The grove was behind him.
But Thuta couldn't shake the feeling that something had followed.
It wasn't the Yellow Ribbon Maiden. Her presence had vanished the moment he crossed the last ribbon-marked tree. She was not a pursuer. She was a guardian. A watcher.
No, this felt different.
He walked down the mountainside path, jungle creeping in on either side, shadows thick and sun thin. The scroll in his satchel was silent, but the sigil on his palm tingled — not pain, not heat. Just… unease.
The birds weren't singing.
The leaves didn't rustle.
And every now and then, he caught a whiff of burned iron.
Something was wrong.
---
He reached a narrow bridge spanning a shallow stream, its boards rotting but intact. He stepped carefully across, boots creaking against old nails.
Midway over, the forest shifted.
Three shapes stepped out from the mist.
Not ghosts.
Not spirits.
People.
But they looked… wrong.
Wearing faded monk robes stitched with black thread, barefoot, faces hidden beneath wide hoods. Each of them held something different — a curved blade, a hooked staff, and what looked like a spiked censer dripping glowing ash.
On their necks and forearms: tattoos shaped like spirals, but inverted — curling inward, not out.
Thuta froze.
The one with the staff stepped forward.
"You carry the breath."
Thuta's mouth was dry. "And you are?"
The staff-bearer's voice was calm. "Flame must be hunted before it spreads."
The censer carrier spoke next. Her voice was higher, almost gentle. "The Fold burns echoes. You… are more than echo."
Thuta backed a step.
The curved-blade man hissed. "He's marked. Second breath. Kill him before the third binds."
The woman snapped, "Not yet."
Too late.
The one with the blade lunged.
---
Thuta dodged left. The blade clipped his jacket and sliced the fabric. He fell into the mud, rolled, and scrambled for cover behind the bridge post.
The sigil on his palm blazed.
He reached toward the blade attacker with his left hand, mind pulsing with panic. Not fire. Breath. Not destruction. Disruption.
Something inside his chest hummed.
The curved-blade man staggered, dropping his weapon as it heated unnaturally fast in his grip. He screamed, clutching burned fingers.
Thuta didn't wait.
He bolted.
The censer swung. Sparks flew. A tree trunk exploded near his head.
He ducked behind thick vines and ran into the deeper brush.
---
The jungle wrapped around him like a trap, branches clawing, roots slick. He stumbled, slid, righted himself.
The sigil was too hot now. He felt sick. Like the forest itself was rejecting him.
Still, he ran.
Until he couldn't.
He collapsed against a fallen log, breath ragged, shirt clinging with sweat. His shoulder burned from a gash he hadn't noticed.
Footsteps echoed behind him.
Then stopped.
"You carry the breath," the staff-man's voice called from the trees. "That makes you a threat."
"Lucky me," Thuta wheezed.
Another voice — the woman again. "The Fold burns those who remember the war."
He didn't know what that meant.
But he felt it.
Old. True. Heavy.
---
The jungle held its breath.
And then — silence.
They were gone.
Thuta stayed low for another hour.
Only when he was sure they wouldn't return did he limp to a shaded creek and clean his wounds.
He didn't speak.
Didn't curse.
Didn't panic.
But when he unwrapped the scroll, his hands shook.
There was nothing new. No new spirals. No new symbols.
Only a single word had been added in faint red ink:
"Hunted."
---
He camped that night in a hollow beneath an overhang, rain dripping softly in the background.
He lit no fire.
Cooked no food.
He stared at the sigil on his hand and asked the dark, "Why me?"
The silence answered, as always.
But something else joined it.
A memory. A voice he'd only heard once before:
"Three breaths awaken the fourth. But the fourth breath is not yours."
He pulled out the fragment left by the Watcher. Read it again.
Not yours.
Then whose?
He didn't know.
But someone else did.
---
At dawn, he prepared to move again.
As he passed an old tamarind tree, he stopped.
A message had been carved into the bark, still fresh.
"Next time, we won't warn you."
Below it — a spiral. Reversed.
Still smoldering.
He stared at it a long time.
Then walked on.
Not faster.
Not slower.
But aware.
He was being hunted now.
Not just watched.
And wherever the third breath waited — they'd be there too.
-----