Rubble met them first.
The smooth, half-buried path broke apart as it crossed into the fringe of the town, slabs tilted at odd angles where roots had pried them up. Chunks of fallen wall lay scattered like old teeth. Kota picked his way around them, testing each step before he put his full weight down, listening to the ground.
The hum stayed steady. Deeper here. Closer to the surface.
"Smaller one," he said, eyes flicking over the options.
To their right, a square structure slumped against the hillside, one corner caved in completely. To the left, a narrow tower leaned at an angle that made his bones hurt just looking at it. Ahead, a squat, broad building crouched by the path, most of its walls still intact, roof mostly there.
He pointed to that one.
Aisha followed his finger, then nodded once.
"Less likely to collapse on our heads than that," she said, jerking her chin at the leaning tower.
"Low standards, but yeah," he said.
He led them toward it, scanning for anything that watched back.
The building's front wall had not died cleanly. Its central section was simply missing, a jagged, blackened gap opening onto shadow. Stone and some other, paler material had shattered outward in a rough cone. Shards still lay strewn across the steps, half-sunk into dirt and vine.
"Blown out," Kota murmured. "Not just… rot."
Aisha toed a charred piece near the edge of the opening. It flaked under her boot, leaving dull gray dust on the pale stone beneath.
"Explosion?" she said.
"Or something hit it hard enough," he said. "Doesn't matter which if whatever did it is gone."
"If," she echoed under her breath.
They stepped inside.
The air changed at the threshold—cooler, touched with a dry, chalky smell under the green. The hum underfoot grew faint, muffled by the layers of old material between them and whatever beat in this world's bones.
The interior space was bigger than the shell outside suggested, a long, low hall that stretched back farther than the light reached. The ceiling sagged in places where time and plant had eaten supports, but most of it held. Vines drooped from above in pale curtains, leaves wide and flat, drinking what little glow filtered in.
Kota had three steps to think maybe this was safe.
On the fourth, the shadows moved.
A spray of tiny shapes burst from a tangle of vine to his left—small, winged things that looked like crumpled bits of glass given life. They scattered in a glittering cloud, buzzing so fast their forms blurred, then shot past Kota and Aisha in a ragged stream, pouring out through the broken front like someone had kicked a nest.
Aisha ducked instinctively, hand flying up to cover her eyes.
One brushed Kota's cheek as it went by, cool and hard, wings humming at a pitch he felt more than heard. Then they were gone, vanishing into the broken daylight.
Kota stood still until the last echo of their movement faded.
"Unhappy tenants," Aisha said softly.
"Better that they left," he replied. "Whatever lives here… we don't want it comfortable with us."
He waited for his heart to remember the rhythm it was supposed to be using, then moved farther in.
The room was almost eerily bare.
No furniture he recognized. No heaps of discarded things. Just open floor—sections of that pale, worked stone, now cracked and buckled where roots had forced up from below—interrupted by islands of vegetation. Thin-legged growths sprouted from fallen debris. Moss crept in fuzzy strips along the base of the walls. Vines claimed everything vertical.
The walls themselves were plain from this side, no glowing symbols, just smooth surfaces gone dull with time and dust, lines softened where age had worn them down. Here and there, rectangular scars showed where something once had been fixed and torn loose.
"People stripped it," Kota said. "Or whatever passed for people here."
"Or it was never meant to have much inside," Aisha said. "Utility building. Storage. I wish I'd paid more attention in Marcus's history rants."
Kota's mouth twitched.
Marcus had never needed much encouragement to talk about the "old world"—not alien ruins, but the factories and depots and processing yards that had once fed better parts of Earth. Kota had run in and out of those kinds of places more than once, chasing rumors of forgotten crates or scrap to sell.
He knew how to look for leftovers.
"I'll check for anything that didn't want to rot," he said.
"You mean metal," she said.
"Metal doesn't mold," he said. "Usually."
He started along the right-hand wall, Aisha taking the left.
He moved the way he did back home when he went after scraps: eyes tuned for edges and colors that didn't match, ears open for the wrong creak. He nudged aside drifts of dust and leaf, levered up broken panels where the ground gave a little different underfoot. Most of it was just… nothing. Old shell. Holes.
He found a length of material that might have been pipe once. It was eaten through in three places, edges crumbling. He left it. A handful of bite-sized fragments of something rubbery clung stubbornly to the floor in one corner; he pried one up, stretched it between his fingers, then tossed it aside when it snapped.
Useless. Or at least, not immediately life-saving.
There were doorways off the main hall—just squared gaps in the walls, no doors left. Kota checked each in turn.
