Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Redstone Town seemed to move around Wemmbu, already awake by the time he arrived among its streets.

Players crossed through intersections in steady streams, their nametags faintly floating above their heads as voices overlapped beneath the whirs of redstone mechanisms built into the streets. Doors opened as people approached them, and lamps brightened as afternoon shadows shifted across the roads. Somewhere farther down the street, a piston fired with a heavy thunk, followed by the sound of a bridge shifting into place above a riverbank.

The streets stretched in clean, straight lines between buildings of smooth stone and oak, their structures marked by geometric patterns. Redstone dust ran beneath the cobblestones, occasionally visible through narrow panels of glass set into the ground.

The first few days, Wemmbu had found himself looking up every few seconds, trying to figure out what had triggered what. But now, he had spent just enough time wandering these streets to stop being so curious whenever a door opened by itself.

That, more than anything, was probably how he knew he had been here for too long.

 

The players moved through the city with a purpose. They weren’t lingering at market stalls or chatting in clusters the way the Farville townsfolk did. They walked with direction, their conversations brief and functional, their expressions focused.

Soldiers in enchanted diamond armor stood at intervals along the main roads, their posts marked by low stone platforms. Interestingly, their weapons remained sheathed. Their shields rested against their backs, and none seemed particularly concerned with keeping a hand near a hilt. They watched the crowds with the relaxed attention of people who had spent so long expecting peace that the possibility of actual danger had become almost theoretical.

Wemmbu had spent enough days in Redstone Town to notice the differences.

The city was fascinating in its design, in the way every mechanism served a purpose and every street seemed to lead somewhere specific. The redstone circuits beneath the cobblestones were a constant presence, a hum of energy he could almost feel through the soles of his boots.

Redstone Town was nothing like Farville.

Farville had been smaller, barely a village compared to this sprawling city, yet it had somehow felt fuller. Its streets had been narrower and less orderly, crowded with market stalls, children running between houses, and townsfolk who seemed to have nowhere particularly urgent to be. There had been bartering, laughter, arguments over prices, the smell of bread and smoked meat drifting through the streets. Even when the streets became crowded, there had always been space for someone to stop in the middle of the road and talk.

Redstone Town had no shortage of noise.

The streets were full of footsteps, chatter, and the distant clank of machines. Players moved from one destination to another with intention, and their interactions, while polite, were often short. A nod, or perhaps a quick exchange before they continued on their way.

Wemmbu wasn’t sure which one was more exhausting.

He had never been around so many players before. The cottage had contained only two. Farville had contained perhaps a few hundred, but he had visited rarely and never for long. Redstone Town contained thousands, and their presence was a steady pressure at the edge of his awareness.

Wemmbu didn’t like crowds. He wasn’t used to the constant noise of footsteps and voices, or to the distant hum of redstone running underneath his boots. He wasn’t used to being looked at, even briefly, by complete strangers who passed him on the street.

Still, Wemmbu had grown accustomed to it in the way someone grows accustomed to anything given enough time.

 

Wemmbu remembered arriving at the gates with his hand hovering near his inventory, prepared to draw Verdict at the first sign of trouble. He remembered sleeping in between oak branches outside the city because he hadn’t yet found anywhere else to stay. Then he returned the following morning, and the morning after that, until the streets he had once studied from a map began to become familiar beneath his feet.

At some point, Wemmbu found a motel. At a later point, he began recognizing the faces of players who frequented the same streets. Now, a few of them recognized him, too.

A few people waved at him as he walked down the familiar road toward his motel. Wemmbu returned the gesture with a brief nod, careful not to slow down enough for it to become an invitation. He had become slightly known in some parts of the city as the demon hybrid in the long navy cloak, the quiet tourist who had arrived several days ago and seemed determined to explore every nook and cranny of Redstone Town.

More specifically, Wemmbu was the quiet tourist with the parrot.

It wasn’t a reputation he had sought, but it was one he’d accepted. The parrot on his shoulder made him particularly memorable. There was no avoiding it.

 

This bird was different from the last.

The former had flown away shortly after the kidnapping attempt, disappearing into the oak forest with a final burst of red and blue feathers. Wemmbu had watched it go without any attempt of stopping its departure.

He knew where it was going. Not exactly, but he knew enough, and that knowledge should have bothered him more than it did.

Yet it didn’t.

Several minutes later, another parrot had appeared in its place. Smaller than the first, with vibrant green feathers and patches of yellow around its head and wings. It had landed on Wemmbu’s shoulder with such confidence that he’d stared at it for several seconds before continuing to walk. Its pale, curved beak had rested near his cheek, its bright black eyes taking in the surroundings with familiar attentiveness.

Parrot had promised he would send more. Apparently, he’d meant it.

Like how he did with the earlier birds, Wemmbu had tried to shoo the parrot away. But it had become useless by this point. One would leave, and sooner or later another would appear. Eventually, he’d stopped reacting altogether. What was the point? There would only be another one.

The people of Redstone Town seemed to find the parrot significant, anyway.

Wemmbu had noticed the way their eyes lingered on the bird, the way their expressions shifted when they saw it perched comfortably on his shoulder. A player, the one who had helped him find a motel to stay in, had explained some of it when Wemmbu asked why everyone kept staring.

Ever since the God of Order ascended, parrots had become something more than ordinary animals. They were regarded as extensions of his presence, little signs of his favor. Parrots had become rare, untamable, and those who were seen with one were often assumed to have earned the God’s attention in some way. Even parrots that had existed before the ascension were believed to carry some kind of resonance with him.

Wemmbu had thanked the player and left it at that. He hadn’t mentioned that this wasn’t the first parrot to follow him, nor that he had grown strangely fond of the small creature perched on his shoulder.

Favored by the God of Order.

The phrase had stayed with him longer than he liked. He didn’t feel favored. If anything, he felt watched. There was a difference, wasn’t there?

