Kagekami jolted awake.
He sat on the edge of his bed and pressed both hands against his temples. Every time I speak with him my head feels like it's splitting open.
He dragged himself to the bathroom and ran cold water over his face. When he looked up at the mirror his reflection stared back — and in his eyes, faint but unmistakable, something glowed. Not light exactly. More like the memory of it, or the shadow of something that had no business being there.
He stared at it for a long moment. Then he reached for his towel.
A knock at his door.
"Kagekami. Are you up?"
He walked out of the bathroom with the towel around his waist. Sora looked at him. Her expression went through several phases in quick succession.
"When did you get so — when did that happen?"
Kagekami knocked her lightly on the head as he passed her and went to get dressed.
They left together. The morning was cool and the city was just starting to wake up around them.
"How's school?" Kagekami asked.
"Good, actually."
He glanced at her sideways. "You don't have to hide things from me, Sora. You know that."
Sora was quiet for a moment. Then she sighed and looked at the pavement. "There's a popular girl who gets other students to bully me. I don't know what to do about it. And I don't want to fight."
Kagekami thought about Annie — the way she had never raised her voice, never answered cruelty with cruelty, the particular quiet dignity of someone who chose their battles carefully.
She doesn't value violence. Just like Mum.
"What do you think Mum would have done?" Sora asked.
Kagekami smiled. "She would have confronted it." He caught himself. Did I just tell her to fight?
"I don't want to fight," Sora said immediately.
"You won't have to," he said. "Next time it happens — don't fight back. Just come tell me. Alright?"
Sora looked up at him and smiled — wide and genuine, the kind that meant she believed him. "I will."
They reached the Rankers' post. Kagekami was about to walk in when Sora called his name. Three A-Ranks nearby glanced over — two men and a woman — then looked away.
"What's wrong?" Kagekami asked.
"I need money for food," Sora said, with the expression of someone who has been waiting for the right moment to bring this up.
Kagekami looked at her. Then at his wallet. "So that's where all of it has been going."
He gave her the cash. Sora thanked him with great warmth and absolutely no guilt and headed off toward school. He watched her go for a moment, then turned and walked inside.
"Kagekami!"
He turned. Emily was weaving through the crowd toward him, already beaming with the energy of someone who had been awake for two hours more than was strictly necessary.
"It's been a while! How are you?"
"I'm alright. You?"
"Wonderful. Are you ready for our first day?" She was practically vibrating.
He looked at her with mild amusement. "You seem very excited. Did I miss something?"
The only reason I'm excited, Emily thought, is standing right in front of me.
"No," she said. "It's nothing."
Walter appeared at the front of the room and the noise died down.
"Good morning. Today you will all be assisting the A-Ranks in the field. B-Ranks are not — under any circumstances — to engage in combat. Let the A-Ranks handle the fighting. Your job is support and collection. Are we understood?"
A general murmur of understanding moved through the room.
"Good. You're dismissed to your vehicles."
Two trucks waited outside. Emily fell into step beside Kagekami as they crossed the yard, talking comfortably, until an A-Rank stepped into Emily's path.
"Hey — new recruit. Wrong truck. B-Ranks are over there."
Emily redirected without complaint and climbed into the A-Rank truck. A young man near the back — well dressed, legs crossed, with the particular ease of someone who has never once been told no — glanced at her as she settled in.
"You're new," he said.
"I just joined, but I—"
"Don't get in our way." He looked back out the window.
Emily glanced at the other two A-Ranks — a man and a woman, both watching her with the polite disinterest of people who take their cues from whoever is in charge. She looked down at her hands and said nothing.
An hour later they arrived at the territory perimeter. The A-Ranks climbed out first and swept the area in silence. After a long moment one of them called back — "Clear."
Everyone else got out. Roi — the young man from the truck — moved toward the treeline with his two companions, Rita and Mike, close behind. He glanced back once at Emily.
