Kaara could still feel his presence even as the sun rose over the horizon. The red tailed xio who had put a stop to the ceremony and destroyed the Oskuutors with the help of his allies. Kaara knew instinctively that it had been the same xio she’d raised in an Ux dream. The same one who had called himself ‘Oikevas’ back in Punuuk. She hadn’t noticed it before, but it was just Savekio spelled backwards. The Savekio she’d known always loved doing things like that. Taking the letters of a name and mixing them up to make a new name.

But the Savekio she knew had a golden tail, not a red one. Still, that presence lingered over her. Familiar and yet foreign at the same time. As if she should know who it was, but nothing lined up. The Savekio from her dream, and the Savekio who she sensed were two completely different xio, and yet something familiar still hid beneath the surface.

She let out a sigh. She had other things to worry about right now. Since their intervention, Kaara had been searching for anyone who needed help. Luckily for her, those gray cloaked warriors had provided basic healing to everyone. Whether it was potions or magic, those who had been at the cusp of death had been rescued. Those who were already dead, however, were now being collected by the adults.

She saw Amaro and his siblings together. She gave a bittersweet smile. The horrid memory of what happened to Raktus still lingered in her mind. She was glad the rest of them had survived.

She hoped it was the same for Argo and the other Noxa. She had not been able to keep track of them after the Oskuutor broke through their defenses. Kaara could hear the enraged nobility crowded nearby. The ritual had prevented them from intervening until the dawn, and by then it was already too late to do anything about it.

As Kaara trudged closer, she could make out what they were saying.

“They’ll pay for this!” One of them screamed. “This is an outrage! How dare they disrupt the ceremony!”

“The disruption is bad enough, but let’s talk about the sheer volume of Malaki this year. There was clearly some sort of sabotage from the beginning!”

“You Tiburs were trying to slaughter all of our next of kin, weren’t you? But when we proved too strong you hired a group of mercenaries to ruin the rituals.”

“This is a conspiracy!”

“Who were those interlopers?”

Kaara gritted her teeth. The adults didn’t really act too differently from the children. Shiira stood in front of the crowd with the chief of each branch flanking her, “I will take responsibility for this oversight in our ritual. Every year, the Malaki have increased their numbers, and this year was the worst one yet. Those interlopers ended up sparing us from a very nasty battle.”

“So you admit that you were colluding with them!” on yelled from the crowd.

Shiira sighed, “Which are you more mad about? The fact that the ritual was interrupted, or the fact that there were hundreds of Malaki this year? Either way, what’s done is done, and it was beyond our power to stop it.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The crowd of nobility was unruly, but they were not the only detractors. Even the other Tibur questioned what had happened, “Grand elder, why are we not tracking the interlopers? Interfering with this ritual is among the greatest insults to our customs.”

“The ritual was already interfered with. That much is clear by how many Oskuutor gathered this year, is it not? Regardless, the ritual was still successful.”

“Successful? It was an utter travesty!” A noble yelled from the crowd.

“How can you call any of that a success, grand elder?”

“Nearly every child who has survived this night has awakened. And everyone has at least partially awakened. That is what my eyes tell me.”

“The awakening is meaningless if too many survive the ceremony! The power won’t transfer.”

“The children who survived have clearly proven they are stronger than any generation preceding them.”

“All the more reason that this is a tragedy,” The Emperor spoke up, walking through the crowd of nobles, “It’s very clear to me that the number of Malaki this year was directly proportional to the quality of souls participating. And now we have interlopers who have stolen that power from us at the last second while we stand helplessly watching from the sidelines.”

“You should know more than anyone that the power gained from the Siren Ceremony is a drop in the bucket compared to the other rites of the Tibur.”

“And that drop in the bucket can be the difference between life and death for the future rites.”

“When I went through the ritual it was life or death.” Kadmus chimed in, “The Malaki shaved my generation down to a third, but it was that natural selection which made us strong. This generation had so much potential and yet now they’re going to grow up soft. The Malaki are going to exploit that.”

Kaara gnawed the inside of her cheek. She hated it. Didn’t he care that his own son was dead? Did he even know he’d passed away?

Amaro and his siblings arrived next to her, “Are you alright?” he asked.

Kaara looked at him. Amaro looked as if he had just finished crawling through broken glass. His clothes were torn and caked with blood. Even his hair was closer to Deka’s color than his usual snow white, “I should be asking you that question. Are you okay?”

Amaro laughed to himself, “I know I look like death right now, but I’m fine, actually. It’s just a lot of blood is all.”

Kaara looked closer, noticing that most of the wounds on his body seemed to have closed, “What do you think about everything that happened?”

Amaro raised an eyebrow, “What else could I think? Those warriors earlier are my heroes. I owe my life and the life of my siblings to them. Not that these adults would care about that, though.”

There was an awkward silence between them for a moment. The constant circular arguments from the nobility turning into white noise.

“You know I remember something you said to me when we met at that dinner a few weeks ago.”

Kaara raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean?”

“When we were playing hide and seek. You said something to me and Deka. At the time, I thought you used your water magic to trick my ears, but your soul had been injured by that point, hadn’t it?”

Kaara nodded.

“I’ll keep your secret, then. All I ask is that you tell me about it later. And that maybe I can reconcile with my brother’s death somehow.”

“Do you blame me for what happened?”

“I do. And I hate it.”

Kaara smiled, “I’m alright with that. I blame myself too.”