The doorframe caught Kyo's shoulder on the way out. Wood scraped skin through damp fabric, a dull drag that landed a fraction before he felt it. His boot hit the platform slick and wrong; it slid, caught, corrected. Cold air hit his chest in a flat sheet.
The river moved.
Not in sync. The shove reached him through the boards first—an upward nudge under his feet—then the sound followed, late, a heavy slap against the bank. Froth climbed over the first stones, stuttering, correcting. Soil in the rails loosened in small, uneven slips.
He didn't think about it. He put himself between that and the greenhouse.
Two steps. One longer than the other to make up for the slip. He planted at the track edge. The wood under his boots thrummed, a faint vibration that didn't match the rhythm of the water.
Behind him, movement—Hana stopping short, breath catching on the pressure building in his chest. Ren not committing forward. Sumi going still.
"Kyo—" Hana's voice came late, the name arriving after he'd already moved.
Foxfire rose before he finished turning. It came hot and eager, pushing up his spine, spilling into his ribs with a sharp, familiar bite. He dragged it up, tried to shape it—
Too fast.
He shoved.
The air in front of him tightened, warped—then buckled. The curve he'd aimed for kinked at the center, folding inward. Rain hit it and punched through in scattered lines before the sound of impact caught up. The feedback slammed back into him, wrong direction, driving into his sternum.
His breath cut off. For a second, his hands didn't feel like his.
He choked the foxfire back hard. Not that shape. Not that much.
Behind him, Hana again, sharper, closer. "Kyo!"
He reset his stance, heel grinding against wet grit until it held. The platform shivered under him—pressure traveling through it in a slow, uneven wave.
Again.
He pulled the foxfire tighter this time, forcing it to narrow, to curve instead of slam. It resisted, pushing outward, wanting to flatten into a wall. His jaw locked. He shoved his palms forward—
The barrier took, but not cleanly.
A curved plane snapped into place, linking platform to platform. Rain struck it and smeared sideways, streaking off in thin, frantic lines. For a beat, the surface rippled, the curve too shallow on the left, bulging on the right. The water hit—
Impact first. The sound followed late, a deep, delayed thud that crawled through the boards.
The barrier bowed.
Kyo's shoulders jerked to compensate, one side dropping lower than the other. Heat surged through his arms, then spiked back into his chest. His breath came in short, uneven pulls that didn't line up with the movement of his ribs.
Hold.
The river pressed harder. Spray hit his face in bursts—colder than the rain, sharp against his skin. Droplets that struck the barrier skittered sideways, some slipping through where the curve thinned, stinging his forearms.
The platform answered. A low creak moved through it, not all at once—segment by segment, a delayed complaint traveling under his boots. The force he pushed forward came back up through his legs, into his hips, misaligned.
Too much on the right—
He shifted, a fraction too late. The barrier wavered, the curve tightening, then loosening. The water slammed again—impact, then sound—and the delay stretched, a sickening half-beat where nothing matched.
Inside his ribs, something unwound and burned, then caught.
Don't lock it. Don't—
The foxfire surged, trying to harden the plane, to turn it solid. He forced it back, teeth grinding. Not a wall. The tracks would take it. The beams would take it.
His breath hitched, stuck halfway in. He forced it out, dragged another in that scraped going down.
The ground pulsed again—push, hold, release—each one arriving a fraction off. His stance tilted with it. His left knee dipped; he corrected, too sharp, sending a tremor up through his arms. The barrier flickered, the surface dimpling where the river struck.
Behind him, someone moved—Ren, a half-step forward, then stopping. Sumi's voice, low, off-beat with the moment. "It's loading from upstream—"
The words landed after the next impact.
Kyo didn't answer. He couldn't spare the breath.
He held the curve where it wanted to flatten, forced it to bend, to bleed force sideways instead of taking it straight on. The ends of the barrier strained, pressure dragging along them in visible streaks of rain.
His shoulders shook now, small at first, then sharper. One hand tremored harder than the other; the imbalance fed back into the shape, making the left edge shiver.
The river hit again.
Impact—then sound—then the delayed groan of the platform under his feet.
He leaned into it, posture slipping, one shoulder lower, spine taking the load at an angle that felt wrong. Heat crawled up his neck. His vision tightened at the edges, everything narrowing to the curve in front of him and the places it might fail.
Hold.
The word didn't form cleanly. It broke halfway through, lost under the next surge.
He held anyway.