Chapter 9: The End Of An Era
The cold settled into the Garden, and into me, a permanent resident. Ren showed up the next day, and the day after that. He was a ghost of his former self—a silent, efficient instructor who inhabited the same space as me but offered nothing of the man who’d argued in the mist. Our sessions became a brutal, wordless dance. He’d demonstrate a stance, a weight shift, a precise flick of the wrist meant to channel a sliver of energy. I’d mimic it clumsily. He’d step in, his hands adjusting my shoulders, tilting my chin, his touch clinical and impersonal. “Like this, Kashikoi.” That was all. No context, no encouragement, no criticism beyond the correction itself. The crack that had opened in my heart after our fight didn’t heal; it widened, a fissure through which all the warmth leaked out, leaving a hollow, aching cold.
Weeks bled together under the slate-grey First Winter sky. The scar on my hand from the beast faded to a pink, shiny patch, but the one inside felt raw and open. I watched him from the corner of my eye during these silent lessons, searching for a flicker of the person who’d told me about consequences, who’d gotten angry because he cared about the outcome. I found nothing. Just a squad leader fulfilling a duty.
The day it ended started like any other. A brittle frost coated the monoliths, and our breath hung in the air between us like barriers. We’d run through the drills, my movements stiff, his observations curt. As I finished the final sequence, panting slightly, he didn’t immediately turn to leave. He stood looking at the frozen gravel at his feet, adjusting the fingers of his gloves with a deliberate slowness.
“Kashikoi.”
The sound of my name, not ‘you’ or ‘civilian asset’, startled me. I looked up.
His breath sent a plume of fog into the space between us. “Your first year is coming to an end.” His voice was flat, devoid of any inflection that could be mistaken for sentiment.
I just stared, a stupid, hopeful part of me waking up.
He met my eyes then, and his were the color of the winter sky above us—distant, impassive. “After you get back from winter break, we won’t need to meet anymore.”
The words didn’t compute at first. They were just sounds. Then they crystallized, sharp and cold, and drove straight into the center of that hollow space inside me. We won’t need to meet anymore. Not ‘I’m reassigned’ or ‘you’ve progressed’. A cessation. A full stop. The final, logical conclusion of his silence.
A hot pressure surged behind my eyes, threatening to spill over. I bit the inside of my cheek hard, the coppery taste of blood flooding my mouth. I nodded, too quickly, my gaze dropping to my boots. I couldn’t speak. If I opened my mouth, a sob would escape, and I would not give him that. I would not be the crybaby.
He lingered for a second, as if expecting something—a protest, perhaps. When I offered only my silent, trembling nod, he turned and walked away. The sound of his boots on the frost was the only goodbye.
I stood there long after he’d vanished, the cold seeping through my leggings, my hoodie. It felt like a punishment. It felt like confirmation. I had done this. My recklessness, my outburst, my failure to control the one thing that defined me here—it had worn down even his formidable patience. I was a liability he was finally, officially, discarding.
“You look like someone kicked your puppy and then stole your lunch,” Aria declared the next morning, barging into our shared room with Tsubaki in tow. She took in my puffy eyes and the fact I was still in bed at six. “Nope. Not happening. Solstice Eve is tomorrow. We’re baking. Up.”
They didn’t ask. They just pulled me from my bed, threw clothes at me, and herded me across the academy grounds to a part of the complex I rarely saw—the research wing. Mark’s lab was a chaotic wonderland of glowing screens, humming machinery, and strange biological specimens floating in jars. And today, it also smelled profoundly of butter and sugar.
“You people are savages,” Mark said fondly, watching as Aria commandeered a sterile metal table, scattering bowls, bags of flour, and cartons of eggs across it. “This is a place of science.”
“Today it’s a place of therapy,” Aria shot back, tying an apron around her waist. “Traditional therapy. With cookies.”
