Shiori climbed the last ridge alone, her pack light and her hands steady. She had come to wake the guardian her ancestors had buried inside the mountain. The villages below were emptying in silence, and silence was the only warning she needed. She passed the weathered pillar her ancestors had set as a warning. Moss filled its carved symbols. Shiori did not slow. The math was simple: stay away, and more villages would empty. The shrine waited in the hollow above. Its wooden roof had caved inward. Cracked stone walls framed a tall arch of glowing blue runes. The seal was already broken, and the break came from inside. Shiori stepped through the splintered doorway. A crystal stone pulsed on the floor, soft moss clinging to its sides. Above it crouched a white tiger with iridescent stripes and folded, feathered wings. Its yellow eyes opened and fixed on her. The guardian was awake. Someone, or something, had freed it before her. Shiori lowered her hand toward the crystal and met the tiger's stare. Her plan to aim a sleeping weapon was gone. Now she had to bargain with one already loose.

Shiori held still beside the cracked crystal. The tiger did not lunge. It rose, shook out its bright wings, and stepped past her into the open air. Something swung from its jaws on a thin cord. She followed it out of the broken shrine. The tiger dropped the object at the lip of the hollow and waited. Shiori knelt. It was a small locket, smeared with dried blood, the painted face of a child inside. Pressed flowers crumbled when she touched the glass. "That isn't what's emptying the villages," she said. The tiger's yellow eyes held hers. It picked the locket up again and turned away from the trail that led down toward the silent valleys. It walked instead toward a fallen stone arch on the far ridge, vines swallowing its carved symbols. Beyond the arch, driven into the dirt, stood a rough wooden post wrapped in white fur and dangling bones. A claim marker. The tiger had a hunt of its own, and the path of that hunt split clean away from hers. Shiori stood at the arch and watched the bright stripes vanish between the trees. She had come to aim a weapon. The weapon had already chosen its target, and the target was not hers. She turned back toward the broken shrine. The villages were still emptying below. Whatever was taking them, she would have to find it without the guardian. She shouldered her pack and started down alone.