Falling wasn't the right word. It was being unwritten.
Aiko's existence was stripped down to a single, terrified scream lost in a hurricane of raw possibility. The space between worlds wasn't empty. It was full. Too full. It was a vortex of screaming colors, fractured memories that weren't hers, and the deafening roar of realities being born and dying all at once.
There was no up. No down. No time. Only the crushing, violent pressure of everything.
And Kael's last promise, a single golden thread in the chaos. "I will find you."
It was the only thing she held onto. The only anchor in a sea of infinity.
Then, just as she felt her own consciousness starting to shred and dissolve into the vortex, the everything became something. The chaos resolved into a brutal, singular impact.
CRASH.
She landed hard, the breath knocked from her lungs in a painful gasp. She wasn't falling anymore. She was on something solid. Something real. Something that smelled of dust, damp stone, and forgotten prayers.
Zara landed beside her a moment later, not with a crash, but with a practiced, fluid roll that ended with her on one knee, blade already in hand. Her silver eyes were wide, scanning their new surroundings with frantic intensity.
Aiko pushed herself up, her body a symphony of new aches. They were in a building. Dust motes danced in beams of colored light filtering through high, arched windows. The windows were broken, the glass a mosaic of shattered saints and fractured angels.
An abandoned church. Of course. The universe had a flair for ironic sanctuaries.
"Where are we?" Aiko rasped, her throat raw.
"Not Heaven," Zara grunted, getting to her feet. "That's a start."
The reality of their escape slammed into Aiko with the force of a physical blow. The vortex. The last stand. The promise. Kael.
"We have to go back," Aiko said, scrambling to her feet, her eyes wild. "He's still there! We left him!"
She turned, expecting to see the shimmering, chaotic rift they'd tumbled through. There was nothing. Just a solid stone wall depicting a faded mural of some long-forgotten saint.
The door was closed.
"No," Aiko whispered, stumbling toward the wall. She pressed her hands against the cold, rough stone. "No, no, no. We have to go back for him!"
"And do what?" Zara's voice was sharp, cutting through Aiko's rising panic. "Die? Get captured? Hand the Nox the very weapon they need to burn down reality?"
Aiko spun around, her eyes blazing. "He's going to die! He stayed behind for us!"
"Yes, he did," Zara said, her face hard, her voice devoid of sympathy. "He made a tactical decision. He bought his objective—you—time to escape. The single most valuable thing a soldier can do is die for a reason. Don't you dare make his reason worthless by getting yourself killed two minutes later."
The cold, brutal logic of it was like a slap in the face. It didn't lessen the pain. It just gave it a sharper, more terrible edge.
"He's not just a soldier," Aiko choked out, tears blurring her vision. "He's…" She couldn't finish the sentence. What was he? Her partner? Her protector? The celestial being she was pretty sure she was falling in love with?
"I know what he is," Zara said, her voice softening almost imperceptibly. "I've known him for over a century. He is stubborn, arrogant, and has a martyr complex the size of a planet. He knew exactly what he was doing."
She sheathed her dark blade, the sound a soft, final click. "He's also the most formidable warrior I have ever known. Don't count him out yet."
But her words were a thin blanket against the cold certainty in Aiko's gut. She had felt the power in that chamber. She had seen the tide of darkness. He was one man against an army of monsters and a council of gods.
The weight of it crushed her. She slid down the wall, her legs giving out, and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook with silent, wracking sobs.
She had survived. And she had never felt more like she was dying.
Zara watched her for a long moment, her expression unreadable. She didn't offer comfort. She wasn't built for it. Instead, she walked to the massive, broken doors of the church and peered out through a crack.
"Well," she said after a minute of silence. "The good news is, I don't think we're in Tokyo anymore." "The bad news is, I have no idea where we are. The constellations are wrong."
Aiko looked up, wiping at her wet cheeks with the back of her dusty hands. "Wrong how?"
"Wrong as in 'not the ones visible from Earth'," Zara replied, turning back from the door. "That gateway wasn't stable. It didn't just move us in space. It could have moved us in… other ways."
Great. So they were lost. Possibly in another dimension. Or another time. And Kael was facing down an army of cosmic horrors, alone.