The tradition, Aria explained as she measured flour, was for Solstice Eve. You baked sweets for friends, for loved ones, for people you cared about. It was a gesture of light in the deepest part of the year. The normalcy of it, the simple, human ritual, was a balm. I found myself smiling as I creamed butter and sugar, my hands falling into the familiar rhythm. For a few hours, in the warm, flour-dusted light of Mark’s lab, with the ovens humming and my friends bickering over icing consistency, the hollow space inside me shrank.
Then, as I was carefully pressing fork patterns into some peanut butter cookies, Tsubaki asked, “So… how are things with Ren?”
The question hung in the fragrant air. I kept my eyes on the cookie. “He ended our sessions. After the break.”
Aria’s spoon clattered against her bowl. “He what?”
“He said we won’t need to meet anymore.” My voice was tight.
“That asshole,” Aria muttered, slamming her hands on the table. The bowls jumped. “After everything? Good riddance, then. If that’s how he’s going to be, you’re better off.”
Tsubaki was more cautious, wiping her hands on a towel. “Maybe… maybe it’s standard? First-year mentorship ending?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know. All I knew was the finality in his voice.
Mark, who had been observing from his desk chair, swiveled around. He’d been quiet, typing on a holoscreen, but now he leaned back, his expression thoughtful. “You probably hurt his pride,” he said simply.
I blinked. “His pride?”
“Think about it.” Mark stretched, his arm casually slinging over the back of Aria’s chair. She didn’t shrug it off. “Guy’s a squad leader. He’s used to giving orders and having them followed, instantly. He’s telling you to do this, do that, and you…” He made a waffling motion with his hand. “You don’t seem to listen.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks. “Yeah, because he’s ordering me to do things I can’t do. It’s not about listening. It’s about being able.”
Mark shrugged, a knowing look in his eyes. “I don’t know, man. Have you really tried?”
“Of course I have!” The protest burst out of me, louder than I intended. The memory of the beast, of the wall of fire, of every failed candle in Vanya’s class flashed before me. The desperation, the fear, the furious effort. Have you really tried? The question echoed, and suddenly, the certainty drained from my voice. “Of course I have…”
My words trailed off. Had I? I’d tried to summon the big, showy power. I’d tried to fight the feeling, to bend it to my will like a tool. But had I ever tried to simply… listen? To understand the current instead of fighting the river? The doubt was a quiet, insidious whisper.
Tsubaki, sensing the downward spiral, quickly changed the subject to the merits of sprinkles versus sanding sugar. The moment passed, but Mark’s question stayed with me, a small, persistent itch in my mind.
When the last trays had cooled, we began packing everything into tidy little bags. The lab was filled with the warm, sweet smell of success. I made a separate pile. For Aria, a bag of her favorite ginger-spiced molasses cookies. For Tsubaki, delicate shortbread dipped in dark chocolate. For Mark, a bizarre but successful experiment involving caramel and sea salt.
My hands moved on their own for the final bag. I selected a dense, rich brownie, and two perfect apple fritters I’d managed to fry without burning. I’d seen him eat these in the mess hall once, quickly, almost furtively, like he wasn’t supposed to enjoy them. I added a few of the peanut butter cookies and a single, perfect sugar cookie. I placed them in a small, plain baggie and tied it shut with a red ribbon, the ends curling.
It was stupid. It was a tradition for people you cared about. He had made it abundantly clear he did not care. But the gesture felt necessary, a silent apology for my failures, a final, futile offering across the chasm he’d opened.
Later, dressed for another silent, solo practice session in a deserted training yard, I shoved the bag of cookies for my other instructors into my satchel. The small baggie with the red ribbon I held in my hand, its weight insignificant, its meaning crushing. I walked out into the deepening twilight, the cold air sharp in my lungs, the little package feeling like a confession I was too scared to make out loud.
I walked out into the deepening twilight, the cold air sharp in my lungs, the little package feeling like a confession I was too scared to make out loud. The path to the Garden was a tunnel of grey stone and darker shadow, the frost on the paving stones crunching softly under my boots. Each step felt heavier than the last, the baggie with its stupid red ribbon a lead weight in my palm.
