Gilded Ashes Chapter 301: Two Steps Ahead

The lantern light swung toward the edge of the platform.

Saffi looked down at Raizen through the fog.

Raizen looked up at Saffi through the fog.

The lantern light crept toward the edge.

For one stretched, airless second, neither of them moved.

Then Saffi closed her eyes

And she jumped.

She didn’t announce it. Didn’t warn him. One mont she was pressed against the wall - the next she was falling through the fog, arms tight against her chest, eyes squeezed shut.

Raizen lunged forward.

He caught her wrong. His arms hooked under her back but the angle was off - her montum carried them both sideways, and his foot slipped on the wet bark. His back hit the branch first. Then Saffi on top of him. The impact drove the air out of his lungs in a single, forced grunt, and for a horrible second they slid together toward the edge of the branch, bark scraping against Raizen’s spine, until his hand caught a ridge and stopped them.

They just lay there. Tangled. Breathing hard.

Saffi was on top of him, one hand gripping his shirt so hard the fabric was twisted into a knot. Her eyes were still closed. Her face was - even in the fog, even in the dark - unmistakably red.

"You can let go now" Raizen wheezed. No offense whatsoever, but Saffi’s weight hit harder than he expected.

She let go so fast it was like he burned her. She rolled off him and pressed herself flat against the branch, as far from him as she could get without falling off the other side. Her hands were shaking. She didn’t look at him.

Raizen sat up. His back ached, and sothing in his ribs returned when he breathed too deep.

Above them, the guard’s lantern reached the edge of the platform.

Light spilled down through the fog. Not much - the fog was thick enough to scatter it into a diffused glow - but enough to turn their branch from invisible to dangerously bright. Raizen grabbed Saffi’s arm and pulled her sideways, pressing them both against the trunk where a cluster of smaller branches created a pocket of shadow.

The lantern swayed. The light moved slowly - left, then right. Searching absently.

Raizen held his breath. Beside him, Saffi had gone completely still. Not rigid. Not tense. Still – so much, that he was afraid she was unconscious for a second.

The light paused. Hung directly above them for three seconds that felt ilke a year.

Then it pulled back.

"Nah, it’s nothing" the guard called to soone behind him. "Probably a bird or sothing."

Footsteps retreated from the edge. The lantern light faded.

Raizen exhaled. His heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his biceps. Beside him, Saffi’s shoulders dropped a full inch, the closest she’d co to showing relief.

They sat in the dark, in the fog, on the branch wide enough for both of them. Rain dripped from the branches above in irregular patterns. The engine hum from the aircraft was still there - faint now, more felt in vibrations than heard.

For a few minutes, nothing happened. They just rested, trying to figure out what to do next.

Then new footsteps.

These were different. Heavier. Unhurried. The kind of footsteps that didn’t need to rush because wherever they were going would wait for them. They crossed the platform above with a asured, deliberate rhythm - not patrolling, not searching. Arriving.

A voice.

"Sorry I’m late."

Raizen’s blood went cold.

He knew that voice. He heard it over als, in hallways, in the comnts that always seed to land exactly where they were ant to. Calm. asured. The voice of a man who treated every room like he designed it himself.

Eiden.

The guards’ posture changed - Raizen could hear it. The shuffle of boots straightening. The subtle shift in breathing that ca when soone important showed up.

"P- Professor." One of the guards stuttered. Respectful. "We weren’t sure you were coming or not."

"Sothing ca up." Eiden’s tone carried no further explanation. He didn’t owe them one, and everyone present seed to understand that. "The crate - is it prepped?"

"Nearly, sir. Day after tomorrow, as planned."

"Good."

Silence for a mont. Just the rain and the engine hum.

Then a younger voice. One of the guards - newer, maybe. Less filtered. The kind of voice that hadn’t learned yet which questions weren’t worth asking.

"Professor - if you don’t mind... What’s actually in the crate? We’ve been told to handle it like it could kill us, but nobody’s said what it is."

A pause.

Not a long one. But a pause that had weight behind it.

"A staff" Eiden said.

"A staff?"

"A broken one."

The young guard hesitated. Raizen could almost hear the confused expression in his voice. "If it’s broken, then why -"

"Because it uses sothing not even the Echelon understands... Yet."

The words fell into Raizen’s mind like stones into water. No elaboration. No softening.

The young guard didn’t ask another question.

Nobody else did.

Eiden’s footsteps resud. A few more instructions - logistics, timing, nothing Raizen could fully make out. Then, almost as an afterthought, tossed back over his shoulder the way soone might ntion a loose floorboard:

"And clear the lower branches tonight. The fog isn’t as thick as it looks from up here."

The footsteps continued. Unhurried. Moving away.

Raizen couldn’t breathe.

Saffi didn’t, either.

The fog around them - the fog that was supposed to hide them, that they’d trusted with their lives, the fog that Eiden had just told them, without looking down, without changing his tone - wasn’t enough.

The footsteps faded.

Raizen stared at the platform above him.

He drugged this man. More than enough dose. Watched him eat the food, watched him go down. And Eiden was now standing up there, giving orders, running a cargo operation, arriving almoston schedule -

Like nothing even happened.

Like the drugs were an inconvenience. A delay, at most. Sothing he’d shaken off the way soone shakes off a bad night’s sleep.

...Like he was two steps ahead the whole ti.