The mission had long since softened into something indistinct, its urgency dissolving beneath the glow of Nod-Krai’s festival lights. Lanterns drifted in slow arcs overhead, their reflections trembling across frost-kissed stone, while laughter and music folded into one another like overlapping melodies. Columbina did not walk beside Ren so much as slightly behind them, her steps quiet, unhurried, as though she were following a current only she could feel.

Her veil remained undisturbed, resting gently over her eyes. It did not hinder her.

She did not see the world the way others did.

Instead, she perceived the quiet saturation of kuuvahki that filled Nod-Krai, that ancient, primordial energy woven into every surface, every breath of air, every living thing. It pulsed softly around the festival like a second heartbeat. Where people moved, it shifted. Where they laughed, it shimmered. Their shapes were not outlines, but impressions, like warmth through fabric, like ripples in still water.

And so she watched.

A pair of friends brushed past Ren and herself as they ran to a booth up ahead, their shoulders knocking together in exaggerated annoyance. One shoved the other lightly, muttering something sharp-edged and playful.

“Watch where you’re going, idiot!”

“Then stop walking like you own the place!”

Neither meant it. Their bright smiles and laughter gave that away clearly.

Further ahead, a small group clustered around a stall, one of them adjusting a crooked set of antlers perched atop another’s head. Laughter followed, uneven and loud, as someone else reached up to fix it only to make it worse. The decorations were strange. Unnecessary. Yet… common. Many wore them. Ears, horns, ribbons, all sitting carelessly atop their heads as if such adornments held meaning.

Columbina slowed.

Then, gently, she reached forward and nudged Ren’s arm just enough to catch them off guard.

She placed a plush cat-ear headband carefully onto Ren’s head.

“There,” she murmured.

Her head tilted, as though examining them through something far more abstract than sight.

“You match the others now.”

A faint smile formed, small and fleeting, like a thought that had almost chosen to stay.

Her attention drifted again, pulled toward a nearby game stall where voices rose in playful conflict. Someone missed their throw. Another laughed too loudly.

“That was terrible!”

“Say that again and I’ll hit you, dude.”

Columbina stilled, listening. Not just to the words, but to the cadence, the intent behind them. There was no hostility in the energy there. Only closeness, disguised in something sharper.

She turned back to Ren.