Kota felt the dark press in tighter with every step they took.
The slums had shadows; the dark area had weight. It settled on his skin like damp cloth, like air that had been breathed too many times and never really exhaled.
Marcus's lantern cast a narrow, dirty-yellow circle ahead of them, barely enough to push back the black. The rest of the world existed in fragments—broken walls, a toppled support beam, the rusted carcass of a transport wagon eaten half away by time and exposure. Everything else was suggestion and outline.
They moved quickly, but not carelessly. Marcus's strides were long and sure, his boots landing with the steady cadence of someone who'd walked these dead streets too many times. Kota matched his pace as best he could, keeping just half a step behind and a little to the side, his left hand tight around the makeshift sword's grip.
His right shoulder burned.
Every jolt of his steps sent a fresh ache through the stitched flesh, the bandage warm and damp beneath his shirt. Yuki had warned him not to stress it. He heard her voice in his head, calm and firm. He'd ignored it the moment Aisha's name and the words "dark area" had collided.
Now the consequences thudded in time with his heartbeat.
The lantern light slid over a smear of dark brown on the cracked pavement.
Kota's gaze snagged on it without meaning to.
Old blood.
It had dried in ragged streaks across the concrete, splattered up one leaning wall. A few meters further on, half a skeleton lay collapsed against a chunk of broken barrier—ribs caved in, skull askew. One arm bone was missing from the elbow down, as if something had carried it away.
"Don't stare," Marcus said quietly, without looking back. "You learn what you need to from a glance, then you move. Nothing good waits in places that look like that."
"I know," Kota said.
He tore his eyes away.
But he couldn't unsee it. The empty sockets. The way the bones looked too small to be an adult's.
Not a good place for a child to grow up.
He'd grown up barely a few streets from the boundary, and still, this felt worse than he'd imagined when he'd first started running Marcus's errands. There was a difference between knowing the world was dangerous and walking where it had already bitten.
Far ahead, something screeched.
The sound carried strangely—stretched and warped by the broken architecture. It rose, thin and grating, then cut off abruptly. A second later, a different noise answered from somewhere farther away: a low, rumbling bark that didn't belong to any dog Kota had ever seen.
He kept walking.
"Those are distant," Marcus said. "If they were close, you'd feel it in the ground before you heard it."
"Comforting," Kota muttered.
"Wasn't meant to be," Marcus replied.
They threaded their way through a collapsed block of old housing, moving between stacks of shattered brick and concrete that had once been homes. Kota's boots crunched on shattered glass and loose stone. The smell here was old dust, mold, and something sour that clung to the back of his throat.
The further they went, the fewer human traces remained. No boot prints in the grime. No bits of trash that hadn't already been driven into the ground by weather and time.
No one sane came this deep if they could avoid it.
Which meant Aisha should never have been here.
Why did you come this way? he wondered, jaw tightening. For me? For a stupid birthday surprise?
He tried not to think about what might have happened to her in the hours since the old woman had seen her heading this direction. He tried to keep his mind on the now—on obstacles, sound, scent, the small circle of light, the shift of Marcus's shoulders as he adjusted their path.
They passed a familiar shape looming out of the dark.
The warehouse.
Kota's throat went dry.
Under the lantern's glow, the structure looked even more broken than it had the last time he'd seen it. The wall he'd forced himself through now sagged inward around a jagged tear in the metal. The gap was wider, as if something had kept hitting from the inside until the frame gave way.
Scarred gouges clawed across the outside wall, deep furrows where metal had been shaved away.
Kota's shoulder throbbed in sympathy.
He stopped for a second without meaning to, gaze fixed on the torn opening.
Marcus slowed and followed his line of sight.
"Is that where—?" he began.
"Yes," Kota said.
The memory flickered sharp and hot—claws, the shriek of metal, the explosion of pain as the beast's strike grazed instead of severed, the taste of fear and copper in his mouth.
He rubbed his bandaged shoulder once, an unconscious gesture.
"You're alive," Marcus said, not unkindly. "Which is more than I can say for whatever that thing was, if it stayed around here too long."
"I didn't kill it," Kota said. "It was still inside when I ran."
Marcus's brows drew together.
"Then with luck, it found something else to eat and wandered off. With bad luck…" He let the sentence hang. "Either way, we're not here for it."
Kota nodded.
They moved past the warehouse without stopping. Kota didn't look back.
Just beyond it, the world opened up.
The old transit station had always been a boundary in his mind—a line between the slums he knew and the deeper, wilder dark. Seeing it now, up close, felt like approaching the crumbling edge of a cliff.
The station had once been important. He could see that in the bones of it—a wide platform with cracked tiles, the shadow of old signs whose lettering had long since peeled away, thick support pillars holding up a half-collapsed canopy. Rust had eaten through the rails in places, leaving jagged gaps where they dropped into black drainage channels.
