The door of Haqi's house closed behind them and Ozair walked straight to the nearest open space on the floor, dropped himself down, and sprawled out with his arms wide.
"Oh, damn," he said to the ceiling. "Today was a very busy day."
Toviro lowered himself onto the mat nearby with considerably more composure, though his exhale said the same thing. "It really was."
One by one they found their spots. The room settled into the particular quiet of people who are too tired to talk but too wound up to sleep.
Haqi disappeared into the kitchen.
A moment later, Yami emerged from inside carrying a wooden jug and a set of cups, moving among them with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this countless times before.
He poured for Aryan first, who accepted the cup with a grateful nod.
Mina took hers next without a word, her thoughts still lingering somewhere in the wake of the day's events.
When Yami reached Elina, however, his movements seemed to falter for the briefest moment. A faint blush touched his cheeks as he handed her the cup.
"Thank you," Elina said softly.
Yami cleared his throat and quickly moved on.
Toviro accepted his cup with a simple thanks.
Finally, Yami stopped before Ozair. Looking up from the floor, Ozair took the cup with a grin. "Oh, right on time. Thanks, Yami."
With everyone served, the conversation settled into a comfortable quiet. Not long after, Haqi brought out the food, and the group gathered around to eat together.
The soup was warm and simple, yet somehow exactly what the evening called for. After everything the day had put them through, the meal carried a quiet sense of comfort that no one felt the need to disturb.
Partway through, Toviro glanced across the table at Haqi. "We're still so grateful to you," he said. "Truly."
Haqi pointed his spoon at him without looking up. "I already told you. Don't mention it."
Toviro went quiet and returned to his bowl with a slightly surprised expression, like a man who had walked into a door he forgot was there.
Ozair set his spoon down, a sudden thought surfacing through the haze of the conversation.
"Hey, Haqi," he said, looking up. "You mentioned something earlier, but I forgot what it was called."
He frowned, trying to pull the word from memory. "What was it again?"
"Zaym," Elina answered without a moment's hesitation.
Haqi looked up. His expression was the one a person makes when they have a mouthful of food and receive unexpected news at the same time: eyes slightly wide, gaze fixed forward, chewing slowed considerably.
Before he could respond, Yami said, "You seriously don't know?"
The group looked at him.
"It's what people use to perform abilities," Yami said plainly. "Like a force that lets people wield powers. There are a lot of people who can use it."
The table went quiet for a moment, and then everyone spoke at once.
"Wait, what?"
"What do you mean a lot of people?"
Haqi swallowed. "You use it and you don't even know what you're using?"
"We know what it is in a general sense," Ozair said. "It's what we were given to achieve our goal."
"It's like our superpowers," Elina added.
"And those superpowers," Haqi said, folding his arms across his chest, "are called Zaym."
The word sat over the table differently now that it had a definition attached to it.
Toviro's expression hadn't changed from the moment Yami first explained it, which meant he was thinking very hard.
"You're saying there are people here who have Zaym?" he asked, turning toward Haqi.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then Haqi burst out laughing.
Yami immediately joined in, and what began as a brief chuckle quickly turned into full laughter.
The two of them laughed so hard that Toviro found himself wondering what he had said wrong.
After a moment, Haqi wiped at the corner of his eye and shook his head.
"Of course there are," he said, still trying to suppress a grin. "Millions of people."
He was still smiling when he added, "I know you're joking, but now you're taking it too far."
Nobody was joking.
Ozair's mouth hung open. Aryan stared at the table. Elina's gaze remained fixed on some distant point, clearly caught on the same thought as everyone else, only processing it in her own quiet way.
Ozair turned to Toviro. "What does this mean? Did Atsal give those people powers too?"
Toviro was silent for a moment, his brow furrowing slightly.
"No," he said. "It has to be something else."
Elina looked up. "Is it because of the merging too? The rewritten rules?"
"It would seem so," Toviro said.
The room went silent.
Haqi and Yami looked at each other, then back at the group, then dissolved into laughter again.
Haqi eventually put his forehead down on the table, shoulders shaking, and said into the wood, "You guys are something else."
The laughter gradually faded, giving way to the comfortable quiet that followed a good meal.
Before long, dinner came to an end. Together, they cleared the table, carried the dishes into the kitchen, and returned to their seats.
By then, the weight of the past two days was beginning to catch up with them. Their movements were slower, their eyes heavier.
Elina rested her chin on her hand.
"I don't think the tiredness from yesterday's travel and everything today has worn off yet."
"Tonight, we sleep early," Toviro said. "We have things to do tomorrow."
The reminder drew everyone's attention back to the reason they were here.
Ozair looked up. "Right," he said. "What's the plan? How do we get Mayo out?"
