The Wandering Isles: Session 76

The fires of Saigo no Toshi were still burning when the group gathered around Dash’s still body. The blood moon had not faded, and the city’s ruin pressed in on all of them. Eldrin knelt beside him with Hatsu, but every spell and technique came up empty. Dash wasn’t breathing, and nothing they tried brought even a flutter of life back.

With a steadiness that didn’t match the panic around him, Eldrin asked if anyone had a diamond. When someone handed one over, he pressed it firmly to Dash’s chest and whispered a desperate prayer to Tempestas. There was no burst of light or dramatic surge, just a long, hollow silence. Then Dash drew in a shallow breath. Hatsu didn’t hesitate, lifting his head and pouring a healing tonic between his lips. Dash came to slowly and glanced down, startled to see the golden Kintsugi lines sealing the scars he earned when he’d died in the woods weeks before.

Hatsu moved quickly after that, counting the survivors. Four hundred, maybe five hundred people needed to escape. He asked Kaelora what to do, but she didn’t have an answer. A moment later someone handed him a small note sealed with a familiar mark.

“I’ll be fine.
–A.”

He didn’t need to guess who had written it.

Eos stepped in, asking who would carry Dash and the children once the portal opened. Eldrin told her it would take all of them. Hatsu leaned down to Dash, asking for the stone, and Dash simply murmured “pocket.” Hatsu fished it out, knowing it could carry a handful of people if used right.

Under Hatsu’s direction, Kaelora gathered the wounded rescued earlier with Slate’s help, bringing them into a sheltered room so Eldrin could heal them. When Sister Vaelith awakened from Eldrin’s magic, she was supported by two other sisters, they bowed to Eldrin with quiet reverence. He backed away, uncertain, only for Dash to stand, sway, and collapse straight into him. Dash checked on Elandor, then drifted to rest beside Lysa, briefly losing consciousness.

Through the telepathic link, Slate and Eldrin talked through their dwindling options. At the same time, Hatsu and Eos pressed Eldrin to find Vathros. When Eldrin reached out, Vathros answered that he was keeping the city’s last survivors hidden from the incoming royal forces. Eldrin thanked him. Vathros then reminded Slate that the book could hold more than one person, possibly many. Whether it was worth that sacrifice was another question entirely.

Eos was visibly overwhelmed by the crowd, so Hatsu guided her into a quiet space in her mind, offering her stability while he asked his sister Asuka what they should do. Their father was still missing somewhere out in the city.

Eldrin searched for any way to save more people. Maybe Kaelora could help with teleportation, but she didn’t know the spell well enough, and no other casters were strong enough to amplify Eos’s power. When Eldrin told Slate they should consider using the book instead of the portal, everyone felt the weight of it. They had been trapped in that place for seven months. Vathros had been imprisoned there for centuries.

Eos stood and explained the truth to the crowd, telling them plainly what the book was and offering them a choice between the portal or stepping into the prison realm. Hatsu moved toward her, but Slate subtly pushed him back, pretending to be uninvolved as he handed him the book and the ring under Eldrin’s instruction. He sold the lie to Drel easily, claiming it was a cultural ritual.

Before heading downstairs, Hatsu gave Slate a final blessing. “May the bee guide you. I hope you find your way back home.”

Down below, panic was rising. Hatsu stepped forward and delivered a speech that would be remembered long after the city fell. He told them he wouldn’t abandon them, that he would guide them through the book himself. He spoke of sacrifice, of starting from nothing, of the ancestors who had once done the same.

"People of Saigo no Toshi. It's not easy to decide which path we go. There are certain limitations. There is a number limitation on the portal... and there's another limitation. In the spirit of Henry Cruise, we sometimes have to explore the things we don't understand yet... and yet these people made this city great. This book was created by a Maleficum for the purpose of sealing spirits and entities into a place where they'd be safe from the hate of the outside world. It had become a prison for some, but I have been in here and I can teach you how to navigate through this. I am not going to leave you alone, I will go with you, but in order to save everybody here I need some people that voluntarily go into this book. There was a time when Haruki Saito spent his life and his dedication and he lost his own life in The Battle of Blossoms. We all have to make a decision in this very moment if we want to keep the flame of the ancestors burning and alive and set foot on to a place we don't know yet where there's no food or something else to eat from. No food. No vegetation. Nothing. We have to start from zero until we can come back and restore Saigo no Toshi for what it was, but if we die then the city is dead. So I ask, who wants to come with me into the book?”

When he asked who would step forward, the response was immediate. People surged forward with hope rather than fear.

Still, something gnawed at him. He turned to Asuka and asked her to find their father. He would lead the others. He gathered Kaelora, Malrik, and Nora, showed them the Hearthstone, and named their new home: The Rising Pearl.

Then Vathros stepped forward. He told them he would return to the prison himself. This wasn’t a choice for him, it was the path he’d always been walking. He said goodbye to his friends, thanking Slate for bringing him life instead of death. Slate reached out mentally and inspired the others, though Vathros didn’t respond. Hatsu offered him a final memory, a moment of guidance from the bee, then called him friend.

Vathros vanished into the book. One by one, people followed Hatsu’s direction and entered after him. The portal opened, and Eos ushered people through, urging them to run. Dash gathered his children and the book containing Vathros and the refugees, then stepped through with the last of the group.

Silence fell. Only a handful remained: Hatsu, Kaelora, Nora, Orla, and Ayame. They had one task left. They needed to find Hashirama.

They set out at once. Along the way, they alerted Slate, who turned to Drel and nodded in thanks. Drel told him that his “staying quiet” made them even, and if Slate ever wanted to stay hidden from “her”, he’d help. If he ever wanted to return, Drel wanted the reward money. Slate simply nodded, lit the fire around himself, closed his eyes, and let his body fall to ash.

Hatsu saw it happen, but he couldn’t stop. He didn’t have time. He looked inside the window.

At the prison, he saw Thrakgar standing over his father. He froze as he heard the brute recount his childhood in a low, bitter voice, ending with the moment he lost everything. He holds the blade, Onimaru. Family heratige, stolen from the Toshisugu clan.

“I was four. Smoke in my lungs. Her blood on the floor beneath me. I waited for the man who carved me a wooden toy as if he would walk through the fire itself. He never did. I wouldn’t mind so much that you discarded me but to then take in that abomination. No father should ever do that to his son. I know that this is your first life and the things you faced as a child were horrific, but I was a child too and you were supposed to be there for ME. You discarded me. You turn your back on me. You… took in another. An owl? but I was too much for Saigo?! You were my father too. I am your blood, and this is how you repay me? Well this is how I repay you.”

Then, with chilling finality, he executed his revenge and severed Hashirama’s head. Standing there, watching, was Hatsu as he was faced with Thrakgar Toshitsugu’s actions.

Down by the docks, a ship approached. A man in black armour bearing a sun emblem stepped off. Behind him marched a towering white construct, looming above the buildings themselves and marked with the OmegaVerse crest, its eyes glowing like spotlights.

Ash swirled through the air. It began to gather and form. Slate reconstituted himself from the cloud, body reforged by a power he’d stolen barely weeks before. He looked up as he took shape again, gazing at the mechanical goliath standing before him.

And the night, somehow, grew darker.