The lantern's light painted the scene in dull gray and orange.
No movement.
No voices.
No beast shapes slinking at the edges.
Just silence.
Too much of it.
Marcus slowed as they stepped onto the broken platform. His boots scuffed against spilled gravel and old trash. Kota's breath sounded loud in his own ears.
"Too quiet," Marcus murmured, echoing Kota's thought. "Even the scavengers stay away from here now."
"Do you think she made it this far?" Kota asked.
Marcus didn't answer immediately.
"Depends how stubborn she was," he said finally. "If she'd already decided this is where she needed to go, she might have ignored her better judgement. Just like someone else I know."
Kota didn't argue. The truth hit too close.
They reached the edge of the platform and looked out.
Beyond the tracks, the world changed.
The slums were a tangle of metal and concrete, sharp lines and stacked shapes. Past the broken rails, nature had taken over in a way that didn't look natural anymore.
Trees rose in thick clusters, trunks twisted, branches intertwined so densely in places that they formed living walls. Bark gleamed dark and slick where it wasn't coated in pale lichen. The undergrowth was a mess of tangled shrubs, thorny vines, and unfamiliar plants that glowed faintly in the half-light like deep green embers.
Everyone knew the forest was there.
Everyone knew not to go into it.
Even some Domain patrols refused to chase things past the first line of trees. Stories had filtered back—about people getting lost twenty meters in, about compasses spinning uselessly, about beasts that belonged more in nightmares than in the catalogues of low-tier threats.
Kota had never been this close to it.
His skin prickled.
He scanned the tree line again, eyes sharp, looking for any sign of movement. Any flash of blond hair, any flutter of familiar cloth.
Nothing.
The forest waited, patient and silent.
He was about to say as much when a small, wrong shape caught his eye.
Something pale hung from a low branch, waist-high, just past where the cracked station concrete gave way to wild soil.
A scrap of fabric.
No. Not just fabric.
A glove.
Kota's heart lurched.
He didn't think. He moved.
"Kota," Marcus warned, but Kota was already stepping off the platform, boots crunching old gravel, then sinking slightly into damp, softer ground.
He crossed the rusted tracks in three quick strides and reached the branch.
The glove dangled from it by the strap at its wrist, caught as if someone had been moving too fast and snagged it without noticing.
He grabbed it.
The fabric was familiar against his fingers—sturdy, worn at the fingertips from constant use, patched once along the side seam with Yuki's precise, tiny stitches.
Aisha's gloves.
She wore them almost every time she left the house. Too big when she'd first found them among Marcus's old workshop supplies, better now that she'd grown into them, but still hers in a way that made them as much a part of her silhouette as the way she tilted her head when thinking.
Kota's grip tightened around the glove.
His chest felt suddenly too small for the air it needed to hold.
"Aisha," he whispered.
Another sound drifted across the open space.
Not from the forest.
From behind them.
Marcus had gone very still.
Kota turned.
"What was that?" he asked.
Marcus wasn't looking at him.
He stood at the edge of the platform, lantern held a little higher, eyes narrowed as he stared back along the path they'd taken. His whole body had shifted subtly—the relaxed readiness of a veteran moving into a different mode. Alert. Coiled.
"This is already worse than I wanted it to be," Marcus said quietly. "Finding that glove this close to the trees…"
His jaw clenched.
"You think she went in?" Kota asked.
Marcus didn't answer the question directly.
"Higher-ranked Domain teams won't go more than a few hundred meters in without full support," he said. "Kids from the slums don't walk in and out of there. If she went under that canopy, she either found something to hide in, or something found her."
Kota's stomach twisted.
He looked back at the glove in his hand, then at the dark barrier of the tree line rising ahead like a wall.
"I'm going," he said.
Marcus's expression flicked with something like pain—but also resignation. He knew as well as Kota did that there was no "going back" point anymore. Not with Aisha's glove in Kota's palm and no sign of her on this side of the trees.
"She's my daughter," Marcus said, voice rough. "If she's in there… I'm not staying out here."
He stepped off the platform, boots crunching on gravel as he joined Kota near the tracks. For a moment, the two of them stood there—just beyond the last crumbling line of civilization, staring into the tangled wild.
Marcus took a breath, like a diver about to go under for too long.
"Stay close," he said. "Don't lose sight of me. The forest likes to play tricks with distance."
Kota nodded, fingers closing tighter around the sword's grip. He tucked Aisha's glove into his jacket with his free hand, close to his chest, as if keeping it there might anchor her to the same world.
They stepped into the forest.
—
The change was immediate.
On the bare edge of it, the air had already felt heavier, thicker. Under the canopy, it felt… strange. Not just humid or dense, but charged, like the half-second before lightning struck, held on repeat.
