Chapter 16: Two Against the Stairway
They ran together.
Across shattered stone.
Through smoke and screaming steel.
Kazuto on the right like a blade of stormlight.
Kyūsei on the left, heart pounding hard enough to crack ribs.
For one impossible moment, the battlefield narrowed into a single line leading to the temple stairs.
Everything else became noise.
Then the undead hit them.
Kazuto's sword flashed once.
Three armored corpses split apart at the waist.
Kyūsei ducked beneath a rusted axe, drove his shoulder into the attacker's chest, and blasted wind point-blank through its ribs.
Fragments of crystal burst from its back.
He didn't stop moving.
"Good!" Kazuto shouted.
"I'm terrified!"
"Excellent speed source!"
They reached the lower stairs just as two chains lashed down from above.
Kazuto vaulted the first.
Kyūsei slid under the second by pure panic and bad form.
Stone exploded behind them.
"I meant to do that!" Kyūsei yelled.
"No you didn't!"
"True!"
They climbed.
Step by step.
Fight by fight.
Below them, the others held the valley.
Garron had planted himself like a fortress at the stair base.
Undead bodies piled around his shield.
Every time one tried to pass, it left in pieces.
Rufus stood behind him panting, throwing healing magic so fast his hands shook.
"If you die after this," Rufus wheezed, "I will be offended!"
Garron punched an enemy off the stairs.
"Then keep working."
Lena carved a silver path through the villagers, freeing minds wherever she could. Every strike was measured. Every motion efficient.
Mira was nowhere.
Which meant someone important was about to have a very bad day.
Halfway up the stairs, the masked figure raised one hand.
The dead stopped attacking.
All of them.
Instantly.
Kyūsei and Kazuto halted.
That silence was worse than battle.
The figure stood twenty steps above them.
Robes shifting like smoke.
Mask gleaming with that single silver line.
"You always rush," it said to Kazuto.
"You always monologue," Kazuto replied.
"Habit comforts identity."
"You don't have one."
The figure laughed softly.
Then turned toward Kyūsei.
"Do you feel it?"
Kyūsei's chest tightened.
"What?"
"The pull."
He did.
Since entering the valley, something beneath the temple had been calling—not in words, but gravity. A hunger beneath stone. A vast empty place aware of him.
He hated that it was true.
Kazuto stepped in front of him.
"Eyes on me."
The figure sighed.
"Protective until the end."
Then it spread both arms.
The stairs split.
Stone cracked in jagged lines as black roots burst upward between steps, forcing Kyūsei and Kazuto apart onto separate sections.
"KAZUTO!"
"I'm fine!"
Three armored giants climbed from the fractures beside Kyūsei.
Wonderful.
The first giant swung a hammer the size of a barrel.
Kyūsei barely rolled aside.
The impact shattered half the stair.
He scrambled up, lungs burning.
Too strong.
Too heavy.
Too slow.
Think.
Second giant thrust a spear.
Kyūsei redirected the shaft with wind, stepped inside its reach, and sent fire through the visor slit.
Black smoke erupted.
It collapsed.
One down.
Hammer giant came again.
Kyūsei leapt onto the broken haft mid-swing, ran up it two steps, and kicked off.
He drove both palms into the helmet.
"Burst!"
Compressed wind detonated inward.
The head caved.
Two down.
The third giant caught him by the ankle midair.
"Oh come on—"
It slammed him into the stairs.
Pain flashed white through his back.
Then again.
Then lifted him to throw.
A blur of silver crossed the gap.
Lena's rapier pierced the giant's elbow joint.
Its grip loosened.
Kyūsei dropped hard but free.
Lena landed beside him lightly.
"You look messy."
"You came all the way up here to insult me?"
"Obviously."
She sliced the giant's knee. Kyūsei, gritting pain away, blasted wind into its chest.
It toppled backward down the stairs, crushing undead below.
Lena glanced toward Kazuto's side.
"Go."
"What about—"
"I'm busy being competent."
Fair.
Kyūsei ran.
Kazuto was bleeding.
That fact stunned Kyūsei more than the battlefield.
Three deep cuts marked his arm and side. The masked figure moved with a curved black blade now, parrying Kazuto strike for strike.
Each clash sent shockwaves through the stone.
Kazuto grinned despite blood loss.
"There you are."
"You're losing!"
"I'm warming up."
The figure slid backward.
"You joke to hide fear."
Kazuto's smile vanished.
"I joke because you're boring."
They collided again.
Kyūsei joined from the flank, launching fire low.
The figure spun, robes scattering sparks, and kicked him square in the chest.
He flew six steps down.
Air gone.
Ribs furious.
Kazuto roared and unleashed a storm slash that carved through pillars behind the enemy.
The figure blocked—but was driven backward at last.
Kyūsei dragged himself up coughing.
"I hate stairs."
"Shared feeling," Kazuto said.
Then quietly:
"We do this together."
Kyūsei nodded.
No hesitation.
No fear worth listening to.
They rushed at once.
Kazuto high.
Kyūsei low.
The figure blocked Kazuto's blade.
Too late seeing Kyūsei's hand strike the stone beneath its feet.
Wind drilled downward.
The stair exploded upward.
Balance broken.
Kazuto's pommel smashed into the mask.
Crack.
A thin fracture split the silver line.
The figure stumbled back, one hand to its face.
For the first time, its voice changed.
Anger.
"You dare."
Kazuto spat blood.
"Frequently."
The figure tore the mask away.
Kyūsei froze.
Underneath was no monster face.
No skull.
No shadow.
It was human.
A young man perhaps a few years older than Kazuto.
Pale skin threaded with black veins.
Sharp features.
Eyes completely dark.
And horribly familiar.
Kyūsei whispered, "He looks like…"
Like someone from Earth.
Like someone who could have stood in a train station yesterday.
The man smiled sadly.
"Of course I do."
He looked at Kyūsei as if greeting an old friend.
"We came from the same world."