"We need to move."
Goburo's voice cut through the stillness of the room. He stood up from the floor, his hand pressing lightly against the bandage that covered the ruin of his left eye. His posture was steady, his breathing even.
Watabei didn't move immediately. She remained slumped against the wall, her eyes darting between the blood-soaked puppet standing in the centre of the room and the goblin who spoke as if nothing had happened.
The disconnect was jarring. A moment ago, she had been screaming. A moment ago, Goburo had been screaming. Now, there was only this quiet, efficient calm.
"Goburo," she said, her voice hoarse from the crying. "Wait."
She forced herself to stand. Her legs felt shaky, unreliable. She leaned against the rough stone wall for support.
She scanned the room.
The leader was dead. His body was a broken heap against the tiles, his limbs bent at angles that defied anatomy. Two guards lay near the door, their chests caved in, their faces frozen in masks of shock.
But the room felt wrong.
It felt incomplete.
She counted the bodies. One. Two. Three.
Her heart skipped a beat.
She spun around, looking into the shadows of the corner where the fourth guard had been standing when she passed out.
Empty.
The spot where he had dropped his weapon was vacant. A trail of disturbed blood led to the back door—a small, service hatch that was now slightly ajar, letting in a sliver of grey, dusty light.
"Fuck," Watabei hissed.
She scrambled forward, her boots slipping on the slick floor. She pushed the hatch open. Outside, the Wasty Sade stretched out in silence. There were no footsteps. No movement. Just the endless, twisted horizon.
She turned back to the room, panic rising in her chest like bile.
"He ran," she said. "One of them ran away."
She looked at Goburo, her eyes wide.
"He has the map. He knows where we were going. He knows we're alive. We... we lost it. We lost everything."
Goburo didn't flinch. He didn't show any sign of the panic that Watabei felt. He stood by the wall, his head tilted slightly, as if listening to a sound only he could hear.
Then, the healer spoke.
It was not a human voice. The vocal cords were dead, the lungs mechanically forcing air through a throat that had gone cold. The sound was a dry, rasping croak, like dead leaves skittering over pavement.
"The map is a variable," the healer said. "It is not the solution."
Watabei froze. She stared at the corpse-girl. The girl's jaw moved with mechanical precision, but her eyes remained glassy and fixed on nothing.
"Did... did that corpse just talk?"
"She," Goburo corrected, his tone matter-of-fact. "And yes. That's Kenji."
He turned to Watabei. His single remaining eye was clear, focused.
"I have a way," he said.
"What do you mean?" Watabei asked, her voice trembling. "The map is gone. The location is gone. We have nothing."
"They might have the map," Goburo said. "But we do too."
Watabei blinked, confusion warring with exhaustion.
"We... what? You have it memorized?"
"No," Goburo said. "But Kenji sees it."
He tapped the side of his head, right next to the bandage.
"Our bond... it redistributed. It changed. I thought it was gone, broken when he... when the system took over. But it's just... different now. I can feel him. He is running on channels I can pick up, like hearing a song from the next room."
He gestured vaguely around them, encompassing the floor, the walls, the earth beneath their feet.
"He has certain powers. He can channel through all the roots in the area. Through the earth itself. He doesn't need a piece of paper to know where the mana flows. He doesn't need ink to find the lines of power."
Watabei looked down at the stone floor, as if expecting roots to burst through the mortar and drag them down.
"So... he knows where the Ancient Goblin is?" she asked slowly.
"He knows where the *energy* is," Goburo corrected. "The places that matter. The anchors. We are in the Wasty Sade. We need to know the next place."
Goburo closed his eye. He went very still.
Beside him, the healer—the puppet—raised a hand. A thin, violet root slithered out from under her blood-stained sleeve and touched the ground, pulsing with a faint, necrotic light.
For a second, the room felt incredibly heavy. The air pressure dropped. A low hum vibrated in Watabei's teeth.
Then Goburo opened his eye.
"Conjurer's Crane," he said.
Watabei froze.
"What?"
"Conjurer's Crane," Goburo repeated. "That is the next point on the line. That is where the flow leads."
Watabei let out a slow, shaky breath. She ran a hand through her hair, her fingers catching on knots and tangles.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. That... that actually makes sense."
She looked at him, trying to gauge his mental state.
"Do you know what that place is?"
"No."
"It got its name from a famous guild," Watabei explained, her voice gaining strength as she fell into the rhythm of explanation. It was easier to think when she was talking about facts. "The Conjurer's Den. It's a hub. A massive structure built into a canyon. It looks like a giant crane, stretching out over the abyss. It's a place where mages, mercenaries, and information brokers gather. Neutral ground."
She looked towards the door, her mind racing.
"We need to go there," she said. "We have to wait there for some time. I have to meet up with a certain person. Someone who can give us entry to the communication with the Ancient Goblin."
"Who?"
"A contact," Watabei said evasively. She looked away. "Just... someone who owes me a favor. If we want to get to the Exile Mound, the ancient hideout, we need a pass. And that pass is at the Crane. The map would have shown us the route, but the Crane is the only place that can give us permission to use it."
Goburo nodded.
"Then we go to the Crane."
He looked at the puppet.
"Kenji has located the place," he said. "He will accompany us."
"Spiritually?" Watabei asked, glancing nervously at the blood-soaked girl.
"Yes," Goburo said. "He is connected to the root network. As long as we walk on the earth, he walks with us. He sees what the roots see."
He walked towards the back door, stepping over the body of the leader without looking down. The healer followed behind him with silent, jerky steps, her limbs moving with the uncanny precision of a marionette.
"Come on," Goburo said, pausing at the threshold. "We shouldn't stay here. The blood smell will attract scavengers."
Watabei looked at the corpses one last time. She looked at the empty spot where the map had been.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay."
She walked over to the table where her pack had been dumped. She grabbed her remaining gear—the knife, the canteen, the few supplies the guards hadn't taken. Her hammer was gone, likely lost in the Sade.
She slung the pack over her shoulder.
She looked at Goburo's back. At the white bandage. At the puppet trailing in his wake.
It was a strange convoy. A one-eyed goblin, a tired rogue, and a dead girl.
"Let's go," she said.
They stepped out of the room.
The Wasty Sade stretched out before them, a vast expanse of cracked earth and twisted wood under a bruised sky.
But now, Goburo didn't look at the terrain with fear. He looked at the ground, listening to the hum in his head—the silent, resonant frequency of a mind far away, guiding him forward.
The voyage towards the Conjurer's Crane had begun.
TO BE CONTINUED...