The first "room" was a shallow alcove, half-filled with some collapsed unit, its innards a tangle of dead, stiff tubing and panels shot through with faint lines of color. Whatever it had done no longer cared.
The second and third were similar—smaller spaces, more ruins of things Aisha would probably have named and Kota only saw as potential blades or plates.
He was halfway through the last doorway when Aisha's voice cut across the quiet.
"Kota! Come see this!"
Nothing in her tone screamed panic. Curiosity, yes. That didn't stop his body from reacting like she'd yelled fire.
He pushed away from the wall and ran.
His boots marked a dull rhythm on the stone as he cut back through the main hall, ducked a hanging curtain of vine, and slid slightly on a patch where damp and dust had mixed to slime. He caught himself on the frame of the doorway Aisha had gone through earlier and looked in.
She was in a room no bigger than Marcus's workshop back home, light slanting in from a crack high in the wall. Vines trailed down like lines of script. A block of something once functional sat against the far wall, its face cracked open.
Aisha crouched on the floor in the middle of the space, one knee down, the other up to rest her arm on. Her injured leg was the planted one, he noticed—she was favoring it without thinking. In front of her, on a relatively clear patch of stone, something small and pale-blue quivered.
For a startled second he thought she'd dropped a jelly from the market back home into this nightmare.
Then it moved on its own.
The creature was about the size of his boot from toe to heel, maybe a little shorter. Its body was a rounded lump of translucent flesh, tinted milky blue, the surface glossy with a faint, inner sheen. It had no real "front" or "back" that he could see, just a general ovoid shape.
From underneath, thick, stubby appendages protruded—many of them, each no longer than his thumb, ending in little darkened nubs. Twenty? More? They rippled in waves as it shifted, lifting part of its body and scooting itself a few centimeters at a time in a series of tiny, determined jounces.
It jiggled when it moved. All of it.
Right now, it was pressed close to Aisha's hand, its… head? side?… tilted up.
She held a blue berry between thumb and forefinger, the kind they'd picked near the pool—the ones that had made his tongue fizz and everything taste like lightning. She lowered it cautiously.
The creature's underside flexed. A round opening formed, ringed in a darker, firmer tissue. It latched onto the berry like a suction cup and pulled.
The fruit vanished inside it in one quick gulp.
The thing shivered all over, a pleased sort of wobble.
"That's disgusting," Kota said before he could stop himself.
Aisha glanced back at him, eyes bright.
"Look at it," she whispered. "It's… cute."
The creature made a faint, wet chirp. Or maybe the sound came from the way its body squished against the floor. Either way, it did another little bounce, as if agreeing.
Kota took a half-step into the room, hand not leaving the sword hilt.
"You're feeding random… slime-things," he said. "With berries that made my whole mouth go numb."
"He's fine," she said. "See? No twitching. No exploding. No… whatever would count as an allergic reaction for a… blob."
"That you can tell," Kota said. "Maybe its blood is boiling and it just—doesn't know yet."
She reached for another berry from the small pile she'd set on the floor between them. The creature's stubby legs rippled in impatient waves, pulling it fractionally closer, opening that round mouth again.
Aisha fed it.
It vacuumed the fruit up and did its happy jiggle.
"He was hiding under that panel." She nodded toward a dislodged plate of material leaning against the far wall. "Almost stepped on him. He made this little squeak. I think he was… hungry. Or upset. Or both."
"We're not adopting it," Kota said automatically.
"We might not have a choice," she said dryly. "He's sort of… attached."
As if to prove her point, the creature pulled itself forward with a surprising burst of speed, stumped over her boot, and then flowed halfway across the top of her foot, settling its whole soft weight there like a self-anchoring sandbag.
Aisha's face lit in a way he hadn't seen since before the Rift.
Something inside his chest made a small, unfamiliar twist.
"You're going to call him something," Kota said, resigned.
"Of course I am," she said. She looked down at the jiggling lump thoughtfully. "He's round. Squishy. Looks like he belongs in a bowl of soup."
"Appealing," Kota muttered.
"Dumpling," she decided.
The creature—Dumpling now, apparently—quivered. One stubby leg stuck out at an angle and wiggled before he pulled it back underneath himself. The motion sent a ripple through his body that made the light inside him shimmer for a second.
"You know it can't understand you," Kota said.
"You don't know that," Aisha shot back. "He came out when I talked to him."
"You also bribed him with food," Kota said. "That works on humans too."
"Exactly," she said. "See? Intelligence."