"Stay with the B-Ranks. I don't babysit dead weight."
Emily watched them go without responding.
Kagekami looked at her as the A-Ranks disappeared into the trees. "Be careful."
"I'm fine, Kagekami." She smiled. "Really."
Kagekami turned back to the treeline. The forest was still. Too still — no birdsong, no movement, nothing that should be nothing.
Something's wrong.
The Ripper came out of the trees before he finished the thought — massive, fast, aimed directly at Emily.
Kagekami stepped in front of her and shoved her sideways. The Ripper's claws cut the air where she'd been standing.
The A-Ranks came charging back through the treeline. Roi took one look at the Ripper and went still for a half second.
"I've never seen one that size."
"We put it down fast and report," Mike said.
Roi nodded. Mike and Rita moved — charging up a combined energy blast, the air crackling between their hands. The Ripper charged toward them and Roi raised one hand. Gold chains erupted from the earth, coiling around the creature's limbs and torso, pulling it to a stop with a sound like snapping cable wire.
The blast hit it square in the head.
The roar it produced shook the trees. Then the sound cut off. The Ripper collapsed, headless, and the forest went quiet again.
The B-Ranks cheered. Emily watched the three A-Ranks and thought — They're strong. But something about them makes my skin crawl.
Roi looked around at the B-Ranks beginning their collection work and thought nothing in particular about any of them.
Kagekami crouched beside the body and studied it.
One of the select few that can evolve, he thought. Hunter said that.
"Hey."
He looked up. Roi was standing over him, hands in his pockets, wearing the expression of someone who finds most things mildly beneath them.
"You. B-Rank. Question."
Kagekami straightened up. "What?"
"The girl you came in with." Roi glanced toward Emily. "Is she yours?"
"No."
"Good. How much?"
Kagekami looked at him. "She's not for sale."
Roi smiled — the particular smile of someone who has never been told no often enough to take it seriously. "You're doing a job that can barely keep the lights on. I'm offering you a way out of that."
"I don't want your money."
"Everyone wants money."
"Then I'm the exception." Kagekami turned to walk away.
"I don't accept no," Roi said pleasantly, to his back.
Kagekami kept walking.
He heard the energy build before he saw it — felt the air change the way it does before something large and fast moves through it. He started to turn.
The blast hit him full in the chest.
The impact sent him through the treeline — branches, bark, the ground itself giving way — until his body connected with a large boulder with a crack that silenced every B-Rank in the field. The rubble came down around him. Dust rose. Then stillness.
Nobody moved.
Emily broke first — she was already running toward him when Roi stepped into her path.
"Move again," he said quietly, "and you'll join him." He looked around at the B-Ranks, who had gone very still and very pale. "All of you will keep your mouths shut when we return to the port. The story is he was killed by the monster." His eyes moved back to Emily. "And she comes with me."
Emily looked at him. "I will tell everyone what happened here. Every single person. And you will answer for it."
Roi's aura expanded — a thick, suffocating pressure that rolled outward from him like heat from something burning. He turned toward her and began walking.
If I die here, Kagekami thought from somewhere beneath the rubble, they take Sora. She has no one. She has nothing.
Get up.
The rubble shifted. A single piece of rock rolled away from the pile. Then another. Then the whole mound moved and Kagekami stood up from it — slowly, fully, the dust falling from him — and looked across the field at Roi and his companions.
The light around him seemed to pull inward. The darkness gathered at the edges of his eyes.
Emily's breath caught. She let herself smile.
Roi turned. The colour left his face. He looked at Rita. "That was your strongest attack."
Rita said nothing. She was staring at Kagekami with the expression of someone rapidly revising every assumption they had made about the last five minutes.
That was everything I had, she thought. And he stood up.
Kagekami looked at the three of them. When he spoke his voice was quiet and absolute.
"Three A-Ranks attacking a B-Rank." He let that sit for a moment. "If you want her that badly — come and finish the job."