The abandoned depot had the roof partially collapsed and the morning light came in through the gaps in strips that illuminated the dust in the air and gave the shadows defined edges. It was the kind of space that under normal circumstances had no particular use, but for a fight between a hunter and a remnant it was almost convenient — no civilians, no witnesses, enough room to move and enough columns to use as variables.
Kagami had noticed it when he chose this place to corner the hooded figure.
It had not been entirely coincidental.
The remnant moved first.
Not with the explosive speed of those that attacked on instinct — but with something more calculated, more deliberate, like someone who has assessed the distance and the angle and has chosen the moment with judgement. The threads came from its fingers before Kagami had finished registering that the movement had begun — fine, almost invisible in the diffuse light of the depot, with that specific speed of something that does not need mass to have force.
Kagami moved to the left.
The threads passed where his right shoulder had been and found the column behind him, cutting the cement with a sound that was not that of metal against stone but something drier, cleaner, like something that has no friction.
Faster than they look, registered Kagami. And more precise.
He responded with the reddish mana — not a full strike but a concentrated burst that forced the remnant to move, changing its position and cutting the angle from which the threads could arrive with precision.
The remnant absorbed it with its right side — not blocking but turning, redistributing the impact in a way Kagami recognised as something learned rather than instinctive.
It has fought before, thought Kagami. Against hunters. It knows how mana works.
The threads came back — this time from two simultaneous angles, one low aiming at the legs and one high aiming at the neck, forcing a response that committed to one of the two.
Kagami chose the neck and jumped forward instead of back, passing under the high thread and over the low one in a movement that changed the distance between them from five metres to a metre and a half before the remnant could adjust.
Kagami's strike landed directly at the torso.
The remnant received it with a solidity that did not correspond to that build — it did not yield fully, absorbing part of the impact with that density that some remnants had in the body that made striking them in the torso like striking something with more layers than were visible.
But it stepped back.
One step, two — enough for Kagami to read it as useful information. Direct impact with mana worked. Not as quickly as with simpler remnants, but it worked.
The remnant recovered with that calm it had — without hurry, without the urgency of something that feels it is losing. It watched Kagami with those white unblinking eyes that in this moment transmitted something resembling the continuous assessment of someone who is processing information while fighting.
"Interesting," it said.
Kagami did not respond. Not because he had nothing to say but because in a fight words were generally a distraction the other side used to gain time or information.
The threads came out again.
This time in a different pattern — not two simultaneous angles but several in quick succession, one after another, forcing Kagami to move continuously without being able to establish a stable position from which to respond. It was an intelligent tactic — if he could not plant himself he could not concentrate the mana with the precision a effective strike required.
Kagami recognised it and changed tactics.
Instead of dodging each thread individually he activated the gravitation in the immediate area around himself — not increasing it over the enemy but reducing it in his own space, enough for his movements to be faster and less predictable without the cost of a wide field.
The threads kept coming, but found less to catch.
Kagami moved to the right of the depot, then forward, then changed direction without prior signal — the kind of movement that physical enhancement made natural but that reduced gravitation converted into something more fluid, harder to anticipate.
The remnant adjusted.
Kagami adjusted too.
The exchange that followed was longer than any Kagami had had with remnants in the past few months — not because the remnant was stronger in absolute terms but because it was more adaptable, more capable of reading what Kagami was doing and changing its response in real time.
A thread found Kagami's left forearm — superficial, a cut that did not compromise movement but registered as information about the speed of the remnant's adjustment.
Kagami responded with the mana concentrated in his right fist — not the burst from before but something more specific, more directional, with all the energy available in that moment compressed into the point of impact.
It found the remnant's left shoulder.
The sound was different from the previous one — deeper, with more consequence. The remnant stepped back three paces this time, with its left arm responding differently than before.
There, thought Kagami. The left shoulder has less density.