"We can't simply walk into the garrison cell," Toviro said. "I haven't been inside it but I know how those places work. Security is strict and we can't fight our way through everyone to reach him."
Haqi frowned. "Don't tell me you're planning to break in illegally." His gaze swept across the group. "If that's the plan, you're all cooked."
"Then what are we supposed to do?" Elina asked. "It's not like we have many options."
A brief silence followed.
Then Haqi said, "You could do it the proper way. Make your case and tell them he's innocent. That might actually work."
Aryan looked at him. "He's right. We should try the legal route first."
Toviro considered it, then nodded once. "Then that's what we'll do."
Haqi smiled. "Good. Tomorrow, I'll take you to the public records office, and the guard station if it comes to that." He looked around. "Settled."
The conversation lingered for a few moments after that before naturally beginning to die down.
It was then that Ozair glanced around the room and noticed something. "Where did Yami go?"
Haqi glanced at the empty spot beside him, then smiled to himself. "Watching the stars, probably."
A hint of fondness entered his voice. "He does it almost every night before going to sleep. Sits up there and stares at the sky for hours."
Haqi shook his head lightly. "I've never figured out what he sees up there, but he seems to enjoy it."
Ozair looked at him for a moment. "He's like Aryan, then."
Aryan looked over. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, don't act like you don't know," Ozair said. "I've seen you sitting by the riverbank and staring at the sky more times than I can count."
Aryan said nothing, which was as good as a confirmation. A faint colour touched his face.
Ozair stood and looked at Haqi. "Where is he?"
"The rooftop," Haqi said. "That's where he usually goes."
Ozair stepped out of the room and made his way outside. The night air was warm and still.
"Now where could the way up be?" he said, looking around.
He took a few steps to the left and immediately spotted a wooden staircase running up the side of the house.
"There it is."
He followed the wall to the corner and climbed.
The rooftop was flat and open to the sky.
Yami sat on a carpet near the center, both hands planted behind him, legs stretched forward, head tilted all the way up.
Three moons hung above the jungle canopy, silver and enormous, and between them the stars were so numerous they seemed crowded.
Yami's mouth was slightly open, and his face carried the look of someone who had forgotten, if only for a few minutes, that the world contained any problems at all.
Ozair walked over and sat down beside him.
Yami didn't notice at first. Only when Ozair settled into place beside him did he feel the movement.
He startled slightly, then let out a breath. "You scared me."
"Oops. Sorry."
Ozair turned his gaze toward the sky. "What are you doing out here?"
Yami looked over at him for a moment, then let his eyes drift back to the stars. "Nothing in particular. Just looking."
The silence returned.
"What do you see up there?" Ozair asked.
Yami blinked.
For the first time that night, his eyes left the sky completely.
He looked at Ozair.
The question had been asked so simply that it took him a moment to process it. There was no teasing in Ozair's face, no hidden meaning.
He was genuinely asking.
Yami turned his gaze back to the stars. For a few moments, he said nothing.
It was a question he had never really thought about before.
"I don't know," he admitted at last. "It's just beautiful."
His eyes wandered across the countless points of light above. "It feels good to look at."
Ozair smiled faintly, the moonlight catching in his eyes.
"When I look up there," he said, his voice quieter than before, "I see who I want to be."
Yami glanced at him.
Ozair kept his gaze on the sky.
"In simple words I see myself." A faint smile crossed his face. "But stronger. Unstoppable. Standing at the peak of everything I'm capable of, with no regrets and no part of myself left unexplored."
Yami slowly turned back to the sky, struck by something in Ozair's words.
His gaze moved across it differently now, like he was looking for something he hadn't thought to look for before.
The three moons shifted in his vision. The stars seemed to arrange themselves around something he couldn't quite name but could almost see.
His mouth spread into a wide smile.
"You're right," he said quietly. "I can see it now."
He kept his eyes on the sky, the light reflecting silver in them.
"I see myself, too," Yami whispered.
For a moment, his eyes remained on the stars. When he spoke again, there was a quiet certainty in his voice that hadn't been there before.
"But strong enough to stand up for the people I love the most. To protect the innocent. To stand between the bad and the people who can't protect themselves."
His words faded into the night.
"I see myself as a..."
He stopped.
The last words seemed harder to say than everything that had come before. Yami swallowed once, almost embarrassed by the thought, then forced himself to continue.
"...as a hero."
Ozair looked at him in surprise, his mouth slightly open. For a long moment, he simply stared, taking in the pure, unguarded certainty on Yami's face.
A memory surfaced.
—
The memory carried him back to a riverbank beneath the night sky.
