Chapter Text
Kikujin’s office always smelled faintly of old paper and pressed reeds. It was a dry, warm scent the children claimed “smelled like boredness.”
This morning, sunlight filtered through the narrow windows, brushing over shelves that climbed the walls like brittle cliffs. Books of all colors and sizes grew on the wood like flowers of knowledge. His three grandchildren darted between stacks of documents, arguing over which scroll looked the oldest or which ledger had the funniest handwriting.
“Careful, careful,” Kikujin murmured from his desk, though he did not sound worried. At nearly eighty, age had bent his back and softened his voice, but his eyes still glittered with the same amber sharpness he’d inherited from his late father.
Aoi was the first to find it, a bundle of pages tied together with frayed twine, half-slipped behind a crate of proper bound books, as if meant to be forgotten.
“Grandpa, this one looks like trash,” he declared, tossing it lightly onto a nearby table, before burying himself under another pile of books.
Kikujin straightened immediately.
“Wait, don’t throw that.”
The children froze. He picked up the packet with both hands, surprisingly gentle, and brushed layers of dust from its aged cover, glistening like mudmoths themselves in the sun.
The title revealed itself slowly, like something rediscovering its own name:
Sandbound Histories
His breath caught.
“Well, now… I haven’t seen this in a very long time.”
“Is it special?” Kuroe, the youngest, asked while tugging at his sleeve.
“Very,” Kikujin said. He turned the packet over, revealing a faint signature scribbled onto the last page. Time had almost faded its once rich blue ink.
Apokruphos
“What’s it about?” Koniro asked, leaning in until his chin rested on the table.
Kikujin smiled, easing himself down into his wooden chair that was older than he was himself. He had saved it from their once-home.
“It’s a collection of very old tales. Some are true, some maybe half-true, some pure story. But they belonged to our people once.”
He opened the manuscript at random, and the children gathered close as the ancient ink revealed myth.
Long ago, when the skies still held mysteries unspoken,
and the bones of the earth whispered to those who dared listen,
a sorrowed tribe wandered the edge of the world.
It was in this time,
when silence had replaced songs,
that the heavens opened.
From the sky fell a fire not of this earth,
a meteor burning in hues no tongue could truly name.
Red, yes, and gold, and a blue like the space between dreams.
A small sigh interrupted the rhythm of the old words. Kuroe flopped backwards onto the floor, arms spread dramatically.
“This already sounds boring,” she groaned. “It’s just old people walking after a rock. Can’t we hear a story with a knight or something cool?”
Before Kikujin could answer, Aoi clicked her tongue sharply in disapproval.
“Be quiet, Kuroe. I want to hear it. Grandpa, please keep going.” She shot her sister a glare. “You’re just impatient.”
Kuroe pouted, lower lip jutting out. Koniro, who had been half-listening and half-staring wistfully at the door, raised a hand.
“Grandpa… I think I’m gonna go outside too. It’s too many words.”
Kuroe immediately scrambled up after him. “See? Even Koniro agrees!”
Kikujin raised both hands in surrender, chuckling.
“Alright, alright. Go play, both of you, but no running near the cliffs, understood?”
“Understood!” they chirped in unison, already halfway out the door.
The room grew quiet as their footsteps faded, leaving only the soft rustle of paper and the hush of distant tides. Aoi had settled onto an old cushion she’d fished out from under a collapsed stack of maps. It was faded and lumpy, but she sat on it like it was a throne. Kikujin watched her for a moment, fondness warming his now tired eyes.
“Are you sure you want to stay?” he asked gently. “This tale was written when I was barely older than you.”
Aoi shook her head, her small hands folded neatly in her lap. “I want to hear it. You said it brings you memories, right? Then I wanna know why.”
A bittersweet smile tugged at his lips.
“Yes… memories. Many of them.”
He turned back to the battered pages, the ink uneven and fragile with age, and continued reading aloud exactly as written:
The tribe followed its descent across mountains and wastelands, for it called to their sadness like a bell calls to mourning.
Where the meteor fell, they found it not shattered, but pulsing. And curled within the crater’s heart was a creature no lore had named, and yet every myth had promised. It twisted like smoke and stone, its form ever-shifting, as though the world could not decide what it was meant to be. Unable to comprehend its nature, the people named it Draconis, after the old dragons of legend, beasts too vast for reason, too sacred for simplicity.
And Draconis, though newly born, was not without purpose. From its form came a light, blue and cold, that sliced through the toughest trees and carved stone as if it were sand. With it, the tribe built wonders. Their lives grew easier, their burdens halved. But nothing is freely given by a Nous.
The air of Kivotos was heavy with damp earth instead of drifting sand, and the wind carried the calls of distant insects instead of the hollow slide of the dune sea. The Mudwhale, long since swallowed by the waves, lived on in the memories of those who had survived.
In its place, a village had grown on solid soil: timber huts with moss-covered roofs and roasting fires that crackled with warmth instead of fear.
A people who were learning. And yet…
Peace, as always, was fragile.