He was already there, a dark silhouette against the monoliths, his back to me as usual. His posture was rigid, a commander awaiting a report, not a mentor waiting for a student. The familiar ache bloomed in my chest, cold and dull. I stopped a few paces behind him, the silence between us as vast and frozen as the landscape.
“Sir,” I said, the word automatic and hollow.
He didn’t turn. “Begin.”
I set my satchel down carefully, the cookies for my other instructors inside thumping softly against a textbook. The small baggie I slipped into the pocket of my hoodie dress, the crinkle of the plastic sounding obscenely loud to my ears. My hands were cold, but I flexed my fingers and reached for the familiar, sourceless energy of the place.
Shadow chains. Not for combat, he’d said weeks ago, his voice clipped. For control. To teach your nervous system to sustain a draw without breaking. I exhaled, and from the coalescing gloom at my feet, two slender tendrils of darkness spiraled upward. They solidified into chains, shimmering with a faint purple-grey light, and wound around my forearms from wrist to elbow.
The weight was immediate, a psychic and physical pull that strained my focus. I planted my feet, gritted my teeth, and held. One minute. The chains trembled, whispering against my skin. Two minutes. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, my muscles beginning to quiver with the effort of containing the volatile energy. At three minutes, a sharp spike of pain lanced through my temples and the chains dissolved into wisps of smoke.
I dropped my hands, panting slightly, the ghost of the strain humming in my bones.
“Again,” Ren said, still facing away.
We repeated the exercise twice more. He offered no praise for reaching three minutes, no comment on the slight improvement in the chains’ stability. When I finished the third set, my energy reserves feeling scraped raw, he finally moved. He turned, his expression unreadable in the dim light.
“Your form is less wasteful,” he stated. “That’s all for today. Dismissed.”
This was it. The last time. The finality of it coiled tight in my throat, threatening to choke me. He began to turn away, the motion so familiar, so final.
“Wait, Ren.”
My voice was a raw thread of sound, but it stopped him dead. His shoulders stiffened. He turned back, slowly, to face me fully. The fading light caught the angles of his face, his eyes shadowed and impossible to read.
My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs. I fumbled in my hoodie pocket, my cold fingers clumsy. I found the baggie, the ribbon scratchy against my skin, and pulled it out, clutching it behind my back like a shameful secret.
“I, uh,” I started, the words tangling on my tongue. I stared at a point just past his shoulder, unable to meet his gaze. “I just wanted to say, I’m sorry for all of the trouble I caused you.”
I forced a breath, the air burning my lungs. “I really should learn to listen more. And even though you are ending the sessions, it makes me sad to think about how I won’t continue to meet you here in the Garden everyday. I suppose that’s my fault.”
The admission felt like pulling a thorn from deep in my palm. I finally looked at him, my vision already starting to swim. “But, I wanted to give you this. As a token of my appreciation. And if I had handled everything better, I wish we could try and be friends.”
I thrust the small bag out toward him, my arm trembling. I kept my face down, my hair a curtain, because the tears were welling up fast and hot, blurring the image of his gloved hand. He didn't move. He just stared at my outstretched hand holding the pathetic, lumpy baggie with its childish red ribbon.
The seconds stretched, brittle and agonizing. I was certain he would leave it there, would turn and walk away and let my offering hang in the frozen air. My arm began to ache.
Then, slowly, he reached out. His leather-clad fingers closed around the bag, his touch so careful it made my breath catch. He took it from my trembling grasp. He looked at it, then back at my downturned face. With deliberate slowness, he pulled open the twisted top of the baggie and peered inside.
He stared into the bag for a long, long moment. The world had narrowed to the sound of my own ragged breathing and the faint winter wind through the monoliths.
Then he did something I could never have predicted.
He reached out with his other hand and patted my head. It was a rough, awkward gesture, his palm coming down twice on my hair, so quick and clumsy it was utterly genuine.
A broken sound escaped me. The dam holding everything back shattered. A sob wrenched itself from my chest and I surged forward, forgetting all space and decorum, burying my wet face against the hard leather of his jacket. The impact was sudden, my full weight hitting him off-balance.