The parrots themselves didn’t bother him. He liked having them around, even if he would never admit that aloud. But every time Wemmbu looked at it, he was reminded of its divine owner, of the things Parrot had told him and the accusations he still didn’t know what to make of. It was difficult to think of the bird as a blessing when its presence kept bringing Wemmbu back to questions he wasn’t ready to answer.

Every few streets, another temple appeared between the shops and residential buildings, marked by the same feather-and-crown sigil. Their doors remained open throughout the day, and worshippers passed in and out with quiet regularity. Redstone Town was as religious as Farville, perhaps more so. The God of Order was everywhere here, his presence woven into the city’s daily life through its temples and its traditions.

Wemmbu had started noticing the temples more often than he wanted to. It was difficult to forget a god when the city seemed determined to place his symbol everywhere.

So he tried his best not to think about it. He had enough to worry about.

 

Wemmbu had been searching for days.

At first, it had been simple. He followed the map Eggchan had given him, checked the streets it marked, then widened his search when nothing happened. The map had been useful for reaching the city. Beyond that, it offered him very little. It highlighted the important parts of his route, but not the details of the city itself, and it certainly didn’t tell him where the recipient would be waiting.

So Wemmbu had started making his own routes.

He knew which districts he had already searched. Which alleys he had walked twice. Which markets he had crossed enough times that vendors had begun looking at him strangely. He had explored the residential streets, the industrial quarter, the temples, the public squares, even the grand hall where the city’s governing council met. He had searched faces in crowds and lingered near places where he thought someone might be waiting for him.

Yet the recipient of the package was nowhere to be found.

Nothing. No one approached him. No one recognized him. No instinct surfaced to tell Wemmbu that he had finally found the person he was supposed to meet.

Eggchan hadn’t seemed concerned back in the cottage, when he mentioned how Wemmbu was supposed to identify the recipient. The answer had been simple, delivered in that calm, certain voice Wemmbu had trusted his entire life. “You'll know him when you see him. Don't worry about that part.”

At the time, Wemmbu had accepted it easily.

Of course he had. Eggchan always knew what he was doing, guiding the Ender Dragon through every uncertainty. If Eggchan said Wemmbu would know, then Wemmbu would know. That was how trust worked. That was how it had always worked between the two of them.

But now, standing in the middle of Redstone Town with days of failure behind him, Wemmbu didn’t know.

The certainty Eggchan had promised never arrived. No face in the crowd had sparked recognition, no stranger had stepped forward to claim the package, and no gut feeling had whispered: this is the one. There was only the same blank stream of players who passed him on the streets without a second glance, and the small wooden box still sitting untouched in his inventory.

 

At first, Wemmbu had assumed the problem was him.

The instructions had been mostly clear. Eggchan had given him everything he needed. If the moment of recognition wasn’t coming, it was most probably because Wemmbu was failing to see it. He was obviously missing something here, overlooking some crucial detail, perhaps walking past the recipient without realizing. The thought had gnawed at him during those first few days, a persistent accusation that grew louder each time he returned to the motel without progress.

Wemmbu then began to second-guess every face he passed. The baker who had sold him bread on the second morning. The soldier stationed at the eastern gate who had nodded as Wemmbu walked through. The elderly player who had paused to admire the parrot on his shoulder.

Any of them could have been the recipient. Any of them could have been waiting for Wemmbu to recognize them and hand over the package. And Wemmbu had failed to see it.

The possibility sat badly in his stomach, cold and heavy. Eggchan trusted him with this mission. Wemmbu had crossed most of the Overworld in a fever of urgency, pushing himself past exhaustion because he knew how important it was to finish quickly and return home.

He had a mission to complete, an invisible swordsman to track down, and a method of escape to understand before that player could hurt his best friend and the life they built together. Wemmbu had rushed to get here. He had sacrificed sleep, food, and the simple pleasure of admiring the world he was seeing for the first time. But after all of that, after all that urgency, he was standing in the middle of a city with no idea what to do next.

The self-blame had become so familiar that he barely noticed it anymore.

Each failed search felt like another confirmation of his own inadequacy. Each night he returned to the motel without having found the recipient, he replayed Eggchan's instructions in his head and wondered what he had missed. He had walked the streets from dawn until dusk. He had waited for the moment when the knowledge would click into place, when he would see someone and just know.

But it never came.

And the longer it failed to arrive, the more certain he became that the failure was his alone. Eggchan had given him plain instructions. It’s just that Wemmbu was the one who couldn’t follow them.

Eggchan had trusted him. Wemmbu was the one proving that his trust was misplaced.

Wemmbu didn’t know anything. He was wandering through a strange city with a package he couldn’t open and a mission he couldn’t complete, and the only thing he was certain of was that he was letting his best friend down.

 

Lately, though, there had been another thought.

It wasn’t one he liked. It hadn’t come from him, either.

The man walking beside him was the source.

Wemmbu didn’t need to look to know where he was. The faint shimmer of invisibility particles drifted beside him, catching the afternoon light whenever the angle was right. His netherite armor moved with each step, its deep orange resin trim flashing briefly. The heavy footsteps had become familiar, too, and so had the way the invisible figure seemed to take up far more space than an unseen person had any right to.

The invisible player had somehow made himself part of Wemmbu’s routine, and that was the problem. He was always there.

Wemmbu kept his spine straight and his gaze forward, his high ponytail shifting behind him. His cloak covered most of his armor and fell around his feet with each step. The parrot on his shoulder shifted its weight, its claws adjusting their grip on the navy wool.

Wemmbu didn’t acknowledge the man beside him. He had learned over the past several days that silence was the best defense, although it wasn’t particularly effective. Leo would talk regardless of whether Wemmbu responded, thus it was easier to let him.

 

The man had been following him ever since his kidnapping stunt.

Wemmbu still remembered the indignity of their first meeting. One moment, he had been preparing to walk through the city gates. The next, the invisible player had thrown him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and started carrying him away. Wemmbu hadn’t even bothered trying to negotiate. He had thrown an ender pearl, and the world around him had snapped sideways.

