Shigen didn't argue.
He waited.
Aoi stood at the edge of the valley as the last snow of the morning settled, watching routes disappear beneath fresh white. Her posture was still, composed—like someone already halfway gone.
"They'll move without me," she said quietly. "They always do."
Shigen joined her, careful not to crowd the space she kept around herself. "They'll move," he agreed. "But not together."
She didn't respond.
"They're scattering because they think that's the safest shape," he continued. "And sometimes they're right. But not this time."
That made her turn.
"You don't know this land," she said. "You don't know what follows us."
"I know patterns," Shigen replied. "And I know fear makes people choose short-term safety over long-term survival."
Aoi studied him, eyes sharp. "You want them to gather again. That makes them visible."
"No," he said calmly. "I want them to transition."
He knelt, drawing lines in the snow with a gloved finger. Not a map—a flow.
"Here," he said. "Fire Country border regions. Low political interest. Terrain interference. Multiple exit vectors. Not a village. A corridor."
Aoi frowned despite herself.
"You're proposing a moving refuge."
"I'm proposing a place that doesn't look like one."
He looked up at her. "You've been thinking in terms of what you can abandon. I'm thinking in terms of what you can carry."
Silence stretched.
"You don't get to decide this," she said finally.
"No," he agreed. "You do."
Then, softer: "But they trust you. And right now, they're exhausted. Someone needs to tell them it's allowed to survive together."
Aoi's jaw tightened.
"They'll die if I'm wrong."
"They'll die if no one risks being right."
That landed.
That night, Aoi spoke to the elders again—not as a weapon, not as a shield, but as a bridge. She didn't promise safety. She promised direction.
Shigen didn't sit in the chamber.
He spent the night elsewhere.
With the children.
He helped pack without being asked. Carried water. Listened more than he spoke. When a boy asked why he didn't freeze the ground when he walked, Shigen smiled faintly.
"Because I'm bad at it," he said. "You're not."
That answer earned him quiet stares.
He learned names.
He learned which elders preferred silence and which filled it out of fear. He learned which families had already lost too much to argue anymore.
And slowly—without realizing it—he stopped being the outsider.
Aoi watched this from a distance at first.
Then closer.
Then not at all.
By the third day, she found him sitting with an elderly woman, playing shogi with stones chipped from ice. He lost on purpose—badly—and let her tease him for it.
"That was deliberate," Aoi said when he rejoined her.
"Yes," he replied. "She needed the win."
A pause.
"She laughed," Aoi said.
"So did you," he replied gently.
She didn't deny it.
The move began at dawn.
Not all at once. Not loudly. Groups flowed out along paths that only existed because Aoi had once walked them. Shigen coordinated timing, spacing, misinformation—not with orders, but suggestions that made sense even to those who didn't trust him yet.
When it was done, the valley felt empty—but not hollow.
They stood at the last ridge together.
"You didn't have to stay," Aoi said.
"I wanted to," Shigen replied. "And I wanted them to know someone would."
She looked at him then—not guarded, not distant.
Just tired.
"You're changing things," she said.
"I hope so," he answered. "Because I don't think you were meant to carry this alone."
For a long moment, the cold held its breath.
Then Aoi exhaled.
Not a smile.
But something close enough that it mattered.
And Shigen understood that hearts like hers didn't melt all at once.
They thawed slowly.
From the edges inward.
One warm decision at a time.