Kota ran.
There wasn't time to think about what the runes had done, or why the glass had held that kind of force, or what his mind had whispered a heartbeat too late.
There was only Aisha, crumpled where she'd landed.
He skidded on loose dust, boots scraping, sword clattering from his grip as he dropped to his knees beside her.
"Aisha."
She lay half on her side, half on her back, one leg twisted at an awkward angle. Dust speckled her face and hair. Tiny cuts tracked across her cheek and forearms, already beading with blood. Her back, where her shirt had ridden up from the slide, was a mess of scraped skin and raw red streaks. She was breathing, chest rising and falling too fast.
A thin, sharp piece of stone jutted from the middle of her left thigh.
Kota's stomach lurched.
"Aisha," he said again, forcing his voice to stay level. "Hey. Can you hear me?"
Her eyelids fluttered. Slowly, she blinked up at him. For a moment her gaze didn't focus; then it snapped to his face like a magnet.
"Kota…?"
"Yeah." He let out a quick breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "I'm here."
Tears pooled in her eyes. She tried to move, then gasped and went rigid, jaw clenched.
"Don't," he said quickly, one hand hovering over her shoulder without quite touching. "Don't move yet. Just— stay still a second."
He forced himself to pull his eyes away from her face and look.
Small cuts everywhere—arms, shins, the side of her neck—where debris had peppered her. A wide, angry scrape across her back where she'd hit and skidded. The biggest problem, though, was obvious: that jagged shard of stone embedded in the front of her thigh, a few inches above the knee. Blood welled slowly around it, dark against her skin and the fabric of her shorts.
He reached for her wrist and pressed two fingers to the inside. Her pulse thudded there: fast, but strong.
"Okay," he said under his breath, mostly to himself. "Okay. You're alive. That's good."
"Can't… move," Aisha whispered, her voice shaking. Tears slid sideways along her temples into her hair. "Hurts—"
"I know. I know." He swallowed. "Where is it worst?"
Her hand lifted a few centimeters off the ground and made a weak, shaky motion toward her leg. The movement alone made her hiss, breath catching between her teeth. She let her arm drop again.
Kota followed the direction and focused fully on the wound.
The shard was narrow but long, like a sliver of glass-turned-stone, driven in at a slight angle. It hadn't gone straight through; he couldn't see an exit wound on the back of her leg. That was something. But it was deep enough that the thought of pulling it free twisted his insides.
He reached out and brushed the edge of the stone, just enough to test how firmly it was lodged.
Aisha screamed.
The sound tore through the ruined street, raw and high and full of panic. Kota jerked his hand back like he'd been burned.
"Okay," he said again, this time more sharply. "Okay, don't touch that. That was— that was dumb. My fault."
Tears spilled freely now, tracking through the dust on her cheeks.
"It… it feels like it's… all the way in," she gasped. "I can't— I can't move my leg—"
He shook his head. "It's not all the way. It didn't come out the back. That's… better than it could've been." Not good, he thought. Just less bad.
He tried to make his voice firm, steady, something she could cling to.
"We need to get you back to the shelter," he said. "I can't fix this out here. There's too much dust. Too open. If another shockwave hits, or a beast—"
Her fingers twitched, trying—and failing—to grip at the ground.
"Kota, it hurts," she said, voice cracking.
"I know," he said quietly. "I'm not going to leave you here. We're moving. I'll carry you."
He slid one arm under her shoulders as carefully as he could. Even that made her whimper, muscles seizing from the scrapes on her back. He hissed sympathetic air through his teeth.
"Sorry. Sorry, I've got you," he murmured. "Wrap your arms around my neck. Use the right one if you can—your left might twist your leg more."
Her right arm, scraped but functional, lifted and looped around the back of his neck. Her fingers dug into his skin involuntarily as another wave of pain rippled through her. He eased his other arm under the backs of her knees, careful to avoid the protruding shard.
Dumpling appeared at her waist, scrambling up from somewhere in the dust. He looked worse for wear himself: fur puffed out, one ear bent, eyes wide and glassy. He chirped anxiously and clawed his way up her torso to her shoulder, where he latched on, trembling.
"Yeah, yeah, you too," Kota muttered. "Hang on."
He drew in a deep breath, braced his legs, and lifted.
Aisha gasped, every muscle in her body stiffening. Her nails bit into the back of his neck. The movement jostled the stone in her leg just enough to send a thin trickle of fresh blood down over his arm.