Wemmbu landed half a mile away with his heart pounding and his tail lashing behind him, already deciding that whoever the hell that man was, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. The indignity of being carried like that still burned in his chest, and he had thrown that second pearl with more force than necessary, letting the purple particles swallow him and deposit him far from the oak forest.

Several hours later, the man found him again.

Wemmbu had been walking through the eastern gates of Redstone Town, still scanning the crowds despite his rattled nerves, when a familiar shimmer of particles appeared beside him.

The modulated voice had greeted him as though nothing had happened. There was a good restaurant nearby, apparently.

Wemmbu had tried to lose him after that. He ducked into alleys and circled back along his own path. He disappeared into crowded marketplaces and wove between players with his head down. He told the man, in increasingly sharp tones, to leave him alone.

But it was just Wemmbu’s luck, none of it worked.

Leo always found him again, appearing above his shoulder with a casual greeting, as though they had simply been separated by the crowd for a moment.

Once, Wemmbu had hidden inside a temple for nearly an hour. He’d sat behind a pillar in the incense-filled quiet, his back pressed against the cool stone, listening to the murmur of worshippers coming and going. When he finally emerged, certain that he had waited long enough, Leo had been leaning against the outer wall. He even pulled out an apple from his invisible hand, offering the fruit to Wemmbu without comment.

 

The food had been harder to resist than the company.

Leo seemed to know every restaurant in the city, and he appeared at odd hours with offerings that Wemmbu's dwindling supplies couldn’t compete with.

At first, Wemmbu refused everything. He had his own food. Steak, porkchops, and golden carrots. Then Leo showed up with something hot, and the next day he had something else, and the day after that, something different again. A skewer of grilled mutton, seasoned and still sizzling. A bowl of mushroom stew from a stall near the southern gates. A loaf of bread warm from the oven. A sweet pastry that Leo insisted was a local specialty.

Wemmbu had accepted the first skewer with considerable annoyance and discovered that it was the best thing he had eaten in weeks.

He told himself it was practical. He needed the energy to continue his search, after all. That explanation became less convincing after the third time, and by the fifth, he had stopped bothering to justify it at all.

The food was good. Wemmbu was tired. And Leo, for all his infuriating persistence, never asked for anything in return.

The company, however, was relentless. Leo talked whether Wemmbu answered or not. He commented on buildings, complained about the weather, and pointed out restaurants they had already passed. He asked questions that Wemmbu ignored and then asked them again several minutes later. He made vague observations about passersby and occasionally told stories about past jobs, though he was careful to leave out any details that might actually reveal something useful about himself.

Somehow, the silence Wemmbu had once wanted from him had begun to feel stranger than the noise.

Leo. That was the name the invisible player had given.

Wemmbu was certain it wasn’t his real name. No nametag floated above his helmet to confirm or deny it, and the few players in the city who seemed to recognize the alias did so with a caution that spoke of reputation.

Wemmbu had noticed the way their expressions shifted when they saw him. Recognition first, then the immediate decision not to stare for longer than a second. Once, in a tavern on his fourth day, Wemmbu had overheard two players muttering over their drinks about the infamous mercenary who sometimes passed through town. The one with the resin-trimmed armor. The one no one knew the real name of.

‘The best, apparently,’ Wemmbu thought absentmindedly.

Wemmbu hadn’t been particularly reassured. But by then, Leo had already bought him dinner three times, and the indignation was getting harder to hold onto.

He had asked Leo once, on the fifth day, if he was actually a mercenary.

It had been the first time Wemmbu had initiated a conversation rather than trying to end one, and Leo seemed genuinely surprised by the initiative. His modulated voice had gone quiet for a beat before he answered.

“Yes, bro, I’m a mercenary. The best of the best, actually.”

Leo had said it with casual confidence that didn’t sound like boasting. It sounded like fact. Then he’d continued walking, as though the admission meant nothing.

Wemmbu had promised himself, after learning what kind of person Leo was, that he would be more careful.

He knew exactly what Eggchan would say if he could see him now, walking through a strange city beside an infamous mercenary who refused to show his face. The scolding practically wrote itself. Don’t trust strangers. Don’t let them get too close. Don’t tell them anything they don’t need to know. Keep moving. Keep your head down. Keep yourself safe.

Wemmbu had heard varying versions of those warnings for years, delivered in Eggchan’s calm voice and repeated so often that they had become a familiar part of his life. They had always seemed reasonable. Obvious, even. Eggchan was only trying to protect him. He knew more about the world than Wemmbu did, had seen more of its dangers, and his rules existed for a reason.

Leo made those rules strangely difficult to follow. That was not Leo’s fault. That was Wemmbu’s.

At least, that was what Wemmbu told himself whenever he caught himself walking beside the invisible figure without trying to lose him, whenever he accepted another offering of food, or whenever he let the modulated voice fill the silence without telling it to shut up.

Wemmbu knew what he should be doing. He should be trying harder to lose Leo, refusing the meals, keeping his distance, and remembering that the man wasn’t just a stranger but a mercenary, an infamous one who hid his identity behind potion effects, voice changers, and a name that probably wasn’t his own.

He was the exact kind of dangerous player Eggchan had spent years warning him about. Wemmbu knew all of this, and he knew he should have been more cautious.

And yet it had taken only three days for him to stop trying quite so hard to lose Leo.

Three days of failed attempts and food that was too good to refuse. Three days of walking through a city that was overwhelming and lonely, where the players were polite but distant, and where the only constant was the invisible figure who kept showing up beside him with pastries and an easy, cynical humor that seemed to ask nothing of him.

That was the part Wemmbu preferred not to examine too closely.

He had simply gotten used to the footsteps beside him and the modulated voice that had gradually stopped grating on his ears. After several days of hearing it, the distortion had become familiar enough that he barely noticed it anymore. It was strange, perhaps, how quickly a person could become part of a routine without Wemmbu ever consciously deciding to let them in.

 

Wemmbu had expected to miss the cottage when he left. He hadn’t expected to miss Eggchan quite this much, either.

