Chapter 72: Heart of The Lotus
Morning found them like mercy.
Light pushed through the curtains in uneven bands. The apartment didn’t smell like tea, laundry soap, like it always used to. Instead, it was more like whatever festival smoke had followed them home. Keahi was a fossil in a blanket on the couch. Arashi had become a cautionary tale in the armchair, neck at an angle no neck respects. Hikari was already on her knees by the low table, slow and careful, lining up four cups because order helped her mornings make sense. Raizen stood at the sink, watching the faucet until it made it remember how to flow water.
His right hand kept checking the inside pocket of his jacket. The small folded packet sat there like a heartbeat - light, warm, ridiculous. Shiny brass stars, four points each. He closed the pocket again like closing a secret.
"Status report?" Arashi croaked. "I am dying."
"You’re just dramatic," Keahi said into the blanket. "I am dying."
Hikari set a cup in front of each of them. "We’re alive," she decided, with the stubbornness of someone who had chosen hope as a habit.
The door swung open and Kori walked in like last night had been a dream they were not allowed to discuss. Hair neat. Her Slate reappeared as if it had never left the world.
"Up" she said. "Teeth. Shoes. We leave in ten."
Arashi raised one eyebrow with the energy of a man lifting a mountain. "How is your head, Instructor?"
Kori’s ears forgot how to be the same color as the rest of her. "Fine!" she said, a bit loud. "Why?"
Keahi peered over the arm of the couch. "No reason."
Hikari made a small noise that wanted to be a laugh and tried to be a cough. Kori gave them the look instructors sharpen in secret - stern on top, worry beneath.
"Breakfast" Kori added, softer. "Then we go."
"What are we doing" Raizen asked, because someone had to.
"Reading" Kori said. The clipboard clicked. "And then something else."
"Suspicious" Arashi said.
"Obviously!" Kori answered, which in Kori language usually meant suspicious.
They ate quickly. Hikari made toast and cut fruit with an efficiency that felt older than she was. Keahi salted and spiced everything as if it had hurt her feelings. Arashi critiqued the jam like a judge in a contest no one else had entered. Raizen did not taste much of it. He tried twice to speak but didn’t. Hikari leaned close to slide her cup nearer the middle and the small movement brushed her shoulder against his. The old reflex to step back rose. He told it to sit. It barely did.
Kori stood at the door five minutes early, like always. "We meet the others at the east gate," she said. "You won’t need training gear. Not today"
"So we will fight a book?" Arashi said, more like a statement than a question.
"If necessary" Kori replied.
They filed out into The Hive’s late morning. The inner ring of the city was awake but not aggressive about it. A woman watered balcony herbs from a can. A few streets next, on an elevated sidewalk, a courier pushed a cart that seemed full and whistled softly to keep rhythm. A cat decided that behind the clouds, the dim sunlight was nice and sprawled to collect its share. Far above, the Lighthouse turned where no one could see it from here, and yet everyone knew it was doing its patient work.
Hikari walked a half step behind Kori, still tidying her hair as they went. Keahi scanned storefronts like danger might decide to be mundane for a day and buy bread. Arashi narrated quietly for his own benefit. They crossed from The Hive into the cleaner streets that led to the Lotus Grounds. The Academy sat slightly off center in the city, Having its own pie slice of ground.
At the east gate the other four were waiting. Feris had the plush whale she got from Esen, that had won yesterday pinned under one arm as if it might try to escape. Lynea offered a paper cone of roasted nuts to anyone who wandered too near. Ichiro leaned against the wall with a calm that could have been patience or stubbornness. Feris looked like she had been trying not to vibrate for at least seven minutes.
"How are the legs?" Esen asked.
"Dead" Keahi said. "We are haunted now. By our own calves."
"Worth it" Feris said, hugging the whale as if it added gravity to her opinions.
Kori did a quick head count and the little breath she let out afterward was invisible unless you were looking for it. "Library" she said. "Let’s go!"
They moved into the courtyard paths - gravel that did not dare crunch too loud, trimmed hedges, pond water still enough to copy the sky. The library sat at the far side like a patient animal - wide, low, with a frontage of stone carved in overlapping petals. There were no screens above its doors, no chalked announcements. If you belonged, you would know when to show up.
Inside, the air cooled and the world remembered how to whisper. Shelves rose in quiet ranks. Low lamps lit pools on polished tables. Students hunched over slates and texts with the posture of careful thieves stealing useful thoughts. An attendant at the main desk glanced up, saw Kori, and mentally rearranged a few invisible rules.