"Breathe," he said through clenched teeth. "In. Out. Don't hold it. It's going to hurt, I'm not going to lie. But I need you conscious. With me?"
Her forehead pressed against the side of his neck, hot and damp. He felt the tremor of her nod more than he saw it.
"With… you," she whispered.
He adjusted his grip, trying to keep her leg as stable as possible, the shard angled away from anything that might bump it. Dumpling dug his little claws into her torn shirt, making a soft, terrified chittering sound that vibrated against Kota's collarbone.
The shelter was roughly an hour's walk from here at their normal pace, if they cut through alleys and didn't stop.
Carrying someone who was bleeding? Longer.
He tightened his arms and started moving.
The northern streets felt different now.
They'd come here earlier with a cautious kind of curiosity, taking in details, speculating about function and history. Now everything narrowed to immediate threats: unstable walls, loose debris, any path that might make Aisha's injuries worse.
The Treacherous Mind whispered constantly.
That alley's floor is fractured; step there and you'll jolt her leg. That support beam is one good shove away from falling. That pile of rubble is hiding a slope that will send you both down.
Each intrusion brought a stab behind his eyes, but Kota didn't push it away this time. He rode the edges, skimming for the most important bits and backing off before the worst of the pain hit.
Aisha's grip on his neck slackened, then tightened again as she fought through each jostle. Her breathing sawed in and out, uneven.
"Talk to me," he said after a few minutes, voice low. "If you can."
"About… what?" she rasped.
"Doesn't matter. Just don't go quiet on me without warning."
A pause. Then, faintly, bitterly: "This is… not how I pictured… first trip to another world."
He huffed. "You pictured the part where I almost died to a silver beast pretty accurately, then?"
"I pictured… you not being… an idiot with orbs," she shot back weakly.
"That's fair."
Another step. Another. His arms burned. The shard in her leg watched every movement with imagined malice.
He almost didn't notice the first flash.
Something bright flickered at the edge of his vision, like sunlight on metal except there was no sun, only that diffuse purple glow.
His entire body reacted before his mind caught up. Instinct. Or the new thing in his head. Or both.
He stopped dead.
"Kota?" Aisha's voice was little more than a breath. "Why—"
The Treacherous Mind surged.
Impact vector. Lateral. Right. One second. Get low.
His muscles obeyed faster than thought. He pivoted and ducked behind a half-collapsed wall, curling his body around Aisha as much as he could without crushing her injured leg.
A heartbeat later, the world rang.
Something hit where they'd been standing with a noise like a bell being struck inside stone. Air hammered against his back, shoving him hard into the rubble. Dust exploded outward in a savage cloud, choking and blinding.
Aisha let out a small, strangled sound. Not the full scream from before—she was too tired for that now—but the hurt in it went straight through him.
The impact hadn't knocked them over—he'd already been braced too low—but the shock had rippled through her leg all the same.
He crouched there, heart pounding, ears ringing, every instinct screaming at him to move and hide and fight all at once.
"Sorry," he said hoarsely, knowing it was nowhere near enough.
She didn't answer. Even in the grit-filled air, he could see fresh tears cutting clean tracks down her filthy cheeks.
He lowered her, as gently as he could, onto a relatively clear patch of ground tucked against the base of the wall. Her leg shifted in spite of his care. She sucked in air sharply, fingers clawing at the broken pavement.
"Stay here," he said, though neither of them had much choice in the matter. "Don't—"
"Move, yeah," she whispered. "Got it."
Dumpling scuttled from her shoulder to her chest, then back again, clearly torn between wanting to be close and wanting to be anywhere else. He settled finally half under her hair, only his eyes and the tips of his ears peeking out.
Kota turned toward the haze.
Dust hung thick, turning the world into a swirling gray-brown fog. He couldn't see more than a few meters ahead; everything else was shifting shadow and suggestion.
A low sound rolled through it. Not the ring of the impact. Deeper. Wet and ragged, a cross between a moan and a growl. It raised the small hairs on the back of his neck.
He narrowed his eyes, wiping his forearm across his face. The movement left a thin grit-layer on his already-scraped skin.
He reached back blindly, fingers finding the familiar worn leather of his sword's grip. The weapon slid from its sheath with a soft rasp.
"Kota," Aisha said, barely audible. "What… was that?"
"Something big enough that I don't want to meet it up close if I don't have to," he said. "Stay down. If anything gets through the dust, you crawl away from the noise, not toward it. Got it?"
"Not funny," she whispered.
He couldn't help it; a corner of his mouth twitched anyway. "Wasn't trying to be."
