The door slid open.

Alteea walked in with a bandaged left arm and a line of thin cuts across her cheek and neck where glass flew. Her uniform was clean, her hair… Less... She looked like a person who hadn't slept… For a long time.

The room straightened on instinct. She scowled at that. "Don't do that in here" she said. "I don't want any spines broken too soon."

"Hi, comms abuser!" Arashi grinned.

"Hi, bad example" Alteea replied without looking at him.

She stopped by Raizen's bed. Her eyes did a sweep of damage and landed on his face. "You look worse in person."

"Mmm… You should have seen me earlier"

She let out a ghost of a smile. Then her voice eased. "Good job. All of you."

Rune shifted, like he wanted to argue that it hadn't felt like a win. Alteea ticked a finger at him.

"Don't. If I hear "but" I'll have you doing emergency simulation wake-ups for a week."

He shut his mouth, afraid of waking up at 3 am with alarms in his ears because Alteea was bored.

"Miners?" Raizen asked, because his brain didn't know where else to put itself.

"Alive" Alteea said. "Not all, but many. Because of you." Her gaze flicked up as if she could see through the ceiling to the mountain itself. "The avalanche cleared more than it ruined. We picked up survivors we didn't expect to find."

He looked down at his hands. They were a mess.

"And Luminite" she went on, lighter. "You'll be very pleased to learn the harvest teams are happy. We pulled enough ore to make the Council stop arguing about budgets for some time. Also - pretty stuff, too. Clean. Stable."

Arashi raised a hand like a student. "Does this count as extra credit?"

"No" she said. "But I wrote your names on a nice paper for the Council. Don't make me regret it."

Lynea sipped her tea and made a face. "We accept bribes in the form of rank."

"Ah, yes. Rank." Alteea rubbed the bridge of her nose, sighed through a smile that didn't quite arrive. "If it were up to me, I'd stamp Vanguard across your foreheads and call it a day. The Council says - and this is me paraphrasing through a lot of swearing - too soon. You've already proven that you're capable enough. Most of times, experience is irrelevant."

Keahi arched an eyebrow. "You swore at the Council?"

"I swore near the Council" Alteea lied. "It echoed."

Arashi grinned. "That counts."

Alteea leaned in close enough to tug the blanket higher on Raizen's stomach without making a thing of it. "Also, Kori... Raizen, you broke her beautiful little grid into spaghetti."

"It worked" he said. "The grid was too small, and the front was too wide."

"I know." She paused, then let the softness show. "It worked better than what she wrote."

Alteea Went on. "We'll debrief when you're vertical. For now, sleep. Eat something that isn't snow. Try not to reenact anything."

Raizen hesitated. "Casualties?"

Her face hardened in that way that didn't mean anger. A kind of armor. "Not your concern."

"It is" he said quietly.

"Not right now. You did your job." She held his gaze until he let the subject walk out of the room alone. "Rest. That's an order. You're really bad at those."

"Fine…" he murmured.

She straightened, winced at her sling like it had offended her, and turned toward the door. Then stopped with one hand on the frame.

"The Lighthouse" Raizen said. He hadn't meant to say it, not yet. The word found its own way out. "Why did it blow? What hit you?"

The room went quieter than quiet. Even Alteea's eyes sharpened.

She didn't turn around. "It's… Complicated" she said.

"So it wasn't us."

"No." A beat. "Whatever hit us came from higher." She looked past the glass wall and the city to something no one else could see. "And it left before we could name it."

He didn't like the shape of that. "What was it?"

"We'll talk later." Her voice turned practical again, on purpose. "Also, if you try to solve the universe from a bed, I'll sedate you."

She stepped out. The door sighed shut behind her, and her footsteps faded into the long hall.

Raizen stared at the ceiling and let the steady beep at his elbow convince his heartbeat to be boring again.

"Soup?" the nurse asked, reappearing with a tray that did, to its credit, smell like soup.

"Please" Hikari and Raizen said at the same time, then looked at each other like two people who practiced that.

The soup was… not terrible. Warm. Real. Let's say that it counted as a meal and. I mean… Hey, it was a bit better than Lynea's disastrous cooking.

Rune limped over. "For the record" he said grudgingly, "thanks for not letting my head be removed by a four-armed disaster. That would have ruined my day."

"Anytime" Raizen said.

"Not anytime" Hikari corrected.

"Fine. Sometimes" Raizen amended.

Rune nodded once, fiercely, as if gratitude had to be fought like a thing with teeth, then wandered off to harass Oren about shield angles.

Lynea slid her chair closer. "How's the head?"

"Uh… Still attached" he said.

"Good. Keep it that way." She tilted her cup. "Want tea that tastes like very old wood?"

"No."

"Wise." She moved off again, smiling at nothing in particular.

Esen cracked one eye. "Hey, boss?"

"Don't call me that" Raizen said.

"Hey, man-who-made-the-mountain-erupt" Esen corrected with delight. "Next time, maybe warn me before you detonate a meteor with your swords."

"Next time, stay behind the wall Ichiro built for you."

"Mmm... Fair." He shut his eye and hummed tunelessly.

Keahi returned to her bed and sat with the same careful grace she used to stand. She watched the wing's windows take the city's light in and give it back. The red in her hair caught the white and made it warmer.

"Rest" she said to him without looking over.

"I'm thinking."

"At least do it lying down! Geez…"

Hikari tucked her scarf under her chin and leaned back. She didn't fall asleep this time. She watched him look at the ceiling.

"Are we in trouble?" Raizen asked finally, because the silence had started doing tricks.

"For what?" Hikari said.

"For ignoring orders. For breaking formations. For… avalanches."

"Yes" she said. "But also no. Everyone saw what you did."

"That's not always good."

"It is today."

He let his eyes close.

The window by his bed held a sliver of sky. Snow drifted past the glass, late and lazy. In the light, a few specks floated, slow and bright. For a second he thought they were still golden ash - those tiny particles that rose when a Nyx's life ended and the wind took the rest away.

"Thank you" he said, eyes still closed.

"For what?"

"For not letting me be an idiot alone."

"Anytime" she said, and meant it in the kind way.

"Not anytime" Raizen corrected.

"Fine. Sometimes" Hikari smiled.

They had survived the storm. But somewhere, hidden, something had survived it too

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.