The feeling was worse at night, when he returned to the motel and had no one waiting for him there. He still messaged Eggchan through the communicator from time to time, usually brief questions about the cottage, the forest, and his safety. He found himself rereading Eggchan’s replies more than once before putting the communicator away.

It wasn’t that he wanted Leo to fill that space. Wemmbu didn’t.

Leo was still a stranger, still a mercenary, and still someone Wemmbu wasn’t entirely sure he should trust. But Leo was there, and after several days of having someone beside him, his presence had become easier to tolerate than Wemmbu would have liked to admit. The thought of walking through the city without the familiar footsteps following a few paces beside him felt almost odd.

Wemmbu frowned at the thought and decided it was stupid. He had gotten comfortable. That was all. And getting comfortable around someone like Leo was exactly what Eggchan had warned him against.

He was going to get rid of Leo today. Probably.

 

“Hey, we should stop by that meat shop we passed yesterday.”

Leo's modulated voice echoed above the usual chatter of the city street. Wemmbu didn’t bother looking at the invisible figure beside him.

“Dude, we just ate.” His tone was flat, sarcastic.

After a moment, he glanced sideways. The netherite helmet was already tilted toward him, watching. Wemmbu frowned and made a shooing motion with his free arm, careful not to disturb the green parrot perched on his opposite shoulder.

“You can go ahead. I already told you, I can do this on my own.”

A soft scoff crackled through the voice changer. Wemmbu had come to recognize that sound. It was Leo's response to anything he considered unserious, which seemed to include most of what Wemmbu said.

There was something fundamentally strange and cynical about the man, a casual disregard for social cues and personal boundaries that Wemmbu had never encountered before. He walked through the world as though nothing in it could touch him, and that confidence extended to ignoring every attempt Wemmbu made to get rid of him.

“Yeah, yeah, but I also already told you, you won't find nothin' here.”

The words were casual, almost lazy, but they carried an implication Wemmbu had begun to notice more and more over the past few days.

Leo knew something. He knew more than he let on, and despite the constant stream of meaningless chatter, certain things occasionally slipped through. The second day they had met, Leo had mentioned that he knew Wemmbu was looking for someone to give something to. The statement had been offhand, almost bored, as though it were common knowledge. Wemmbu had drilled him with questions immediately, his mind racing through the possibilities.

How could Leo possibly know that? No one knew about the mission except Eggchan and Wemmbu himself.

Unless Leo was the recipient. Unless the person Wemmbu had been searching for had been following him this entire time, testing him, waiting for the right moment to reveal himself.

Yet Leo had only laughed at the suggestion. A bright, genuine sound even through the distortion.

He then told Wemmbu that if he stopped searching and came with him instead, he would explain everything he knew. The offer had been flippant, as though abandoning the mission was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. Wemmbu had refused. He wasn’t going to throw away Eggchan's trust on the word of a stranger who wouldn’t even show his face.

But the hints kept coming, small and insidious, and now Leo spoke with the easy confidence of someone who knew exactly how Wemmbu's days had been going. The empty searches. The fruitless walking. The growing, unspoken fear that something about this mission wasn’t right.

 

“You keep saying that. It doesn't help.”

Wemmbu clicked his tongue and began walking faster, hoping to lose Leo in the afternoon crowd. It was a futile effort. Within seconds, the man was beside him again, his longer stride easily matching Wemmbu's quickened pace.

“You're stubborn as always,” Leo mused.

There was faint amusement in his voice, but it was the familiarity that grated against Wemmbu's nerves. ‘As always,’ he often said. As though Leo had known him long enough to make that judgment. As though he had earned the right to make it.

Wemmbu didn’t respond. His eyes remained fixed ahead, tracking the road that led back toward the motel.

He needed to reassess. The search wasn’t progressing, and he was running out of places to look.

He had walked almost every district. He had checked every temple courtyard and public square. The recipient was either not here or so well hidden that Wemmbu had no hope of finding him without more information. Maybe it was time to message Eggchan, to admit that he couldn’t complete the mission on his own and ask for further instructions.

The thought sat heavy in his chest, cold and unwelcome.

Admitting failure to Eggchan was the last thing Wemmbu wanted to do. Not after the charm. Not after the swordsman in the birch forest. Not after everything that had happened since he left the cottage.

Eggchan had trusted him with this. Wemmbu had been so sure he could handle it. And now he was standing in the middle of a strange city with nothing to show for his efforts, all except a package he couldn’t deliver and a growing certainty that he was letting his best friend down.

 

“Whoever you’re tryin’ to find, they’re not here.”

Leo's voice cut through his thoughts, flat and certain.

“You're just wasting your time.”

Wemmbu's jaw tightened. He kept walking, his netherite boots pressing into the smooth cobblestone with a rhythm he refused to break.

The words landed somewhere beneath his ribs, and he could feel them settling there even as he tried to ignore their assumptions. Wemmbu couldn’t believe those words. More importantly, he couldn’t let himself believe them. If he did, then he would have to start questioning things he had never questioned before.

He would have to wonder whether the instructions Eggchan had given him were wrong. Whether the recipient really existed. Whether there was something about this mission that he had never been meant to understand.

Wemmbu wasn’t ready to doubt Eggchan.

The thought alone felt like a betrayal, a crack in the foundation of everything he had been taught. Doubting Eggchan would mean doubting their friendship. It would mean admitting that the person Wemmbu trusted most in the world might have lied to him. Might have sent him on a fool's errand. Might have looked him in the eyes and told him he would know the recipient when he saw him, knowing full well there was no recipient to find.

Wemmbu wasn’t ready for that. He didn’t think he ever would be.

It was easier to believe that everything happening was his fault alone.

 

Leo moved closer. His arm came up and shooed the parrot from Wemmbu's shoulder, a quick, casual gesture that sent the green bird fluttering into the air with an indignant squawk.

Before Wemmbu could protest, an arm draped across his shoulders, pulling him close. The motion was practiced, almost offhand, and Leo used his height advantage to slow Wemmbu's stride, guiding him toward the side of the street. Then, with a smooth pivot, he pulled Wemmbu into an alleyway between two stone buildings.