The ground was softer, hidden under a layer of fallen leaves, damp soil, and tangled roots. Every step sank a little, squelched a little. The smell shifted to wet earth, sap, and something green and sharp that made Kota's nose itch.
Branches knit overhead in twisting patterns, blocking out most of the sky. The lantern light bounced off leaves and trunks, casting warped shadows that moved even when the air was still.
It should have been loud here—creaks, drips, small animal noises—but it wasn't.
A few distant calls sounded now and then—harsh, warbled cries from things Kota didn't recognize—but nearer to them, sound seemed swallowed. Even their own movements felt quieter than they should have been, the crunch of leaves and the scuff of boots dampened as if the forest were listening and didn't want anything else to hear.
Marcus moved with deliberate care. He didn't follow a path—there weren't any, not really—but he chose routes that skirted thicker clusters of undergrowth and large, gnarled roots that rose from the ground like sleeping serpents.
Kota stayed on his right side, the sword angled low in his left hand. His shoulder ached more with each step, a deep, insistent throb now. He bit down on it and focused on the details instead.
There—on the rough bark of a tree at shoulder height—a faint scrape. Not made by human hands. Too wide, too shallow.
There—on a patch of soft ground—a depression that might have been a footprint once, blurred now by time or weather. Bigger than his. Clawed at the front.
No small boots.
No messy, familiar tracks.
He scanned the ground ahead, eyes sweeping automatically for any sign of Aisha's passage. A broken twig. A scuffed patch of dirt. A loose blond hair caught in bark. Anything.
He found nothing.
They pushed deeper.
Kota lost track of time. Distance in the forest felt slippery; each tree looked like the last, but when he glanced back, he could never quite see the exact shape they'd just passed. Everything blurred into variations of dark trunk and pale leaves, neon moss and shadows.
"Do you feel that?" Kota asked quietly.
Marcus grunted. "The hair on your arms standing up?"
"Yeah."
"Welcome to high-resonance ground," Marcus said. "Rifts poison the world even when you can't see them. Some places never went back to normal after the first tears opened. This is one of them."
Kota swallowed.
He'd been close to controlled Rifts before, in the distance—seen the shimmering distortions caged in heavy stabilizers, the way the air seemed to warp around them. But that had been under Domain control, on platforms crowded with tech and guards.
This wasn't like that.
This felt like walking through someone else's held breath.
A branch cracked somewhere behind them.
Kota turned instinctively, sword raising half an inch.
Nothing moved.
"Marcus," he said softly.
"I hear it," Marcus replied. "Keep your feet under you."
They kept going.
The forest dipped suddenly, the ground sloping downward in a subtle but steady incline. Roots grew thicker here, knotting over one another in tangled webs that forced them to step carefully or risk twisting an ankle.
A faint breeze brushed through the upper branches, stirring the leaves.
The sound it made was wrong.
Not the normal soft rustle of foliage, but something that carried an irregular whistle under it, like air being drawn through broken pipes.
Kota's heart ticked faster.
They emerged onto an old, overgrown path—or what might have been one once. The trees on either side gave just enough room for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder. Moss smothered what could have been stone slabs laid long ago, cracked and displaced now by roots and time.
Marcus stopped and crouched, holding the lantern lower to examine the ground.
Kota watched him.
"See that?" Marcus said after a moment, pointing.
Kota leaned closer.
In the weak light, he spotted it: a partial impression in the damp moss. Not crisp, but enough. The shape was narrower than his boot, the tread faintly visible at one edge.
Not beast.
Human.
Recent.
A second mark overlapped it a short distance away, smearing the first.
Two steps?
Stumbled?
Changed direction?
Kota's chest tightened.
"Aisha?" he asked.
"Could be," Marcus said. His voice was flat, but his eyes had gone brighter, more focused. "Could be someone else. But it's the first sign of anyone coming this way in a while."
He stood.
"The track angles this way," he said, nodding ahead. "Stay sharp."
They followed the faint suggestion of disturbed moss where they could find it, losing it, then picking it up again in patches. Every few meters, Marcus would pause to reassess, scanning the area with a practiced eye, listening.
The air grew colder as they descended further. Not by much, but enough for Kota to notice the difference on his damp skin.
The forest noises—such as they were—pulled back again. The thin cries grew more distant. Even the weird whistling breeze faded.
A shallow roar replaced it.
Not loud. Just present. A constant, low note that made Kota's teeth vibrate faintly.
"What is that?" he whispered.
"Could be water," Marcus said. "Could be something else. Either way, we're heading toward it."
Kota wasn't sure he liked the sound of that.
They stepped around a particularly massive tree whose trunk had twisted upon itself into something almost spiral. Pale fungus clung to its side, glowing with a faint internal blue light.
The roaring sound swelled.
Then the ground dropped away.
