Kira Mizushima had not slept in two days, and the man hunting her knew it. She crouched under a sakura tree, counting her own breaths. Each one burned. The shadow court had trained her to kill, then tried to bury her when she asked too many questions. Now she meant to walk back into their halls and burn every secret they kept. But first she had to lose the tracker behind her. She knew him. He had worn the same gray cloak the day she fled. The court sent only one man when it wanted someone erased quietly. He never ran. He walked, steady, and let exhaustion do his killing for him. If Kira stopped to rest, he would find her against a wall and finish it. Petals drifted down as she studied the ground. Mud. Her boots left prints. That was the problem. She could not outrun him, so she would make him chase the wrong trail. A little creek cut through the trees. Beside it sat a mushroom-shaped car, its red cap roof slick with rain. Someone had left it parked and empty. Kira pressed her palm to the hood. Cold. It had sat for hours. Perfect. She worked fast. She smeared mud across the driver's seat and dragged her heel in a long streak toward the creek, loud and clumsy, the mark of someone fleeing in panic. Then she climbed into the water itself. The cold bit her legs. She waded upstream, careful, leaving nothing. From a low branch she watched. The tracker came. He read the mud, the car, the dragging heel. He crouched by the creek and traced the false path downstream, away from her. For one breath he paused and looked back at the tree. Kira held still. Then he moved on, following the lie. She let him go a hundred paces before she dropped down. Her hands shook. She had bought herself hours, maybe a full night. But the creek had soaked her to the bone, and her legs no longer answered cleanly. Inside the mushroom car she found a small carved chest tucked under the seat, its flowered panels locked tight. She broke the clasp. Inside lay dry cloth and a single purple axolotl carved from stone, cool in her palm. A child's toy. The car belonged to a family. She had stolen their safety to save herself. Kira set the stone axolotl on the seat where they would find it. Then she took the dry cloth and bound her frozen legs. She could move now. She could reach the court. But the tracker would reach the dead end before dawn. He would understand the trick. And a man like that did not forget a face. The next time he found her trail, he would not walk. He would be waiting at the one place he knew she had to go — the court itself.

The creek led Kira upstream through the dark. By dawn her legs worked again, but a new fear gnawed at her. She knew the court's walls. She did not know how to get inside unseen. If she walked up to the gate, guards would take her in the first breath. She needed a door no one watched. And only one person had ever shown her those doors. She left the water where a trail climbed toward a house. A split-level home sat on the rise, its yellow door bright against gray siding. She knew this place. Her old trainer lived here now, cast out like her, but years before her. She crept to the back window and watched. Inside, an old woman knelt over an open chest. Carved flowers ran across its wood. The woman lifted a folded cloth, then froze. She had heard something. Without turning, she spoke. "You breathe too loud, Kira. You always did." Kira stepped through the back door. The woman who had trained her sat straight despite her gray hair. She did not reach for a weapon. That scared Kira more than if she had. "I need the hidden entrances to the court," Kira said. "The ones the guards don't walk." The old woman laughed, dry and short. "So you can die in them." She returned to the chest. Inside, among the cloth, sat a small purple figure. A stone axolotl, frilled and smiling. She lifted it and turned it in her fingers. "They gave me this the day I joined. A child's charm. I kept it to remember I was once soft." "Give me the entrances," Kira said. "Or I go in blind and they catch me at the gate." The woman studied her. "You won't stop. I can see that." She set the axolotl down. Then she drew a finger through the dust on the floor. She sketched walls, a drain, a low tunnel beneath the east kitchen. "This grate. It floods in spring. No one guards wet stone. It drops into the lower stores. From there you can reach the records." Kira memorized every line. Her heart beat hard. "But know this," the woman said. She wiped the drawing away with her palm. "I am not the only one who kept old lessons. The man they sent after you trained in those same tunnels. He knows the grate too. If he reaches the court before you, he will be waiting inside, not out." Kira's stomach dropped. The false trail had bought her hours, not safety. The tracker would not stand at the gate now. He would be below, in the dark, in the one path she meant to take. "Then I go fast," Kira said. The old woman nodded once. "Go. And do not come back here." Kira slipped out the yellow door and ran upstream. She had her way in. She also had a killer waiting at the other end of it.