Thuta stayed in the village two more days.
He told himself it was to heal. To rest. To make sense of the Salt-Blood Pact.
But it was also because he was afraid.
Not of the Fold.
Of what the ritual had revealed.
He was no longer sure whose blood ran through him. Or what it meant that the flame didn't reject him. That it spoke through him.
Ama Khin hadn't said anything after that night. She didn't need to. Her silence was enough.
But the village had started to change.
---
It began with small things.
A new man appeared, claiming to be a water seller. His cart was wooden and old, but the water jugs were too clean. He never seemed to blink.
A boy played in the street every afternoon with a ball made of palm fronds — always bouncing it in the exact same rhythm, facing away from the house, but his head turned slightly toward Thuta's window.
A woman came to the tea stall and never drank anything. Her prayer book was full of burned pages.
Ama Khin didn't speak of them. But she sharpened her knives every morning now.
On the third night, Thuta found a note tucked inside his satchel.
Folded once.
No signature.
Just a single line:
"You've been tagged. You're not walking alone anymore."
The sigil on his hand pulsed, hard and cold.
He didn't sleep that night.
---
At dawn, he tried to leave.
Ama Khin didn't stop him. She just watched as he packed, eyes heavy, lips pressed in a line.
"You won't be alone out there," she said.
"I never was," he replied.
He stepped onto the trail leading north, toward the highlands where the scroll seemed to point.
He made it less than a kilometer.
---
Two figures blocked the path.
Not the brutes from the bridge ambush. These were cleaner. Sharper. Like they'd read too many books about being invisible and believed all of them.
A man in grey, tall, clean-shaven, with a coil of iron wire looped at his hip.
A woman in a hooded red shawl, carrying nothing — but her hands bore scars shaped like spirals.
The man spoke first.
"You're not our target."
Thuta laughed dryly. "You've got a funny way of showing mercy."
The woman stepped forward. "It's not about you. It's about what follows you."
Thuta narrowed his eyes. "You mean the sigils?"
The man nodded. "Each breath you take burns a path."
"Into what?"
They exchanged a look.
The woman said, "Into memory. Into time. Into the boundary that should not be crossed again."
"The Fold was formed after the Ash Rebellion," the man continued. "We're not loyal to kings or spirits. Just survival."
Thuta's fingers curled. "You think killing me will stop this?"
The woman replied: "You were never the end. You're just the first light. We prevent the Fourth Breath."
He stepped back. "And who has the Fourth?"
Their faces changed. Not confusion.
Fear.
"You won't survive long enough to meet him," the man said softly.
---
Then — motion.
Too fast.
The woman lunged with both hands, spiral-scars glowing. Thuta raised his arm, sigil flaring. The air bent. Her strike missed by inches, diverted by a sudden pull of energy.
He twisted sideways and ran into the trees.
The man threw the coil of iron after him — it hit the ground and snapped with electricity, missing his foot by seconds.
Thuta dove, rolled, and vanished behind a fallen tree.
He kept running.
The path twisted. He doubled back. Took a low ridge.
And nearly collided with a stranger.
---
A woman in a faded green cloak stood in his way.
She didn't flinch. Didn't speak.
She raised one hand — not to strike, but to draw something in the air.
A broken spiral inside a rising sun.
Then she was gone.
Just… gone.
The agents didn't follow.
Thuta collapsed beside a stream, chest heaving.
He didn't know what had just happened. Or who she was.
But she'd saved him.
And left a mark he didn't recognize.
---
That night, back in a hidden grove lit only by moonlight, he unrolled the scroll.
The fourth spiral was still faint.
But at the top of the parchment, a new line had been written:
"You are no longer a witness. You are the flame's trail."
He stared at it for a long time.
Then looked at his hand.
The sigil didn't just glow anymore.
It drew.
It pulled.
It called.
And something, somewhere, was listening.
-----