He activated the gravitation more broadly this time — not only in his own space but in the area between the two of them, increasing the weight on the floor around the remnant to limit its mobility while Kagami maintained the reduced zone around himself.
The remnant felt it — Kagami read it in the way its feet sought the ground differently, in the way the movement lost some of that calculated fluidity it had had until now.
He charged.
"I've seen what I needed to see."
The phrase arrived in the moment when Kagami was two metres from the remnant with the reddish mana fully active and the gravitation adjusted for the final strike.
He stopped.
Not because the phrase had surprised him but because the remnant was already moving — not towards Kagami but towards the gap in the roof above the far wall, with a speed that did not correspond to someone who had just taken a strike to the left shoulder.
Kagami threw the strike anyway — direct, with all the force available, calculated to arrive before the remnant covered the distance to the gap.
Something got in the way.
Two figures — humanoid, grey, the kind Yūta had faced in the back yard — emerged from the shadows at the side of the depot with the speed of something that had been waiting a while for the right signal. One of them absorbed Kagami's strike with its torso, being thrown back against the wall with enough force for the impact to leave a mark in the cement.
The other placed itself between Kagami and the direction of the escape.
From the gap in the roof, the figure of the green remnant looked down.
"Enjoy yourself with them," it said, with that smile that had too many teeth in the wrong place.
And disappeared through the gap.
Kagami looked at the space where it had been.
Then he looked at the two remnants that remained in the depot — one still against the wall recovering from the impact, the other in the centre of the space with the posture of something waiting for instructions that were no longer going to arrive.
He clicked his tongue.
It sent two to cover its retreat, he thought. And both of them are expendable to it.
The two remnants did not speak — not the fragmented words of the grey remnant from the temple nor the complete sentences of the green one. Only that instinctive presence of something that exists for a specific function and fulfils it without needing to understand why.
The one against the wall recovered and advanced.
The one in the centre too.
Both at the same time, from different angles, with the basic coordination of something that acts from shared instinct rather than real tactics.
Kagami assessed the situation in the time it took him to exhale.
Weaker than the green one. Significantly. The density in the body was lesser, the movement more predictable, there was none of the adaptability that had made the previous fight what it was. They were obstacles, not adversaries — and the difference between the two things was relevant to how Kagami was going to handle the next thirty seconds.
He activated the gravitation across the full area of the depot.
Not with the precision he had used against the green one — he did not need precision for this. A wide field, with the gravity increased across all available space, enough for the two remnants to lose that basic coordination they had and for movement to become slow and costly.
Both of them felt it at the same time. The steps became heavy. The arms dropped slightly with the additional weight.
Kagami moved.
The first received the strike before it had finished processing that Kagami was no longer where he had been — direct, with the reddish mana fully concentrated, to the centre of the torso that in this remnant did not have the density of the green one. The impact was final in a way the strikes against the green one had not been — the remnant did not step back but simply ceased to be cohesive, dissolving before the sound of the impact had finished resonating in the depot.
The second tried to adjust — the slowness of the gravity field had delayed it but not stopped it entirely, and when it arrived it came with all the force available to something of that level.
Kagami dodged to the right with his usual economy of movement and returned the strike in the same motion — not with the mana but with the pure speed and force of someone whose body has been trained to respond before the mind has finished processing the situation.
The remnant turned with the impact.
Kagami did not give it time to recover.
The second strike came with the mana and was sufficient.
The depot fell silent.
Kagami lowered his hand. He looked around the space — the dust in the air, the marks on the cement, the gap in the roof through which the green one had disappeared.
The cut on his left forearm was still there. Superficial but present.
I've seen what I needed to see, he remembered.
What had it come to see exactly? Kagami? His way of fighting? The level of the hunters in the area?
And if it had come to observe and had finished observing — where was it going now?
He took out his phone.
He found Yūta's contact and wrote two lines — a location and an instruction.
Come here.
He put the phone away and looked at the gap in the roof one more time before leaving the depot the way he had come in.