“What’s your name, sweetie?”

Rumi held the hand of the little girl, guiding her along as her little, worn-out red shoes crushed the snow beneath her feet.

“Red,” the little girl stared at the floor as she walked. There was a small segment of the snow that had fully solidified into a chunk of ice, causing her to slip slightly when she stepped on it.

“Oh, careful now,” Rumi helped her regain her balance. “Do you want me to carry you again?”

“No,” Red shook her head.

Rumi took a look at the other two members of her party, chaperoning the lady and her child along. Soleiman had engaged in conversation with her, though from what she heard the lady hardly seemed interested– responding almost entirely out of courtesy and giving him little to work with.

Qingxi had kept her coat wrapped tightly about her, her Chitite ears pressed tight against the top of her head, shivering visibly. Rumi wasn’t entirely surprised, given that her use of her Wind Technique to shield herself from the cold had effectively prevented her from being able to acclimatise the same way she, Soleiman and Pallas had.

Now, though, with the environmental mana supposedly having been drained, she would not be able to rely on her magic for comfort.

Rumi didn’t entirely grasp the concept the Yusheed had explained to them, even after Soleiman’s best attempts to further explain it to her. But to the best of her knowledge, she knew it had something to do with Al-Muqayad.

The Fellbeast.

The Artefact of Avarice.

Mana tides.

Rumi shook her head slightly. Frankly, there were times she felt utterly useless. How she of all people was supposed to make even the littlest bit of difference when it came to dealing with such monumental, unfathomable forces of nature– she did not know.

Red slipped again, and Rumi just managed to catch her fall in time to save her from tumbling onto the packed snow.

“Thank you…”

“It’s okay,” Rumi helped her up, adjusting the hanging, frizzy locks of hair that had moved to cover her face.

But at least she found happiness in doing what she could do. Be it feeding them well, going fishing with Qingxi whenever they fancied fish, patting Pallas to sleep whenever she awoke from a nightmare, or making Soleiman fluster whenever she smiled at him. At least she could find solace in that.

She was only Rumi, after all. She was no Soteira. Nor Xiafan prodigy. Nor walking encyclopaedia.

And she was okay with that.

“Miss Rumi?”

“Yes, Red?”

“Do you… like my shoes?”

“Of course I do, Red,” she responded. The things' laces were worn, frayed and snapped and doing nothing to help hold the shoe together. Its sole threatened to fall off with each stumbling step Red took, exposing her feet to the bite of the snow and ice. Its toe box had even begun to grow thin and tear in some places, the very tip of her sock-covered big toes peeking through to the outside world.

But it was perfectly red.

“I love their colour,” Rumi added.

Red giggled slightly.

“I polish them every night,” she said bashfully. “They’re my favourite.”

“You should be proud, Red,” Rumi shook her hand slightly. “You’ve done a very good job.”

The little girl turned to look up at her, the dirt and grime and sweat on her unwashed face doing little to hide the glimmer of light in her eyes.

“Your shoes are perfectly red.”

Sometime later, after they had gone back with Walid to clear out the third house under them, they and a few other members of the Yusheed gathered in the mess tent to have their lunch.

They sat in circles on the matted floor, with Rumi, Soleiman and Qingxi sitting in a circle of three as Walid had left to attend to other business. Before them was a platter of food, immaculately arranged atop a larger tray, each little flavour and texture and spice sitting patiently in its allocated cup or bowl.

They were having maqluba, except the chefs had gone out of their way to separate the individual components of the dish in case they had any aversions to any of its components.

The dish had a centrepiece made entirely of fragrant, golden rice– whose grains ranged in colour from white to yolky orange like the hues of a campfire. A generous serving of chopping lamb meat had been placed in several of the bowls, and the rest of them had been filled with a great variety of other miscellaneous items. There were vegetables like potatoes, dried tomatoes and eggplants, spices like chopped parsley and ground-up peppercorns and side dishes like salads made from chopped tomatoes, purslane and cucumbers. One of the bowls even had yoghurt inside of it.

Soleiman and Qingxi had taken to mixing the myriad of ingredients on their spoons and wolfing said spoonfuls down. But Rumi couldn’t quite match their pace.

