Chapter 44 – The Night the Waters Answered
The water-gate opened like a slow breath.
Lili stood at the alley's edge behind Peterson's house, two plastic bottles emptied in a circle over cracked concrete. Silver-blue ripples lifted off the puddle and unfurled into an oval of moving light. Cold air rolled out of it, smelling faintly of rain and iron. Beside her, the replica of Peterson—same face, same tired smile, same wayward curls—watched the gate with Peterson's curiosity and none of his nerves.
"You're sure about this?" he asked, voice a little too smooth.
"As sure as I am about you not being the original," Lili said, soft but firm. "You're coming so the real one can come back."
He nodded like a student accepting a fact, then tried the joke Peterson would've made. "And here I thought this was a date."
"You're a good copy," she said, deadpan. "Don't spoil it."
They stepped through.
The Loa's world received them in a hush. The horizon was a bruised violet, constellations drifting slowly like lanterns carried downstream. Lili didn't head toward any city lights—there weren't any. She followed the memory in her bones: the stink of demon fur, the slope of a low ridge, the way the wind knifed through the grass where the ground dipped. Her sandals cut a whispering path across tough blades. Replica Peterson kept pace without complaint.
"Why this place?" he asked after a while.
"Because the last time we were here," she said, "you—he—nearly died. And because the Midnight King pays attention to places where power wakes up."
They crested the ridge and looked down upon the hyena den.
Bodies still lay where Peterson and Lili had left them. Spines like black combs. Horns glinting. Sword-tails frozen mid-curve. In the center, a crater the size of a house where the great demon hyena had fallen. The ground was glassy in places from heat. The night air carried a sweet-metal rot.
Replica Peterson swallowed. "We… did that?"
"He did," Lili said. "And now we do this."
She slid down the slope, dress catching on scrub, then knelt beside the nearest corpse. Beneath each ribcage, tucked behind a plate of bone, demon beasts grew crystals—coagulated essence the color of their violence. Lili pressed her fingers to the fur, found the seam, and used the flat edge of her dagger to pry.
The first crystal came away like a pulled tooth: green, thumb-sized.
"Common," she murmured, holding it up so the replica could see. "Green. Horns tell the rank; crystals tell the value. One horn: E-rank. Two: D. Up you climb."
"And the colors?" he asked, watching her work.
"White is Uncommon, green is Common, blue Rare, purple Epic, orange Legendary, red Mythical." She slid the crystal into a pouch. "Rainbow means God-tier. Pray you never see one of those and need it."
They moved beast to beast. Lili's motions were quick but respectful, as if she were harvesting fruit from an old, dangerous orchard. She counted horns as she went—two, three, one—and named them under her breath like rosary beads: D, C, E. She found blue wedged like a promise in a rib pocket; purple humming faintly in a double-headed brute; one stubborn shard that clung to bone until she pressed a palm and whispered a word she'd learned from her father.
At the crater's rim, she stopped.
The great demon hyena's skull was a cracked shrine. Six spiraling horns arced like frozen lightning. In the chest cavity, between plates of blackened bone, something burned orange in a slow pulse.
"A-Rank," she said. "And he was rare even among his kind."
It took both hands, a quiet curse, and a patient minute. When the crystal came free she nearly dropped it—it was heavy, like a heart, and bright as a coal in a forge. She held it up to the starlight. Threads of darker amber swirled inside it, like smoke trapped in glass.
"Legendary," replica Peterson breathed.
"Legendary," Lili agreed. She wrapped it in cloth and put it deep in her satchel, beneath the others. "We'll need it."
They sat on the lip of the crater for a moment, breathing. The sky turned a shade deeper; a wind scuffed the ash.
"You're very calm," the replica said at last.
Lili smiled without warmth. "I've been scared for so long it learned my address. It sends postcards now."
He laughed. It sounded right. That was almost worse.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Ready."
She stood, dusted her hands, and faced the dark. She did not call out. She did not bang a blade on a shield. She simply said, at the volume of a thought:
"I'm here."