The hysterical laugh bubbled up again. This time, she let it out. It was a ragged, broken sound that echoed in the vast, empty church.
"This is insane," she said, looking up at the shattered rose window above the altar. "My life is officially a cosmic soap opera written by a sadist."
Zara raised an eyebrow. "You're just getting that now?"
Aiko pushed herself to her feet, fueled by a fresh surge of desperate energy. "Okay. Okay. I can't just sit here." She closed her eyes, trying to do the one thing she knew how. She tried to feel.
She reached out with her senses, past the dust and decay of the church, searching for the familiar hum of spirits. There was nothing. The world outside these walls was silent. Spiritually dead.
And worse… her own power felt muffled. Stifled. The connection to the ambient energy of the world, a thing she had always taken for granted, was a faint, tinny whisper. The Praetorians' silencing field was gone, but this was different. This was a fundamental deadness in the environment itself.
"There's nothing here," she whispered, her eyes flying open in a new panic. "No ghosts. No energy. It's… empty."
And then she reached deeper. Past the silence of this strange new world. Past the fear and the grief. She searched for the one connection that wasn't tied to a place. The binding. The golden thread that connected her soul to his.
For a terrifying second, there was nothing. Just a cold, hollow void where he was supposed to be. Her heart stopped.
And then she felt it.
Faint. So faint it was barely a whisper. A tiny, flickering spark in an infinite darkness. It was strained, stretched thin across an impossible distance, and it was thrumming with agony. But it was there.
He was alive.
The relief was so sudden, so overwhelming, it buckled her knees again. She choked on a sob, but this one was different. It wasn't despair. It was a fierce, desperate, ragged hope.
He was alive. And he was in pain.
"He's alive," she said, looking up at Zara, her eyes shining with a wild light. "I can feel him. The binding. It's weak, but it's there."
Zara's expression shifted. The hard, cynical mask cracked, revealing a flicker of genuine surprise. "You can still feel him? Across a dimensional barrier?"
"It hurts," Aiko admitted, pressing a hand to her chest, where the phantom connection seemed to burn. "He's… he's fighting. He's in so much pain."
"Of course he is," Zara said, her voice flat, but her eyes held a new, grudging respect. "That's what he does."
She walked over to Aiko, her gaze analytical. "That power surge back in the courtroom… I've never seen anything like it. Not from a mortal. Not from anything." "You didn't just disrupt the Praetorians' field. You shattered it. You overloaded their very concept of order with pure, chaotic emotion."
"I was angry," Aiko said simply.
"You were more than angry," Zara corrected. "You were a force of nature. The Council called you a singularity. They weren't wrong." "They wanted to use you as a bomb. They might be right about that, too."
The thought sent another chill down Aiko's spine. She was a weapon. A doomsday device powered by her own soul. And the people who wanted to use her were still out there. Kael was fighting them right now.
"We have to help him," Aiko said, her resolve hardening. "We have to get back."
"And how do you propose we do that?" Zara countered, gesturing to the empty space around them. "We don't have a gateway. We don't even know where here is. For all we know, we're in another galaxy on the other side of time."
"There has to be a way."
"There is," Zara said quietly. "But you're not going to like it."
Aiko looked at her, waiting.
"We survive," Zara said, her voice low and intense. "We find our bearings. We get stronger. We make them regret letting us run." "Kael bought us time. The best way to honor his sacrifice is to use that time to become a weapon he would be proud to stand beside."
She looked around the ruined church. "This place… it's an eye of the storm. A temporary refuge. We rest. We plan. And then we find a way to re-enter the war."
Aiko looked at the shattered altar, at the dust dancing in the fading light. She felt the thin, painful thread of her connection to Kael, a constant reminder of his fight, his pain. Zara was right. Rushing back now would be suicide. It would make his sacrifice meaningless.
She had to be smart. She had to be strong. She had to become the weapon they were all so afraid of.
She took a deep, shaky breath, the scent of old stone and decay filling her lungs. It smelled like a tomb. But maybe, just maybe, it was a chrysalis.
"Okay," Aiko said, her voice steady now, imbued with a new, cold purpose. "Where do we start?"
Zara allowed herself a small, grim smile. "We start by figuring out what the hell you are, Aiko Tanaka." "And how we can aim you."