“You good, Rumi?” Soleiman asked through a mouthful of rice and lamb.

Rumi hesitantly pushed a bit more rice onto her spoon, before slowly lifting it to her mouth.

“Yeah,” she responded, still holding the spoon before her lips. “And don’t talk while chewing. It’s dangerous.”

Soleiman made a pained gulping noise, swallowing the still half-chewed food.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. And thank you.”

She put the spoonful into her mouth, instantly regretting her decision to do so as she felt each grain sit uncomfortably on her tongue.

She began chewing, albeit slowly, gradually turning the rice into mush.

“This is quite nice,” Qingxi said as prepared another spoonful of rice, paired with a potato cube this time round. “It’s certainly different from the rice back at home or in Houzen, but not in a bad way.”

Soleiman swallowed his food.

“You prefer it over Xiafan rice?”

“Oh no, not at all,” Qingxi was quick to correct him. She swallowed. “I just think it's an interesting change.”

“Qingxi,” Rumi dragged, her mouthful of rice long since having disappeared into her stomach.

“Sorry, Rumi.”

“Don’t be sorry to me, be sorry to yourself,” she said. “I don’t want to lose you guys because you choked on a bit of rice…”

“It’s alright, Rumi,” Soleiman reassured her. “We can always just do the manoeuvre if any one of us chokes on something.”

Rumi grumbled softly.

“I still don’t want you choking at all.”

“Mm, I understand,” Soleiman backed down. Perhaps he realised trying to avoid the blame would do little to help the situation. “We won’t do it again.”

Rumi nodded, humming softly.

She pushed another half-portion of rice onto her spoon. This time, though, it felt too heavy for her to lift.

Perhaps… It’d be good if she saved this for sometime later. Maybe her appetite would return come time for dinner.

Though, if things went on the way they were, there was not a chance Rumi would make it through the rest of the day without becoming ravenously hungry.

“It’s… so… cold!” she huddled up even closer to Soleiman, wrapping her arms around his right arm as they stumbled together against the roaring winds.

The weather had taken a turn for the worse while they and the others were gorging themselves on their lunchtime feast. What once was a bright, clouded sky had turned into a dull grey that– when combined with the near blizzard that had rolled into Yellow Rock– made it much, much harder to see.

At best, they could see ten metres before them. Though even then her field of view specifically was narrowed down by the heavy squint she had to adopt to try and avoid getting any snow in her eyes. Soleiman’s lenses took care of that issue for him.

They kept as close as they could to Qingxi before them, and Walid a few metres ahead, their cloak flapping and jumping in the wind as they made their way through the winding side streets of the settlement.

“How are you holding up so well, Qingxi?” Soleiman yelled through the wind.

She had on the exact same attire she had earlier that day. Yet she seemed entirely nonchalant about the damn near snow storm raging about them.

“I don’t know. Maybe I just acclimatised?”

“That quickly?”

Qingxi shrugged, her cloak hanging almost dead from her shoulders.

“Your wind!” Rumi said. “You're using your wind technique!”

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Qingxi turned to look at her, her eyes glancing back down to her body as if in disbelief.

“Am I?”

She walked sideways, her eyes fixed on her hand as Rumi and Soleiman watched on.

Verily, after a second or so, her sleeve began to flutter.

“Oh wow. I was,” she stared at her hand, watching as the flutters stopped the moment she rolled her wind shield back into place. “I didn’t even realise.”

“That’s how it is, usually,” Walid called out to them. “The changes in environmental mana are so gradual it's difficult to tell just from sensing whether or not it’s returned.”

He led them to the end of a street, terminating in a little wooden hut, raised off of the ground by several sturdy logs. By then, they had arrived at the very edge of the settlement, and the structure before them served the purpose of being a first line of defence along with the several others similarly placed upon the perimeter.

“But if we can feel it returning, then you know that there are others who can too,” he set his hand on the ladder. “Now come on. We’ll have to do a bit of setting up.”

“Careful, Rumi,” Qingxi warned, leaned back and away from the ladder’s rungs as she prepared to catch Rumi if she fell from where she was.

She slowly made her way up the ladder, having to wrap her left arm about the rungs with each step to make up for the fact she had no fingers with which to hold onto them. When she got close enough to the top, though, Soleiman grabbed ahold of her– and with Qingxi’s help– they were able to gently lift her into the safety of the stilt house’s interior.

