"Yuri, move!" Julian lunged, but Yuri had already sensed the shift in the air. Driven by a raw, survival instinct, she threw herself to the side, her body tumbling across the checkered floor. Her light blue hair flared like a silk banner as she tumbled. The bullet hissed through the air exactly where her throat had been a millisecond prior, striking a sugar glass jar on a distant service station.
SHATTER.
The jar broke. White granules exploded outward, raining down on the floor like a mocking, localized snowstorm. Yuri slid to a halt, her palms stinging from the friction against the tile, her breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches.
"Oh, good dodge! Ten points for the Young Boss~" Cynthiya giggled, retreating once more into the gloom before Ryon could even scramble to his feet.
Bang! Bang!
Two more rounds slammed into the table, one of them punching through the wood near the top, sending a spray of sawdust over Ryon's denim jacket.
"Gah! She's definitely not playing!" Ryon yelped, pulling his knees up to his chest. "Hey, Yuri, if your ancient book has a chapter on 'How to Not Get Shot by Your Coworker,' now would be the absolute peak time for a summary! Maybe a quick tutorial on how I can grow some armor? I'd even settle for a very fast pair of legs right about now!"
Yuri crawled back toward the cover of the flipped table, her chest heaving, her face flushed with a mixture of terror and mounting fury. "I'm working on it, Ryon!" Yuri snapped, clutching her head. "It's hard to focus on something ten years ago while someone is trying to put a hole in my skull!"
"Maybe if you thought in 'Nya-speak' it would come back to you," Julian muttered. He didn't look at her; his brownish-black eyes were fixed on the perimeter of the table.
"Julian! Not helping!" Yuri cried out, her face flushed with a deeper shade of annoyance. "I don't see you coming up with a tactical retreat plan!"
"Sorry," Julian said, though his eyes remained dark and focused.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
A volley of gunfire erupted. This time, the shots didn't come from one direction. The muzzle flashes blinked from the ceiling, from behind the espresso machine, and from the deep shadows of the kitchen doorway. Cynthiya was moving like a liquid, her form sliding across the walls as if she were made of the same sickly black ink that stained her eyes.
From the darkness, Cynthiya listened to their frantic whispering. She clung to the wall near the ceiling, her cat ears twitching. Ohh~ so you know what you are dealing with? Or you know partially? She thought, a cruel smirk stretching her face into something barely human. Let's see if your little book told you how it feels to have your soul digested.
Yuri closed her eyes tight, leaning her forehead against the cool, unfinished underside of the table. She ignored the burning smell of cordite and the sound of Ryon whimpering beside her. She dove into the labyrinth of the Legend of Celestia.
"The book..." Yuri panted, her voice strained as the memory finally began to crystallize. "It spoke about some kind of energy. A bridge between the symbols in the sky and the human body."
Ryon looked up. "Energy? What are we talking about here, Yuri? Is it like mana? Like in the RPGs?"
"I think so," Yuri replied, her brow furrowing deeper. "I don't remember how the book called it. It said that those who witness the Celestia will be granted with that energy... and if you can control the energy, you can manifest it as a ability."
"Great," Julian muttered, his voice a low, jagged rasp. He peeked over the splintered edge of the wood, checking the ink-black shadows near the espresso machine for the next flicker of that sickly black light. "So, how do we pull that 'mana,' 'energy,' or whatever out, Yuri?"
Yuri was huddled between Julian and Ryon, her light blue hair disheveled and dusted with white sugar from the shattered jars. Her sapphire eyes suddenly snapped open, glowing with a frantic, desperate clarity as a specific passage from the Legend of Celestia finally breached the surface of her memory.
"Memories!" she gasped, her voice a sharp whisper that cut through the silence. "Julian, to access the energy—to bridge the gap to the Celestia—you have to remember. You need to anchor yourself to memories related to the meaning of your symbol."
"But there's a cost," she whispered, her voice trembling. "The book gave a warning. If you fail to access the energy—if your soul isn't a match for the memory—your body will mutate. You'll become a monster. And even if you are able to access the energy, if you fail to control it... if you let the power overwhelm you... your body will suffer a backlash."
Ryon, who had been trying to merge his body with the floorboards to avoid the incoming fire, let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. He looked at Yuri with a mix of horror and genuine confusion. "Seriously? Mutate? What kind of weird book are you reading at five years old, Yuri? Normal kids read about hungry caterpillars, not eldritch biological horror!"
Yuri snapped back, her face flushing with a mixture of annoyance and terror. "It was in my father's back-office book collection! I was searching for a bedtime story because I couldn't sleep, and the cover looked pretty! I thought it was just some weird fairy tale about the stars!"
"Would you stop criticizing my childhood reading habits for five seconds?" Yuri whispered harshly, clutching her head. "I'm trying to save our lives!"
