The Guardian Of The Multiverse: A Hero's Burden

Comet Over Navori

(Marvel, DC, images, manhuas, and every anime that will be mentioned and used in this story are not mine. They all belong to their respective owners. The main character "Karito/Adriel Josue Valdez" and the story are mine)

Lillia POV

The Placidium had learned to breathe. At least, that's what we told ourselves when the red ceilings sighed and the ribs of the old halls flexed like tidewater.

We sat in a pocket Karma held open—four tatami's worth of clean footing inside a pavilion that used to have wisteria and now had membranes that clicked when the wind touched them. Her beads were laid in the old pattern, except the beads were pebbles we'd boiled in salt and prayer. My lantern's bell rested against my wrist, quiet. Shen had posted himself at the mouth of the pocket where a corridor narrowed into a throat.

No one else was coming. No one else had been coming for a long time.

"Roll call," Shen said. He always said it like a ritual could still decide the day. "Lillia."

I raised my hand. "Here."

"Karma."

"We hold," Karma said, and the circle steadied by a finger's width. "Shen."

"Present," he answered, and then, because he sometimes remembered to be kind, "Food."

He unfolded a strip of dried lotus root from cloth that still smelled like smoke. We ate it as if it were festival sweet and not something that had forgotten how to be crisp months ago.

"You should talk," Karma said after the first chew, gentle as steam. "We haven't, since the last... since the river." She glanced to the corridor, asked the air for privacy, then—softly to me—"You first, if you want. May I borrow your fire, Lillia? Just the warmth of it. Not the petals."

I nodded. "You can have the warmth." I kept the petals tight in my hands. If you scatter petals, the red likes to count them and make maps.

Karma breathed, and the damp in the pocket retreated enough for our shoulders to unknot.

"Tell us about him again," she said, and her voice made the request a shared blanket instead of a theft. "The human. It helps to remember a rule that worked."

Shen's gaze dipped—the kind of bow he used for grief, not respect. "Minute limit," he said. "Sixty. Then we check walls."

"Okay." I tucked my knees up. The new skin of the pavilion flexed, then pretended it hadn't. "His name was Karito. He smelled like paper and a door you're allowed to use. Mother Tree was... wrong. A rift opened and a red hunter came through—armor like lacquer; a tail with a club. I tried to make it sleep, the way we do, but my magic came back with splinters in it. It laughed at me."

My lips felt dry. I named the feeling dry, not afraid. Afraid is a word the red likes to taste.

"He caught it by the mouth with one hand," I said, and my voice remembered to be soft. "He said, 'Are you okay?' like we were at market. Then he lifted its head like a lid and poured lightning in. The sky turned into a bruise and then back again. He asked if I was hurt. He... he made the rules behave."

Karma smiled with her eyes. "We remember. Thank you."

Shen: "Outcome. Dark: eliminated. Collateral: minimal. Follow-up: contact?"

"He stayed a night," I said. The petals crowded my throat; I kept them behind my teeth. "I made tea. I turned human-shaped to be polite. I tripped. He caught the cup without looking. He told me to be careful. I tried to peek into his... into his petals while he slept—" I shot Karma a guilty look "—and he told me no. Then he apologized for saying no too sharply. He promised to come back." I hooked my smallest finger around the lantern handle in the old gesture. "He promised."