The Yearly Maho Assessment

  The warmth of that night didn’t vanish all at once. It unraveled slowly, thread by thread, as the days crawled into cold mornings and colder routines.

  Kenny found them again a few days later, this time dragging along a tiny girl with frizzed braids and bruised knees.

  “Yo!” he called, waving exaggeratedly. “How’s everyone doin’?”

  Roi followed behind him, arms crossed, head low. The little girl with Kenny clung to his sleeve, peeking from behind it with wide gray eyes.

  “This is Perdita,” Kenny announced proudly. “My baby sister. Tougher than she looks. Smarter, too. She said she can smell bad people.”

  Perdita stared straight at Dozai for a full five seconds before declaring, “You smell scary. Too many eyes.”

  Rei choked on her drink. Nobu’s eyes widened.

  Dozai blinked, touching his face for extra eyes. “Too many eyes?”

  Perdita then pointed at Rizaru. “She smells like a storm. But a storm not trying to be a storm?”

  Rizaru pointed at herself confused, though her face remained impassive.

  Kenny beamed. “Told ya she’s special.”

  Roi muttered under her breath, “She said that you smelled like pee this morning.”

  “She’s technically not wrong!” Kenny laughed.

  Rei laughed with him. Nobu relaxed just enough to lean back against the wall. Rizaru mouth twitched in the faintest smile.

  The corner almost feeling like theirs again. For a few breaths, the tunnel noise faded.

  But as they were talking, the guards dragged a boy, barely older than Dozai, into the square.

  Said he’d stolen food. A roll. Maybe half a dumpling.

  The truth didn’t matter.

  Dozai recognized the boy’s face clearer now—blotched with tears and dirt, blonde hair that covered one eye. It was the same boy from that night. The one whose scream had torn through their laughter the other day.

  The name finally came to him.

  Elian.

  They tied his wrists to the pole and told everyone they didn’t have to watch. But they made sure everyone heard.

  The lash cracked.

  Once.

  Twice.

  A third time.

  Dozai watched with calm eyes, not because he wanted to, but because it reminded him why he always tried to stay invisible in the first place.

  He noticed how the others reacted, Rei flinched on the first. Covered her ears by the second.

  Nobu stared at the dirt and whispered, “It’s just thunder. It’s just thunder.”

  Rizaru was beside Dozai, watching just like him. Her expression unreadable. But her subtle twitches when the lashes came out were more than enough to understand.

  Elian stopped screaming eventually. His body crumpled at the base of the wall, breathing shallow. The guards didn’t move him. They left him there, twisted and bloody like a message smeared in flesh.

  The silence around the scene festered. No one dared step near. Feet scuffed at the gravel, as if the sound could bury Elian’s sobs.

  Finally, Master Hellick Aleveire appeared.

  Not “sir.” Not “overseer.” Not even “commander.” Just “Master.”

  The title hung in the air like something carved into metal. She walked without hurry, but every step felt heavy. The guards stiffened before she even turned the corner. Her coat was bone-white, flawless, cut sharp to the wrist and gleaming at the seams. Not a single speck of soot touched her.

  The two guards followed precisely two steps behind her, heads lowered. Hellick stopped at the boy’s side.

  “Hunter or worker?” Her voice was calm. Too calm.

  A young guard snapped to attention. “W-Worker, ma'am—! I mean Master!”

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  Hellick didn’t move or frown, but there was a subtle twitch in her brow. She turned her head slowly, eyes landing on the guard next to him.

  “Is this guard new?”

  The other man swallowed. “Y-Yes, Master. H-He joined last week.”

  Hellick rubbed the corner of her lip. A scar there.

  Thin. Pale.

  And just like that, the pressure changed.

  It came like a ripple in the world itself.

  Subtle at first. Then overwhelming.

  The air buckled.

  Gravity thickened.

  The dust on the ground began to settle unnaturally fast, like it had been commanded to rest.

  It wasn’t aimed at anyone. But it didn’t need to be.

  Kids collapsed to their knees. Some clutched their chests. Even the guards winced.

  Dozai stayed on his feet, but only barely. His chest heaved, heart hammering, yet the noise of the area dulled, like someone had pulled a curtain over the world.

  It wasn’t panic. It was something else.

  Wrong, but familiar.

  It was only for a moment, but it was enough for him to gather his thoughts.

  Some kind of… Maho? A field? No… pressure. There was a name for it I overheard from when they were training the hunters once.

  He paused and then the word came to mind.

  Abyssal Pressure...

  The air wasn’t just heavy.

  It was alive.

  At first, he felt it broad, but then, when he let himself sink into it, the shape of it sharpened. Something knotted deeper. Beneath its iron command throbbed a hollow, sour loneliness, and deeper still... a flicker, like a child staring at a locked door.

