The dust was still hanging in the air when Iyato Kyomaki arrived.
He stepped through the fractured corridor, bootfalls silent on the uneven ground. The tunnel had been wrecked—pillars cracked, sand embedded deep in the walls like impact craters. Steam rose from shattered pipes, the taste of iron and static thick in the air.
Iyato's coat trailed faintly behind him as he walked. His uncovered eye scanned everything—every scorch, every bent tile, every misplaced grain of dust. In his mind, the chaos folded into something elegant.
Blast radius from the shockwave... glass fragment spread suggests three-point assault... that smell—burnt ozone and blood. He bled.
He reached the others just as the dust began to settle.
Daihatsu, rubbing his shoulder, looked up with a half-frown.
"Where the hell've you been?" he asked, his voice rough but edged with concern.
Iyato didn't respond. His gaze swept the chamber like a slow tide. Gail stood off to the side, adjusting her quiver. Adrien, blade now sheathed at his back, was exhaling sharply—still recovering from the weight of the earlier strike.
Then Iyato stopped.
His eye caught something—a thin smear of dark crimson, glistening faintly against a fractured metal plate. It hadn't been part of the debris pattern. It was recent.
He knelt beside it, fingers hovering just above the blood.
"He's injured. Not deeply. But enough to leave a trail," Iyato murmured.
Adrien took a step closer, a grin tugging at the edge of his mouth as he put it together.
"You're going to trace him."
Iyato's gloved fingers spread slightly above the blood, resonance pulsing beneath the surface of his skin like ripples in a pond. The veins in his hand glowed faintly red.
"He's not far," Iyato said calmly. "And panic makes blood move louder."
But then, with a slight glance toward Adrien, Iyato's tone shifted—sharper.
"You should've used your Morpher," he said. "You let him relocate."
Adrien shrugged, still brushing sand from his coat. "Didn't need it."
Iyato scoffed softly. "He did."
He closed his eyes and pressed two fingers gently to the ground near the blood trail. A dull pulse echoed outward like sonar. Dust lifted briefly into the air, disturbed by the echo. He inhaled. Tasted the direction, the pressure, the change in tension.
"Southeast tunnel. Fast. But bleeding harder with every step."
He stood.
"He's heading toward the rail loop access."
Adrien stepped forward, his smile fading into focus. "Then we cut him off."
"No," Iyato said flatly, cracking his knuckles. "We hunt him."
The tunnel walls were slick with condensation and smeared dust, like time had forgotten how to keep this place clean. Ancient support beams creaked overhead, strained by the shifting weight of the city above. Fluorescent panels flickered with no rhythm, barely alive, painting the corridor in sickly green glows.
Dust Devil stumbled forward, one hand dragging along the wall, the other clutched to his side where Gail's arrow had sliced open his cheek. Blood smeared across his fingers, hot and pulsing with a rhythm that was no longer his alone. It whispered to him now. Shouted, sometimes.
"Faster," it hissed.
"They're close. They're in the dirt. Feel them. Hear them."
He fell against a maintenance locker, breath ragged and sharp. The sand that once danced confidently at his heels now twitched erratically, shifting in confused spirals on the ground. It no longer obeyed—it reacted.
His eyes rolled upward for a second, vision fracturing into shapes and colors. His head slammed against the wall as a jolt of pain stabbed through his skull, sending the sand around him into a brief cyclone before it collapsed again.
"Too loud... too LOUD..." he groaned, gripping his temples. "They're humming again... always humming..."
He looked down at the trail of blood droplets behind him.
"Damn it..."
The walls pulsed. Or maybe he just imagined it. It was hard to tell anymore. The difference between what was breathing and what was not had blurred hours ago... or was it days?
"They're coming," he whispered aloud, eyes narrowing. "Flashpoint... the ice boy... the girl with the eyes... and that thing in the dark..."
He coughed—dust clinging to his throat, blood lacing his spit. He slammed a fist against the locker, and the sand snapped to attention, swirling protectively around him again.
"Fine," he growled, his voice half-mad, half-mournful. "If they want the devil... they'll get the devil."
The blood from his wound began to drip into the sand.
The sand hissed around him now—no longer controlled, no longer elegant. It convulsed. Twitched. Spiked. Every grain trembled with rage and confusion, a storm waiting for direction and only receiving pain.
Dust Devil fell to one knee, hand still clutching his bleeding side. His breaths were labored—erratic gasps through gritted teeth. The floor beneath him felt like it was breathing again. Everything did.
His mind swam.