The singular room it was made of had four large latticed windows, one on each of its walls, and several large caches of various items and supplies positioned directly under them. There was also an old musket stashed in a corner of the room, though by the looks of things it had been left there entirely because it had run its course and its owner did not want to have to lug it around anymore.

Walid immediately got to checking the caches, taking into account what supplies and tools were already available. He handed Rumi a small eyepiece, directing her and Qingxi to the window facing away from the rest of the settlement to stand by and accustom themselves to observing the snowy landscape for any signs of activity.

After that, he directed Soleiman to the cache containing not-yet-assembled paper cartridges. He gave him the task of crafting as many little shots as he could with what gunpowder and paper was still left within the cache, taking a seat beside him to teach him how to do so.

Apparently, they were waiting on a shipment of supplies to their little outpost, and then they’d be able to do some real work setting up the place for a potential Fiend encounter.

“Am I supposed to shoot through this thing?” Qingxi asked, feeling the lattice with her fingers.

“I mean… maybe? Why don’t we-”

The entire thing moved as Qingxi slid it upwards.

“Ah.”

She slid it back down, though, seeing as Rumi almost immediately began to shiver again.

Thankfully, as the minutes went by, the weather began to clear up slightly. The sky had taken a much brighter tone– hints of gold and amber indicative of the coming evening painting the clouds–, and visibility had gone up significantly. Qingxi and Rumi even played a few games of ‘I Spy’ to see if they could correctly identify the specific tree from the distant forest the other was looking at.

Now, it probably wasn’t the responsible thing to do to play around on the job, but given the fact that there was at least a hundred metres of clearance between the forest cluster’s edge and the settlement’s perimeter, they thought they’d be alright.

Not thankfully, though, was the fact that the supplies Walid had said would soon arrive had yet to show up. The three of them were doing fine, Soleiman had actually taken quite well to creating the paper cartridges one-by-one– he said it felt ‘therapeutic’–, but Walid felt less so.

“I’m sure it’s fine, Mr Walid,” Soleiman tied off one end of a paper cartridge. “I mean even if we leave before it comes at least we’ll have set up a bunch of shots for the night-watchmen.”

“No, Soleiman,” he put a hand to his forehead. “They won’t have enough bloody firepower if they don’t get here with the goddamn heavy muskets.”

The vim in his words made anyone else abandon any ideas of reassuring him.

“I mean come on, how late can they-”

The air crackled.

The shot came from far away, and it echoed a few times through the room. But despite its softness, there was no mistaking it for anything other than a gunshot.

Then it crackled again. And again. And the shots kept on coming.

He rushed over to the cache Soleiman was working by, sliding open the window and squinting his eyes as best as he could to see what was happening on the other side of town.

The three of them paused momentarily, exchanging glances as they waited for his verdict.

“Oh,” he said, backing away from the window. “Nevermind.”

The air crackled a few more times.

“What’s going on?” Soleiman himself tried peering through the window.

“...Don’t worry about it,” Walid responded. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Are… are they training?” Soleiman asked, moving out of the way as Rumi shuffled over to take a look through her eyepiece.

“...No,” he stared at Rumi. “They’d send a signal if that was the case.”

“Then…”

Peering through the eyepiece, Rumi’s eye scoured the distant view of Yellow Rock’s many outposts. As she did so, hopping from station to station and scanning each one’s surroundings for any signs of fighting, the air periodically stopped– taking a moment to breathe before very quickly returning to popping again.

After a while, though, the crackling stopped in earnest, and Rumi had still yet to see what had caused it.

“Did you see it, Rumi?” Soleiman asked.

“You should get back to your position.” Walid said.

“Just… a little…”

She switched her search parameters. Her eyes dove deeper into the area surrounding Yellow Rock, scouring the lifeless snowy plains to no avail.

There were no men nor any monsters.

“I don’t see anything,” she put her eyepiece down.

“What are they doing, Mr Walid?” Qingxi asked.

“They’re cleaning us out,” he replied. “Protecting us from within.”

The three of them stared blankly at him.

The air crackled again.