The shadows swallowed them. The alley was narrow and dim, its high walls blocking most of the afternoon light.

The noise of the city was still audible beyond the entrance, the chatter of players and the steady rhythm of footsteps, but it felt muted here, pushed away by the stone surrounding them. The air was cooler, stiller. The hard-packed dirt underfoot was soft compared to the cobblestone outside.

Wemmbu didn’t fight the pull. He let Leo maneuver him farther into the alley, his body moving with a compliance he didn’t fully examine.

It was easier than resisting. Wemmbu was tired of resisting.

The search had worn him down, the doubt had worn him down, and somewhere along the way he had stopped pushing back against the one person who seemed determined to stay.

The parrot circled above them, its green wings catching the afternoon light as it descended to perch on the edge of a nearby rooftop. It looked down at them with its head cocked, its black eyes observant and concerned. It was a silent witness to whatever was about to happen.

Wemmbu glanced around the alley.

No one else was here. The realization settled over him slowly. Leo had pulled him into countless side streets and food stalls over the past few days, always casual and public. But this was different. The privacy felt intentional. A prickle of unease ran along the back of Wemmbu's neck, and his tail stilled beneath his cloak.

Before Wemmbu could pull away, Leo tightened his hold around his shoulders. The arm was heavy and warm through the netherite, and it kept Wemmbu in place with a gentle, insistent pressure. The silence stretched for a beat longer than it should have, the air between them thickening with something unspoken.

Then Leo spoke, the words landing with the weight of a sharp blade.

“Dude, you don't even know who you're looking for, do you?”

 

Wemmbu froze.

The words weren’t new. Leo had implied them before, circling around the idea with hints and vague statements that Wemmbu had deflected or ignored.

The first day, when Leo had somehow known Wemmbu was searching for someone. The second day, when he had made an offhand comment about package deliveries. Each time, Wemmbu had brushed it aside, unwilling to engage and ask questions that might lead somewhere he didn’t want to go to. But Leo had never said it so directly. So plainly. The modulated voice carried no judgment or accusation. It was almost gentle.

That gentleness was worse than anything else. It meant Leo wasn’t trying to provoke him. It meant Leo believed what he was saying.

For a moment, Wemmbu's mind went completely blank.

The noise of the city faded into a distant hum, and the shadows of the alley seemed to press closer around him. He blinked once, twice, and then his body moved before his thoughts could catch up.

He wrenched himself away from Leo's arm and shoved him back. Hard.

The invisible figure stumbled a step, his boots scraping against the dirt, but he didn’t fall. He didn’t retaliate. He simply stood there, his helmet tilted slightly as he watched Wemmbu, waiting.

Wemmbu's canines flashed as he bared his teeth.

“I'm so fucking fed up with you. Do you have nothing else to do, bro? Why do you keep bothering me like this?”

His hands were balled into fists beneath his cloak, his scaled tail lashing behind him. Everything about his posture screamed aggression, but something about the anger felt wrong. Too sharp, too immediate.

Wemmbu knew, distantly, what he was doing.

He was performing anger because the alternative was too terrifying to face. If he stopped being angry, even for a second, then he might have to listen to what Leo had said. He might have to admit that the doubt coiling in his chest had been there long before Leo gave it a voice.

“If you have nothing helpful to say, leave me alone!”

The words rang through the alley before fading into the surrounding stone.

Leo didn’t move or speak. The silence thinned between them, and Wemmbu became painfully aware of his own breathing, too loud in his ears. Somewhere above them, the parrot made a soft, worried sound.

Wemmbu stared at the invisible figure before him. The netherite armor, the resin trim, and the faint shimmer of potion particles. Leo had been following him for days. He had brought him food. He had kept him company through a city that was overwhelming and, despite all its thousands of people, strangely lonely. He had said things that made no sense, things that suggested he knew far more than he should. And now he was standing there in silence, and Wemmbu didn’t know what to do with the knot of emotion tangled in his chest.

There was truth in Leo's words. Or at least the possibility of truth. That was the part Wemmbu didn’t want to acknowledge.

Because he couldn’t believe it.

So what if Leo knew bits and pieces? So what if he carried himself with that maddening air of knowingness? Maybe he was guessing. Maybe he was trying to manipulate him. Maybe he had simply noticed things Wemmbu had overlooked. There were explanations. There had to be.

Wemmbu should stay true to what he knew, to what he had been taught, to the person who had protected him and kept him safe for years.

He would continue looking for the recipient. He would message Eggchan for help, even if admitting that he had failed made something hollow twist inside his chest. He wouldn’t let a stranger's words shake the foundation of everything he believed in.

Wemmbu let out a long, slow breath. The tension in his shoulders eased slightly.

He turned away from Leo and started walking toward the mouth of the alley. The parrot swooped down from the rooftop and gently landed on his shoulder, its claws gripping the wool of his cloak. It made a soft warble, as if satisfied that they were leaving.

Wemmbu took another step.

 

“Open the box.”

 

His foot stopped. For a moment, Wemmbu didn’t move.

The words had struck something deeper, something he had been protecting without ever questioning why.

Behind him, Leo continued. “I know the person who sent you on this mission gave you a box, didn't they?”

His voice was calm and unhurried. The casual tone was gone, replaced by something quieter and more deliberate. “A small one. Wooden. No lock. You've been carrying it for days, and you've never once looked inside.”

Wemmbu slowly turned around.

The words were knowing, impossibly so. His expression remained blank as his purple eyes fixed on the shimmering outline of the man behind him. The parrot on his shoulder pressed close to his cheek, its small body warm and still. The alley felt narrower than it had a moment ago, and the shadows seemed deeper. Even the distant noise of the city felt strangely far away.

“What did you say?” His voice was quiet.

His dominant hand twitched, hovering inches from his hotbar.

His thoughts were spinning too quickly to catch, fragments of questions colliding and breaking apart before he could grasp them.