Memories cracked open.
The scent of oil and coffee on his lunch break. Laughter from coworkers in the upper Narrows elevator. Blue-collar jokes. A half-finished crossword. That little broken radio he kept in his locker, the one that played smooth jazz no matter the static.
—And then—
Silence.
The day the grid shut down. The lights didn't come back on. The Mechons didn't respond. No orders. No help. Just the humming. And the dust.
"You left me here..." he rasped, nails digging into his forehead. "You left me here to rot in the hum... with nothing but the walls..."
The sand around him spiked upward, forming jagged, needle-thin pillars that slammed violently into the ceiling above with a crack of thunderous force, punching through the rotted concrete.
The entire ceiling caved inward in a burst of dust and crumbling rebar—chunks of metal and broken light fixtures raining down. A shaft of daylight pierced through the hole, flooding the corridor in washed-out white.
An exit. A way up. A way out.
Dust Devil looked toward the opening, pupils shrinking. His entire body coiled like a spring.
"No more humming. No more eyes. I'll breathe again. I'll BREATHE AGAIN—!"
He lunged toward the light, sand rushing with him like a geyser.
But before he could reach it—
SNAP—!!
He froze mid-air, limbs thrashing as telekinetic force gripped him like a vice, seizing his momentum in a split second.
And then—
SLAM—!!
He was hurled downward, spine-first into the floor with bone-rattling impact. The corridor shook with the force. The sand exploded outward.
He howled.
A scream of pain. Of rage. Of pure, betrayed madness.
Through blurry eyes, he looked up—dust raining down around him.
And there they were.
Four silhouettes. Backlit by daylight, standing shoulder to shoulder atop the fractured incline.
Adrien. Gail. Daihatsu. Iyato.
Bloodhound.
Adrien adjusted his gloves, his blade floating at his side.
Gail's visor glinted as she loaded a resonance-tipped arrow.
Daihatsu's gauntlets sparked with frost and lightning.
And Iyato's eye burned faintly red beneath his brow, hand still extended from the telekinetic slam.
Dust Devil bared his teeth.
"I'LL BURY YOU ALL!"
The sand rose like teeth around him.
The corridor pulsed with tension. Dust Devil screamed beneath them—coiled like a storm held together by hate and sand.
Then came Iyato's voice—calm, quiet, but absolute:
"Let me get close."
The others turned to him, momentarily unsure.
Adrien's brow twitched. "Iyato—"
"Trust me."
A heartbeat passed.
Then everything erupted.
SAND LASHED UPWARD, a spiraling burst of force aiming to skewer them where they stood. Adrien tackled Gail from the blast radius as Daihatsu planted his boot and unleashed a lightning pulse, hurling a shockwave down the slope. Iyato leapt sideways, coat flaring, barely dodging a line of sand spikes that split the ground where he'd been.
"Move! MOVE!" Adrien shouted. "Buy Iyato time!"
Sand screamed across the walls like a sentient flood. The Dust Devil wasn't just attacking—he was panicking, and in that panic, he became chaos incarnate.
Daihatsu exhaled sharply, eyes locked on the twisting form below.
His gauntlets sparked, left glowing cobalt, right shimmering yellow—lightning and frost dancing together like twin souls.
"I'm not cut out for this," he muttered under his breath—like always.
But he charged anyway.
The sand curled toward him like a scythe. He met it with a thunderclap—one fist slamming into the floor, sending arcs through the dirt. Glass particles vaporized.
He didn't stop. Every step was a defiance of his fear. Every punch—a promise he was still standing.
Dust Devil snarled and launched a jagged spear of compressed sand.
Daihatsu ducked beneath it, twisted, and slid into cover.
"Gail! Now!"
Gail Rosenbaum – The Eye of Focus
From atop the higher rail, Gail exhaled slowly, the world around her muting.
The chaos... vanished.
She didn't hear Adrien shouting. She didn't feel the heat. All she saw was vectors. Trajectories. Fractured light bending through dust.
She loosed an arrow—not at Dust Devil, but at a beam above him.
The shot rebounded. Once. Twice. A third time—
CRACK—!!
It splintered a support pipe, sending steam bursting down onto Dust Devil's flank. The monster staggered.
Another shot—this one aimed for his cheek.
It struck.
"Got you."
Adrien Avendano – The Weight of the Unmorphed
From the side, Adrien watched the battle unfold with sharp, tactical eyes.
He hadn't morphed.
He should have, by now.
But something inside him—the part of him that still believed in restraint, in the strength of human will—refused.