Kori led them past the public stacks. Past the corridor where old maps lived. Past a glass case with a cracked training blade once used by someone with a plaque for a name. They reached a wall that had only one purpose - to be a wall. Kori pressed her palm to a small metal plate set flush into the stone. It woke, not with a glow, but it beeped with a sound like a lock finally understanding a request.
A seam appeared where there had been none.
Arashi whispered, mostly because the room had decided all noises should be smaller. "Aah, yes. I love forbidden doors."
"Not forbidden" Kori said. "Just not for everyone."
She stepped forward and gripped a bronze ring that had been pretending to be a decorative circle. The panel swung inward on silent hinges. The temperature shifted. A breath of air came from below - cooler, dry, with the clean note of metal that has not met rain in a long time. The line of light from the library floor fell into the space and the space did not give it back. A stairway spiraled down, hugging a round shaft. The risers and rail were a blend of old stone and newer work - iron set into the edges, small anchors like precise stitches where someone had insisted this place stay exactly as it is.
Raizen felt it at once.
At first it was just the suggestion of a hum, the way a room with a machine behind a wall sometimes whispers to your bones. Then it grew, in the place behind his ribs where his Eon moved when he let it. It was not loud. It did not push. It simply arrived and asked him to notice. The memory of the training hall touched his skin - the protective walls that drank Eon and returned it like a steady hand. This was not the same. It was cousins with that feeling. Iron and something more expensive than iron. Quiet electricity without arrogance. The kind of order that wants you to be sharp and will not beg.
Kori stood aside and let the eight line up at the lip of the stairs. No one spoke. The library noise thinned and slid away like polite water.
"Where are we going," Esen asked, because someone needed to ask even if he did not expect an answer.
"Down" Kori said.
"Excellent" Esen muttered. "My favorite direction."
The first step waited. It was the same stone as the library floor, only it felt like standing on the edge of a thought that had not decided to be spoken yet.
Raizen put his hand on the rail. The metal was cold and absolute. The hum in his chest tugged, as if something below had leaned up toward him in greeting. His fingers tightened without permission, then loosened because fear and respect look the same from a distance and he wanted to choose the right one.
Kori looked at each of them in turn. She did not have her teacher face on. She had her person face on - the one that cared before it judged.
"What you see below does not leave your mouths." she said. "Please."
Eight heads nodded. Some because rules were comfort. Some because Kori saying please felt like a day that mattered.
Feris tucked the whale into Lynea’s arms for safekeeping. Ichiro shifted his weight forward the smallest fraction. Esen closed his eyes for a heartbeat like he was setting his breathing to a metronome. Keahi looked hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food. Hikari drifted closer to Raizen without noticing she had. Arashi tilted his head, unable to decide if this was a joke that had forgotten to be funny. Raizen took the first step because stopping at the edge has never been a talent of his.
The air accepted him. The hum climbed an inch in his bones. He felt it along the lines in his wrists, in the old scars that knew what training had taught him the hard way. The hum did not bite. It did not welcome. It simply asked him to go deeper if he wanted answers.
"Lights" Kori said.
Small fixtures under the rail woke in a line going down. The spiral turned into a ribbon. No glare. No display of power. Just enough to see your feet and the shadow of the step below.
Raizen counted steps without meaning to. By twelve he had matched his breath to the rhythm of the stair. By twenty he had stopped trying to understand the hum and let it be what it was - a presence. Hikari’s shoulder brushed his once and stayed near, not touching but not far. Keahi’s hand hovered over the rail as if she might need to use it to launch herself into a fight with the staircase. Arashi breathed out annoyance and curiosity in alternating measures.
A landing revealed itself like a chessboard deciding to add a new square. The stair curved toward it and delivered them to a round platform with a door set into the far wall. This door did not hide. It had a frame of brushed steel and a seam that promised it would open straight and true. No handle. A reader plate to the right, sleeping.
Kori stepped to the plate. The machine inside the wall noticed her and woke with a small acknowledgment sound. She looked over her shoulder at them - at all of them - and the privacy in her face was gone. What she carried now was a kind of pride that did not want applause.
"You are here because you have earned it" she said.
Esen swallowed. Feris squeezed Lynea’s fingers once. Arashi tried to say something and then decided the joke would be better later. Hikari’s eyes were wide and calm. Keahi said nothing for once. Ichiro nodded as if the room had asked a question and he had agreed.
Kori gently put one hand on the mechanical door. The light from the hidden fixtures lined her profile in soft white, turned her eyes into hard, bright pieces of intention. For a heartbeat, she looked ten years younger and ten years older.
"Welcome." she said, and her voice did a small thing none of them had heard before - it tilted toward pride and warning at the same time.
"To the Heart of The Lotus."