He edged along the broken wall, keeping low, until he found a gap where the dust shifted just slightly differently—the hint of open space beyond.
He peered through.
A shape moved in the fog. Tall. Wrong.
The Treacherous Mind lunged.
For a split second, everything sharpened.
The dust parted enough to show a hunched figure on two legs, its outline jerked and unnatural. It had no fur, no scales—just skin, stretched thin over bone, cracked and dry like old leather left in the sun too long. Its arms hung too low, ending in elongated hands with hooked, curved claws. Its head jutted forward, neck corded, jaw slack and open in a silent, ragged snarl.
Words slammed into Kota's mind.
Stage: Awakening – Foundation Tier 2.
Beast Type: Gutted Wanderer.
Behavioral Note: Drawn to areas of unstable Resonance. Territorial, semi-mindless. Attacks perceived movement. Carnivorous scavenger with high pain tolerance.
Pain spiked through his forehead.
He jerked his head away, eyes squeezing shut instinctively. The information cut off like someone had slammed a door. He staggered, one hand catching the edge of the wall to steady himself.
"Kota?" Aisha called, alarm coloring the pain in her voice.
"I see it," he said through gritted teeth. "Don't worry. It's… not the worst thing out there."
Tier 2, he thought. If Tier 1 is the small stuff, Tier 2 is… what? Neighborhood killer? Something a trained squad could take if they're careful.
He was one slum rat with a half-ruined sword and a girl bleeding out behind him.
The gutted wanderer moved closer, shambling through the dust, head swinging as if sniffing, though Kota saw no nose. Its chest cavity, he realized, was partially open—ribs warped outward, empty. No organs inside. Just darkness.
A low, keening cry slipped between its teeth, then built, layering on itself. The air vibrated with it.
He tightened his grip on the sword, weighing options, mapping the terrain in his head. If it charged, he'd have to—
A blur of movement cut across his focus.
Something slammed into the gutted wanderer from the side, all muscle and momentum.
The first beast was driven back with a guttural, surprised roar. Dust billowed anew around the impact.
Kota blinked, thrown for a second.
A second creature.
He caught only flashes through the swirling cloud: a thicker torso, broader shoulders, dark fur or armor mottled with pale streaks, a wide head with curved horn-like growths or bone ridges. Claws flashed as it raked at the wanderer's exposed chest, tearing strips of dried flesh free.
The gutted wanderer responded in kind, its long arms whipping out, claws scraping across the other beast's flank. The sound of impact was heavy and sick: flesh on flesh, bone near breaking.
They were fighting each other.
Kota stared, brain swallowing and reassembling that fact.
Not hunting us, he realized. Not coordinated. Just two predators in the same space, each too set on claiming it to notice the intruders immediately.
For a precious heartbeat, he and Aisha didn't exist to them.
"Change of plan," he muttered.
He backed away from the gap and moved in a low crouch to Aisha's side again.
"What's happening?" she demanded. Her eyes were wide, face bleached pale beneath dust and blood.
"Two beasts," he said shortly. "Fighting each other. We're not the main event. I'm not going to wait around until they remember we're here."
He slid his arm under her shoulders again.
"Can you hold on?" he asked. "I have to move fast. I'll try to keep it smooth, but… it's going to be rough."
She swallowed, gaze flicking involuntarily toward the noise of struggling beasts in the distance.
"You're… not going out there to fight them," she said, half-statement, half-prayer.
"Not today," he said. "I'm not that stupid."
He lifted.
She bit down on a cry, nearly crushing his neck with her grip. Her leg barely moved, but even the small jolt sent fresh blood trailing down over his forearm.
He turned his back on the sounds of the beast battle and darted between two close-set structures—a narrow gap just wide enough for a person to slip through sideways. The Treacherous Mind whispered: Good. Limited angle of approach. Harder to follow quickly.
Dust still hung in the air, but thinner here. He could see more of the broken street ahead. He aimed for routes that offered cover: leaning walls, piles of debris, low doorways they could duck through if something else decided to join the party.
His lungs burned. His arms shook. Sweat slicked his palms where they pressed against the back of Aisha's shoulders and the crook of her knees.
He didn't let himself slow down.
The beast noises faded gradually behind them, swallowed by the heavy, humming silence of the city. Only when he reached a stretch of street he recognized—cracked stones, a particular crooked pillar, a toppled statue they'd passed before—did he allow his pace to drop from almost-sprint to a hard, steady walk.