The night answered by getting heavier. Shadows thickened the way crowds thicken when a famous person walks by. A breeze became a hush, became a hush with corners, became a hush that had somewhere to sit.
Then the hush stood up.
A figure gathered from the dark at the crater's far edge. He did not glow. He did not hum. He was plain and precise—tall, dressed in black, dreadlocks tied behind him, beard short and streaked gray. No veve burned on his skin. No crown weighed his head. He wore authority like a man wears posture.
"Good evening, Ti Zaka," the Midnight King said.
Lili inclined her head. "Good evening, Makroz."
The replica looked between them, confusion rippling briefly through his practiced calm. "Makroz?" he asked, then blinked. "Why do I know that name?"
"Because the one you're borrowing knows it," Lili said gently. "And because you're about to give him back."
The Midnight King's eyes—dark, steady—fell on the replica and softened a fraction. "You did well," he told it. "They weren't harmed."
"I… tried," the replica said, and for a heartbeat there was real pride in the counterfeit voice. It reached for Lili's sleeve without thinking, then let its hand fall. "Do I… end now?"
"You rest," Makroz said. "You did your purpose."
Lili stepped closer. "He believes he's real," she murmured.
"He believes what he must," Makroz replied. "It's how the illusion holds shape without lying to itself."
He lifted his hand and, for the first time, showed power—not a blaze but a gesture so exact it felt like a sentence without a wasted word. The air around the replica trembled. Light—no color at all, the color of ending—passed over Peterson's likeness from crown to heel.
The replica smiled at Lili. "Tell them… I tried not to be weird."
"You were the right kind of weird," she said.
He laughed, then unwound—not like smoke, not like dust, but like a thread pulled out of a cloth until nothing was left but what the cloth had always been. The real body sagged, suddenly heavy with its true weight. Makroz stepped forward and caught Peterson before he hit the ground.
He looked small, asleep. The white lines of the Veve had faded. His chest rose; a bruise yellowed his jaw; his lashes twitched like he'd just missed the ending of a long dream.
Lili's throat tightened. "Will he—?"
"He'll be fine," Makroz said. "But for one day, the body is mine."
Lili lifted her chin. "Then say it plainly. Why did you pull us here?"
Makroz glanced past her, as if he were listening for something only kings hear—how a land breathes, whether its stones have shifted underfoot. When he spoke, it was the quiet of a man who has never needed to raise his voice to be obeyed.
"The Zobop will move. The First still hunts the daughter of fire. I need you to keep the boy alive and keep his circle small while I set a roof back on my house." He exhaled; it fogged, though the night wasn't cold. "And I needed to meet you in honesty before the storms boil over."
"Honesty," Lili repeated, tasting it. "Then be very clear, Makroz. If the boy asks me whether he's safe, what do I say?"
"You say," Makroz replied, "that he is safer with you than without you. And that I intend to make him far more than safe."
Her eyes narrowed. "I don't ferry tyrants."
His mouth twitched—the ghost of a smile. "I don't hire any." He shifted Peterson's weight and set him gently against his leg. "You brought a legendary crystal."
"Maybe," she said.
"Good," he said. "Keep it. You'll buy a door with it before long."
"And you?" Lili asked. "What door do you need?"
Makroz looked at the crater, at the dead king of hyenas, at the sky beyond it. "The one that leads me back to everything I built. Heh." He rubbed his beard. "And the one that lets me dismiss rumors by doing something better than correcting them."
"Like?" she asked, dry.
"Being seen doing the work," he said. "By the right eyes."
They stood in a companionable, uncanny quiet. He adjusted Peterson against his shoulder. For a heartbeat the shadow of him was different—taller, older, a silhouette that once made settlements kneel—not by fear but by relief that somebody competent had walked into the room.
Then he stepped toward Lili and, with grave politeness, handed Peterson to her.
"Take him home," Makroz said. "He'll sleep the day. When he wakes, let him ask questions. Answer the ones that keep him human. Leave the ones that make him a weapon to me."
