The rupture wasn't loud.
It was wrong.
Mio felt it before they turned the corner — like stepping into a room where someone had been arguing for hours and suddenly stopped.
Too still.
Too charged.
The hunter moved ahead of him without looking back. Her pace wasn't rushed. It was measured. Each step placed exactly where it needed to be.
How does she move like that? Mio wondered.
Not afraid. Not eager. Just… ready.
They reached the alley.
A man was on his knees near a dumpster, clutching his head. Red threads burst from his chest in frantic spirals, snapping and reforming in violent pulses. The air around him distorted, bending in shallow waves.
Vice feeding itself.
Too much debt. Too much desire. No correction.
The man gasped. "Make it stop."
Mio's hunger surged.
It wasn't blood he smelled.
It was distortion. Thick and electric.
He could take it.
He knew he could.
His fingers twitched.
The hunter stepped forward first.
Her hand drew the blade in one clean motion — no dramatic flourish. The metal shimmered faintly, lines etched along its surface glowing a cool, steady blue.
She didn't strike the man.
She struck the space above him.
The blade sliced through a cluster of red threads.
The air snapped.
The man screamed once — not from pain, but release.
The threads recoiled violently, trying to reattach.
Mio's thoughts raced.
How'd she see which ones to cut?
How'd she know where the pressure actually was?
She pivoted smoothly, blade tracing deliberate arcs, severing only the thickest lines. Not all of them.
Not everything.
Just the excess.
The alley calmed gradually. The distortion thinned.
The man collapsed forward, breathing hard but conscious.
Mio's hunger burned hotter.
He could feel the remaining imbalance like heat from a stove.
He stepped forward instinctively.
"Don't," she said sharply.
He froze.
The word wasn't loud.
But it carried weight.
"You're not stabilizing," she continued without turning. "You're absorbing."
He swallowed.
Isn't that the same thing?
"No," she said, as if hearing the thought. "Because you're keeping it."
The man on the ground sobbed quietly.
Mio stared at the fading threads.
I could fix it faster.
The hunger whispered agreement.
Take it.
Quiet it.
You earned it.
Sevrin materialized beside him, fur bristling faintly.
The wolf's amber eyes met his.
Not encouragement.
Warning.
The hunter knelt beside the man, placing two fingers against his temple. A faint seal glowed at her wrist.
Breathing slowed.
Threads settled.
Not gone.
Balanced.
Mio exhaled slowly.
She stood.
"That's discipline," she said calmly.
He felt irritation spike.
"Looks like control," he replied.
"It is."
They faced each other fully now.
The alley lights flickered.
"Power without filtration becomes dependency," she said. "You feed on vice. That doesn't make you its solution."
He hated how steady she sounded.
"I prevented worse," he argued.
"You prevented nothing," she corrected. "You took pressure from two floors down earlier. I felt it."
His chest tightened.
She had felt that too?
"You thinned it," she continued. "But you didn't remove its cause."
He looked away briefly.
The hunger pulsed again — not from the man, but from her words.
She was right.
And that bothered him more than he expected.
A sudden crack split the air above them.
Not a thread.
A tear.
Red script poured downward like rain.
Both of them looked up instantly.
That's not normal.
The temperature dropped.
The alley stretched unnaturally, walls bending outward as if making space for something descending.
A figure emerged slowly from the rupture.
Taller than the collector.
Heavier.
Its form solidified gradually, red script wrapping tighter, darker than before.
"Unauthorized correction detected," it said.
Its voice wasn't like pages turning.
It was iron scraping stone.
The hunter stepped forward immediately, blade angled defensively.
Mio felt something shift inside him.
This presence wasn't after debt.
It was after him.
The figure's gaze locked onto Mio.
"Hybridization accelerating," it observed.
The hunger flared violently now — not toward imbalance.
Toward challenge.
Sevrin growled low.
The hunter's eyes flickered toward Mio briefly.
"Do not feed," she said under her breath.
Easy for you to say.
The figure extended its hand.
The alley compressed inward, crushing air from his lungs.
The hunter moved first — blade flashing upward, slicing through descending script.
This time, it resisted.
The metal sparked.
She gritted her teeth.
"Fall back," she ordered.
Mio didn't.
The hunger surged again.
It felt different this time.
Not like relief.
Like ignition.
He stepped forward.
Sevrin lunged with him.
The wolf's silver aura collided with the red script midair.
The impact sent a shockwave down the alley.
Mio's vision sharpened violently.
He could see every thread now.
Every contract line attached to the descending figure.
It wasn't singular.
It was funded.
Fed.
By dozens.
The realization hit him hard.
How'd it get that big?
Because people feed the system willingly.
Rage flickered under his control.
The hunter cut through another cluster of script, but the figure did not weaken.
It thickened.
Feeding off the tension.
Mio inhaled sharply.
If I take from it—
"No," she snapped again.
He hesitated.
Just long enough.
The figure's hand slammed downward.
The alley cracked.
Concrete split.
The man they'd stabilized screamed again.
Mio made a choice.
Not to absorb.
Not to dominate.
He reached outward and pulled—
Not the script.
The source.
He tugged at the invisible threads feeding into the entity from elsewhere in the city.
They snapped back violently.
The figure staggered.
The hunter's eyes widened slightly.
"How'd you—"
He didn't answer.
Sevrin's orange strike blazed bright.
The red script thinned abruptly as distant connections severed.
The entity flickered.
"Interference detected," it hissed.
The hunter seized the opening.
One clean strike through its core.
The rupture sealed instantly.
Silence crashed back into place.
Dust drifted down slowly.
The alley returned to its normal shape.
The hunter lowered her blade.
Mio's breathing was steady.
Too steady.
She looked at him carefully.
"You didn't feed," she said.
"No," he replied.
He felt something else instead.
Stronger than hunger.
Understanding.
And somewhere deeper in F-Scape, something had just marked him as more than debt.
More than hybrid.
A threat.
The hunter sheathed her blade slowly.
"That," she said quietly, "is why you're dangerous."
And for the first time, Mio wasn't sure if she meant it as warning.
Or recognition.