She peeled Dumpling gently off her boot with both hands, fingers sinking slightly into his cool, yielding surface. He flexed, then settled into her palms like he'd decided this was acceptable.
Kota watched her for a beat—watched how carefully she handled the thing, like it was both fragile and priceless. She'd been the same way with broken machines Marcus gave her, old circuit boards and manual locks she'd taken apart and reassembled for fun. Same focus, same small smile.
In the slums, anything that soft was a liability.
Here, he wasn't sure.
"Fine," he said. "You can… keep it. Him. Whatever. But if he tries to eat you, I'm not arguing I told you so. I'm just cutting."
Dumpling responded by stretching one stubby leg toward him, touching the toe of his boot. A faint tingle ran up through the leather into his toes—like the echo of the pool-water's fizz, but so light he might have imagined it.
He stepped back anyway.
They did one more circuit of the building together, Dumpling now perched on Aisha's shoulder like a fleshy, unsteady ornament. He seemed content to cling there, legs splayed for grip, body jostling with each step.
They found little more of use.
A cracked panel that might once have shown images or data lifted off its mounts in Kota's hands and crumbled as soon as he tried to test its weight. A compartment that looked promising turned out to be nothing but a cavity packed with brittle, fibrous material that fell apart like old webbing.
Still, as they moved from room to room, Kota's eyes kept drifting to corners, to edges where structure met floor.
"Looking for more pets?" Aisha asked at one point.
"Looking for more things that might chew our ankles," he said. "The one you picked up has enough legs for both of us."
"I heard that," she told Dumpling quietly. "He's just jealous because you're more useful than his sword."
Dumpling made another wet little chirp, which Aisha chose to interpret as agreement.
By the time they circled back to the entrance hall, the sky outside had shifted. The light filtering in had gone a shade duller, the gold streaks in the purple arch overhead thinning.
"How long do you think a 'day' is here?" Aisha asked, eyeing the dimming.
"Long enough that I'm not testing night outside," Kota said. "We need water if we're staying."
"We still have some," she said.
"Not enough for 'I don't know how long,'" he said. "And I don't want to go back to the pool in the dark."
She opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again, chewing that over.
They checked the rear of the structure last, through a narrower corridor that smelled faintly different—less green, more dust and something metallic. At the end, a wide doorway yawned onto a back chamber.
No vines here.
Instead, something more deliberate dominated the space.
A rectangular unit sat against the far wall, almost as tall as Kota and twice as wide. Its sides were smooth, a dull, off-white that had picked up streaks of grime and age but hadn't cracked like stone. Smooth ribs ran around it horizontally, reinforcing the shape. Short, thick legs held it off the floor.
A tank.
Pipes—some intact, some severed—connected to its base and sides, disappearing into the wall and floor. Near the front, a panel jutted out with a cluster of… controls. Discs. Levers. Angled protrusions.
"It looks like a storage cell," Aisha said quietly. "For… something. Fuel. Coolant. Water?"
"If it was fuel, the explosion would've started here," Kota said, eyeing the unburned surfaces. "Probably."
"Probably," she echoed.
He stepped closer.
The hum in the ground was almost nonexistent here, cut off by layers of worked material. The air felt still, heavy.
Up close, the tank's surface showed hairline scratches but no deep corrosion. He put his palm flat against it.
Cool.
He rapped his knuckles gently against the side. The sound that came back was duller than he expected, not the hollow thump of empty metal, but the thick, muted note of something not-quite-solid inside.
"Still holding," he said.
He crouched by the panel.
The controls made no sense. There were no labels he could read, just raised lines and indents. He tried turning one of the knobs. It resisted, then gave with a creak, rotating a quarter-turn. Nothing obvious happened.
He tried another.
"Kota," Aisha warned.
"We need to know if it's useful," he said.
He thought of Marcus, elbow-deep in some dead machine, muttering to himself while Kota held the light.
"Everything's just pieces," Marcus had said once, grease on his face. "You try something, you watch what moves. If you blow yourself up, you did it wrong."
Comforting.
He watched for leaks. Smelled for anything sharp or burning. The world stayed as it was.
He flipped a small, flat piece of material up with his thumb. Beneath it, a recessed slot awaited something he didn't have. He left that alone.
His fingers found a lever half-hidden below the main cluster, its surface worn smoother than the others. Use left traces.
He wrapped his hand around it, braced his boots, and pulled.
At first, it didn't move. Then, with a low groan, it came down in a short arc.
For a heartbeat, nothing changed.
