Every world begins with imagination.

“Beyond the ridge there are no brothers. Those whose names we do not speak live there. Whoever carries their things into our cave brings their hunger with them. You give the dust to the ancestors. Or you sleep beyond the fire.”

He turned away and trudged into the dim cave, where the embers glowed. Aia waited until his shadow had disappeared into the rock wall. Then she drew the edge of her thumb across the stone. She divided the powder. Half went into the shallow horn bowl for the rites. The other half slipped into a pouch of tanned deer stomach, which she tied with a firm strip of leather. She pushed the pouch deep beneath her fur clothing, where the leather rubbed against her ribs.

“They don’t drink bori-cha in Rome,” Min-seo said quietly. Her voice held a faint roughness. “Sometimes I tried to find it at the Korean market near Piazza Vittorio. But the water tastes different there.”

“Hard water,” Eun-ji replied. She cut the words off cleanly, as if to stifle any echo. “You wrote that in your second postcard.”

Min-seo looked up. Her eyes moved across Eun-ji’s face, searching for something familiar and finding instead that upright, controlled composure. She drew breath, began to answer, then fell silent again.

A sudden gust crossed the tiled roofs of Huam-dong, rustling the dried ferns at the terrace railing and sending two paper napkins off the table. Both reached for them without thinking. Their hands met at the edge of the wood; Min-seo’s fingertips brushed Eun-ji’s wrist. Neither pulled away at once.

“The lintel is still holding,” Dolma replied softly. She stepped beneath the gatehouse’s low entrance. The scent of dry birch wood lingered faintly in the cold, mixed with ancient candle wax and pigeon droppings. Her fingers moved down the post, past splinters and hardened resin, until they met a rough hollow. Two slanting notches joined by a deep, straight cut from a chisel. Her grandfather’s carpenter’s mark.

Dolma held her breath. The world narrowed to that small, tangible sign. He had worked here, with plane and axe, long before she sat over papers in the libraries of Pokhara and forgot how much a fresh beam weighed.

“Why are we afraid of their wheels when we can learn from their tools?” Marikuta asked, his gaze fixed on the iron in his hand.

Nantan reached slowly into his belt, drew out an iron awl and laid it on the flat stone in front of Marikuta. The metal was smooth, the point finely sharpened, without a flaw.

“Because everything of theirs asks a price they only tell you once you have already kept it,” Nantan said softly. He turned away without waiting for an answer and walked back towards the large tent with even steps.

Marikuta picked up the awl. The iron felt cool and heavy, unfamiliar and full of promise. He slipped it deep into his bag, brushed the fine dust from the straps and fastened the buckles with a short tug.