozair spoke slowly, still trying to process the idea. "So they won't eat us."
"Not even slightly interested," Haqi said. Then he glanced sideways at him. "They already know you don't taste very good."
Ozair blinked. "I appreciate the first half of that sentence. The second half feels unnecessarily personal."
Haqi laughed again.
Toviro looked at the dragons for several more seconds before finally lowering his gaze toward the horizon ahead.
Because now the capital had begun to appear.
At first it was only shapes in the distance beyond the hills.
Then the walls emerged fully.
Massive pale stone walls rose across the landscape like part of the mountains themselves, catching the morning sunlight until they seemed almost golden at the edges.
Tall towers stood along them at measured intervals, banners flowing from their peaks in the wind.
As they drew closer, the city slowly revealed itself piece by piece.
Layered rooftops appeared above the walls. White stone buildings climbed gently upward behind them.
Tall spires reflected sunlight across glass windows. Bridges connected distant towers high above the streets below.
The closer they came, the more alive it became.
The roads widened with travelers. Merchants moved carts loaded with goods. Riders passed them heading toward the gates.
The distant sounds of the capital drifted outward in waves, voices, wheels, bells, movement, life.
And above the city itself, dragons circled through the open sky.
The gates finally came into full view.
Two enormous entrances stood side by side beneath carved arches of pale stone. Symbols were etched across them, crescents and stars worked into patterns so intricate they almost seemed to move beneath the sunlight.
People flowed constantly through both gates, one stream entering, the other leaving, endless and alive like the city's own breathing.
Elina stopped for just a second.
"That's beautiful," she whispered.
Ozair stared openly. "It looks exactly like those fantasy films where everything is impossibly magical and somehow nobody struggles."
Yami looked down at him immediately. "What's a film?"
Ozair pointed at him. "That question requires several hours."
"Then tell me later," Yami said seriously. "The best stories are always long."
They finally reached the gates and entered with the flow of people moving through them.
The walls rose high on either side.
The sounds of the capital wrapped around them completely now.
Haqi walked ahead naturally with the donkey and cart, moving through the city with the ease of someone returning home after an ordinary morning.
Behind him, the others looked everywhere at once.
They were inside the first Unitedverse now.
Truly inside it.
And somewhere within this enormous living capital, hidden among streets they had never seen in a kingdom they had not known existed two days ago, Mayo was waiting to be found.