Lately, the village carried a tension that did not belong to it. Whispers passed through alleyways even in daylight, not about Nous, or war, or the old horrors, but about something newer. Something unexplainable.
A figure on the hills. A ghost with red eyes. Watching. Always watching.
The children were the first to speak of it breathlessly, competing to tell the most terrifying version. But soon even the night watch began reporting unease, shadows that slid where shadows should not, a presence just beyond the lantern glow.
No one truly believed in ghosts, but no one dismissed them, either.
On one such night, Kikujin, not yet the archivist he would one day become, but a bright-eyed teen with hair still defiantly messy, stepped toward the door of their house. He only made it three steps.
“Oi! Kikujin!”
His father’s voice cracked like a whip.
Kuchiba stood by the doorway, arms crossed, expression thunderous. Age had finally started to soften his shoulders but not his temper; his red hair had started having the odd streak of salt and sun.
“We’ve spoken about this,” Kuchiba said, gesturing sharply for him to sit back down. “No wandering after dark. You hear me?”
Kikujin groaned. “But I’m helping patrol tonight! It’s my turn…”
“Your turn,” Kuchiba cut in, “is tomorrow. In daylight.”
Kikujin bristled. “You’re just scared of the ghost, dad.”
His father’s eye twitched in irritation. He was no child.
“It’s not a ghost. It’s some wild animal. Or…“
“A red-eyed monster that stares right into your soul,” Kikujin murmured under his breath.
Kuchiba stomped once, demanding attention.
“A smart boy would stay inside.”
“You’re the one who always says I should grow up.”
“And you can start,” Kuchiba retorted, “by not being an idiot.”
Kikujin slumped dramatically onto the floor cushions. Kuchiba muttered something about “reckless children” and went back to his own room.
Even so, his eyes flicked toward the window every few moments, scanning the hills.
Outside, beyond the torch-lit perimeter of the village, the wind rolled over the grassy slopes like a slow breath.
Something shifted there.
A silhouette stood against the moonlight, thin and unwavering, neither approaching nor leaving. Red glinted faintly in two small, distant sparks. Watching.
The villagers would later say they felt the moment something entered their world. A tremor deep beneath the soil. A flicker in the sky’s edge.
The crack came just after midnight.
A sound like splitting stone. Kikujin jolted awake, clutching instinctively at the edge of his blanket. Across the village roofs, people burst from their homes, faces washed in red light that should not have existed.
Because above them, carving a wound through the heavens, fell a star.
The village watched as it tore a path across the sky, screaming silently through the clouds. For one heartbeat, the world glowed bright enough to show every blade of grass standing upright in the wind.
Silence, then darkness. The star vanished beyond the treeline, swallowed by the hulking black of the northern hills.
By dawn, the entire settlement hummed with dread. People gathered in loose, uneasy circles, voices overlapping:
“An omen.”
“A warning.”
“Didn’t the old stories say a meteor made the world as we know it?”
“Is it war again? Are the Nous waking?”
“No, don’t say their name. Don’t invite them back.”
The elders met before breakfast and returned pale. Their official conclusion was almost laughably tame: A wild animal.
Something prowling the hills. Nothing supernatural. Nothing to fear. It would leave eventually. But the villagers could still feel the earth trembling in their bones, and children clung to their parents’ legs, insisting they saw the crimson eyes in the dark.
When the sun slipped behind the hills and the old fears resurfaced, it was only natural they sent Shuan. He had been mostly retired now, but his smile was still as eerily fixed as ever. But when something needed to be done that others were too afraid to do, he was the first name on every tongue.
Shuan accepted the task with the casual shrug of a man picking up groceries.
Now, he walked the slope’s edge with his hands behind his back, humming under his breath, shoes brushing grass that still quivered from the night before. His long burgundy coat trailed behind him like a banner dulled by age.
The villagers watched from the safety of their windows. The blonde looked unbothered, of course he did. Nothing ever seemed to crack his composure.
When he reached the treeline, he paused. The air was thick, still, as if the night waited for him to speak first. He tilted his head, opened his single eye and saw them. Two flecks of red, faint but unmistakable, hovering between the trunks.
He whistled softly, almost impressed.
“Well now,” he murmured, voice barely above a breath.
“So you are real.”
Shuan held his breath as the two crimson eyes stared back at him. They were unblinking, patient, fixed on him with a cold intelligence he hadn’t expected. Beyond them, the rest of the creature was swallowed in shadow. All he could make out was a tall, dark silhouette, and the unmistakable curve of two horns rising from its head.
He waited.
If it was a ghost, he expected it to wail. If it was an animal, he expected it to bolt. If it was a threat, he expected it to lunge.
But it didn’t move. Not even a twitch.
A part of him wondered if this was just a trick of the moonlight, or worse, a trick of his own tired mind. So he stepped forward, slow and deliberate, shoes sinking slightly into the damp earth. The moment his foot settled, light flickered. Maybe it was lightning, maybe just the reflection of the lantern he had carried onto the hill, and the creature sprang toward him. Claws flashed.
He barely had time to swing up his wooden staff as they clashed.
