Pain and discomfort returned before consciousness did.
A sharp ache pulsed through Vira's ribs with every breath he took… dragging him slowly upward from darkness.
For a moment he thought he was in another dream, everything felt distant and numb.
Then the cold concrete and sand dancing on his skin reminded him otherwise.
Vira's eyes slowly opened.
The ruined structure around him was barely standing… fractured support beams hanging overhead, while dust still drifted hazily through thin rays of light. The silence was deafening.
Everything from his battle — however long ago it had been, was still there. But something was missing…
No screeching, no movement, and no Nullborn.
Vira's body trembled weakly as memory came flooding back all at once.
The creature… the cracks in the air, that thinginside him.
His breathing immediately became uneven.
He forced himself upward with a pained gasp, only for agony to tear through his body hard enough to nearly send him collapsing again. Something rough had been wrapped around his side tightly.
Bandages.
Vira froze, his eyes darting downward instantly. The cloth around his ribs was old and stained, clearly torn from some larger piece of fabric, but it was wrapped carefully enough to give his core a splint.
Someone had been there… someone had wrapped it around him.
The realization sent panic through his already exhausted and aching body.
He scrambled backward against the rubble despite the pain screaming through him, his heartbeat pounding violently in his ears as his eyes searched the darkness for any sort of hint as to how this bandage came to be wrapped around his torso.
It was then that soft embers flowed in front of him and danced on his face.
Turning around, Vira spotted a girl sitting across the debris in a long, ripped coat. He assumed that's what was used for the bandages.
She watched him carefully from where she rested on the rubble, one knee pulled to her chest while she poked the fire.
The sound of the flames crackling echoed throughout the ruins, and her expression didn't change much when their eyes met.
"You should stop moving."
Her voice sounded dry… almost exhausted.
"Your ribs are probably cracked, I'm sure everything else won't fall far behind if you keep putting stress on your body."
Vira stared at her silently.
His chest rose and fell unevenly while his mind desperately tried to process what he was seeing.
She wasn't a corpse… not a twisted abomination crawling from the darkness, not another Nullborn but a person.
The girl slowly lowered the metal pipe from the fire, although not completely letting go of it.
"You're awake faster than I thought. Most people stay unconscious for at least a day after overstraining their Aether..."
Aether.
The unfamiliar word barely registered in Vira's head, his eyes remaining on her cautiously.
She looked exhausted.
Dark circles underneath her eyes, dust and cement covered almost every part of her clothing… not to mention the endless array of faint scars on her hands and fingers.
Yet despite all of that, she was normal.
Vira's voice came out hoarse.
"…What are you?"
The girl blinked in confusion.
"What?"
"What are you?" Vira repeated weakly, almost afraid of the answer.
The confusion across her face swiftly turned into sadness and pity as she looked at Vira.
"I'm human…"
The word hit Vira harder than the Nullborn ever did.
Human… she was human! It wasn't a dream, it wasn't a hallucination, he wasn't under some weird ability… she was human.
Vira's entire body suddenly lost whatever strength had been holding it together, his breathing staggering violently.
A sharp sound escaped his throat before he could stop it.
The girl's expression shifted to worry immediately.
"…Hey?"
Vira's vision blurred as he choked out his next words.
"You're… you're human…"
His voice cracked apart completely, and before he realized it, tears were already spilling down his face.
Relief crashed into him so violently it hurt.
'I'm not alone… there's people, there's someone else!'
The words repeated through his mind over and over again while months of terror, isolation, and hopelessness broke out of him all at once.
A broken sob escaped from his chest, and many more followed.
He lowered his head into his shaking hands as his entire body trembled uncontrollably.
The girl stared in shock, not knowing how to react.
"H-hey! Why're you crying?!"
Vira tried speaking, but nothing articulate came out.
Only fractured hiccups and painful gasps.
For the first time since being shunned into The Remnants, he no longer felt like the last living thing abandoned by existence.
Someone else was here… talking to him, being with him.
The girl sat the pipe down, her caution hadn't disappeared but now confusion and worry outweighed it.
"Have… you seriously never seen another person before?"
Vira shook his head weakly.
Her expression tightening slightly at that.
"How long… have you been here?"
"I-I don't know…" He whispered. "I thought… I thought I was alone… I thought everyone was dead."
Silence sat between the two, only occasionally could Vira's hiccups and winces of pain be heard from crying.
"That'd probably be easier," she muttered quietly.
Vira wiped at his face, trying and failing to steady his breathing.
Questions flooded his mind all at once now that the fear had loosened its grip on him.
"W-what's Aether?"
The girl glanced back towards him, pity returning to her face as she sighed.
"You really don't know anything…"
Vira slowly shook his head as the girl leaned back against the rubble.
"Every human has a fracture core, or at least… the ones that don't turn into Nullborns do."
Her fingers lightly tapped her chest.
"Aether flows through your body… and lets you do things normal people can't, but like everything else in this cursed world, it comes at a cost. That's all I really know about it."
Vira listened in confusion, the tears from before already drying on his face from crying.
"Before I get into everything else… we have to leave."
Her hand rose and a wave of translucent energy flowed from it.
"What're you doing? And… why do we have to leave?"
Vira looked in awe and confusion.
"Just extinguishing the fire, and we have to, otherwise another one of those Nullborns you fought will come here."
Fear returned to Vira's face as he watched the flames go out. Trying to move his body was already hard… but running from a Nullborn?
He was already wincing and whimpering trying to get up.
"Here, let me help."
The girl grabbed his other arm and helped support him with her shoulder. They were about the same height so it wasn't all that difficult.
"By the way… my name is Nora."
Vira's head slowly turned to her as he was taken aback by her face, before, he hadn't been able to see it fully due to the flame and darkness surrounding her, but now he could see she was beautiful.
"I-I'm Vira…"