The darkness inside Kota's mind was not the quiet void of a regular sleep. It was a heavy, suffocating ocean of cold obsidian that pressed down on his consciousness until his thoughts felt entirely disconnected from his skin.
A sharp, mocking laugh echoed through the blackness, ringing like silver bells against stone.
"Why are you lying there, boy?" the woman's voice asked, her tone dripping with smooth amusement. "Look at you. You are writhing in pain over a tiny drop of spilled essence. It is truly pathetic."
"My Yen," Kota managed to grunt, his mental voice strained and raw. "It's too much. I cant move. The friction is burning right through my chest."
The woman paused for a while, the silence hanging heavy in the void before she let out a soft, dismissive sigh. "I would tell you to take those medicine vials that girl carries in her pack but we both know they do not work, they never have.
"Leave me alone," Kota snarled, trying to force his eyes open to break the trance.
"Stop being so weak, boy," she snapped, her amusement vanishing into a cold, sharp edge. "You have been going through this exact same cycle since you were an infant. Your body knows the path. Your internal pathways know the weight."
Suddenly, her voice boomed through the entirety of his skull like thunder. "Stand up now!"
Outside in the physical world, the dense concentric rings of Yen suddenly faltered.
Kota's eyes snapped open, his irises clouded with a heavy, ink black fog. Slowly, deliberately, his spine straightened as he forced his legs to lock beneath him. He stood completely upright, his chin tilted toward the gray sky as the dark steam hissed off his skin in violent, erratic bursts.
"Look," Mira whispered, her fingers digging into the fabric of Thorne's sleeve as she stumbled back a half step. "He is moving. Leiya, look at him."
"How is he able to stand right now?" Thorne muttered.
Leiya stood in place, her face pale as she watched the black steam swirl violently around his frame. "The pressure isn't dropping. It's getting harder to breathe out here."
"He has a terrifying amount of willpower," Jaeger added, his eyes narrowing to tiny slits as his face went exceptionally rigid under the morning light.
Inside the dark expanse of his mind, Kota felt the agonizing friction double.
"Now," the woman's voice commanded, swirling around his thoughts like a snake. "Begin masking your Yen immediately. If you do not pull it back beneath your flesh, you will hurt your friends."
"Why would it matter if I hurt my friends?" Kota countered, his mental focus fracturing under the sheer weight of the restriction. "I left them back at the camp. They are perfectly safe in the ruins."
"Open your eyes, boy," she hissed, her tone dripping with false pity as she leaned closer into his thoughts. "Your friends are standing right in front of you. You're scaring them."
Kota's vision cleared slightly, the ink-black fog parting just enough for him to see Leiya's face and Mira's trembling frame through the shimmering waves of heat.
The woman inside his head went quiet, thinking for a long time as she evaluated the scene through his senses. "Maybe you should just release the Yen entirely," she suggested softly, her voice full of a warm, dangerous sweetness. "Why struggle to bottle a storm? Let it out."
"What do you mean release it?" Kota responded sharply, his mind recoiling in instant horror. "If I let this much raw Yen explode, it will kill everyone here."
"And why is that your concern, boy?" she asked, her words wrapping around his core like a tightening noose. "They are weak and they'll just hold you back boy."
"She is trying to manipulate me," Kota thought, his teeth grinding together as he recognized the venom in her logic.
"Leave me alone!" Kota shouted back into the void of his own skull.
He focused entirely on his own chest, forcing his hands into tight fists at his sides. He began pulling the wild, crackling arcs of black lightning back toward his skin. It was excruciating. The friction felt like scraping an iron file directly against his veins, but he forced the volatile current down inch by inch. The shockwaves flattened, the heavy gravity well dissipating until the dark steam was nothing more than a thin, quiet trail rising from his shoulders.
He didn't look back at the group or not speak a single word to Leiya.
Turning his back on them entirely, Kota began walking toward the entrance of the Speedhardt family ruins alone, his posture stiff as every single step required a massive, agonizing effort to keep his Yen completely masked.
"Well, at least he's not exploding anymore," Thorne said, watching the boy's retreating back for a second.
Leiya kept her gaze fixed ahead, her face setting into a determined line as she hurried forward. "He is still completely unstable."
"Are we just going to let him go by himself?" Mira asked, her small voice shaking as she stepped closer to Leiya.
"No," Jaeger replied flatly, his boots already starting to track the small path Kota was leaving behind. "We follow him. We have no choice."
Without another exchange of words, the crew fell into a quiet, synchronized pace, following Kota as he dragged his heavy boots through the ruins.