The wind carried ash from a village that no longer existed. Ritsuka knelt on the ridge, her knees pressed into the cold stone, her fingers buried in the soil. She had been tracking Ash‑Grin for three weeks through marshland, across salt flats, past the hollowed remains of villages that had once been full of life. Each step had brought her closer to something she had spent twenty years learning to hunt, a Grin‑Eater.
The traces of En she found in the earth were thin and old but still warm. They tasted of ash and memory, of something that had once been human. She pressed deeper, letting the En seep into her palm, and felt the shape of it, a hunger that had been fed recently, not on flesh but on will, on the memory of a life that had been erased.
She straightened, brushing dust from her hands, and looked west.
"Ash‑Grin passed through here."
she said. "Not long ago."
Soru shifted behind her. He had been silent for most of the hunt, but she had heard him at night, his breathing uneven, his hands restless on his blade. He was young, with two black teeth and the eager hunger of a Bitten who had not yet learned what it cost to hunt something that had once been a captain. "How can you tell?" he asked. His voice was low, as if he was afraid the wind might carry it to ears that were no longer there.
She looked at the horizon. "The ground remembers."
Below the ridge, the valley opened into a patchwork of fields and orchards. She could see the roofs of three villages, their chimneys sending thin lines of smoke into the grey sky. Farmers would be bringing in the last of the harvest. Children would be running through the streets. A boy somewhere would be dreaming of grafting trees, of white petals falling in spring. She had seen the reports.
She knew that Ash‑Grin had been a captain once before the hunger took him. He had been like her, driven, disciplined, certain that he could hold back the tide. And now he was a thing that fed on memory, leaving villages empty of everything but ash.
"Captain."
Soru's hand went to his blade. "The trail leads toward the settlements."
"I know."
"If it reaches them before we do..."
"It will."
She turned to face him. His face was pale, his jaw tight. He recalled the hollowed village they had discovered three days ago, where they had left the bodies with their faces smooth and empty. He was thinking of what it would mean to be too slow again. She did not soften her voice.
"Which is why we will not let it."
She moved down the slope, her steps silent on the stones, her hand resting on the hilt of her blade. Behind her, Soru followed, his boots scraping against the rock, his breath coming too fast. She did not tell him to be quiet. He would learn, or he would not. Either way, the Grin‑Eater was ahead, and the villages were below, and the boy in the orchard was still dreaming.
The sun was already low. They had maybe an hour before dark. She quickened her pace, and Soru kept up, his breathing finally steadying. The wind shifted, carrying the smell of woodsmoke and turned earth.
Somewhere in the valley, a dog barked. Somewhere, a child laughed. She pressed forward into the dusk.