Chapter 25: A Heart of Glass

The next day breaks gray and wet. The mist has not lifted; it clings to the trees like ghostly shrouds. We are hungry, cold, and dirty. But we are alive.

Hitane is better. She can sit up, though she is still too weak to stand for long. Minaki takes charge of our morale. She finds wild berries she claims are safe-a memory from our childhood in the mountains, she says. I trust her. I eat them, and the tart sweetness helps chase away the metallic taste of fear in my mouth.

"I can feel the forest," Minaki says, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the shrine. "It is quiet here. There is no human noise. No anxiety. No debt. Just... growth. And decay."

"Is it better?" I ask. "Than the village?"

"It is peaceful," she says. "But it is lonely. I miss the voices. Even the sad ones."

She looks at me, her violet eyes intense. "I realized something yesterday. When the Cleaner attacked."

"What?"

"I could not block him," she says. "I tried to build the wall. I tried to filter. But his mind... it was not like a human mind. It was cold. Structured. Like a machine. There was no emotion to grab onto. No fear to project back."

"He was shielded," Hitane says from her spot on the floor. "Technology. The Cleaners use tech to dampen their own humanity. It makes them immune to empathy."

"So I am useless against them," Minaki says, her voice trembling.

"No," Hitane says. "You just have to change your target. You cannot fight the machine. You have to fight the man inside it. Even a Cleaner has a heart, somewhere deep down. You have to find the crack in the armor."

"Or," I say, looking at the rotting wood of the shrine, "we do not fight them alone. We fight them together."

I pick up a stone from the floor. "Hitane stops them. I separate them. Minaki... you find the man inside and you break him."

Minaki looks at the stone in my hand. "Break him?"

"If they want to erase us," I say, my voice hard, "we have to be ready to erase them back. Or at least, stop them permanently."

Minaki looks horrified. "I do not want to break anyone, Juiro."

"You might have to," Hitane says softly. "To save us. To save Juiro."

Minaki looks at me. She looks at the dried blood on my shirt. She sets her jaw.

"Okay," she whispers. "I will try. I will find the crack."

Later that afternoon, I go out to scout. I drop my anchor every ten feet, testing the stability of the space. The forest feels solid. Old. It does not want to move. It is a good place for an Anchor.

I find a stream nearby and fill our empty water bottles. I wash the mud from my face. I look at my reflection in the water. The man looking back is not the hollow student from the library. He is tired, unshaven, and terrified. But his eyes are alive. They are burning with a fierce, protective light.

I am not just Juiro Minasaki anymore. I am the Anchor of the Triad. And I will not let them be erased.