Gilded Ashes-Chapter 298: Expected Arrival

Saffi’s hand clamped onto the back of Raizen’s head and shoved him down.

His face hit the wet root. His umbrella clattered sideways. He caught himself on one elbow, mud smearing across his clean sleeve, and his head twisted to look at Saffi.

"What are you -"

"Shut up."

She was pressed flat beside him, one hand still on his head, the other braced against the ground. Her eyes were locked on the sky - or what they could see of it through the thick branches. Rain streamed down her face. She didn’t blink.

"That sound" she said, barely above a whisper. "It was close. Right above us."

Raizen stopped struggling. The mechanical roar was already fading - pulling away - but the tension in Saffi’s body hadn’t loosened at all.

"I recognize the model" she said.

Her voice had changed. The anger from earlier was gone. Replaced by something precise. "Ah... She’s back in her focused mode" Raizen thought.

"It’s a thruster series that came out of The Heart less than a year ago. Newest generation. Quietest engine currently in production." She swallowed. "That’s why we barely heard it. Anything else at that altitude, at that speed - we’d have heard it a good distance away."

Raizen stared at her. Then the pieces connected.

Quiet. New. Expensive. Military-grade stealth from Neoshima’s central tech lab.

Flying over Ukai in the middle of the night.

"Oh" he said.

Then he grabbed her shoulder.

"What’s it used for?"

"Raizen -"

"What weight can it support? Is it recon?"

"Well..."

"Is it a transport? How big is the aircraft - is it a small -"

"Uhh -"

"- or something bigger? Can it carry cargo? How many of those engines fit on a single -"

Saffi turned away from him. Both hands came up to her face. She pressed her palms against her eyes and held them there, shoulders tight, breathing hard through her nose.

Silence.

Raizen’s hand hovered in the air where her shoulder had been. He watched her for a moment - the rigid posture, the way her fingers pressed into her own skin. She was still pissed at him about the swapped pills. Still running on the wrong end of a forced wake-up. And now he was shouting questions at her in the mud.

He hesitated. Then, carefully - very carefully - he extended one finger and poked her arm.

Nothing.

He poked again. Lighter this time. Almost apologetic.

Saffi exhaled slowly. Her hands came down. She didn’t look at him, but the rigid line of her shoulders loosened by a fraction.

"The engine model" she said, voice controlled now, "was designed for four things. Stealth, silence, heavy-duty lift and stability." She wiped rain from her jaw. "It can’t do rapid maneuvers. No sharp turns, no evasive flying. That’s not what it’s built for. It’s built to hover in place for long periods and carry serious weight without making a sound."

"What kind of weight?" Raizen asked, slower now.

Saffi paused. Calculated.

"A few tons, I think."

The words settled between them like something heavy.

"But I don’t know which aircraft it’s attached to" she added. "The engine is Neoshiman. Doesn’t mean the ship is. Foreign engineers could mount it on their own frames." She shook her head. "I can’t tell from sound alone, but it sounded like something big."

Raizen turned back toward the hall, peeking from behind the roots.

The rain hadn’t let up. The guards were still circling - same pace, same route, same lights. But now, past the far edge of the hall’s roofline, something moved. A dark shape, barely visible against the black sky. No lights. No markings. Just a silhouette sliding through the rain, descending slowly toward the hall like it had always been meant to land there.

The guards looked up.

All pairs. At the same time. Heads tilting back, tracking the shape as it passed overhead.

Then they looked back down, and kept walking. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Like that was always supposed to happen.

Raizen felt something cold settle in his chest that had nothing to do with the rain.

The aircraft’s shadow drifted lower, disappearing behind the hall’s roofline. The sound of its engines - already quiet - cut to nothing.

Raizen exhaled. His fingers pressed into the wet bark of the root. Beside him, Saffi’s hand had gone white around the scanner, knuckles tight, but she wasn’t looking at it. She was staring at the hall.

He was about to whisper something - he didn’t know what, maybe a plan, maybe just the obvious question neither of them had said out loud yet - when one of the guards stopped.

Not the slow, winding-down stop of someone reaching the end of their circuit.

A sudden stop. Mid-stride.

The guard turned. Faced right in their direction.

Raizen’s breath caught. He pressed himself flat against the root, almost pulling Saffi down with him, but he refrained in the last second. He could hear the guard’s footsteps now - deliberate, unhurried, but getting closer. "Don’t move." He thought.

The flashlight’s beam swept across the ground ahead of the guard slowly. It touched the base of the root. Climbed it. Golden light spilled over the edge, close enough that Raizen could see the grain of bark lit up in sharp detail.

The footsteps stopped.

Right there. On the other side.

Raizen could hear the guard breathing. A slow, steady rhythm. The faint creak of light armor plates shifting as the man adjusted his weight from one foot to the other. The light then swayed - rocking back and forth across the top of the root, passing over the exact spot where Raizen’s fingers had been a second ago.

A sound from behind the hall. Distant, metallic. Heavy.

The guard turned toward it.

He lingered for a moment - just a moment - then resumed his circuit.

Raizen didn’t move for five full seconds.

Then he heard it again. The sound from behind the hall. Clearer now that he was listening for it.

Metal against stone. A low grinding, deliberate and measured. The scrape of something heavy being lowered into place.

Loading. Or unloading.

A few tons of lift capacity. A stealth engine designed for silence and stability. An aircraft that the guards were expecting near Echelon’s hall.