The central square wasn't far now. From there, the path to their shelter was burned into his muscles.
Aisha's head sagged against his chest, her breaths coming in harsher bursts but less frequently.
"Hey," he said, voice rough. "Stay with me. Talk."
"I… don't want to," she whispered.
"Not optional," he said. "You can insult me. You can yell at me for dragging you here. You can tell me how you're going to ace all the Academy written exams and make me look like an idiot. Just… say something."
"Can't… think," she murmured. "Just hurts."
He swallowed. "Okay. Then listen instead. We're almost to the square. Then it's just past the big creepy orb, then right to the broken doorway with the crack in the frame. You know the one."
"Yeah." Her voice was barely audible. "Home sweet… ruin."
"Exactly."
The purple light shifted subtly overhead as time crawled on, the sky's strange streaks seeming to pulse in slow waves. When the central orb's familiar bulk finally loomed between two shattered buildings, Kota had to force himself not to avert his gaze like a flinching animal.
He didn't look at its surface. Not directly. He kept his eyes on the ground, on Aisha, on Dumpling clinging to her shoulder. The memory of blood streaming from his eyes and nose was more than enough warning.
The orb hummed faintly as they passed, a vibration he felt more in his bones than his ears. The warmth in his core twitched in response, but he refused to let the Treacherous Mind grab onto anything new here.
Not now.
Not with Aisha bleeding in his arms.
The path from the square to their shelter felt longer than usual. Every uneven stone was a potential hazard. Every slight misstep risked jarring her leg.
By the time they reached the half-collapsed building that had become their base, Kota's arms were numb and his legs shook.
He ducked through the narrow entrance, half-turning his body so Aisha's injured leg wouldn't bump the rough edges of the stone. Inside, the shade swallowed some of the glare, making the world feel smaller, closer, safer by contrast.
"Almost there," he rasped.
Their sleeping area lay in the back, where the roof was mostly intact and the walls cut the worst of the wind. He lowered her onto the flattest stretch of scavenged padding—a mix of old insulation, stripped fabric, and whatever else they'd pieced together.
Aisha cried out as her leg shifted during the descent, her fingers digging bruising crescents into his shoulders before finally letting go. Sweat and tears had turned the dust on her face into muddy streaks.
Kota crouched beside her for a second, catching his breath. His shirt, already in bad shape before today, was now stiff with sweat and streaked with drying blood—hers and his.
He stripped it off in one motion and rolled it tightly, then pressed it into her hand.
"Bite down on this," he said. "Not yet. Just… in a second. When I say."
Her fingers closed weakly around the bundle of fabric. Her eyes were glassy but focused on his face with unnerving intensity.
"Kota," she said, voice small and raw. "You're… scaring me."
"Good," he said, and his own voice surprised him with its roughness. "You should be scared. So you don't try to be brave and move when you shouldn't."
Her mouth twitched like she wanted to argue, then fell still.
He shifted down, kneeling beside her injured leg.
The shard of stone jutted from her thigh, surrounded by torn skin and blood. Now that they were out of immediate danger, he could see more clearly: the entry wound was jagged, the stone not perfectly smooth. The swelling around it worried him. He didn't know if it had nicked anything vital underneath, but if it had, the blood would probably be worse.
Probably.
He pushed the thought aside. He didn't have enough information to think in probablies.
"We have to get it out," he said quietly. "Leaving it in means it keeps tearing things every time you move. And if it's blocking blood or pressure, that's… bad too."
She swallowed. "Is there… another choice?"
"Not a good one," he said. "We don't have proper bandages. Or antiseptic. Or painkillers." He forced his tone calm. "What we have is this shirt, some water, a half-understood plant outside that might be useful later if we don't both die first, and a very determined small alien furball."
Dumpling blinked up at him from Aisha's shoulder, as if he understood and resented being dragged into this.
A very small, pained snort escaped Aisha. It broke on the end, twisting into a choked sound dangerously close to a sob.
"Bite," he said gently, tapping the rolled shirt.
She lifted it to her mouth and clamped her teeth around it. Her eyes never left his.
He drew his sword.
It wasn't the right tool for this. Too big. Too crude. But the edge was still sharp, and he needed something that could cut her shorts away without tugging the stone.
"Don't move," he repeated, more for himself than for her.
He slid the flat of the blade under the hem of her shorts, careful not to touch her skin. With slow, controlled motions, he sliced upward along the outer seam, stopping just above the wound. The fabric parted, exposing more of her thigh and the full extent of the damage.