Rumi dove back into her eyepiece, this time scouring the houses of Yellow Rock themselves.

“Get back to your position, Rumi.”

“Wait, just a little bit-”

“Rumi. You’re jeopardising the operation,” he moved towards her.

“Hold on, I’ve nearly-”

She caught a brief glimpse of a handful of people gathering about a large building, facing down another group of people on the opposite side of the street as them.

Walid grabbed her, gently urging her back to the window facing the woods.

“Wait, hold on!”

She fought herself free, and returned to the glass to see.

Those weren’t just gatherings of people. They were people in lines. Two lines to be exact. One against the wall of the large building, the other midway into the street. And, though she couldn’t quite tell, the ones in the street were holding something. Each one of them.

She twisted the end of the eyepiece, swapping into the stronger lens.

There, she finally saw as the refugees lined up against the rough wooden wall of the larger building– their backs turned to the smoking muzzles of their executions across the street. They had ropes bound about their wrists and blindfolds on their faces, and the Yusheed went down the line dispatching them one-by-one.

Some of their bodies had slumped over against the structure, others were still standing– yet to be shot. The furthest down the line, though– and the first ones to be executed– were nowhere to be seen. There were only heaps of rope and clothes where they should have been.

“Rumi!”

Walid grabbed her hand, pulling the eyepiece away from her face.

“Hey, stop!” Soleiman countered, himself grabbing on Walid’s arm to try and pull it off of Rumi’s.

“Don’t touch her,” Qingxi glowered.

“We need to focus, here!”

She must’ve seen something wrong.

But the mental image of the refugees going limp one-by-one and slowly sliding their way down against the wall stuck with her.

“You’re… killing the refugees.”

Soleiman and Qingxi turned to look at her.

“...They’re not refugees.”

“Wait, what?” Soleiman asked.

Rumi peered back into her eyepiece, fighting herself free from Walid once more.

She took a closer look at the lineup of people, each and every one withered and raggedy and dishevelled. Some of the ones that were already slumped over when she first looked had already disappeared.

She looked at the piles of clothes further down the line. What the hell was going on?

Some had shoes still neatly arranged facing the wall– as if those who had worn them were still there. Some didn’t.

“They’re not human.”

And yet, what caught her eyes the most were two little spots of perfect red.

Two red shoes, half covered by a wet rag.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Rumi turned around, the pain on her face taking him off guard.

“They… listen,” Walid raised his hands. “Will you listen to me?”

“What the fuck did you do!”

“They’re not human!”

The outpost fell silent for a moment, the quietness broken only by the slow return of the blowing winds.

“You saw it with your own two eyes, didn’t you? They left no corpses.”

Rumi had nothing to say.

“They’re Those Who Bleed Blue, Rumi,” he said. “Fakes who try to imitate being human to infiltrate our societies and blend in with the rest of us. The real us.”

“...What?” Rumi yelled.

“Look again, Rumi,” he said. “They melt into water when they die. They were no humans.”

She didn’t have to look again. She didn’t want to look again. Yet she could still see those two red shoes in her mind, even with her back turned to the distant crackling of the air.

“It’s grim, I know,” he said, closing the window shut as the winds began to roar back to life, bringing the visibility way back down as the dunes of snow outside began to shift. “But it’s necessary. We Sahlbaridis live on the forefront of these Donoc’s encroachment, and if we didn’t do this then their presence would stretch far, far beyond just Siraj’s wastes and the Silent Valley.”

She wasn’t listening to him. She didn’t want to listen to him. She could only hear the soft voice of the little girl she had carried out the door of that house.

Do you… like my shoes?

Of the little girl she’d walked right into an execution.

“I… no,” she pleaded, hunching over as Soleiman and Qingxi hurried over to her side.

“We’re doing the rest of Phia a favour.”

I polish them every night.

“No…”

The winds roared just a little louder.

“We have to do this, Rumi! It’s part of our duty!”

“No, no…”

The windows rattled slightly, snow began filtering into the room.

“Rumi, it’s okay, it’s okay…”

They’re my favourite.

“No.”

“Listen!”

“No!”

The windows clattered.

“No!-”

Her screams of anguish were silenced.

For in the distance, just by the perimeter of Yellow Rock…

Howled a Fiend.