But a detailed architectural design spread across the hide in fine, deliberate lines. A house.
Every curve, every wall, every asurent was etched with precision. She could see where the kitchen would open into the living space, the position of the windows, the symtry of the pillars, even the arrangent of furniture. It was exact—too exact.
Kaya’s lips parted, disbelief hardening into certainty.
This wasn’t the work of a villager or a beastman artisan. No. This was professional.
Her fingers skimd the surface of the hide, tracing the lines as though they might vanish if she blinked. The more she studied it, the more her chest tightened.
Because this wasn’t just a drawing.
It was a blueprint.
And not of any world she knew—
but hers.
Kaya’s hands moved faster now, her breath uneven. She untied another roll of hide, spreading it across the table.
Her eyes widened.
This wasn’t just a house design. It was an entire colony.
The drawing mapped the mountain itself—precise ridges, valleys, the curves of slopes, and the paths between them. Whoever had sketched this wasn’t an amateur. This was the work of an architect. An engineer. Soone who had planned every detail to ensure the structure could survive anything.
Kaya didn’t understand architecture in depth. She wasn’t trained. But even she could feel the intent behind the lines. She could see the reinforcents, the routes of strength, the ways the design funneled weight and impact. It wasn’t just for convenience. It was for survival.
Her pulse quickened. The more she studied it, the more certain she beca—this was a diagram of this very mountain, the one the vultures lived in. Only here, in these drawings, the mountain had been reshaped into the safest zone possible.
She traced the markings with her fingertips. Clever tricks—thods to hide entire settlents from view. From above, it would look like nothing but untouched wilderness. No hos. No tribes. No lives. But beneath... a secret stronghold.
She opened another roll. Then another. And another.
Eight hides in total.
Each one revealed new layers of shock. Detailed designs blending the wild terrain of trees and cliffs with modern concepts—foundations, supports, reinforcent thods. The kind of calculations that could make a ho withstand not just ti, but force. Even the brute strength of the most savage beastman would break before these structures did.
Kaya’s stomach twisted. Who did this?
Her gaze fell back into the box. Sothing small glead among the dust.
A pen.
She froze.
Not a quill, not inkstone, not the crude tools of this world. A ballpoint pen. Ordinary, cheap, the kind sold at every corner shop back ho. She lifted it with trembling fingers, twisting off the cap.
Her breath stopped when she saw the na scratched into the plastic.
Gracia Siddiqui.
The pen slipped in her grip, and she clutched it tighter. That na. She knew it.
The sa woman who had written her the letter.
Her gaze darted back to the hides, heart pounding. And now, she noticed what she had overlooked before.
At the corner of every design, etched small but certain, was a signature.
Gracia.
Kaya’s chest tightened. The air seed thinner.
Siddiqui.
Kaya’s brows furrowed as the na echoed in her head. She had heard it before—sowhere. But where? The thought tugged at her mory, frustratingly out of reach.
"Um..."
The voice broke her reverie. Veer’s brother had edged closer, hesitation in his tone. Kaya looked up. He gestured toward the dust-covered sofa.
"Um... can I?"
She gave a short nod. He sank down, his wings shifting slightly behind him, then glanced at the box and the scattered designs.
"Can you... like... do you know what these things are?"
Kaya’s eyes lingered on him for a mont before sliding back to the blueprints and the diary. Her reply was dry.
"What do you think?"
For a second he studied her, searching her face, then said softly, "I think... you could."
She didn’t waste ti.
"Whose things are these? And whose house is this?"
The question hit him like a stone. He paused, lips pressing tight, his gaze dropping. He bit down on his lip, hesitation thick around him, before finally speaking in a low, almost pleading tone.
"...This is my parents’ house."
Kaya froze.
Her mind reeled. Parents’ house? That damn old man... that creature that couldn’t even be called human... this was his?
Her shock must have been written all over her face, because he gave a small cough, almost as if to clear the heaviness between them.
"Actually... this used to be their house. Before my mother... disappeared."
Kaya’s eyes snapped to him, her chest tightening.
He didn’t stop. His words flowed, soft, tinged with sothing fragile.
"These things... they’re my mother’s last keepsakes. And this house—" his hand lifted slightly, gesturing to the carved pillars, the neat roof, the hidden precision of it all—
"—was designed by her. Not only this house, but many others. Like Veer’s. Mine. Even my father’s other ho. All of them were made and decorated by Mother."
Kaya’s eyes were wide, disbelief written across her face.
He noticed, and instead of recoiling, he gave a soft, almost bittersweet smile.
"My mother... she was a woman. Just a small woman, like you. With a strange hair color. Half her hair was black, but the rest—" he lifted his hand toward the sky, his eyes searching it as if the mory lived there— "it was the color of the sky below. That’s how Dad described it, the first ti he saw her. He said her hair was unlike anything he had ever seen."
Kaya swallowed, her pulse quickening.
"Her eyes," he went on, "they were brown. And —when she first t my father—she wore strange clothes. Clothes like yours."
Her breath caught.
"She had a long skirt down to her ankles, shoes that were too high—" his finger pointed at her own boots, then at her shirt, "—and a shirt, just like that one you’re wearing, except in black. And on her wrist, there was a strange band that made a sound—tick, tick, tick—with a little needle that moved inside it."
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