They found themselves at the top of a slope—a long, steep hill that vanished into shadow below. The moss and leaf litter gave way to looser soil and small stones, unstable underfoot. The faint suggestion of human tracks went right down the incline.
Marcus raised the lantern, casting its light down.
The slope disappeared into darkness before he could see the bottom.
"We go down," Marcus said.
"How?" Kota asked. "If we slip—"
"We don't slip," Marcus said, but there was a crease between his brows. "We take it slow. Backward, feet first. Use the trees on the sides for support. You go ahead of me. If you fall, you're lighter; I might actually be able to stop you."
The plan made sense.
That didn't make things easier.
Kota turned, facing the hill, and placed his boots at the edge. The earth crumbled slightly under his weight. He gripped a root with his free hand, the lantern's light swaying slightly as Marcus repositioned behind him.
"Step back," Marcus said. "One at a time. Get your heel in, feel for something solid, then the other foot. Don't rush."
Kota nodded.
He stepped back.
The earth shifted, then held.
He found another foothold a little lower, then another.
It was slow work, each movement deliberate. His left hand burned from clutching the sword and whatever support he could find. His right arm throbbed in time with his heartbeat, useless for anything more than balance.
More than once, stray pebbles skittered free and bounced down the slope, vanishing into the dark with faint, delayed clicks.
His breath was loud in his ears.
"Almost there," Marcus murmured. "I can see—"
Kota's foot slipped.
He never knew what exactly he stepped on—a patch of mud, a loose rock, a root slick with moisture—but suddenly his weight had nowhere stable to go. The ground shot out from under him.
The world tilted.
"Marcus—!"
Everything blurred.
He slid, boots scraping for traction and finding none, dirt and small stones tearing at his legs, his free arm flailing for purchase. The sword almost left his hand; he clamped down out of reflex, knuckles white around the grip.
Pain exploded in his shoulder as something wrenched the torn muscles under his bandage.
Somewhere above, Marcus swore, loud and sharp.
"Don't let go!" he shouted.
Kota couldn't answer. There was no breath for words.
The slope turned from a slide into a tumble as he hit a small ridge and bounced. The world went end-over-end for a moment—dark, light, branches, dirt—then he crashed hard onto a relatively flat patch at the bottom, rolling once before coming to a stop on his side.
The impact knocked every scrap of air out of his lungs.
For a heartbeat, all he could do was lie there, stunned, mouth open and empty, his chest straining for breath that wouldn't come.
Then the forest slammed back into focus.
The roaring he'd heard before was louder now, a steady, deep presence vibrating through the ground. It didn't sound like water. It felt more like… pressure. Like standing too close to a heavy machine running just out of sight.
His shoulder screamed.
He forced himself onto his back, eyes squeezing shut as the fresh wave of pain crashed over him. He felt the bandage tug where the stitches had been pulling the wound closed.
Warmth spread under the cloth.
"Fuck," he managed, voice rough and thin.
He reached up with shaking fingers and touched the edge of the bandage. When he pulled his hand away, his fingertips were sticky, dark in the scant light.
Not pouring.
But fresh.
He coughed once, breath finally clawing its way back into his lungs.
"Kota!" Marcus's voice echoed faintly from above, distorted by the slope and trees.
"I'm—" he started, then had to swallow and try again. "I'm down. I'm okay."
"Stay put," Marcus called. "I'm coming."
Kota blinked grit out of his eyes and pushed himself up to a sitting position, leaning his back against the base of a tree. Every movement sent little flares of pain along his shoulder and side, but the world had stopped spinning. He could work with pain. He'd done that before.
Kota took stock.
Sword—still in his left hand, somehow. Good.
Right arm—hurt like hell. Bad.
Blood—seeping through, but not spurting. Manageable.
He drew in a slower breath and looked around.
The forest here was… different.
The trees, though still dense, had pulled back just enough to create a rough clearing of sorts at the base of the hill. The ground under him was less roots and more thick, springy grass shot through with strange, pale flowers that closed themselves tightly as the light passed over them.
The roaring pressure thrummed stronger, close enough now that it felt like it was coming up through his bones.
He frowned.
Something blue flickered at the edge of his vision.
He turned his head.
Out past a scatter of thin trees in the distance.
"Hide!" Marcus shouted in a low voice. Obviously trying to be quiet with that loud voice.
He looked up to see Marcus dart off in a different direction.
'Where did he go.'
Moments later a shadow rushed past the point of where Marcus stood earlier.
"Damn beasts" he muttered.
Another shadow grazed past again. It stopped not far from where Marcus vanished to. Kota felt the glare from the creature beaming into him.
'I got to go. Now!' He thought.
Kota pushed off the tree and staggered toward the glow.
The blue light pulsed faintly through the foliage ahead—too regular, too clean to be anything natural. Even in this twisted forest, nothing else shone like that.
He eased past a cluster of thin saplings and a veil of hanging moss.