The hole was about the width of three of his fingers side by side. If the stone had been any wider, it might've shattered the bone beneath. As it was, he couldn't tell yet if the femur had been cracked or just bruised.
The sight made his own thighs ache in sympathy.
He set the sword aside and tore the remaining fabric back with his hands, rolling it around itself so it wouldn't dangle and catch on anything. He needed clear access.
Then he took her leg gently in both hands—one above the wound, one below, careful not to squeeze near the entry point.
Her whole body tensed.
He took a slow breath.
"On three," he said, though he knew that if he actually waited for three, his own courage might crack.
Her eyes were wide above the bundle of cloth clenched between her teeth. Dumpling pressed himself against her neck, claws pricking her skin lightly, as if trying to hold her down.
"One," Kota said. "Two—"
He pulled.
The shard resisted for a fraction of a second, caught in torn muscle and meat. Then it came free with a sick, wet slide.
Aisha's whole body arched off the bedding.
The scream that tore out of her was muffled by the shirt but still ripped through the ruined room, raw and animal. Her fingers clawed at the floor, nails breaking against the stone. Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes, tracking down into her hair.
Blood followed the stone in a hot, sudden rush, welling up from the newly opened canal in her leg.
Kota dropped the shard aside—it hit the ground with a dull, ugly clink—and slammed his rolled shirt back into place, pressing hard over the wound with both hands.
"Breathe," he ground out. "Breathe, Aisha. In. Out. Come on."
She trembled beneath his hands, muscles jumping and seizing. The scream died down into ragged, strangled sounds around the cloth caught between her teeth.
He kept the pressure steady, counting silently—one, two, three, four—as blood soaked the fabric, hot against his palms. For a terrifying moment, it felt like it would never slow.
Then, gradually, the flow began to ease. Not stop—he could still feel the warmth spreading, see the dark stain widening—but it was no longer a full, pulsing rush. More of a steady ooze.
"Good," he muttered. "Good, that's… that's something."
He peeled one hand away just long enough to grab a cleaner strip of cloth from their pile of scavenged materials—one of the less-filthy pieces they'd been hoarding for this kind of emergency. He packed it carefully into the wound itself, pushing it in with his fingers to apply pressure from the inside, then pressed his shirt back over the top.
Aisha made a thin, broken sound, but she didn't arch again. Her strength was nearly spent.
"Sorry," he whispered. "I know. I know. Just one more part."
He worked quickly, tearing off another long strip of cloth and winding it firmly around her thigh, over his bunched-up shirt, securing the padding in place. Each wrap pulled the makeshift bandage tighter, compressing the wound, trapping the worst of the bleeding.
By the time he tied it off, his hands were slick and red to the wrists.
He let the full weight of his palms rest over the bandage for a few more breaths, just to be sure. Aisha's eyes shimmered, unfocused, but they stayed open, fixed on the broken ceiling.
Slowly, carefully, he eased his pressure back.
No sudden surge of blood. The bandage stayed dark, but it wasn't immediately overwhelmed.
He sat back on his heels.
Aisha spat the mangled shirt out of her mouth. It landed on the floor beside her with a wet thump, stained deep crimson.
Her voice, when it came, was barely a rasp. "That… fucking sucked."
"Yeah," Kota said, the word coming out on a shaky exhale. His own heart hammered so hard it hurt. "You did good."
She managed a weak glare. "Don't… ever… say 'on three' again."
He huffed something that might have been a laugh, or a sob, or both.
"Deal."
Dumpling crept down from her shoulder, sniffed cautiously at the bandage, then retreated to curl up in the hollow of her collarbone, shivering.
Kota wiped his blood-slicked hands on his ruined jeans, smearing red into old stains. His head throbbed in time with Aisha's pulse in her leg, the Treacherous Mind whispering unhelpful fragments about blood loss and infection and shock.
He pushed the whispers away.
One thing at a time.
"We're going to keep you alive," he said quietly, more a promise than a statement. "We made it through silver beasts and orbs and whatever that rune thing was. We're not stopping here."
Aisha closed her eyes, breathing in shallow, uneven pulls.
"Don't… make promises… you can't keep," she murmured.
He looked at her—at the sweat on her forehead, the dirt on her cheeks, the bandage wrapped tight around her torn leg.
"Watch me," he said.
Outside, the dead city hummed softly, as if listening.
Inside their broken shelter, with blood drying on his hands and the weight of too much new knowledge pressing behind his eyes, Kota settled in beside her and prepared for a long, brutal vigil.