While Koleda and the others were still working out how to deal with the mechanical colossus, Geno had already tracked down the Ether signatures left by the Sacrificial Wraith and Grace Howard.
But when he finally found Grace, the sight that greeted him brought him up short.
"Hold on — which one of them was supposed to be the hostage?"
Geno stood there, thoroughly thrown by what he was seeing.
The scene he had braced himself for — Grace Howard captured by the Sacrificial Wraith, suffering at its hands — was nowhere in evidence. Grace was on her feet, and the Sacrificial Wraith that had supposedly taken her hostage was crumpled on the ground at her feet, limp and unresponsive, its condition anyone's guess.
What stunned Geno most, however, was the extensive tracery of Ether Corruption that had spread across Grace's face, and the blazing, jagged fissure splitting open across her chest, glowing with fierce light.
"What in the world happened here?"
At the sound of a voice, Grace instinctively spun around — and found herself looking at a stranger wearing the shape of an Ethereal, someone she didn't recognise at all. She had her nail gun out and levelled before the thought had fully formed.
"Wait — Grace, it's me. It's Geno!"
He raised his hands to show he meant no harm, then shifted back into his human form. Only then did Grace accept who he was, and she lowered the nail gun.
"Oh, it's you. I thought you were some Ethereal I'd never seen before."
The breath Grace had been holding left her all at once — and with it went her legs. She sank to the ground.
Geno rushed forward to check on her, but she waved him off.
"I'm fine."
Grace pushed herself back up off the ground with one hand, refusing to stay down.
"Your body is in no shape for that. Don't push it."
Geno caught her before she could stumble again, steadying her — and the moment he made contact, something shifted in his expression.
Even from the outside it was obvious: Grace had begun to undergo Ether Corruption. The Corruption reaction in her body had already reached a serious stage.
That part, in itself, wasn't beyond fixing. He could do the same thing he had done for Twiggy and the others — draw the excess Ether out of Grace's body, just as he had absorbed it from them.
But when Geno actually attempted it, he knew immediately that something was wrong.
The instant he made contact, he felt it — a mass of densely concentrated Ether energy, coiled and pulsing deep inside her.
As an Ethereal, Geno knew what that was better than anyone. A core. An Ethereal's core.
When a core exclusive to an Ethereal began forming inside a Corrupted living body, that person's death became inevitable. Without exception.
"I see you've worked it out."
Grace gave a small smile. She had only become aware of it herself after the fight with the Sacrificial Wraith.
It had been the Sacrificial Wraith's insults toward her adoptive father, Hors, that had done it — one moment she had been a hostage, and the next she simply hadn't cared, her temper igniting all at once.
She and Koleda really were family in that regard. Same hair-trigger temperament. Same tendency to go off like a firecracker.
Whatever her technical status as a hostage, she had thrown herself straight into the fight.
And in the middle of that fight, Grace had discovered something: she could manipulate a portion of the Ether flowing through her and convert it directly into electrical energy.
She had seized on that power and caught the Sacrificial Wraith completely off guard.
Lightning crackled and blazed — and the Sacrificial Wraith collapsed. Grace had been bracing for a counterattack, watching it warily, when it unexpectedly began to convulse in agony. Then it went still entirely.
It was only then that Grace registered the state of her own body — severely Corrupted. And then she had felt it: there, where her heart should be, something the size of a marble, a core of Ether, slowly taking shape.
In that moment, Grace understood. Her transformation into an Ethereal had most likely already begun.
"And a little while after that, you caught up."
Grace finished recounting everything she knew, then leaned back against a chunk of nearby rubble, her hand drifting wearily to her chest. "I don't think I can go back with you. Can I ask one last thing of you?"
Geno didn't answer. Grace took his silence for reluctance to face the truth.
"I want to ask you to kill me."
She knew she was going to die regardless. But even so — if she had to die, she wanted to die as a human being, not as an Ethereal that would bring harm to the people around her.
"What about Koleda?"
Grace closed her eyes, steeling herself for death — but at the sound of Koleda's name on Geno's lips, something in her still refused to let go entirely.
"She'll... come to terms with it. Time heals everything."
Grace didn't want to think about it any further. She could only hope that, given enough time, Koleda would eventually be able to accept it all.
"Time doesn't heal anyone. It just lets the wound slowly scar over. The pain inside — that stays with a person for the rest of their life."
Geno's words shook her again. But when Grace turned her thoughts back to the state of her own body, despair reclaimed her, and she looked up at him with hollowed eyes.
"Then what choice do I have? I don't have a future anymore."
"Whether you have a future or not — that depends on whether you're willing to accept a new one."
Grace blinked, caught off guard. What did he mean by that?
Before she could work it out, Geno reached up and unclasped the bracelet from his own wrist — the one she had always been curious about — and slipped it onto her arm.
In the next instant, Grace felt the dissolution that had been quietly taking her body apart begin to settle. Grow still.
Even the core inside her stopped expanding. It lay dormant, like a small creature curling up to hibernate, posing not the slightest threat.
"This — what's happening?"
Grace stared at the black bracelet on her wrist in disbelief. She had already made her peace with the end — and now this tiny thing had pulled her back from it.
"Ether Corruption Resistance Bracelet. Special edition. I'll explain the rest once we're out of the Hollow."
Geno glanced at his now-bare wrist, and for a moment couldn't quite get used to the absence.
But saving Grace came first. Everything else could wait.
"So — what exactly does all of this mean?"
Grace knew she had been saved. She just didn't understand why — or how. But then, perhaps that was simply the spirit of inquiry that came with a first-rate scientific mind.
Geno had no choice but to walk her through it, piece by piece.
In short: although Grace had already begun forming an Ether core, she had not lost her reason or her consciousness in the process. She remained herself.
So Geno had used his Ether bracelet to suppress the continued development of the Ether within her before it could complete the transformation — halting her in this in-between state, neither fully human nor fully Ethereal.
"As a side note — even in this suppressed state, that ability you used earlier, the one where you channelled Ether directly into electrical discharge the way an Ethereal would, is still yours to use."
The voice of experience, speaking from someone who had been through it himself.
Grace nodded slowly, still dazed — then reached out a hand toward Geno and closed her fist.
A bolt of lightning crackled out and made her jump.
"Oh! It actually works — but what's the principle behind this?!"
____
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