The box was supposed to be secret. No one knew about it except Eggchan and Wemmbu himself. He had never taken it out in public. He had never mentioned it to anyone, not even in passing. And yet Leo had just described it perfectly: small, wooden, no lock. The details were too specific to be a guess. Leo hadn’t simply known that Wemmbu was carrying something. He had known exactly what it looked like.

Had Wemmbu been too careless? Had he let something slip without realizing?

His thoughts raced backward through the past several days, searching for a moment when Leo might have seen the box. But there was nothing. He had kept it buried in his inventory, untouched, exactly as Eggchan had instructed. No one should have known, no one could have known.

Unless Leo had known before he ever found Wemmbu in the oak forest.

Unless someone had told him.

The realization settled over him slowly, cold and unwelcome. For days, Wemmbu had wondered why an infamous mercenary had attached himself so persistently to a stranger. He had dismissed it as eccentricity, boredom, or some strange personal amusement. It was easier to believe that Leo was simply a strange man with too much time on his hands than to consider the alternative.

But if Leo had known about the box from the beginning, then his presence here wasn’t coincidence. It wasn’t some bizarre attempt at friendship.

It was a job.

 

The parrot didn’t make a sound. Even the bird seemed to sense that something had shifted, its small body pressed close to Wemmbu’s cheek, still and watchful.

Leo spoke again, his voice flat and nasal beneath the modulation.

“I know you’re smarter than this, Wemmbu. It’s been days, and no one’s come to take that box off your hands. You’ve walked every street in this city but you’re still carrying it.”

He paused, the silence stretching just long enough to make the question feel intentional. “Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you?”

Wemmbu smiled. The expression didn’t reach his eyes. “You still act like you know me somehow. But you don’t.”

His fingers flexed at his side.

“Who even are you? How do you know about the box?”

There was no sarcasm in his voice now, none of the faint casualness that had crept into his tone over the past few days of reluctant companionship. Wemmbu was serious. His guard was fully back up, every instinct telling him that whatever Leo was trying to do, it had nothing to do with helping him.

Leo was trying to get inside his head.

That was what this was.

He had spent days following Wemmbu around, learning his habits, feeding him just enough information to keep him curious, and now he was using the one thing he knew Wemmbu could not ignore. The box, the mission. his best friend. Whatever Leo knew, he was revealing it piece by piece because he wanted something from him.

Wemmbu didn’t know what that something was yet. But he wasn’t going to let Leo manipulate him into finding out.

Leo didn’t answer his questions. Instead, he seemed to consider them irrelevant.

“Whoever sent you, you shouldn’t trust them so easily, Wemmbu.”

The words were almost gentle, a friendly warning delivered with an audacity that made Wemmbu’s blood simmer. As though Leo were simply laying out a realization that Wemmbu had somehow failed to reach on his own.

Wemmbu’s smile faded into a deep frown. His purple eyes drilled into the invisible silhouette across from him. “You don’t know anything about who sent me.”

“But I do.”

Leo’s voice was strange then. Quiet and certain.

Wemmbu’s eyes widened. His hand moved before he could stop it, and Verdict materialized in his grip. The axe appeared with a sharp flash of enchanted light, its weight settling into his palm as he raised it slightly.

“What the fuck did you—”

“Nothing specific, hey! Hey!”

Leo raised both hands in mock surrender. His voice was quick but not particularly fearful. He wasn’t afraid of the axe. Wemmbu could tell. He was simply trying to clear something up before Wemmbu did something rash.

That only made Wemmbu’s grip tighten.

“Then what the hell are you talking about?”

Wemmbu didn’t lower Verdict. He had already made up his mind about Leo. The man was dangerous. He had tried to kidnap him, followed him for days without permission, knew things he shouldn’t have known, and now he was making claims about Eggchan with the confidence of someone who expected Wemmbu to simply accept them.

 

There was no reason to trust him. Not even one.

Wemmbu paused, however, when his parrot pressed its head against his cheek, warm and insistent, repeating his name over and over in its tiny, tinny voice. “Wemmbu. Wemmbu.”

It wasn’t much. Just his name, said too many times in a row, the syllables starting to blur together the longer it went on. But something about the soft repetition cut through the noise in his head anyway, worried and stubborn.

The bird was trying to calm him. Against Wemmbu’s better judgment, it was working.

He could feel its claws tighten slightly where they gripped his shoulder, could feel the warmth of it pressed so close to his jaw. It wasn’t enough to make him trust Leo, or to make him believe a single word out of his mouth. But it was enough to loosen something in his chest, to keep his hand steady instead of swinging the axe.

Leo seemed to notice the hesitation and took the opportunity.

“I know what kind of guy sent you here.” He paused, and for once, there was no humor in his voice. “Because he hired me.”

The words hung between them.

Wemmbu stared at him.

The axe suddenly felt heavier in his hand. The parrot remained pressed against his cheek, its bright feathers warm against his skin, while the alley seemed to hold its breath around them.

For the first time since Leo had started talking, Wemmbu didn’t immediately dismiss what he was saying.

Not because he believed him.

He didn’t.

His purple eyes narrowed.

“You,” Wemmbu said slowly. “What?”

“I was hired last week.”

Leo’s voice was steady now, stripped of the teasing ease he usually carried. He lowered his hands slowly, carefully.

“To hunt down a player near Redstone Town. Navy cloak. Silver horns. Purple hair.”

Wemmbu’s fingers curled tighter around Verdict’s haft. Leo tilted his helmet slightly.

“Sound familiar?”

“Stop lying.”

“I’m not. Listen first, yeah?”

Leo waited until Wemmbu said nothing before continuing.

“I’m a mercenary. One of the best. That part wasn’t a joke, bro. I got a request last week, three shulkers of diamonds, to find you and take the box. Fight you if I had to, but not kill you. The request was very clear about that.”

His voice deepened, like he was quoting it straight off the page. “Don’t kill him. Just take the box and burn it.”

Leo let that sit for a second before he went on. “It also said that the box you carried was something you’d never find the recipient for.”