"If you hurt him," she said, eyes blazing briefly, "I will make every worshipper of yours forget your name."
He chuckled. "You'd manage it, too." A softer note: "You have his temper's spine."
"Who?" she asked, thrown.
"You'll meet her in a story when we have time." He took a step back and seemed, impossibly, less—not weaker, but more elsewhere, attention already spiraling out to the edges of a kingdom. "Go. Before the day turns its face."
She nodded. "Come by the same way tomorrow night."
"I'll be here," he said. "And I'll be me."
"And your settlement?" she asked. "Are you going alone?"
"Never alone," Makroz said quietly. "I left someone in charge who never sat on my throne even when the world begged him to. Frederick kept the vault locked. He'll open it when I knock."
"Good," Lili breathed. "Then knock hard."
He smiled—small, unkingly, private. "I always do."
The hush folded; the king was gone.
Lili looked down at Peterson, unconscious and limp as the aftermath of a storm. "Okay, troublemaker," she whispered, hooking an arm under his shoulders. "Let's get you out of the apocalypse."
She balanced him carefully, then planted her staff's end in the dirt. A ring of water rose from nothing—clean, bright, smelling like rain after a long bad season.
"Come on, phone-boy," she said. "We're cheating."
They stepped through.
---
They spilled into Peterson's alley. The world on this side felt loud—distant motorbikes, a radio two streets over, a dog complaining to the moon. Lili propped Peterson against the wall, dug into his pocket, and fished out his phone. The lock screen was a selfie with his sisters; the passcode was… predictable.
She thumbed open a chat and typed fast.
> Lili: need help now. don't freak. back alley behind pete's. he's okay but out cold.
Lili: wilkens — shadow warp. bring JD. quiet.
It took eight seconds.
> Wilkens: omw. 30 sec.
Lili blinked. "Show-off."
The alley darkened at the edges as if someone had dimmed the corners. A rectangle of black peeled itself off the wall and then opened like a door where there hadn't been a door. Wilkens stepped out of his own shadow—eyes wide, hair messy, hoodie half-zipped—pulling a half-breathless Jean-Daniel by the wrist.
"Okay, okay, I—" Wilkens saw Peterson and shut up. "Oh."
Jean-Daniel's face went through three emotions in a second: relief, anger, weaponized concern. "What happened? Is he—?"
"Sleeping," Lili said. "The safe kind."
"That a thing?" Jean-Daniel asked, already moving to grab Peterson's other arm.
"It is tonight," she said. "We can argue definitions later. Bedroom. Now."
Wilkens nodded, already in motion. He bent, shadows coiling around his ankles like cats that knew who fed them. "Wrap in," he said, voice low. "I'll take the weight."
They all pressed in—Lili with Peterson's shoulders, Jean-Daniel at his knees, Wilkens in the middle—and the alley tilted. Darkness folded, not down but in, and with a gentle pop of displaced air the four of them stepped out into Peterson's bedroom.
They were not quiet.
The bedframe squeaked. Someone's elbow thumped the wall. Lili hissed, "Careful, careful," at the exact moment a glass clinked against the nightstand and rolled, catching itself on a book.
The door clicked.
Amanda's head peeked in, hair a crown of sleep. "Peterson?" she whispered, then saw the pile of people and flung the door open. Miranda was right behind her, eyes huge.
"What—? Is he—?" Amanda started.
"Out," Jean-Daniel said, half under an arm. "Not dead. Help."
The sisters didn't ask another question. Amanda slid to the far side of the bed and tugged back the sheet; Miranda took Peterson's feet like she'd done this a thousand times with groceries and stubborn furniture. Between the five of them, they maneuvered him onto the mattress. He made a small sound—not pain, something like a dream changing rooms—and settled.
Miranda tucked the sheet to his chest like a soldier, then looked up at Lili. "Explain. Now."
Lili put her hands up, breathing a little fast. "I will. Just—give me a second to make sure he's stable."