The world opened.
The clearing wasn't large—maybe twenty meters across—but it felt wrong in a way the rest of the forest hadn't. The trees stopped in a near-perfect circle, trunks bent slightly outward, branches reaching away from the center as if pushed back and then frozen that way. The ground within was smoother, the grass shorter and thicker, as though something had scoured this space and kept it clear.
At the center of the clearing, a dome of pale blue light shimmered.
It rose from the ground like a bubble, its surface faintly translucent, shot through with slow-moving patterns that reminded Kota of ripples across water. The light wasn't harsh; it glowed with a steady, restrained intensity, brighter at its base and fading as it rose, like a lantern covered by frosted glass.
He could feel it from here.
A pressure. A thrum.
The same low, steady roar he'd felt in his bones out in the forest was louder inside his chest now, like a heartbeat that didn't quite belong to him.
His hand tightened around the sword.
"What—" he started.
A sound cut him off.
A heavy, rhythmic thud, distant but closing.
Footsteps.
Big ones.
Kota's head snapped back toward the direction he'd come from.
Leaves shuddered. Branches creaked. Something large was moving through the undergrowth above the slope he'd just tumbled down.
His own fall hadn't gone unnoticed.
His mind flashed back to the rust-stained warehouse wall. To claws longer than his forearm. To something tilting its head and deciding whether or not to kill him.
Not again.
He turned back to the dome.
Up close, it was more clearly defined—almost an exact hemisphere, a shade taller than two men stacked. The surface hummed faintly, a sound more felt than heard, skin-prickling and dense.
A barrier.
Some kind of… field.
He stepped closer.
The roar of approaching footsteps pounded through the trees now, accompanied by the wet, sucking sounds of heavy limbs through mud and foliage. A branch snapped—the crack sharp and final.
No time.
He reached out with the fingers of his good hand and pressed them toward the blue surface.
The instant his skin met it, the world narrowed.
It was like pushing his hand into a fast-moving current. Force rammed into his palm, hard enough that his arm jolted back on reflex. The dome didn't feel solid, not exactly; it yielded a fraction, then pushed back with equal insistence. Cold shot up his fingers, not from temperature but from… something else. A tingling, invasive chill that crawled up his nerves.
His heart skipped.
The beat in his chest staggered, then slammed back harder.
The barrier rejected him.
Not entirely—his fingers hadn't bounced completely off—but it didn't welcome him either. It trembled where he touched it, faint ripples spreading outward through the light in concentric rings.
The forest behind him exploded.
Leaves tore. Roots snapped. A low, guttural snarl rolled through the clearing like physical force.
Kota turned.
The beast stepped out from between the trees and onto the edge of the circle.
He'd thought the warehouse creature was tall. This one was… longer.
It moved on four limbs that were almost too thin for its mass, each ending in thick, splayed claws that dug like knives into the soil. Its body was stretched and corded with wiry muscle, patches of matted fur clinging to its vibrantly red, raw-looking skin like mold on meat. The fur didn't cover; it clumped in uneven islands, leaving wide swathes of bare, sinewed flesh exposed.
Its spine arched, too flexible, rippling with each step.
The head was the worst.
A long snout jutted forward from a narrow skull, almost lupine but wrong, teeth protruding even with its mouth closed—curved, uneven fangs that pierced its own lips when it snarled. Two pale eyes sat too close together above that muzzle, milky-yellow and shining in the blue light, pupils vertical slits that locked onto him instantly.
It sniffed.
Kota watched the way its nostrils flared, the wet black skin at their edge glistening as it drew in air in a deep, shuddering breath.
Its gaze tracked the invisible line between them.
His scent. His blood.
Marcus.
Kota's stomach plunged.
Marcus was still up there, somewhere above that slope, somewhere behind the thing that had followed his fall. For a brief, irrational second, he considered shouting, drawing its full attention, giving Marcus a chance to circle—
The beast snarled.
It lowered its head, muscles tensed.
It charged.
Kota didn't think.
He dove.
Not away from it.
Forward.
Straight into the dome.
The barrier hit him like a wall.
Pressure slammed into his chest, flattening breath and thought alike. Every nerve ending lit up with static—cold and sharp and too much. For a moment, he felt like he was pressing his entire body into the edge of a Rift containment field, the way those were described in whispers: like pushing against reality's own skin.
His heart hammered once, hard enough that pain spiked behind his eyes. The hum inside his ears roared.
Then, with a sensation like something reluctantly slipping around a stuck joint, the barrier gave.
He fell through.
For half a second, there was only that pulsing blue.
Then he staggered as his feet hit solid ground again, knees buckling. The world righted itself around him in a jolt.
He was inside.
The hum changed pitch—lower, deeper. The pressure that had been lancing at his skin from outside wrapped around him now like a dense atmosphere. He could breathe, but each inhale felt heavier, like pulling in air underwater.