Something cold settled low in Wemmbu’s stomach. Leo’s voice had dropped further too, quiet enough now that Wemmbu found himself leaning in without meaning to. “Whoever wrote that request knew exactly what they were talking about.”

Wemmbu’s grip on Verdict tightened. The details were too specific to be a lucky guess. The box, the recipient, the navy cloak, the silver horns, laid out one after another like Leo was reading off a description someone else had written.

Wemmbu turned it over anyway, looking for a way out of what that meant.

Maybe Leo had seen him somewhere in passing and pieced the rest together on his own. Maybe other players had noticed the cloak and the horns and talked, the way rumors did, until a guess started sounding exact enough to pass for certainty. Mercenaries traded information like currency. It wasn’t impossible.

It was a thin explanation, and he knew it. Wemmbu held onto it anyway.

Leo seemed to notice the change in his posture. When he spoke again, his voice was almost cautious, stripped of some of its usual amusement. “The person who hired me is the same person who sent you here. You get that, right? Same instructions. Same box. Same guarantee that you’d never find anyone to give it to.”

The silence that followed felt heavier than before. Wemmbu’s heart began to beat faster, each thud seeming to push Leo’s words deeper into his mind. The doubt that had been planted days ago, quiet and persistent at the edges of his thoughts, was no longer something he could simply ignore. It had taken root deep within the days of failure and confusion.

“Watch it. You’re talking about my best friend,” Wemmbu said. His voice was low, dangerously controlled.

“I’m talking about whoever sent you on a wild goose chase.” Leo sounded almost frustratingly calm. “If that’s your best friend, then maybe you should rethink that.”

The words struck harder than Wemmbu wanted them to. He shook his head and took a step back, as though distance could somehow put Leo’s words farther away from him.

“You don’t get to talk about him.”

“I’m just saying—”

“No.” Wemmbu stepped back again, his eyes fixed on the shimmering outline of Leo’s helmet. The parrot on his shoulder tightened its grip on the navy wool, its claws pressing into the fabric as Wemmbu’s posture grew tense.

“You don’t get to talk about him. You’re a mercenary. An invisible mercenary who won’t even show his face. You follow me around for days, you try to kidnap me, and then you start talking about trust and boxes and people I shouldn’t believe in. You won’t even let me see who you are.”

His voice sharpened. “So why should I listen to a single word you say?”

 

Leo went quiet.

The particles of his invisibility continued to swirl in the dim alley, the faint shimmer of them the only indication that he was still. The distant noise of Redstone Town drifted between the buildings, muffled and indistinct. Still perched on Wemmbu’s shoulder, the parrot shifted on the navy slope, watching the scene before it.

When Leo finally spoke, his voice was different. Softer, less guarded.

“You want to see me?”

Wemmbu frowned. “What? No. I want you to leave me alone.”

“That’s not what you said.” There was no amusement in Leo’s voice now. “You said I won’t show my face. If I show you, will you believe what I’ve told you?”

The question caught Wemmbu off guard. He had thrown the accusation at Leo as a way of dismissing him, not as an invitation to prove anything. Yet Leo’s tone had changed. The casual arrogance was gone, replaced by something more serious and strangely genuine. The same man who had laughed through a kidnapping attempt, followed him through half the city, and offered him food as though none of it were unusual was suddenly standing completely still. Waiting.

Wemmbu’s frown deepened.

“Why would it matter?”

Leo didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he stepped past Wemmbu and moved deeper into the alley, toward the narrow space where the walls closed in and the afternoon light barely reached. He gestured for Wemmbu to follow.

“Not here. Further in. This… isn’t something I want an audience for.”

Wemmbu hesitated. Every instinct told him not to follow an invisible mercenary into a darker part of an alley, especially one who had already admitted to being hired to hunt him down. But Leo had already revealed too much, and somehow, that made it harder to walk away.

 

After a moment, Wemmbu followed.

When they were hidden from the street, tucked into the darkest part of the alley where even the afternoon light could barely reach, Leo stopped. He turned to face Wemmbu, and even through the invisibility, Wemmbu could feel the weight of his gaze.

“I haven’t shown my face to anyone in over a decade,” Leo said.

His voice was quiet now, stripped of the casual inflection that had followed Wemmbu through Redstone Town for days. “Built my whole reputation on being a ghost. No name, no face, nothin’ for anybody to pin down. That’s kinda the whole bit, the mystery’s half the fun of the job.”

Leo paused, and when he spoke again, some of the humor had drained out of it. “Point is, it’s been years since anyone’s actually seen me.”

Wemmbu said nothing. The words settled uncomfortably between them.

The particles around Leo began to swirl faster, disturbed by some movement Wemmbu couldn’t see. For the first time since he had met him, the mercenary didn’t seem entirely comfortable in his own skin.

“And I’m about to throw it all away.”

A short breath left him, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff.

“Guess that’s what I get for lettin’ you ask nicely.” The humor didn’t quite make it into the rest of it. “This one’s for you, though, Wemmbu. Figured you deserved better than an invisible bastard feeding you half-truths in a back alley.”

Wemmbu’s brow furrowed.

He watched as Leo reached down, a small bucket of milk materializing in his grasp. He didn’t say anything else. He just tipped it back and drank until it was empty, the sound of it swallowed up by how quiet the alley had gone.

Then the shimmer began to falter.

It went slow at first, the white particles thinning out at the edges like mist that hadn’t quite caught the sun yet. Then faster, swirling tighter, agitated enough to blur his outline completely for a second.

For one final moment, he remained hidden.

Then the invisibility fell away completely.

 

The man standing before Wemmbu was tall and broad-shouldered, easily half a head taller than him.

His dark skin was marked by faint scars, old ones, faded pale along his forearms and the side of his neck, the kind that had stopped being fresh wounds a long time ago. His hair was a mane of blond dreadlocks that fell past his elbows, woven through with small golden rings that caught what little light made it into the alley. Lion ears sat atop his head and a pale tail swished lazily behind him, the tuft at its end twitching with each small, unconscious movement.