She touched two fingers to Peterson's temple. A warm pulse moved from her hand into him. His breathing steadied, the tiny frown between his brows easing.
"Okay," she said, stepping back. "He'll sleep until morning. Wake thirsty and confused. Both are fixable."
Amanda folded her arms. "Is that him?"
"Yes," Lili said. "No replica. Your brother's home."
The twins exchanged a look whose entire grammar was built out of shared childhood. Some of the iron in their shoulders loosened.
Jean-Daniel exhaled like he'd been holding his breath since yesterday. He crashed into the chair by the desk and rubbed his face. "Good. Good. Great. Amazing. I'm going to yell at him when he wakes up and then hug him and then yell again."
Wilkens looked at the floor like it might tell him where to put his hands. "I can… stay," he offered. "Keep watch. Move shadows if, uh, shadows need moving."
Lili smiled tiredly. "You three get an hour. I'll take first watch. Then go home before anyone's mother murders you for being out late."
Amanda arched an eyebrow. "And you? What's your alibi?"
Lili shrugged. "I'm the excuse—'the girls had a friend over.' You're welcome."
That pulled a small laugh from both sisters. It lifted the room a notch.
They dimmed the light. They found places to sit that didn't squeak. Lili took the floor near the bed, leaning her head against the frame, staff across her lap. Wilkens yawned so wide his jaw clicked, then melted into his own shadow up to the ankles like a man standing in a puddle.
"Wake me if his breathing changes," Lili murmured.
"We will," Amanda said.
They didn't mean to sleep. But the kind of exhaustion that follows catastrophe is merciful. It throws a blanket over everybody while nobody is looking.
---
Morning came on like it always does—slow light finding corners, a rooster three houses over auditioning for attention, a motorcycle coughing itself awake. Peterson's eyes opened the way someone opens a door they're not sure they locked—halfway, then all the way, then a step backward.
He stared at the ceiling, at the familiar stain that looked like a lopsided map, at the fan with the one rattling blade. He sat up too fast and the world scrolled sideways.
"Okay," he said to the room, voice hoarse. "Okay. Okay?"
Lili straightened on the floor at once. "Easy."
Jean-Daniel jerked awake in the chair and almost fell out of it. "Alive? He's alive. Great. I never doubted it. I doubted it every second."
Wilkens unpuddled from the corner like a man rising out of a lake. "Morning. You look like a truck backed up and respected you enough to run you over carefully."
The twins were already on their feet, one on each side of the bed. Amanda pressed a cup of water into his hand. Miranda set her palm between his shoulder blades.
"You're home," Amanda said, eyes a little wet.
"You smell like wolf," Miranda added.
Peterson drank. It tasted like the best water that ever existed. He blinked around at all their faces, then froze as a cascade of translucent windows flooded his vision.
> [SYSTEM NOTICE]
Great Demon Hyena (Rare-Class) – SLAIN.
+600 XP (Quest Reward)
+40 XP (Kill Bonus)
> [SYSTEM NOTICE]
Demon Hyena Pack – SLAIN (x? total)
+10 XP each (pack)
Pack Bonus Applied.
> [SYSTEM NOTICE]
Level Up! → 12
Level Up! → 13
Level Up! → 14
> [SYSTEM NOTICE]
New Skills Unlocked:
• Weapon Mastery II (faster transformations, +stance stability)
• Veve Mantle (temporary aura: +defense, +impact resistance; scales with Will)
> [SYSTEM NOTICE]
Stat Points Awarded: +15 (NEW: milestone grant)
> [SYSTEM NOTICE]
Titles Active: Voodoo Clan Leader, The Fearless Devil (synergy bonus increased)
"Whoa—whoa—whoa," Peterson said, eyes darting left and right, trying to read and breathe at the same time. He put the cup down before he poured it on his lap. "Okay that's… that's a lot of boxes. Can we—can everyone see that? Or is it just me? Please say it's just me."
"It's just you," Wilkens said, trying not to grin. "But the way your face is doing math is very public."