His heart hadn't slowed.
If anything, it beat harder, each pulse echoing in his chest in a way he could feel along his bones.
He stumbled forward two steps and turned.
The beast slammed into the barrier from the other side.
The impact shook the entire dome.
Blue light flared white where its body hit, ripples rocketing outward in concentric circles. For a terrifying second, Kota thought the barrier would shatter like glass. Instead, it flexed inward, then snapped back with brutal force.
The creature was thrown off its feet.
It tumbled backward, a snarling, twisting mass of limbs and teeth, then skidded along the ground, tearing up dirt in long gouges before it dug its claws in and stopped itself.
Kota's own breath came in sharp, quick bursts.
The dome's surface quivered, light settling into its previous, slow pulse.
The beast recovered.
It rose with unsettling grace, body flowing back into its crouched, stalking posture in one smooth motion. Its pale eyes fixed on him again, burning with fury and… hunger. It paced along the edge of the barrier, head low, shoulders rolling.
Its snout brushed the shimmering field here and there, testing. Each time it did, the dome trembled and brightened, but it held.
For now.
Kota let out the breath he'd been holding like he could scrape it from the bottom of his lungs.
He wasn't safe.
But he wasn't dead. That was something.
His shoulder throbbed so hard now that it bordered on numbness, like the pain had become too intense for his body to register cleanly. Warm dampness soaked through more of his shirt.
He dragged in another breath, forced his thoughts to sharpen.
Aisha.
He turned away from the beast and took stock of the space around him properly for the first time.
The dome's interior covered a stretch of uneven ground that rose gently toward a central hill—a rounded swell of earth and thick grass maybe three meters high. Strange, faintly glowing plants dotted the interior: low clumps of moss that pulsed with a soft green light, taller stalks with translucent leaves that caught and refracted the blue from the barrier into fractured patterns.
The air inside the dome smelled different from the forest outside. Less rot, more ozone. The metallic tang of Resonance-heavy spaces he'd passed near on controlled platforms.
At the top of the hill, something tugged at him.
Not physically.
Like… recognition without memory.
The roar he'd been feeling through the ground since he'd first approached was loudest there, a deep, steady vibration at the edge of hearing. It wasn't sound, not really. It was more like a pressure drift his bones could read.
Kota swallowed.
He knew that feeling.
Not from experience. From stories. From Marcus's half-finished sentences. From the way people's voices dropped when they mentioned them.
Rifts.
This felt like the Rifts people from the slums only ever saw from a distance, wrapped in stabilizers and sensors, too dangerous to approach.
Except here, there were no stabilizers.
No guards.
No blinking lights.
Just a hill under a blue dome in the middle of a forbidden forest.
His gaze drifted down.
Something lay near the base of the hill, half-concealed by the grass.
A small, dark shape.
Glove-shaped.
Kota's breath caught.
He moved, ignoring the way his shoulder screamed in protest.
As he approached, he realized it was indeed a glove—Aisha's other glove, the twin to the one tucked into his jacket. It lay palm-up in the grass, fingers slightly curled, as if it had been pulled off in a hurry.
His throat tightened.
If this is here…
He looked left and right, heart pounding for reasons that had nothing to do with the dome.
For a terrifying second, he saw nothing.
Then, just beyond the hill, where the ground dipped into a shallow hollow, he saw a foot.
Small. Bare. Pale against the dark grass.
Kota's chest cracked open.
He ran.
Not carefully.
Not measured.
His boots tore divots in the grass as he sprinted around the curve of the hill and skidded down into the hollow.
"Aisha!"
She lay on her side in a patch of thick, soft grass, blond hair spread around her like a halo turned wild. Her clothes were rumpled, dirt-smudged but not torn. One sock was half-off, bunched at her ankle. Her hands were empty, fingers lax.
Eyes closed.
For an instant, the world went very small.
Kota dropped to his knees beside her, the impact sending a lance of agony through his shoulder that he didn't care about.
He grabbed her wrist with his good hand, fingers trembling.
Warm.
He almost sobbed with relief.
He pressed his fingers to the inside of her wrist, searching, and found it—a pulse, quick but steady, beating against his touch.
Not dead.
Not bleeding.
Just… out.
"Aisha," he said, voice hoarse. "Hey. Wake up."
He squeezed her wrist gently, then shook her shoulder—careful to avoid jarring anything that might be hurt.
Her lashes fluttered.
Slowly, like someone swimming up from deep water, her eyes opened.
They were the same pale, clear color he knew so well—but unfocused, pupils dilated, dragging slow from one point to another as if the world were struggling to make sense.
"Kota?" she mumbled, voice thick with sleep and confusion. "What…?"
She tried to sit up and winced, bringing a hand automatically to her temple.