His eyes were covered by an orange blindfold, matching the accents of his clothes and netherite armor.

There was something that made him seem older than Wemmbu had expected, more mature than his voice had ever sounded through the modulator. He stood loose and unbothered despite everything that had just passed between them, like a man who had long since run out of room to flinch.

Then Leo smiled.

The expression was easy, almost familiar, but there was something beneath it that Wemmbu couldn’t place. Something sad, almost relieved. It was as though a weight the man had carried for years had finally been set down, only for him to realize how much it had been holding him together.

“Hey,” he said.

His real voice was warm and deep, carrying none of the distortion of the voice changer.

 

Wemmbu stared at him. The lion ears. The dreadlocks. The scars. The blindfolded eyes.

He had never seen this man before in his life.

And yet, something in the back of his mind stirred.

It was faint, barely there. A flicker of recognition with no memory attached to it. The same unsettling sensation he had felt with Parrot in the birch forest, that impossible sense of familiarity that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than thought.

Wemmbu’s expression tightened.

“I don’t know you.”

The man’s smile flickered. The sadness in his face deepened, but the relief didn’t disappear. If anything, it seemed to settle more heavily into his expression.

“You don’t remember me.” It wasn’t a question.

Wemmbu said nothing in response.

“That’s okay,” the man continued. His voice was gentle, almost careful. “That’s not your fault.”

His words felt layered, as though he was hiding certain emotions behind a fragile facade, a thread on the verge of breaking. Wemmbu didn’t ask about any of the implications underlying his tone, keeping quiet.

Leo tilted his head, studying Wemmbu’s silence. There was something about the way he looked at him that Wemmbu didn’t like. It wasn’t because it felt threatening, but because it felt, somehow, familiar.

“You really don’t remember anything, do you?” he asked quietly. “Not Flame. Not me. Not any of it.”

Wemmbu’s jaw tightened. The unfamiliar name sent another uncomfortable twist through his chest.

“I don’t understand.”

“Yeah. I know.” The man huffed out something tired, close to fond, like he’d rehearsed this a hundred times and still hadn’t gotten it right. “I know this is a lot to dump on you. But you gotta let me say it anyway, or I never will.”

He didn’t step any closer. He kept the distance between them, his hands loose at his sides, as though he understood that Wemmbu might run or attack at once if he made any sudden movements.

“I took the job ‘cause your description felt… familiar.” His voice had gone even, reminiscent and strange. “I had this weird feeling. Didn’t know for sure it was you ‘til I saw you walkin’ through that oak forest, right outside Redstone Town.”

He paused, his eyes briefly dropping before returning to Wemmbu’s face. “And once I did, I couldn’t go through with it. Couldn’t fight you, couldn’t take the box.”

His nasal voice faltered for the briefest moment.

“Not after everything.”

Wemmbu’s brow furrowed.

“After everything what?”

The man’s expression shifted, the corners of his mouth tightening. For a moment, Wemmbu thought he might actually answer. He didn’t.

“Later,” he said instead, and the old drawl crept back into his voice for just a second, like reaching for a mask he’d only just set down. “Ask me again later, bro. I’ll actually answer.”

It didn’t sound like a promise so much as a warning to himself.

Then he glanced toward Wemmbu’s hands.

“You want the truth? It’s in that box.” The deflection dropped out of his voice. “Everything you need to understand what’s going on is probably in there.”

Wemmbu stared at him.

The man continued before he could respond. “I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to trust yourself.”

 

The words should have been reassuring.

But they weren’t.

Wemmbu’s eyes remained fixed on the stranger in front of him. The lion ears. The blond dreadlocks. The orange blindfold. The strange, impossible sense of familiarity that refused to leave him alone.

He thought of Eggchan, of the calm voice and the constant, watchful presence. His mind rewound back to the charm that had been stolen, the mercenary who had escaped him in the birch forest, and the failure that had followed him all the way to Redstone Town. Wemmbu then thought of Parrot sitting in the moonlight, speaking of friendship and death and a past that couldn’t possibly be real. He remembered words of careful suspicion, warning him of stalkers peering through forest leaves.

Wemmbu’s hand moved toward his inventory.

The small wooden box sat in its secured slot, unopened and unquestioned, exactly as it had been since the night Eggchan placed it in his hands. That was already several weeks behind him.

“Do not look inside. I’m trusting you with this.”

The memory of Eggchan’s voice came back to him with uncomfortable clarity.

Wemmbu’s fingers closed around the box.

He pulled it out.

The wood was smooth and light against his palm. The lid was plain, unsealed, and so ordinary that it was almost insulting how much weight it seemed to carry now. Wemmbu looked down at it, observing its shape and imperfections. For the first time since Eggchan had placed it in his hands, he allowed himself to wonder what would happen if he opened it.

His thumb brushed against the edge of the lid.

His mind felt awfully blank. There was no sudden warning, no voice in his head telling him to stop, no sign that he was about to break some ancient rule that couldn’t be undone. There was only the small wooden box resting in his palms, impossibly ordinary despite everything Leo had just told him.

Across from him, Leo remained silent.

Wemmbu could feel the weight of his attention, but for once, the man didn’t make a joke or offer some infuriating piece of advice. He didn’t tell Wemmbu what he should do. He simply waited, and somehow, that made the decision feel even heavier.

Wemmbu swallowed, his fingers tightening around the box.

He could still put it away. He could close his inventory, walk out of the alley, and pretend Leo had never said any of this. He could convince himself that there was another explanation for everything, that his best friend who sent him to Redstone Town hadn’t deliberately sent him on a mission with no possible end.

Maybe Leo was wrong. Maybe there was still something Wemmbu was missing.

But he couldn’t ignore the box anymore. Not after Leo had known about it. Not after he had known about the recipient, the mission, and the promise that Wemmbu would never find the person he was supposed to deliver it to.

His thumb slipped beneath the lid.

For a moment, he hesitated.

Then Wemmbu opened the box.

He looked inside.

 

But there was nothing. The box was empty.