Then a hiss whispered through the chamber, subtle but distinct. A section of the front panel slid back by a hand's width, revealing a dark, rounded opening. From within, a pale, clear stream of liquid gushed down into a shallow indentation at the base of the unit, then overflowed onto the floor in a thin, steady sheet.
Kota jerked back on instinct.
The liquid puddled against the stone, spreading. Where it touched old dust, it darkened it. No smoke. No sizzle. No sudden growth.
It smelled like… very little. Faintly metallic, maybe. Clean in a way that didn't fit the rest of the world.
"Could be anything," Aisha said, hovering in the doorway now, shoulders tight. Dumpling huddled against her neck like a collar of cool jelly.
"Could be water," Kota said.
"Could be acid," she countered. "Or liquid Resonance. Or alien booze. Or—"
"Only one way to find out," he said.
He moved to the edge of the spreading puddle, crouched, dipped two fingers into it, and brought them up. The drops clung to his skin for a second, then trailed back down.
He touched a fingertip to his wrist.
Cool damp. A faint tingle bloomed under the skin—not sharp, not burning. More like what the pool had done to his mouth, but stretched thin and distant.
He sniffed his fingers. No sharpness that said chemicals the way Marcus's cleaning fluids did.
"Don't," Aisha said when he lifted his hand toward his mouth.
"We don't last long without water," he said, eyes not leaving the clear wetness. "You know that."
"We also don't last long with our insides melted," she said.
He hesitated.
Back home, he'd drunk worse. Rust runoff. Condensation caught off corroded pipes. Whatever the slums coughed up that didn't smell like it would kill him right away.
He thought of the pool again. That jolt-taste, the numbing, the way his body had buzzed.
He needed to know if this was that.
He brought his fingers to his tongue and licked.
The liquid was cool. Almost tasteless. A faint mineral edge. The tingle jumped, more noticeable now that it was direct—like he'd pressed his tongue against a battery, but the current was low and careful, more curiosity than threat.
It faded after a few heartbeats, leaving no numbness behind.
Kota exhaled slowly.
"Not like the lake," he said.
"That's not the same as 'safe,'" Aisha said.
"No," he agreed. "But it's closer."
He rinsed his fingers in the falling stream, then cupped his hand and let it fill. The liquid gathered and held instead of beading off.
He drank.
This time, he took more than a taste. The cool slid down his throat, settling in his stomach with a weight that felt… normal. No sudden rush. No fizzing in his veins. Just the basic sense of something his body recognized as "water-ish" and decided not to fight.
He waited.
His heart stayed where it was supposed to be. His head didn't spin. The hum in the world remained the same dull presence at the base of his skull.
He looked over his shoulder.
Aisha's eyes were locked on him, jaw clenched. Her fingers had gone white where they gripped the doorway.
"Well?" she asked.
"If it's killing me," he said, "it's taking its time."
She stared another beat, then sighed, shoulders dipping.
"You're going to keep drinking it even if I say no," she said.
"Yeah," he said.
"Then at least let me be stupid with you," she said, stepping fully into the room.
Dumpling made a soft burble as the new scent hit him. Aisha stroked a careful finger over his surface, then pried him off her shoulder and set him gently on a nearby crate-like protrusion, out of splash range.
"No swimming," she told him. "You don't know what's in there either."
He wobbled once in what might have been indignation.
Kota stood aside to give her space, refilling his cupped hand and holding it out.
She hesitated for half a heartbeat longer, then leaned forward and sipped from his hands.
Her lips brushed his skin, cool.
She shut her eyes as she swallowed, testing. Kota watched for a flinch, a wince, anything.
"Less weird than the pool," she said finally. "Still… something. Like a ghost of a shock." Her eyes opened. "Marcus would love this. 'Industrial-grade hydration solution,'" she added, imitating his gruff tone.
"He'd find a way to bottle it and sell it," Kota said.
"And then drink most of it himself," she said.
They fell into an awkward rhythm then, taking turns filling their canteens as best they could. The mouths didn't fit perfectly under the trickling outlet, so they had to angle them and use their hands as crude funnels, spilling as much as they caught. The floor drank whatever they wasted.
By the time both containers were full, the ache in Kota's throat had eased. His body felt… less brittle.
"These tanks are usually connected to something wider," Aisha said quietly, tapping one of the intact pipes with her knuckle. "A system. This whole city might still have veins of… this… running through it. For now."
"For now," Kota echoed.
He pulled the lever back up cautiously.
The stream slowed, then cut off. The open section slid shut with a soft, decisive thud, leaving only a faint dampness on the panel and the slowly spreading puddle on the floor