Smoke in Still Water

The days after the Hollow Accord's visit felt like standing inside a held breath.

Life at Fluff Co. continued in its quiet rhythm—tea brewed, plants tended, biscuits shared—but every moment carried a subtle weight, like someone might knock at the door and change everything again.

Rei tried to ignore it. He swept the front steps, organized herb jars alphabetically, and re-labeled the rainwater barrels even though none of the labels had faded. It was busy work, and he knew it. But something about it helped him think. Or at least feel like he had control.

Kreg had started baking more often—too often, really. There were now twelve loaves of walnut-moss bread lined on the shelf, none of which anyone dared eat because each was dedicated to a different theoretical emergency.

Auron was drawing sigils in the dirt behind the greenhouse. He claimed it was "creative expression." Rei wasn't so sure. And Ellyn had stopped talking. Not entirely. But she had entered a mode of careful observation, like a beast before a storm.

Watching Rei. Watching the customers. Watching the air. Even Fluff seemed heavier. Not tired. Not ill. Just... grounded. As if ready to spring at the faintest whisper.

It came on the fourth night. A single ring of the shop bell at an hour no one should be traveling. Rei didn't flinch. He was sitting by the stove, drying herbs.

The moment the bell rang, Fluff slipped off the window sill and sat facing the door. Auron looked up from his notes. Ellyn closed the ledger. Kreg stepped out of the kitchen wiping his hands on his apron. None of them said a word. Rei stood and opened the door.

No one stood there. Only a scroll. Tied with black string, no seal, no markings. But the paper... shimmered. Not with magic. With pressure. As if whatever lay written inside had weight.

He brought it in, set it on the tea table, and untied it. A single phrase glowed faintly across the top:

"Smoke Walks."

Below it, the ink shifted. Not visibly, not like words being written—but like words deciding to reveal themselves. It was a report. An intelligence sheet. From someone inside the Hollow Accord? Or another group entirely?

It listed movements. Strange gatherings near abandoned shrines. Increased resonance from deep-sealed wells. A beast summoning gone wrong in a distant province—witnesses described something too fast to see, too heavy to breathe near. And at the bottom:

"The Untethered approaches Orenth." Beneath that: "Probability of Catalyst interference: 86%."

Rei reread the final lines three times. Ellyn finally asked, "What does it mean?"

He placed the scroll down gently. "It means we're no longer watching. We're expected to act."

Auron frowned. "Act how? This isn't our problem. Not directly."

"No," Rei said quietly. "But everything we've built made us visible. That means if something comes to test the balance, it's going to look for the fulcrum."

"And we're the fulcrum," Kreg said, unusually serious. Rei didn't answer. He didn't need to.

The next morning, the sanctuary's outer wards flared. Not alarms. Acknowledgments. Something was approaching. Something ancient. Something untethered. Birds didn't chirp. The moss-hounds circled tighter. The soot-fox didn't come out at all.

Rei moved slowly through the shop that morning, restocking quietly, cleaning methodically. His hands knew what to do. His thoughts didn't follow. He was waiting.

The strange thing was, so was everything else. The air hung still, like it had forgotten how to move. Shadows refused to lean. Ellyn stood near the garden gate for two hours without moving. Auron sharpened his charcoal pencils with blade precision and didn't sketch a single thing. Kreg made three pots of tea and threw each one out before anyone could drink them.

Then the second message arrived. It wasn't a scroll. It wasn't even delivered. It appeared. Right in the center of the front table—a small glass disc with a single word etched in shifting runes: "Breathless." It vibrated slightly, humming with a frequency that made Fluff's fur rise.

Rei picked it up and held it to his ear. No sound. But his breath caught, just once, like something inside him had stuttered. The disc vanished when he set it down. No flash. No smoke. Just absence.

A third day passed with no sign of anything new. That was almost worse. They kept to their routine.

The shop was closed, but the sanctuary ran. Rei taught a soot-fox cub how to measure scent-steeped leaves. A wind-beaver asked politely for meditation space in the pond. Fluff refused to let anyone sit on Rei's lap except for him.

But the pressure grew. Invisible. Unnamed. Like an echo whose source had not yet arrived. When night came, Rei lay awake on the floor mat, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Fluff curled under his chin, not asleep either. Just waiting.

Then the ripple came.

Not noise. Not light.

Just a ripple. Through reality.

It passed over the sanctuary like a tide. No resistance. No damage. But everything felt shifted an inch sideways. Kreg bolted upright in his sleep. Ellyn exhaled sharply. Auron scribbled a warding rune on his wall before fully waking up. Rei sat up slowly.

"It crossed," he said aloud.

Fluff did not move.

And in the silence that followed, the night air said nothing.

Because something new had arrived.

Not a visitor.

Not an enemy.

Just a presence.

And the world they knew had already begun to adjust around it.