"Don't make me use it," he muttered.
Dust Devil spun toward him, launching a horizontal cyclone of glass-like sand.
Adrien surged forward.
His sword screamed through the air, telekinetically propelled, spinning like a buzz saw. It cleaved through the wave, splitting it down the middle.
He hit the ground and slid under the sandstorm's edge, one hand stretched forward to recall his blade. It snapped back into his grip just in time.
"Iyato, NOW!"
Iyato Kyomaki – The Blade in Silence
Iyato moved through the cracks.
The chaos was noise. But Iyato listened to the silence between attacks—to the vacuum moments.
Dust slid beneath his boots, slithering like serpents—but he was too fast. Mitia wrapped around him like a second skin, psychic force pulling his body through the air with impossible grace.
He shot forward—past Adrien, past Gail's ricocheted arrow, past the line of sand bullets heading for Daihatsu.
He closed the distance.
Dust Devil turned, eyes wild, mouth frothing.
"NO! STAY BACK! STAY BACK—!"
Iyato didn't answer.
He slid forward, arms folding into a precise hand sign.
"I see the current."
His feet stopped five meters away.
The blood from the man's cheek—the same blood Iyato had tracked—resonated.
Iyato reached forward.
"Found you."
The ground erupted beneath Dust Devil, not with sand—but with psychic force that rooted the man's blood in space, tethering it with glowing red threads visible only to Iyato's perception.
Dust Devil screamed, the blood in his veins pulled taut, held in place like puppet strings.
"You can't outrun what flows through you," Iyato said coldly.
Dust Devil struggled—but couldn't move.
The sand spiraled, but it was adrift now, disconnected from intent.
The others surrounded him.
Daihatsu landed, one gauntlet blazing with charged ice.
Gail notched an arrow, breath steady.
Adrien stood with his sword lowered, chest rising.
Dust Devil slumped forward, trembling.
"Please..." he whispered, no fight left. "I didn't ask for this..."
Iyato's voice was calm. "We know."
Adrien stepped forward.
"This is over."
He lifted his arm, and for the first time—
His Morpher activated.
A bright glow enveloped his arm as the device sparked to life, binding with his resolve.
A pulse of force swept outward.
The sand didn't fall still—it twitched, spiraled, trembled—like it knew.
Dust Devil groaned, eyes wild, fingers clawing at the air.
But they didn't move of his own will.
"No more," Iyato murmured. His arms were extended, fingers locked in a tight, deliberate sigil. Blood weaved like glowing thread from his fingers to Dust Devil's body—invisible to most, but for Iyato, it was a lattice of control.
Dust Devil's knees buckled, yet his hands rose—trembling violently, twitching against his own resistance, like a puppet caught between strings and will.
"I said—no more," Iyato repeated, sweat now forming at his brow.
Dust Devil's voice cracked through clenched teeth. "Get out of my veins—!"
"Expose his arms!" Iyato ordered, not breaking concentration. "Now!"
Daihatsu moved fast.
His boots cracked the trembling earth as he lunged forward, lightning veining up his left arm, frost spiraling off the other.
"Don't make me regret this," he muttered, raising his fist.
The sand convulsed.
Then it screamed.
The entire corridor vibrated as shards of broken glass, dirt, and dust burst outward like they were reacting to the man's agony. Uncontrolled. Panicked. Furious.
But Dust Devil couldn't move.
Iyato's pressure was unforgiving, locking his joints, freezing his muscle signals mid-synapse.
"Now, Daihatsu!"
With no hesitation—
CRACK—!!
A bolt of yellow-blue energy slammed into Dust Devil's torso, sending controlled current across his nervous system.
The man howled, body snapping back—
Then went still.
Eyes rolled. Arms dropped. The sand collapsed into lifeless heaps around his feet, like breathless corpses returning to earth.
Adrien stepped forward in time, catching the man's limp body just before it hit the rubble.
"Got him."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Gail exhaled first. A slow, clean release.
Daihatsu sat down where he stood, arms resting over his knees, the hum of his gauntlets fading into silence.
Iyato lowered his hands, finally—fingers slightly trembling as the blood threads dissipated into nothingness. He didn't speak. He didn't need to.
The tunnel was quiet.
The air? No longer Dead.
A sudden crackle broke the silence:
"—Team Bloodhound, do you read? This is HQ—static just cleared up. Status report. Are you receiving?"
Adrien pressed his ear. "Bloodhound here. Target suppressed."
He looked over his shoulder at the others—at the battered field, the calmed dust, the unconscious man in his arms.
