The trap sprang without warning.
One moment, Watabei was walking down the stairs of the inn, her mind on the contact she was about to meet. The next, the floorboards beneath her groaned and gave way.
It wasn't an accident. It was a mechanism.
She fell.
She crashed through the rotting wood and landed hard on the stone floor of the basement. The impact knocked the wind out of her. She gasped, rolling onto her side, her vision swimming.
She looked up.
She was in a cage.
Iron bars rose from the floor to the ceiling, enclosing a small, damp space. And she wasn't alone.
Huddled in the corners of the cage were others. A dwarf with a broken arm. A human merchant looking terrified. And, slumped against the bars on the far side, a small figure with a bandaged face.
Goburo.
He looked up at the sound of her fall. His single eye was wide with surprise, then immediately narrowed with concern.
"Watabei?"
She scrambled to her knees.
"Goburo! You're here? How?"
"Rounds," he said grimly. "I was walking past the alley. They came out of nowhere. Nets. Magic dampeners."
He gestured to the others.
"We are not the only ones. They are collecting people."
Watabei gripped the bars. She looked around. The basement was dark, lit only by a single slit of a window near the ceiling.
The door at the top of the stairs was locked.
They were trapped.
***
Night fell.
The basement grew cold. The other prisoners—the dwarf, the merchant—eventually drifted into uneasy sleeps, their snores echoing softly in the dark.
Goburo couldn't sleep.
He shifted, moving silently across the stone floor. He found Watabei sitting in the corner of the cage, her knees pulled to her chest.
She was crying.
It was a silent, heartbreaking sound. Her shoulders shook. Her face was buried in her hands.
Goburo sat down beside her.
"Watabei," he whispered.
She didn't look up.
"Why are you crying?" he asked softly.
She wiped her eyes, smearing the dirt on her cheeks. She looked at him. Her eyes were red, swollen. She looked vulnerable in a way he had never seen her look before.
"I got the map," she choked out.
Goburo blinked.
"What?"
"I got the map," she repeated, her voice trembling. "From the contact. I had it. But... but..."
She took a shuddering breath.
"I also came to a big revelation."
Goburo leaned closer.
"What revelation?"
She looked him dead in the eye. The despair in her gaze was absolute.
"It demands a sacrifice."
Goburo froze.
"What?"
"The map," she whispered. "It demands a sacrifice for the Vial of God."
"What are you talking about?" Goburo asked, confusion warring with dread. "So you mean to say... the Vial of God was in the map itself for the whole moment?"
Watabei shed more tears. She nodded, looking awful.
"Yes. The coordinates... the location... it's encoded in the parchment. But to reveal it... to unlock the path... the map requires a life."
Goburo felt the blood drain from his face.
Devastated.
"So all the things we did," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "The running. The eye. The fire... it was for nothing?"
"At most," she sobbed. "It was for nothing."
He stared at her. Then, a cold realization settled in his stomach.
"Where is the map then?" he asked, his voice dropping to a dangerous low.
Watabei squeezed her eyes shut.
"They have it," she said. "The guards. The ones who caught us. They took it from my pocket."
Goburo took a breath, holding it tight in his chest.
"So they are going to—"
Watabei nodded.
"They are going to use it. They have prisoners. They have us. They have everything they need to open the path."
Silence hung heavy between them.
Goburo looked at Watabei. She was crying, looking small and broken. He felt a surge of helplessness, but underneath it, a strange resolve.
She looked up at him. Her lip trembled.
"I have to tell you something else," she said. "Something I should have told you before."
"What?"
"I'm a shapeshifter," she said.
Goburo stared at her.
"What?"
"I always have been," she said, her voice gaining a strange, hollow strength. "That's why I lied. About... about everything."
She looked down at her hands.
"When I was young... my dad used me to benefit him. My ability. He made me do awful things. Murders. Thefts. Spying. I didn't know... I didn't know the hands I wore were already in other people's blood. By the time I realized, it was too late."
She looked at Goburo, her eyes searching for judgment.
"So I keep it a secret from everyone. I wear this face. I wear this name. But I am... I am a monster, Goburo."
Goburo didn't speak.
"And the grandma," Watabei continued, her voice breaking. "The Moss Hag. That was me. I was the old grandma that worked at the market. I wanted to observe you. To see... to think if you were a good man. If you were worth trusting."
Goburo looked at her.
He thought about the grandmother. The kind eyes. The warning.
He smiled.
A small, tired smile.
"You were right to check," he said quietly.
Watabei let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.
"I was so happy," she whispered. "When you waited for me. Outside the inn. When you sat there... I was so happy."
She leaned in.
Goburo looked at her. He saw the tears. He saw the pain. He saw the truth of her, the messy, broken, beautiful truth.
He leaned in too.
"The world is already ending tomorrow," Goburo murmured. "So what the heck."
He closed his eyes.
And they kissed.
It wasn't a kiss of passion. It was a kiss of desperation. Of two people standing on the edge of a cliff, holding onto the only solid thing left in the world.
They held each other in the dark of the cage, while the city slept above them, unaware that the key to the end of the world was about to be turned.
TO BE CONTINUED...