From the darkness of the kitchen, a tinkling, distorted giggle drifted toward them. Cynthiya emerged from the shadows like a ghost materialized from smoke. She wasn't standing on the floor; she was crouched on the side of a vertical support pillar, her cat ears twitching, her fingers elongated into claw-like shapes around the grip of the 9mm.
"Talking won't save you~" Cynthiya purred, her eyes swirling with that abyssal black light. "Memories are just tasty little snacks for the Darkness. Why don't you give them to me? I'll make the pain stop. If you're going to turn into a monster anyway, why not let me put you down now? Nya~ it would be a mercy!"
She leveled the gun at the table.
Bang! Bang!
The wood groaned as two more slugs buried themselves in the oak, inches from Ryon's head.
"Gah! She's doing that thing again where she tries to kill us!" Ryon yelped. "Julian, I am officially, 100% not a fan of this plan! Let's just... I don't know, throw a chair at her and run? Running is safe! Running doesn't involve mutation!"
Julian didn't respond immediately. He leaned his back against the vibrating oak of the flipped table, the smell of gunpowder and splinters filling his lungs. Tranquility, he thought, the word tasting like cool water in a parched throat. Peace.
"Ryon, stop the sarcasm for five seconds and breathe," Julian said. "Yuri, keep remembering. If there's anything else about how to stabilize the energy, I'll need it. Any detail, no matter how small."
"Julian?" Yuri whispered. "What are you doing? You heard what I said. If you can't control it..."
"I'm going to try it," Julian said.
"Try it?" Ryon whispered, his sarcasm briefly replaced by genuine terror. "Julian, look at this place! We're in a shadowy dimension being hunted by a possessed cosplayer! Whatever you are planning, I'm telling you, I am not a fan of the plan! Let's just... I don't know, run!"
"We have no choice, Ryon," Julian countered, his eyes dark and focused. "We are in another dimension, just like you said. No one is going to come and save us. Running isn't an option either. You saw her move. She's faster than us."
Julian managed a grim, fleeting smile. "Just trust me. We're not dying in a cat café. I haven't even had my coffee yet."
He sat back, closing his eyes, and dived into the depths of his own mind. He searched for the peace of his life, for the moments that relaxed him.
I need peace, he told himself. I need to find the tranquility.
But as he reached into his memory, the first things that surfaced were the jagged edges of his reality. He thought of the docks at 4:00 AM, the biting cold of the East wind that turned his fingers blue. He thought of his supervisor's sharp tongue, a man who treated him like a piece of shit rather than a human being. He thought of the endless night shifts, the crushing tiredness that made his bones ache, and the miserable realization that his life was a cycle of labor for a future he couldn't see.
Is this all I am? he thought, a dark bitterness rising in his chest.
Suddenly, his skin began to crawl. It was a cold, slimy sensation. A low, wet growling sound began to emanate from Julian's throat—a sound that didn't belong to him.
"Julian! Your face!" Yuri shrieked, recoiling in horror.
Ryon scrambled backward, his eyes nearly popping out of his head. "Julian! Stop!"
Julian felt a horrifying pressure behind his eyes. Thick, obsidian-colored tentacles began to sprout from the pores of his legs and neck, swirling like oily snakes. His vision began to fracture into multiple perspectives, and a hunger—a deep, void-like craving for the darkness—started to consume his thoughts. His soul was reflecting the misery he had focused on, twisting his humanity into a physical manifestation of his own despair.
Not good, Julian thought, the logic in his brain fighting against the encroaching madness. This is the failure. I'm focusing on the wrong things. My life... is it really just this? Is it just the cold and the work?
For a terrifying moment, he believed it. He saw himself as nothing more than a beast of burden, a monster born of the docks. The tentacles tightened, the "Hollowed" mutation taking hold.
"Julian, look at me!" Yuri's voice pierced through the fog.
Seeing Yuri, Julian thought to himself, "No." His mind clawing back from the abyss. "That's not true. Everything has good and bad. There has to be some peaceful moment in my life."
He forced himself to look past the cold wind of the docks. He thought about his mom, Sophia, and the way she hummed while making those sandwiches this morning. He felt the warmth of her kitchen, the smell of the browning butter, and the honest promise he made to be home for dinner.
He thought about Ryon—how the idiot had been his brother in everything but blood since the sixth grade, providing a constant, sarcastic soundtrack to their lives that kept the darkness at bay.
He thought about the walk to the café this morning. The simple, rhythmic click of his boots on the pavement. The way the light filtered through the trees. It was a mundane, beautiful peace. It was his peace.
The agonizing pressure in his head began to recede.
The obsidian tentacles stopped their frantic swirling. They began to dissolve, turning back into a fine, silver mist that was absorbed back into his pores. The mutation began to reverse, the jagged, monstrous features of his face smoothing back into the determined lines of the boy he was.
"He's doing it," Ryon whispered, his breath hitching. "The tentacles are... they're melting."
Ryon, peering over the edge of the table, blinked hard. "Okay," he whispered, a hint of his old self returning. "I take it back. I am definitely a fan of this plan."