He let out a long breath, then grinned faintly.
"Make that secured."
The static hum of the tunnel was replaced by a deeper, heavier vibration—the unmistakable thunder of Suppressor containment Mechons inbound.
From above, automated grapples and magnetic clamps descended into the hollowed breach Dust Devil had created in his frantic escape. The crumbling concrete gave way as sleek, quadrupedal units slid down, their limbs hissing with steam and servo-rotations. Glowing white optics scanned the scene.
"Target acquired," one of them droned. "Tissue instability confirmed. Subject exhibiting Phase Three Dead Air affliction. Deploying isolation harness."
They worked quickly—encasing the unconscious Dust Devil in a magnetic suppression pod laced with arc-collars and cryo-binding mesh. The air snapped cold around him as his sand drifted to inert powder.
Adrien stepped back, watching with careful eyes as the Mechons locked down the pod. Iyato stood beside him in silence, hands still tucked behind his back, though his fingers occasionally flexed—a silent come-down from intense hemokinesis.
Nearby, Daihatsu and Gail were already debriefing two Mechon detectives who rolled forward on gyro-track wheels.
One bore a single crimson lens, the other a set of three vertical green slits like digital eyes stacked atop each other.
"Area sweep indicates no other afflicted subjects," the red-lensed Mechon said.
"That doesn't mean this wasn't a warning," Daihatsu replied, rubbing his temple. "One guy makes it this deep under the Narrows and almost brings half the sector down with him? That's not a fluke."
"Environmental trauma is consistent with past Dead Air awakenings," said the three-eyed one, voice filtered through synthetic modulation. "We will require your team's sensor data to finalize incident classification."
Gail handed over her data chip. "You'll find every kinetic pulse, resonance fluctuation, and psychic distortion logged," she said. "But tell your analysts they better flag this as a Class Five Reverb Event. We felt it even before the first signs."
Daihatsu nodded. "And his control over the dust? That wasn't just residue reaction. That was shaping."
"...Shaping?" the Mechon echoed.
"Yeah. The kind of stuff we see when someone's been steeped in the Air for too long."
Gail looked off to where the containment pod was now being magnetically elevated back through the ceiling breach.
"Someone needs to ask how he got here... and why now."
Then came the noise.
A chorus of hovering drones, camera bots, and persistent Capella City news anchors flooded the entryway to the subterranean zone.
"Team Bloodhound! Is it true this was another Dead Air user?!"
"Is it connected to the E-17 Metro incident last week?!"
"Flashpoint! Flashpoint—can you comment on your decision not to use your Morpher until later in the fight? Is it arrogance or strategy?"
"Gail! There are rumors your arrows caused public infrastructure damage—how do you respond?"
Adrien turned his face as flashes lit up the air.
"Great," he muttered. "We're the morning headliner."
Gail crossed her arms and said dryly to Daihatsu, "Remind me again why we don't operate in full blackout?"
"Because someone thought we'd look good on propaganda posters," he replied, shooing a drone with a flicker of frost from his shoulder.
Iyato stepped in front of the press crowd without a word, his single eye cold and unreadable. One step—then two—until the press drones faltered just slightly. No sound came from him, but the sheer psychic pressure said enough.
The reporters hesitated.
Adrien seized the moment, waving them off.
"No further questions. You'll get your answers after the Captain's report. Not before."
They turned, the cameras still rolling—but at least giving space.
The scene dimmed again—an eerie calm in the wake of violence.
"Let's go home," Adrien said, quietly. "We've got questions to ask. And I've got sand in my teeth."
The buzz of conversation dulled into the steady click of data cores and echoing bootsteps. Harsh ceiling lights reflected off glass panels where projected case files floated mid-air, slowly rotating with biometric highlights and pulse logs. The air still smelled faintly of ozone and coolant.
Team Bloodhound stood across from a curved holo-dais, where three case analyzers—Mechons in sleek black exosuits—processed the debrief.
"Designation: Subject 724-D, formerly known as Elion Grange," droned the central analyzer, its voice clipped and monotone. "Thirty-four years old. Civilian reclamation engineer. No criminal record. Resided in Capella Sector 19B."
"Grange was diagnosed with untreated sleep psychosis, memory fracturing, and acoustic paranoia following a mining collapse three years ago," the second Mechon added, casting Elion's neurochart across the screen like a storm map. "His exposure to reverberant particulate—dead zone dust—went undocumented by prior medical checks."
