Chapter 149: Neighbors - Xiao Qi
The refugees call them "the golden visitors."
I call them potential threats.
But after the bow, after the retreat, after the song—I have to reconsider.
Xiao Ba sits beside me on the castle wall, legs dangling over the edge. Below, the refugees rebuild what the attack damaged. Children play among the scaffolding, laughing as if golden energy-beings hadn't nearly destroyed their home yesterday.
"They're not coming back," Xiao Ba says. "The golden ones. They sent their message. They got their answer."
"How do you know?"
She touches her chest. The fragment, calmed by the twins, has become something like a receiver. A radio tuned to frequencies no one else can hear.
"They're talking to each other. Across distances we can't measure. About us. About the twins." She closes her eyes, listening. "Some want to study us. Some want to protect us. Some... want to join us."
"Join us?"
"There are others like us. Worlds that have found balance. Families that bridge opposites. We've started something. A... trend. A movement."
I look out at the horizon. The door in the sky turns slowly, dark silver, humming its endless song. Beyond it, I imagine—other doors. Other worlds. Other families singing their own messy lullabies.
"We're not alone," Xiao Ba whispers.
"We never were," I reply.
But for the first time, I believe it.
Kael walks up along the wall, carrying two cups of tea. Human tea, from Side B's supplies. He hands one to me, one to Xiao Ba.
"The twins want to see their aunt," he says.
Xiao Ba's face lights up. She jumps down from the wall, running toward the nursery with a child's energy despite her adult mind.
I stay, sipping tea, watching the door.
"You're thinking about the future," Kael says.
"I'm thinking about what kind of world they'll inherit. Adrian and Ophelia."
"A world we're making. Messy. But real."
"A world with golden visitors and calmed Forge fragments and a tree that grows between dimensions."
Kael smiles. "Sounds like home."
I laugh despite myself.
It does.
It really does.