He slipped his good arm behind her, supporting her back, easing her upright.
"You're okay," he said. "You're okay. You absolute idiot."
She blinked, then focused on his face properly.
Her breath hitched.
"Kota," she said again, this time like his name hurt coming out. Tears sprang up in her eyes so fast it was as if they'd been waiting there. "I—I'm sorry. I'm so, so—"
Her voice broke.
She covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking.
Kota swallowed past the lump in his throat.
He wanted to shake her. He wanted to yell. He wanted to collapse. Instead, he pulled her against him, one-armed, holding her as tightly as his damaged shoulder would allow.
"You're alive," he said into her hair. "That's what matters."
She clung to him.
"I thought—" she choked out against his chest. "I thought if I got something from closer to the boundary, closer to where the Rifts were… it'd be special. Not just some slum junk for your birthday. And then something… pulled, and I saw light, and my head hurt, and—"
She hiccupped.
"I woke up here," she whispered. "I couldn't move for a while. I think I fainted again. I tried to get up but the air felt thick and everything was wrong and—"
"It's fine," he said, even though nothing about this was fine. "You're an idiot. But you're my idiot. Don't do it again."
She let out a tearful, half-hysterical laugh.
"I thought you were going to die," she said, words tripping over one another now that the dam had broken. "After the warehouse, after Marcus carried you home all bloody, I—I thought, if I can just do something that makes things easier, if I can bring back something worth selling, something for his work, for your birthday, for—"
She cut herself off, biting down hard.
Kota drew back enough to look at her.
Her cheeks were wet, eyes red. Dirt smudged one side of her face, streaked where tears had carved through it. Her hair was a mess, strands stuck to her forehead. She looked exhausted, scared, stubborn.
She looked like Aisha.
"We're going to yell about this later," Kota said quietly. "When we're back home. When Marcus has finished being furious and Yuki's done stitching whatever we tear next. Right now, we have a bigger problem."
He jerked his chin toward the edge of the barrier.
She followed his gaze.
The beast still paced just outside the dome, circling slowly. It hadn't given up. It hadn't gotten bored.
It watched them.
Every time it reached the place where he'd entered, it slowed, nostrils flaring as it sniffed the air. Its claws flexed, scoring deep furrows in the dirt. Occasionally, as if it couldn't help itself, it surged forward and slammed its shoulder or head into the barrier.
Each impact sent ripples across the blue surface, bright white where force met field.
The dome held. The beast bounced back, skidding a few paces, shaking its head in fury.
But the sound the barrier made each time it was hit had changed.
The first impact had sung with a low, solid note.
Now, the pitch had risen, a hairline higher each time.
Aisha's brows knit.
"What is that?" she whispered.
"Hungry," Kota said. "And patient."
She shivered.
He helped her up, testing her weight. She could stand, legs shaky but functional.
"Anything hurt?" he asked.
She rolled one shoulder, flexed her fingers.
"I feel like someone emptied me out and stuffed my head with cotton," she admitted. "But nothing's broken. What about you?"
He glanced at his shoulder.
The bandage was soaked through near the upper edge, dark and ugly. Each heartbeat sent a new, dull throb through it.
"I'll live," he said. "Yuki'll get more practice."
"That's not funny," Aisha muttered.
He didn't disagree.
They climbed the small hill together, choosing a path that didn't strain his wound too much. From the top, the entire clearing spread out below like a diagram.
The beast circled.
The barrier pulsed.
And at the very center of the dome, just in front of where Kota now stood, the air rippled.
The Rift wasn't dramatic.
No towering cyclone of light. No jagged tear in the sky.
It was… a wound in space. A vertical, oval distortion hovering a meter above the ground. Its edges shimmered, constantly shifting, like heat haze over metal. The world behind it looked wrong—bent, smeared, colors slightly off. The violet tinge in the air around it was subtle but unmistakable.
Even without Domain machinery, even without warning tape or stabilizers, Kota knew exactly what he was looking at.
Every instinct screamed at him from two directions at once.
Rift. Stay away.
Rift. This is the only thing more dangerous than the beast.
The presence of it here, in a forest no one in the slums was supposed to enter, under a dome no one had ever mentioned, undercut everything he'd thought he knew about where Rifts did and did not belong.
Aisha stared, eyes wide, one hand unconsciously reaching out as if to trace the warping lines.
"Don't," Kota snapped, catching her wrist.
She started.
"Sorry," she said. "It's just… I can feel it."
He frowned.
"Feel it how?"
She hesitated, groping for words.
"Like… like it's humming," she said. "Not in the air. In my bones. In my teeth. It's… it's following a pattern. There's structure under it, but it's—"
She cut herself off, swallowing.
"Forget it," she said quickly. "I'm just tired."
Kota filed that away.
Outside the dome, the beast completed another circuit.
