I LEARN THREE THINGS BY the third day in Brumdn Cove.
One: Nia has absolutely no idea how to filter a single word that leaves her mouth.
Two: The Cove's people love water more than I love procrastinating.
And three: Someone in this town is hiding something—and it's not just the rainwater recipes.
"You walk like a turtle that just learned shame."
I look up from scrubbing moss off the clay basin. Nia's staring at me with her usual expression of judgmental amusement. Her hair seems frizzy and sticks out in the saline breeze and I push back the urge to laugh.
She definitely needs to meet my sister. They'd love each other.
"I got chased by a forest fire and almost burned to my death," I remind her. "My feet are still emotionally recovering." My voice remains unadulterated —casual and unsuspecting— but I test the waters. Till now, there has been no news about Gaal's Grove from anyone. Not The System, not Nia, not her Grandmother. Heck, not even Foras and his annoying mouth. No one has acknowledged the fire, at least not out loud, and no one has asked me how I got the burns, where I came running from.
She shrugs, dropping a pair of folded linens onto the stones beside the house. Her blue eyeliner pulses just faintly with each movement, a flicker I've started noticing more often but it is like every other day. Nothing out of the usual. Huh, so no reaction.
"You act like you're the only person who's ever been chased by something," she says. "That is usually how trauma works, yeah." She snorts for extra measure.
"Fair enough."
We spend the next few minutes in relative silence. Well, I scrub and grunt dramatically while Nia lounges like an overqualified supervisor.
Behind us, the town is humming. Soft voices, running water, the creak of fishing carts returning from the cliffside dock. The scent of kelp and smoke mingles with something sweet and strange—steamed roots maybe, or boiled sea apples, which Nia claims are real and not a hallucination.
She suddenly perks up.
"Oh! You're on the dinner list tonight."
"Dinner list?"
"Granny keeps track of who's due for community supper. You're up."
I blink. "Wait, I'm being fed by the entire town?"
"Not the whole town. Just Aunt Ree's house. She hosts on thirdcycle eves."
"Thirdcycle what now?"
Nia pauses. "You really don't remember anything, huh."
"Aside from the fact I have amnesia… yes, I don't remember much." I have absolutely no idea how long this farce will last but it's better to push my luck.
"…That was the least reassuring way to say that," she mutters. Then, with more patience than I expected, she says, "We run on a six-part cycle here. Tied to the tide levels and the Moonpull."
"Moonpull." I say dryly.
"It's like gravity's moody cousin," she says.
"Right." Like that makes any sense.
She pulls a copper ring from her pocket and twirls it between her fingers. "Every sixth evening, folks rotate dinners across households. It keeps ties strong. Also helps everyone know who's hoarding fish."
"Let me guess. Aunt Ree is very warm and welcoming."
"She once stabbed a ghost eel with a paring knife."
"…I'll bring dessert."
Aunt Ree's house is bigger than most, with arched windows and swirling mosaics on the walls made of sea glass. Her hair is an almost white blue, and her eyeliner glows so brightly when she smiles at me, I'm halfway convinced it's a threat.
But dinner is surprisingly good.
There's a blue root mash, grilled scallops (or something suspiciously scallop-adjacent), and a cold broth infused with floating flower petals that I swear move on their own. I pretend it is protein and gulp it down without a second thought.
The dining room is full: three elders, a young couple with a baby, a tall man who works the tide gates, and a quiet woman with white eyes who doesn't speak but taps her fingers on the table in perfect rhythm with the dripping aqueduct beside her.
The easiest part of the evening is making conversation. The hardest part is pretending I understand said conversations.
Nia sits next to me, jabbing me with her elbow every time I forget not to drink directly from the ladle bowl.
"You're not a drift crab," she hisses. "Sip like a person."
"I am trying to blend in."
"You're blending in like mold."
I lower the bowl and try to smile. "So… how's the, uh… tide today?" See? Easy.
Everyone in the room blinks. Then laughs. Except the woman with white eyes, who stops tapping for one beat too long.
"Good," Aunt Ree says after the laughter fades. "You'll do fine here."
"Thanks. That's comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be," the tide gate man grunts.
Oh.
Cool.
After dinner, I help clean the dishes in the back basin. Which is quite unfair if you think about it. Why aren't the other guests helping? At least, Nia carries the towels and dumps them on the stone heater to dry and I feel a bit better about the shared labour.
As we leave, Aunt Ree walks us to the edge of the garden. The wind has picked up. The sea roars below, just out of sight beyond the cliff. The salt in the wind feels harsher than ever and for an unexplainable second, my stomach drops.
The glow of Aunt Ree's eyeliner dims. Her eyes linger on me. "Keep an eye on your hair, boy."
"Excuse me?"
"Dark roots, young shine," she says. "But the pulse beneath feels borrowed."
"…Is that some coastal proverb?"
She doesn't answer. Just pats my arm, too gently for the warning to land softly, and walks back inside. The System needs to give me a dictionary the next time she intrudes. I might go bald before understanding conversations here.
Nia and I walk a good few steps before I finally ask, "What did she mean?"
"No clue," Nia says. "That's how old people talk around here."
"Vague and ominous?"
"And sometimes poetic," she adds with a shrug. "You'll get used to it."
I glance back at the house. Inside, the lights are dimming. The glass in the mosaics catches the moonlight like fish eyes. I almost see a shadow behind the haze of the glass but it is gone before I can even blink.
Something about the words stays with me though. The pulse beneath feels borrowed.
She couldn't have meant… the System?
Or—
The thought ends there.
Because the moment we round the corner near the aqueduct, my wrist burns.
A sharp, stinging, sudden burn. I gasp and drop to one knee. Nia yells something, grabbing my shoulder. The glow of the eyeliner flickers around me. I don't feel the cold of her fingers or the sweat that suddenly rolls off my forehead.
And then I hear it.
The voice.
Silk and static. Calm and cruel. It's The System.
"New Quest Unlocked: Proceed to the Temple of the First Reflection."
I freeze. But I've been through this so bracing myself, I ask the next words but she interrupts me. "Where—"
"Quest Path unlocked. Guidance restricted. Recovery state incomplete. Progress at your own peril."
The words ripple inside my mind like a stone dropped in a still lake.
Then the voice disappears, leaving behind the echo of something shifting. The cold tendrils that I was used to now feels like the lash of a wipe. She's gone before I could pick myself up or ask a question. Like a coward.
Somewhere, far below us, the aqueduct water stops flowing for a full breath.
Then resumes.
I look up.
Nia's eyes are wide. Her eyeliner flaring like twin bolts of lightning.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" I whisper.
She doesn't blink. Doesn't speak.
Just says, quietly, "Your hair… it glowed."
t o b e c o n t i n u e d