Bessa, her braid unraveling into a frizzy tangle of sun-scorched straw, slammed her empty clay jug against the dense green barrier where Pipo's bean sprouts used to sit. The Deep-Root vines had woven into an arm-thick barricade around the entire Makkal perimeter, leaves waxy and sweating chilled droplets. Beyond the thorns, shimmering heat baked the dry settlement road, where dozens of thirsty neighbors pressed close with wooden buckets raised. “Open this gate, Pipo Makkal!” Bessa shrieked, skin snagging on a barbed stem as she yanked her hand back with a hiss. Kanto hammered a timber post against the briars, sweat stinging his red-rimmed eyes. “Pipo! Brother! We took the shovels, fine! Just unlatch the gate!” A wicker hatch popped open amid the foliage, framing Pipo's sun-browned face and beaming grin. His flaxen hair, usually perpetually messy, seemed to have been tamed by a fresh breeze. He even wore a flower tucked behind one ear. “Oh, hello, Bessa! Kanto! And all my lovely neighbors from Oma-Kuri! What a delightful surprise!” His voice was light, carrying easily over the din. “Delightful? We’re dying of thirst, you fool!” a woman from the crowd wailed, her voice cracking. Pipo tilted his head, his smile unwavering. “Dying? Oh dear, that does sound terribly inconvenient. But fear not, Pipo built an oasis! Membership merely requires light cardiovascular exercise.” He pointed a thumb toward an iron-strapped cellar hatch set into a mound of damp mulch. “Right this way to the Apology Pump!” A metal viewing slit clattered open, showing Nini's soot-streaked brow and bared incisors. “Step off the turf,” she hissed, brandishing a sharpened fence picket. “Nini, sweetie, manners,” Pipo called cheerfully, turning a heavy brass key in the latch. The hatch groaned on greased hinges, revealing a downward stone ramp lined with moss. “Single file, please! Two-door pressure vestibule. Keeps the moisture locked inside.” Bessa recoiled from the damp stench of compost. “A vestibule? What is this lunatic contraption, Pipo?” “It’s very safe! Nini cleans it daily,” Pipo assured her, his smile broadening. “No nasty desert critters in here! Just… me! And the water!” The parched crowd tumbled through the double threshold, spilling into a vast subterranean chamber roofed by damp clay and glowing pale-blue mold. Cold drops trickled into stone gutters. In the center sat three welded bicycle frames linked by greasy drive chains to a central piston assembly, tin megaphones wired to the handlebars. “Voila! The Apology Pump!” Pipo announced, gesturing grandly. “Unlimited, crystal-clear water from the deep earth-vein! All you have to do is pedal! And… sing! Very loudly!” Kanto stumbled into the underground vault, gaping at the machinery. “Sing? For water? Are you out of your mind?” Pipo held up a small, scroll-like paper. “Oh, not just any singing, Kanto, my dear brother! Personalized apologies! The louder and more heartfelt, the more water flows! It’s a very sensitive pump, you see. Runs on… contrition-power!” He beamed. “Now, who wants to go first? Bessa, perhaps? You can start with, ‘I, Bessa Makkal, regret making fun of my brother Pipo’s dirt-digging’!” Bessa’s face flushed scarlet. “I would rather die of thirst!” she declared, her chin rising defiantly. Pipo shrugged, his smile not dimming in the slightest. “As you wish! But I do have a limited supply of cool, clean air. And the Ash Raiders are notoriously unimpressed by defiance.” Murmurs rippled across the chamber. Bands of northern marauders were rumored to strip drought-stricken settlements to clean bone. “Marauders?” Kanto blurted, knees knocking together. “The dry season barely started!” [WARNING: EXTERNAL THREAT DETECTED. ASH RAIDER ADVANCE ACCELERATED. ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 3 WEEKS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE.] [PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: SURVIVAL OF PIPO MAKKAL. SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: HUMILIATION OF FAMILY UNIT.] [RECOMMENDATION: UTILIZE EXTERNAL THREAT FOR MAXIMUM REVENGE. FAMILY UNIT MEMBERS BESSA MAKKAL, KANTO MAKKAL ARE PRIME CANDIDATES FOR BAIT. SEAL AIRLOCK. ACTIVATE 'HUNGER GAMES' PROTOCOL.] Pipo's cheek twitched. *Bait for the butcher gangs?* The words burned like bile. He looked at Bessa gnawing her chapped lips, then at Kanto's shaking knees. The past self who wrote the notebook wanted them fed to butcher hooks. That went beyond making them eat humble pie. He jammed the notebook deeper into his pocket to stop its brass corners from biting his hip. Milla remained bound to the solar altar three furlongs away; her release depended on every scrap of root magic the book yielded. “Right then, Bessa!” Pipo chirped, voice skipping up an octave. “First verse, please! Or perhaps Kanto would like to serenade us about stealing my iron spade?” He patted an oiled saddle. “The very spade that dug these drainage channels?” Kanto swung a thick leg over the rusted frame. Gripping the tin megaphone with both hands, he ground his feet onto the wooden pedals. “I, Kanto Makkal, deeply regret stealing my younger brother's trowel and selling his wheelbarrow for spiced wine!” With every wheezing rotation, the pump valve hissed, gushing a cool, foaming arc of spring water into the collection trough. Bessa hitched up her silk skirts, climbed onto the neighboring pedals, and began screeching out an inventory of every rumor she had spread about Pipo's mental competence. Pipo beamed as cups clinked together, though his thumbs dug hard into his belt. The ink-stained instruction remained burned behind his eyelids: *Seal doors. Sacrifice family.* He would outsmart his dead self's malice without abandoning Milla. A rumble shook the bedrock, dislodging flakes of clay from the ceiling. Through a slit vent near the entry chute, a smudge of black grease-smoke smudged the orange skyline over the dunes. War horns echoed through the dry air. The scavengers had arrived.