It stopped directly opposite them, at the base of the hill, separated from their vantage point by only a few dozen meters and a thin layer of shimmering blue.
It lifted its head, pale eyes fixing on them.
A snarl peeled its lips back, revealing a double-row of teeth that were too many and too uneven. Drool leaked between them, pattering onto the ground in slow, viscous drops.
It rammed the barrier.
The dome flared.
This time, the reverberation that ran through it was sharper. The light stuttered for a microsecond, like a heartbeat skipping.
Aisha flinched.
"That sounded different," she whispered.
Kota heard it too.
The beast shook itself off, staggered, then shook again. It wasn't as cleanly thrown aside as before.
"Oh, that's not good," he muttered.
They watched, helpless, as the creature tested a new strategy. Instead of pacing away, it backed up only a few steps, lowered itself almost to the ground, muscles coiling.
It charged again.
The impact rang through the clearing.
The barrier shuddered.
A flicker of something hairline and white snapped across the surface directly in front of the beast's shoulder.
A crack.
Barely visible. There. Then not, as the dome's light tried to smooth itself over.
Aisha's breath hitched.
"Kota," she said. "Did you see—"
"Yeah."
His mouth had gone dry.
The beast seemed to sense it too.
It let out a strange, rasping bark—satisfaction?—then lunged again.
This time, Kota could see the crack form.
Like a spiderweb, fine lines etched across the surface of the dome where the beast hit, spreading from a central point outward in jagged, geometric patterns. They flashed white, then dimmed as the barrier rebounded and flung the creature back.
But the lines didn't vanish completely.
They clung, faint and ghostly, like glass that had held together one impact too many.
Panic, cold and clear, slid into his chest.
"How long do you think this thing keeps us safe?" he asked, voice low.
Aisha swallowed hard.
"I don't know," she said. "Whatever this dome is… it's not meant to take repeated hits like that. It's draining. You feel it?"
He did.
The hum inside the barrier had changed. It had started as a steady, strong presence—oppressive but reliable. Now, it wobbled, tiny fluctuations rippling through its rhythm. The air felt thinner. The pressure in his ears lightened.
"What do we do?" she asked.
"Think," he snapped, more harshly than he intended.
She recoiled a little.
He exhaled, forcing his voice gentle again.
"We can't stay," he said. "If that thing breaks through, we're in open ground and I can barely swing this with one arm."
He lifted the sword slightly.
Aisha eyed his bandaged shoulder, worry deepening the lines around her eyes.
"You shouldn't even be on your feet," she murmured.
"Too late to argue about that now," he said.
They watched as the beast paced again, sniffing at the crack that only it and the dome seemed to fully understand. It backed up, claws gouging deeper into the soil, finding purchase.
It hit the barrier a third time.
The sound was wrong.
Less like a bell, more like a plate.
The crack bloomed wider, bright lines lancing across the dome's surface. Fragments of light chipped away, tiny flecks raining down like incandescent dust before dissolving into the air.
The shockwave knocked the beast back only a few meters this time.
It recovered faster.
"Aisha," Kota said quietly. "What's outside the dome?"
"Forest," she said. "And that."
"What's inside?" he pressed.
She swallowed.
"A Rift," she answered.
"Which one scares you more?" he asked.
She didn't even hesitate.
"That thing," she said, nodding toward the beast.
He nodded.
"Same."
She stared at him. "You're not saying we—you're not seriously thinking—"
He looked up at the distorted space hanging at the hilltop's crest, at the way the air around it shivered and bent.
"I'm thinking our options are bleed to death fighting that thing in the open," he said, "or take a risk no one with a brain would take unless they had to."
"You mean step into an uncontained Rift with zero gear, no stabilizers, and no idea where it goes," she said flatly.
"Yeah," he said. "Exactly that."
She exhaled a small, desperate laugh that was closer to a sob.
"Kota," she said. "People die in controlled Rifts. Trained teams. With equipment. With Resonance monitors and Domain support and recall beacons. We…"
She spread her hands helplessly.
"We're slum kids," she said. "I can't even lift a proper weapon. You're half-stitched. We don't even know if going through from this side is possible, or if it just… tears you apart."
He looked at her. Really looked.
At the fear. At the stubbornness refusing to let that fear dictate everything.
"I know," he said. "But if that barrier goes and we stay here, we die for sure. If we go through…"
He lifted a shoulder—not the injured one.
"I don't know what's on the other side," he said. "Which is more than I can say about what's waiting out there."
He didn't add: and if there's any chance—any chance at
The beast slammed into the barrier once again. This time the barrier cracked with pieces falling off.
"We have to go now." Kota muttered to Aisha. As he grabbed her hand they rushed into the rift. The sound of the barrier breaking and the beasts howling reverberated behind them.
Darkness overwhelmed them. No sound. No light. Just the feeling that both they're hands were holding together.