This hallway wasn’t like the others. No modern prints. No minimalist frames. These walls were lined with ancient paintings, each one encased in carved dark wood lacquered to a mirror-shine.
The glass was museum-grade, the kind used to protect priceless artifacts from humidity and heat. The gold leaf edging around each frame glowed under the warm overhead light, catching on the brushstrokes like tiny sparks.
Wealth.
Power.
Lineage.
People filled the canvases—women in ceremonial robes, warriors in armor, children kneeling beside low tables, men fishing at dawn.
But none of that was what caught me.
It was the animal-shaped shadows behind the people.
What the fuck? Can this day get any crazier?
This wasn’t stylized inkwork either. Some of the people in the painting had winged shadows. Others had horned shadows. One had a shadow with a feline body and a tail.
I stopped in front of the painting and parted my lips.
Hiro looked at me. “What’s wrong?”
I was so fucking speechless I just walked on to the next painting and stared at it for several seconds.
In it, a man kneeled in prayer with the shadow of a monkey rising above him.
I got a closer look.
The man’s human body stayed small and humbled with his forehead touching the floorboards.
Meanwhile, the monkey-shadow towered over in darkness. Gold tinged its outline. The monkey’s limbs stretched long. Its spine arched.
And there was this wild intelligence in the monkey shadow’s face.
The brushwork was so detailed I could see individual strands of fur, each stroke devoted and deliberate, like the artist had loved and feared this shadow at the same time.
My skin prickled.
Hiro watched me. “Nyomi?”
I walked on and stopped at the next painting with a woman kneeling beside a stone well—her actual form serene, peaceful, but the crane-shadow behind her was enormous, wings curved like a crescent moon and a beak tilted toward the sky.
I looked at Hiro. “Why. . .did they paint shadows like this?”
He shifted his gaze to the painting. “These are old paintings. Kenji jokes that they came with the island.”
I shivered. “What does that mean?”
“When his mother’s people gave him the island, they also gave him these. He keeps them here because he says that the images make him feel odd.” Hiro shrugged. “Anyway, we should go.”
“But. . .” I held up my hand. “Do you know why they painted these animal shadows behind the people?”
“Not really, but I have a few guesses.”
I snapped my view to him. “Could you tell me?”
“When we were children, Kenji’s mother used to tell us a story. I think it was a legend from her clan.”