The impact rattled his arm to the elbow. Most of the blow was deflected, but one claw raked across his cheek in a clean, sharp line. Warm blood trickled immediately. Shuan wiped it away with the back of his hand, smearing red across his face without a second thought.
He laughed, low, almost amused. He had not had a serious fight in years. Not that he minded, but adrenaline had always been one of the very few neurotransmitters his mind registered.
“Well,” he muttered, tightening his grip on the stick, “you’re going to be more of a pain in the ass than I thought.”
The creature had landed several paces away, crouched in a predatory stance. And now he could finally see it properly.
It stood upright, humanoid in shape only at a glance. Its hands ended in long, curved claws. Its skin was covered in dark scales that caught the moonlight like shards of obsidian. Its face was reptilian like the sand-lizards that basked on the ocean rocks, but stretched into something vaguely human, uncanny, unsettling.
A creature stitched from familiar pieces, a grotesque amalgamation of traits.
The creature moved before Shuan could react again, a blur of shadow and scale and the sudden glint of claws. It launched itself forward with a soundless violence, carving the air downward in a brutal, raking motion.
Shuan brought his staff up just in time. Wood met claw with a thud that reverberated through the night. The blow didn’t wound him, but the sheer force of it sent him stumbling backward, feet slipping. The beast saw it.
It noticed the weakness the way wolves noticed the limp of a deer.
Before he could recover, it surged forward with terrifying precision and slammed into him. The world tilted, sky, branches, the smear of stars overhead, and then he hit the ground hard, breath punched from his lungs in a thin gasp.
As he fell, he instinctively opened his one eye and found the creature already above him.
It pressed two fingers to his face with a terrifying gentleness.
One clawed fingertip rested above his brow, the other hooked just beneath his eye, pulling the lower lid down and forcing the eye fully open.
Shuan froze.
The creature’s face hovered inches from his, close enough for him to smell the humid, metallic scent of its breath. Close enough to see the faint shimmer of saliva on its teeth, built for rending tendon, tearing flesh from bone. Each exhale brushed his cheek with unsettling warmth, fogging the cold night air between them.
Its pupils bore into his, twin slits of burning red that did not blink.
Time warped, everything slowed. Maybe he laid there for minutes, maybe for years, maybe he had never laid there and would wake up in a flicker of time.
He felt the weight of its body pinning him, the powerful muscles coiled around a frame not quite human. The night sounds faded, drowned out by his own heartbeat thudding in his ears. For the first time in years something ancient and instinctive twisted in his gut.
Fear. Real fear. The adrenaline surged through his body, from his medulla oblongata to the chemoreceptors in his brain, through his pumping heart and everything in between.
The creature studied him with unnerving intent, gaze tracing the cursed sigils of doom carved around his eye, as though recognizing them.
At last, the pressure eased. The fingers released him.
The beast did not step back at first. It simply shifted its head, slow and deliberate, as if considering what it had seen. Then, inch by inch, its maw began to stretch. Not into a human smile, not even into something joyful, but into a grotesque parody of one, pleased by what it had found.
Kikujin’s voice trailed off.
For a heartbeat, the old room felt filled with the red ghost of that night. The silence stretched so thick Aoi didn’t dare disturb it. When Kikujin finally blinked, it was as though he had to pull himself back across decades, out of a memory that still held teeth.
He exhaled slowly and closed the book, then he noticed the window.
The sky had gone the color of cooling ink, stars trembling faintly between drifting clouds. The lamps on the pathways outside had already been lit. Night had slipped in without asking permission.
“My, my…” Kikujin murmured. “It seems time outran us again.”
Aoi frowned, clutching the edge of her cushion. “Does that mean you’re stopping? Already?” She leaned forward, stubborn as a stone set in the riverbed. “But you didn’t finish. What happened? I want to know.”
Kikujin smiled, soft but weary, and brushed a bit of dust from his sleeve.
“I know you do,” he said. “But look outside. It’s late, Aoi. Your parents will be wondering where you’ve wandered off to, and I’ve no wish to start a feud with them over stories told.”
Aoi pouted, much like Kuroe earlier, and shook her head hard enough to make her hair rustle. “They won’t be mad! I can tell them I was helping you!”
“Helping me?” Kikujin chuckled. “And what mighty task were you helping me with? Turning pages?” He nudged the cushion with his foot. “Come now. Aoi. Your siblings are likely halfway through causing trouble without you. Let them not finish the job alone.”
She hesitated, gaze shifting between the window, the closed book, and Kikujin’s calm face.
“But I want to hear the rest,” she whispered. “Please.”
Kikujin’s expression softened further, underneath the gentle smile was the faintest shadow of something else. Memory, perhaps. Or regret.
“And you will,” he promised. “Another day. These old tales waited sixty-five years to be told. They can wait one more night.”
Reluctantly, Aoi rose from her cushion, brushing dust from her knees. She lingered by the doorway, looking back one last time.
“You swear you won’t start without me?”
“I swear,” Kikujin said, raising a hand in mock solemnity. “Now go. Before the night gathers you up as its own.”
Only when the soft patter of Aoi’s footsteps faded down the hall did he let his smile slip.