  Hope? Longing?

  He shuddered at the feeling and the more he sank into the pressure, for a terrifying second, he felt a echo of its iron command settle in his own chest.

  Realizing his mistake, Dozai shivered deliberately, knees buckling half an inch more.

  He let his body sag like theirs, faking the same kind of helplessness the others showed.

  Hellick turned again. Towards the children this time.

  He could see her gaze swept the line like a painter choosing where to carve and for a brief second, only a second, her eyes stopped.

  Towards two kids who had not bowed.

  Rizaru and Kenny.

  Kenny was standing in front of Perdita and Roi. Arms slightly out. Not in defiance, but in instinct, shielding them.

  Dozai could see the way his arms trembled even when standing firm.

  Rizaru’s arms were at her side. Her fists weren’t clenched.

  But her eyes were locked on the broken boy, not at Hellick.

  You could see Hellick took note of it. Something in the way her gaze slowed, which said everything. Then she turned and walked off.

  “So useless… everyone is so…” she muttered under her breath, as if the whole world bored her.

  The air uncoiled the moment she vanished down the corridor. A breath released all at once.

  People began to move again.

  Speak again. Think again.

  And Dozai's world rushed back into motion again.

  He’d felt this before, once or twice.

  The world felt like it slowed for him when he felt like he was in danger.

  His instincts, perhaps.

  Most likely his Maho.

  The other was... something else.

  To read pressures that deeply and feel it as part of his own.

  He didn't know if that was normal.

  Or something unique to him.

  Rizaru still hadn’t moved.

  Only when she turned did her expression sharpened.

  Her eyes held his, cold, clear, unflinching. The kind of look that made stone feel soft.

  Dozai had imagined carrying that fire a hundred times. Her fire. The resolve in her gaze, turned toward him like a challenge, like a promise.

  But now that it was real, now that it stared back at him, alive and waiting...

  He couldn't hold it.

  His gaze dropped first.

  The next morning, before the first bell, before the chains of daily routine had even begun to rattle, Dozai stirred.

  He always woke early, just a few minutes before the guards came shouting.

  Like his body no longer trusted the safety of sleep.

  Faint voices drifted in through the cracks in the barrack wall. Two guards again. Same pair as yesterday.

  “…out there,” one muttered. “Leader was with him this time.”

  The other spat into the dirt. “Kingdom’s getting more rowdy these days.”

  Dozai kept his breathing even, pretending to sleep.

  Were they talking about Crow again? His Leader?

  He was always a whisper after ruins. A shadow that left wounds instead of trails.

  “Well shit,” the other grunted. “Long as it stays out there and I still get paid, they can have at it.”

  Dozai glanced to his side. Beside him, Rizaru was already awake, staring at the ceiling, eyes unfocused.

  Bootsteps stomped on cold floors. A third voice cut in, a woman’s, lazy and yawning.

  “Morning, Irena. Paul. Time to rattle the brats again?”

  “You’re always late, Remy.” Paul answered.

  “Whatever. It’s Master Hellick’s favourite time of the year,” she said, stretching. “Lucious’ll probably jump a rank. Kid’s been keeping up with Delnora and Kota lately.”

  Paul snorted. “Scary kids. Bet we get a worker with Maho this year.”

  Irena scoffed. “Please. If any of these rats had something in ‘em, we’d have heard the screaming already.”

  A pause. Then, quieter.

  “…Though, there’s that one.”

  The air cooled a little. Everyone knew who she meant.

  Irena scratched her neck. “Still say it’s just trauma. But she does give me the chills.”

  “Silver says she’s got a Maho,” Paul yawned. “Something rotten even.”

  “Deal,” Irena shot back. “I’ll be laughing when I’m right.”

  “I’ll throw in three silvers,” Remy chuckled, spinning a key on her finger. “And a gold coin if she’s higher than mid-tier.”

  The others whistled low.

  “Three silvers?” Irena teased. “You get a raise or finally rob someone?”

  Their voices drifted off as they headed toward the tower barracks. Dozai strained to catch more, but silence filled the room instead.

  Silence. Then...

  “WAKE UP, BRATS! TODAY IS ASSESMENT DAY!” The bells echoed throughout the camp.

  And just like that, the bodies around him moved in sync. Trained motion. No hesitation

  Maho.

  The word hung in the stifling air. The only thing that separated a Worker from a Hunter. The only way out of this pit, if the stories Roi and Kenny whispered were true.

  A power that could awaken in agony, a divine gift some called it, though all he’d ever seen it bring was more pain.

  No one really knows the truth.

  Or people who do just haven’t told the world yet.

  But everyone knows this,

  Maho changes everything.