He let out a startled grunt. His footing slipped on the frost-slick gravel. We went down in a tangle of limbs, him landing flat on his back with an oof of expelled air, me sprawled on top of him, crying uncontrollably into his chest.
“I’m so sorry, Ren,” I wept, the words muffled against the cold leather. “I know I’m pathetic and you probably think I’m so annoying, but… I promise I will keep everything you have taught me. And I’ll practice everyday.”
I cried for everything—for the beast, for my failure, for his silence, for the hollow weeks, for the simple, stupid gift of cookies that felt like the last piece of my heart being offered. He lay rigid beneath me, utterly still. Then, one of his arms came up, tentatively, to rest on my back. It wasn’t an embrace, just a weight.
After what felt like an age, he shifted. His hand came up between us, his finger aiming unerringly. He flicked me, right on the tip of my nose.
“Idiot.”
The word wasn’t harsh. It was tired. It was fond. It was everything.
I pulled back just enough to look at him, my face a mess of tears and probably snot. A single, perfect snowflake drifted down from the heavy sky and landed on my cheek. He watched it melt, then reached up, his thumb brushing the wetness away with a roughness that was almost gentle.
“We are friends, you dumbo.” He said it quietly, like it was a secret the monoliths weren’t supposed to hear. “And I’ll see you after break.”
The world, which had been tilted on its axis for weeks, righted itself with a dizzying lurch. I hiccupped, a wet, ugly sound. He was still pinned beneath me on the frozen ground, snow beginning to dust his dark hair and the shoulders of his jacket. A faint, exasperated sigh left his lips, misting in the cold air, but his hand remained on my back, a solid, warm weight keeping me from floating away.
A faint, exasperated sigh left his lips, misting in the cold air, but his hand remained on my back, a solid, warm weight keeping me from floating away. I became acutely aware of the position we were in—me draped over him on the frozen ground, my tears soaking a dark patch into his jacket. The reality of it crashed into me, a hot wave of humiliation following the flood of relief.
“Uh,” I managed, my voice thick and shaky. I pushed myself up a little, bracing my hands on the cold gravel on either side of his shoulders. His face was inches from mine, his expression unreadable except for a faint, tired patience in his eyes.
“You gonna get off me, Kashikoi?” he asked, his voice low. “Or is this part of the new curriculum?”
“Right! Sorry!” I scrambled off him so quickly I almost slipped again, my boots skidding on the frost. I ended up kneeling beside him, my face burning. He sat up slowly, brushing gravel from his sleeves with a stiff, deliberate motion. He picked up the little bag of cookies, which had somehow survived our fall, and tucked it carefully into an inner pocket of his jacket.
We stood up together, the world feeling strangely silent and huge. He turned to face me, his movements still carrying that economical grace. For a long moment, he just looked at me, his gaze traveling over my undoubtedly blotchy, tear-stained face. He seemed to be searching for words, his usual sharpness softened into something more hesitant.
He settled for a single, firm pat on my shoulder. It was a gesture so clumsy and earnest it made my throat tighten all over again. “Try not to get eaten over the break,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Happy Solstice, Arisa.”
He turned and began walking away, his figure already blending with the gathering twilight between the monoliths.
“Ren!” The call left my lips before I could think.
He paused, half-turning, a dark silhouette against the deep blue-grey of the evening.
I swallowed, pushing every bit of sincerity I had into my voice. It felt important, suddenly, to say it right. “A happy Solstice to you, too. Truly. I hope… I hope you get some peace.”
He stood still for a heartbeat, two. The surprise was visible even from this distance, a slight stiffening of his shoulders, the tilt of his head. He didn’t say anything else. He just lifted a hand in a brief, almost invisible gesture of acknowledgment before the shadows between the stones swallowed him whole.
I stood there until the cold seeped through my leggings and bit my ankles. The space where he’d been felt charged and empty all at once. I wiped my face with the sleeve of my hoodie, drew in a shuddering breath that tasted of ice and pine and possibility, and started the long walk back to the dorm. The ghost of his hand on my shoulder felt warmer than any fire I could summon.