The host arrived just as the morning light began to thin.

Raizen heard the soft chime at the door and looked up from his slate. Saffi was tying her hair back near the balcony, squinting into the morning haze.

Kenzo had left half an hour earlier, a folder tucked under his arm and a quick promise to "not fall down a bridge" before heading toward the upper districts.

The door gently slid aside.

Their host stood framed in the opening, the same calm figure from the day before. Dark hair braided back with silver threads. Clothes in layered greens and browns that matched the tree. Hands folded lightly in front of him.

"Good morning" he said. "Kenzo requested that I escort you to the Academy."

Saffi straightened. "Already?"

"The Academy does not sleep as much as the rest of Ukai" he replied, the ghost of a smile touching his mouth. "If you are ready, we can depart."

Raizen pushed himself to his feet and clipped the twin blades to his belt. The giant spoon was still in the corner, quietly judging him. He tried not to think about the day he would have to explain it to Kori.

"We're ready" he confirmed.

The host bowed his head slightly and stepped aside.

Outside, the city had shifted into its working face. The soft glow of the lanterns gave way to clearer daylight filtering through layers of clouds and leaves. Voices carried along the platforms - stall owners calling out, children arguing over something, the distant clank of tools.

They followed the host along a wide branch-path that curved around a trunk. Two drones floated past overhead, carrying a bundle of metal rods between them. Thin cables stretched outward into the air, anchoring platforms that hung like broad leaves.

The view was pretty crowded.

Houses layered on houses, some carved into the trunk, some grown outward, some balanced on thick boughs. Lines ran between them - ropes, pipes, cables, all neat despite their number.

People walked in both directions, stepping aside with small nods, never bumping, never hesitating. It should have looked chaotic.

But it didn't.

Everything moved along channels Raizen could not quite see, like water following hidden grooves.

Saffi's eyes flicked from stall to stall as they walked. Her gaze lingered everywhere: On a shop where wooden frames hovered in the air, hovering on magnets. On a group of children using braided branches as swords. On a drone that extended a metal limb to help an old man up a shallow step.

Then the smell changed.

The air went from clean sap, wood and food to something sharper - char and wet ash.

The path bent around a cluster of homes and opened onto a broader platform that wrapped around the trunk's curve. Here, the bark was blackened in patches. Leaves overhead hung limp and curled, their edges burned to a crisp.

Workers moved through the damage in steady lines.

Some wore harnesses, clipped to cables that let them swing as they cut away dead branches. Others guided small, spider-like machines that clung to the bark, their arms scraping ash into containers.

"What happened here?" Saffi asked, her voice dropping without her meaning to.

The host did not slow his steps, but his expression thinned.

"There was a fire last" he said. "It was contained, though. We only had a few casualties."

Raizen looked closer.

The burn patterns were wrong.

He had seen fire damage before - in the Underworks, in Neoshima's industrial rings, on the Mountain. Normal fire crawled and climbed where it could, licking along fuel lines, reaching for air. It left uneven edges, irregular shapes.

This was different.

A long, perfectly curved strip of bark was charred darker than the rest, an arc that burned through the platform like someone burned with intent. Some of the higher branches looked less burned and more... Punched through. Holes bored in from the underside, edges blackened in a clean ring.

"This was not random" Saffi murmured. She had stopped walking without noticing. "Look at the edges. It is like something focused heat inside a beam or something... There's no spread pattern."

Their host paused then, following her gaze. For a heartbeat his eyes weighed her, reassessing.

"We are… Still investigating" he said. "Ukai takes such incidents seriously."

"Deaths?" Raizen asked.

The host's jaw moved, just once.

"No lives were lost" he said. "We were fortunate. That is all I can say at present."

Fortunate…

Raizen watched as a worker guided a machine to cut away a charred limb. The branch fell, caught by a waiting net strung between two lower platforms, then was hauled aside to be processed. The whole effort ran like a drill - no wasted motion, every person knowing exactly where to be.

Even their disasters are organized.

Saffi stepped closer to him as they passed the worst of it. It was small - just half a step, like she wanted to keep her boots away from the ash - but he felt it.

He did not move away.

They continued onward, the smell of smoke thinning as the path curved out toward the outer branches. The noise of the workers faded behind them, replaced by a quieter hum.

This part of the city was different.

Fewer houses clung to the trunk here. The platforms were wider and more open, with sturdy railings and fewer stalls. The air felt cooler, higher, the drop visible between the wooden slats in narrow glimpses of distance. Lanterns hung here too, but they were spaced farther apart, their designs more intricate.

The host walked with measured steps.

"Ukai Academy is situated on the outer growths of the Crown"

"The Crown?"

"The center tree crown. I understand why it might be a bit confusing, but the center, giant tree is Ukai's heart and pillar. It's like the central landmark; we orient ourselves relative to it-"

"We get it, there's no need to explain so much" Raizen laughed.

The man returned the smile

Raizen nodded. "Alright. So the Academy is further from… the main tree?"

"Closer to the sky" the host corrected. "Where there is room for what we do."

"And what do you do?" Saffi asked, curiosity outweighing caution.

The host gave her a small approving look.

"Eon can be shaped into many things. Energy. Armor. Force. But here, we specialize in creatures shaped from our own Eon."

The man paused for a second.

"In other words… Eon Beasts"

Raizen blinked.

"Beasts?"

The host's smile didn't reach his eyes.

"You will see soon enough."

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