"The catalyst appears to be neural interference following the latest shipment of cleanup drones. The voices he reported... were internal failsafes misfiring in his auditory cortex," said the third, gesturing to a slice of brain scan flashing red.
A picture of Elion—before the descent—flickered onto the screen. A tired but smiling man in a reclamation vest, arm slung around a daughter, blurred in motion.
Gail lowered her gaze. Daihatsu exhaled through his nose. Even Iyato's fingers twitched faintly behind his back.
"This man should never have been left unsupervised," Gail said quietly.
"How many more like him are out there?" Daihatsu muttered.
"Too many," Adrien replied, hands on his hips. "And some won't stop at paranoia."
A heavy door hissed open behind them.
General Linard Margrave stepped into the bay, still clad in his crimson-lined officer's coat. His eyes scanned the team like a sensor grid.
"Good work," he said plainly. "Elion Grange was a civilian, but what he became... wasn't. You saved lives today. You contained the breach before it spread. That's what Suppressors are for."
He gave a nod that, for Margrave, bordered on affectionate.
"Bloodhound is dismissed. Except for you, Flashpoint."
Adrien raised an eyebrow but gave a subtle nod. Gail and Daihatsu shared a look before departing. Iyato lingered only for a second before turning on his heel, coat trailing behind him.
As the others exited, the room felt bigger.
Margrave stepped forward, voice dropping a register.
"We both know this isn't isolated," he said. "This... spiral we're seeing? It's speeding up. And that means someone—somewhere—is feeding it."
Adrien squared his shoulders.
"And you want Bloodhound leading the charge."
"Not Bloodhound," Margrave said.
He locked eyes with Adrien.
"You."
The lounge carried a faint hum of late-night life—soft jazz flickered through unseen speakers, and the lights above were dimmed to a warm amber. The air was filled with the scent of heat-pumped tea and the static click of vending units cycling through ration packs.
Iyato sat reclined against a velvet-gray bench, one leg crossed over the other, his coat half-open and sleeves rolled to the elbow. He sipped a steaming cup of something bitter and green. Gail leaned at a high stool nearby, rotating a glowing arrowhead between her fingers, its light casting reflections across her visor pushed up onto her forehead. Her hair was still wind-damp.
The automatic doors hissed as Daihatsu entered, unzipping his overcoat and tossing it lazily over the back of a chair. Beads of frost melted down his shoulder plating as he stretched with a low groan.
"You took your sweet time," Gail said, smirking.
"Was calibrating," Daihatsu replied, rubbing at the back of his neck. "You know—making sure my entire nervous system didn't freeze during that last move."
"Mmm. It was impressive," Iyato said softly, not looking up from his drink. His voice held a tone that lingered between tease and truth.
Daihatsu blinked, then gave a small half-laugh, brushing nonexistent dust off his chestplate.
"Yeah, well, glad you noticed."
The air between them stretched for a breath longer than it needed to.
Before anything could be said—Adrien stepped in.
He looked freshly cleaned-up but carried an edge behind his eyes. He scanned the room, locking eyes with Iyato only briefly.
"You missed the last round of hot tea," Gail called, twirling her arrowhead like a coin.
Adrien smiled faintly and sat down across from them, fingers laced behind his head.
"I'm fine," he answered the question Iyato didn't voice yet.
"I didn't ask anything," Iyato said.
"Didn't have to," Adrien replied, the smile still there—but too perfect. Too held.
The four sat in companionable silence for a beat.
Then the lounge's central holoscreen flared to life, showing news reports from earlier that day. A recording played of the four Bloodhounds stepping through debris, helping Mechons, and confronting Dust Devil. The footage was partially blurred for safety, but the names "Flashpoint," "Redshift," "Sightline," and "Stormglass" scrolled beneath their images.
The screen flicked to street interviews. Civilians in Capella City—students, workers, kids—shouting their thanks.
"Suppressors saved my uncle!"
"Did you see the arrow lady?! She was like—WHOOSH!"
"I wanna be Flashpoint when I grow up."
Daihatsu leaned forward, resting his chin on his palm as the scenes played. He chuckled, soft and genuine.
"Guess we did okay," he murmured.
Gail smirked and nodded. Iyato remained still, but his shoulders eased.
Adrien glanced up at the screen, then down again, his expression unreadable.
Then he stood.
"We'll do better next time," he said. "We always do."
The others rose as well, standing side by side beneath the warm lounge lights, the glow of the screen reflecting off their gear and faces.
Outside, the storm had passed and above Capella City, the skies were clear.
For now.