Jean-Daniel leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Catch us up, Pete. Last thing we had was hyenas, big glow, then you ghosted the planet."
Peterson dragged a hand through his hair. "I… fought the pack. Lili watched. It was bad, then not bad, then very bad. Then I—" He swallowed. "—I think I blacked out. The system told me something about possession and then… nothing."
He looked at Lili, searching. "Did I—did I hurt anyone?"
She shook her head once. "You saved yourself. Then you saved me. Then you broke a god's toy."
He blinked. "Which toy?"
"The big one," she said. "The one with too many horns."
Some color came back into his face. "Good."
He remembered something else then—a laugh that wasn't his, a coat that felt like a storm, a voice that could have split a city in two by saying "move". He shivered and hugged himself without meaning to.
"The Midnight King," he said softly.
Lili held his gaze. "He borrowed the body. He gave it back. He'll meet me again tonight."
"And he's…" Peterson started, then stopped. There were too many ways to finish that sentence. Good? Bad? Using me? Saving me? All of the above?
"He wants you alive," Lili said. "He wants you stronger. And he doesn't want your friends—" she glanced at the boys, then at the twins "—to be collateral. For now, that aligns with what we want."
Amanda squeezed his shoulder. "We'll make 'for now' last."
Miranda nodded. "Then we'll renegotiate with the universe."
Jean-Daniel blew out a breath. "I hate that our life has contract language."
Wilkens lifted a hand. "I thrive in it."
Peterson laughed—a shaky, grateful sound—then rubbed his eyes as a few more windows blinked.
> [SYSTEM NOTICE]
Beast Crystals Detected (x18):
Common (Green): x8
Uncommon (White): x3
Rare (Blue): x4
Epic (Purple): x2
Legendary (Orange): x1 (Great Demon Hyena)
Tip: crafting augments now available; socketing unlocked at Lv. 15.
His eyebrows climbed. "Did… did someone loot while I was dead?"
Lili lifted the bulging satchel with one hand and set it on his blanket. "Not dead. Delegating. And yes."
He untied the pouch, peeked in, and let out a low whistle. "Oh we're rich-rich."
"Don't flirt with the crystals," Jean-Daniel said. "Flirt with hydration."
Peterson grinned, took another drink, then looked around at all of them—sisters, friends, the girl who had dragged a god by the ear on his behalf. The room felt full—of breath, of luck, of trouble not yet arrived.
He swallowed and spoke to no one in particular and everyone at once. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," they all said, almost at the same time. It made them laugh, which made breathing easier.
The laughter faded. The morning settled. Outside, Cap-Haïtien started its daily chorus: tap-taps rattling, vendors calling, a neighbor's radio arguing about love.
Peterson glanced down as the last notification pulsed.
> [SYSTEM NOTICE]
Milestone Path Unlocked:
Spend 15 stat points (recommendation: balance core + Will)
New Quest Seed: "Audience with a King."
Return at night. Bring what you have made of yourself.
He closed the window with a thought. His hands were steady now.
"Okay," he said, voice warmed by something like purpose. "We rest, we eat, we pretend to be normal for a few hours. Then tonight… we go back."
Jean-Daniel cracked his knuckles. "Finally. A plan where I get to punch the concept of 'tonight.'"
Wilkens lifted a notebook. "And I get to write 'tonight' down, which is almost as satisfying."
Amanda crossed her arms. "I'll make sandwiches."
Miranda nodded. "I'll make lists."
Lili leaned back against the bed and let her head tip against the frame again, eyes half-closing. "And I'll make sure the water remembers our names."
Peterson looked at her. "And him?" he asked, meaning Makroz.
"He'll be there," Lili said. "Wearing his own face."
"And us?" he asked, meaning the whole mess of them, his small and stubborn world.
She smiled. "We'll be ourselves." She tapped the satchel of crystals. "Only louder."
He exhaled. The room felt exactly like a beginning.
"Okay," he said again, and this time it sounded like a promise. "Okay."