The river drifted quietly before them, reflecting the stars overhead. Four children sat together in the grass, young enough that the future still felt impossibly far away.
Aryan lay on his back with his hands behind his head, staring up at the stars. Beside him sat Elina, Mayo, and Ozair, their palms pressed into the cool grass as they gazed at the same endless sky.
For a while, none of them spoke, content to simply lie beneath the stars.
Then Ozair turned his head toward Mayo with a grin. "Alright, Mayo. Now tell us your dream."
Mayo blinked and looked over at him. "Huh?"
"We told you ours," Ozair said, still smiling. "Now it's your turn."
"What do you see up there, Mayo?" Elina asked, a faint smile touching her lips. "Tell us."
Mayo looked at them in surprise, then lifted his gaze to the sky. The starlight reflected in his eyes as he stared upward.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
"Come on, hurry up," Aryan said from where he lay in the grass, his hands still behind his head. "Why's it taking so long?"
Mayo shot Aryan a brief glance, then turned his eyes back to the sky.
A moment later, he pushed himself to his feet. Small as he was, he somehow seemed taller standing there beneath the stars.
The red cape fastened around his neck stirred gently in the night breeze, fluttering behind him as he continued to gaze upward.
He remained silent for several seconds.
Then, finally, he spoke.
"I see myself being strong enough to stand up for the people I love the most. To protect the innocent. To stand between the bad and the people who can't protect themselves. I see myself as a..."
He paused.
"...a hero."
A smile spread across his face. There was no doubt in his eyes, not even the slightest trace of it.
Ozair and Elina could only stare, their mouths slightly open. Even Aryan, still lying in the grass with his hands behind his head, wore much the same expression.
—
Ozair came back to the rooftop. To Yami's face, still turned toward the sky, wearing the exact same expression Ozair remembered from years ago.
A bittersweet smile tugged at Ozair's lips.
"When we were kids," he said, "Mayo used to say the exact same thing."
Yami looked over at him. "You mean your friend? The one who's lost now?"
"Yeah." A heaviness settled into his voice. "That's him."
Yami held his gaze for a moment. "I want to meet this guy."
Ozair laughed quietly. "You will. Just a little longer."
The conversation drifted after that, and for a while they simply sat beneath the stars, watching the night pass overhead.
Eventually, Ozair glanced at Yami.
"By the way, do you have this thing called Zaym?"
Yami went still. Then he slowly raised both hands in front of him, treating the gesture with unexpected care.
Small yellow lights appeared in his palms. Not fire, not electricity, something gentler than both, like pieces of a star brought down to a manageable size.
They shimmered for a moment, warm and quiet, and then faded.
Ozair stared at the space where they had been. "That was beautiful."
"That's all I can do," Yami said, looking at his own hands. "I don't know what it is yet. Just those small lights."
Ozair reached over and put his hand over Yami's. "You'll figure it out one day."
Yami looked at him.
"And when you do," Ozair said, grinning with his eyes half-closed, "we'll do duels together."
Something stirred in Yami's chest. He found himself looking at Ozair for a moment longer than he meant to.
Then he laughed.
It came out sudden and genuine, and before long Ozair was laughing with him.
When it settled, Ozair asked, "Isn't there somewhere to learn about Zaym? Like how to use it properly?"
"Big Lore," Yami said immediately. "It's an academy. The best one in the whole kingdom. They teach everything about Zaym there. Training, tests, and all that stuff."
His eyes lit up.
"I've watched their tournaments before. They're amazing. Everyone has these really cool Zaym abilities."
He shook his head with a grin. "They're all so cool."
Ozair found himself smiling at Yami's enthusiasm. "Then why don't you go there? It sounds like a good place to learn all this."
The grin faded, just slightly. "I want to. It's my dream."
His gaze dropped to the rooftop beneath them. "But the fee is too high. I can't ask my father for that. I know he doesn't have it."
Ozair was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at Yami. "I promise you," he said. "One day, I'll get you into that academy. Just wait for me."
Yami looked at him slowly, something uncertain and hopeful moving across his face.
"Really?"
"It's a promise."
For a while, the only sound was the wind moving across the rooftop.
Then Yami broke the silence. "Can I... can I call you big bro?"
The words caught Ozair off guard.
For an instant, he saw Ava.
Not as a memory, but as if she were right there beside him.
Her face. Her smile. The way she used to look at him when she said it.
"Big bro."
The words echoed through a place in him he had spent a long time trying not to touch.
For a moment, he couldn't breathe.
The memory hit him harder than he expected.
Ozair sat frozen, staring at nothing.
Then he looked away, blinking rapidly. He lifted a hand and wiped at his eye before turning back to Yami, a smile finding its way onto his face.
"Of course you can," he said.