(Theme: "Fractured Loyalties")
The crater still breathed.
Steam hissed from scorched bone. The earth was glassed black, cracked open like a divine scar. Tents, bodies, weapons — all melted into silence. Ash curled in the air like burnt prayers.
Akari stood at its edge, Kaito hanging unconscious over her back — shirtless, bandaged, limp. He hadn't spoken in hours. His skin was cold. Breathing, but barely.
She didn't cry.
She just turned — and walked.
They reached Cosmium Forest after three days of dead terrain.
No dragons followed. No soldiers tracked. The storm refused to enter.
The Forest didn't welcome them either.
Shards hung from the trees like frozen blades. The branches were thick, tangled — cutting through the canopy like broken ribs. Every step sounded wrong. Roots twisted like veins. The deeper they moved, the less the sky existed.
Technology failed here. Even Akari's scout beacon couldn't ping.
But she didn't care.
This was where things stayed hidden.
She found a break beneath a crystal-laced rootwall and laid Kaito down gently. His ribs twitched. His eye fluttered. She watched for five seconds longer than she should've, then turned to leave.
Hunting wasn't clean.
She tracked a low-tier True Dragon through the shard-hung trees — its trail light, but its scent iron-sharp. She brought it down with five strikes. No time for clean kills.
The second one — mid-tier — took longer. Its scales were tougher, and it didn't die quietly. She returned to the camp with two cores, wrapped tight in scorched cloth.
Kaito hadn't moved.
She placed the first core against his chest and knelt beside him.
Then — silently, methodically — she undid the bloodied bandages on his side. The wound was still raw. Bone had begun to mend from the last core, but it wasn't finished.
She rinsed the cut with melted snow. He flinched in his sleep.
"Deal with it," she muttered.
She stitched it shut with trembling hands. She didn't know if they trembled from exhaustion or restraint.
Then she replaced the bandage, tighter this time.
Afterward, she tore a strip of ration bread and placed it against his lips.
"Bite," she said.
He didn't.
She shoved it in anyway.
He stirred by nightfall.
Eyes cracked open, breath ragged.
"…Still here?" he rasped.
"Unfortunately."
His fingers twitched toward the core beside him. Akari lifted it, pressed it to his palm. It glowed. Slowly, the light spread — veins igniting, breath deepening.
He spasmed once, then gasped.
"Mid-tier?"
"Feral. Big," she said. "I broke its wing."
Kaito chuckled, barely.
"Thanks for the hospitality."
She rolled her eyes. "You're welcome, princess."
By the sixth night, he was sitting.
By the seventh, he could stand — knees shaking, muscles remembering how to exist.
They trained. Not with words. With breath. With bruises.
Akari disarmed him twice with a branch.
"Dead," she said.
"You need to stop doing that."
"You need to stop dying."
Fair point.
At the fire that night, Kaito asked:
"He said the Eclipse wasn't yours. Do you believe him?"
She didn't look up.
"He feared it. That means it is."
"…You scared of it?"
"I've lived inside it."
That was enough.
Later, as they lay under the twisted black canopy, Kaito whispered:
"You didn't leave me. Why?"
She paused.
Then:
"I wasn't ready to lose anyone else."
That was enough too.
Hours later, far behind—
Snow drifted along the jagged edge of the crater.
Five soldiers in Hound armor stood in silence, boots melting the frost beneath their heels. The crater stretched endlessly — ash, black ice, and fragments of war.
Lieutenant Vell knelt near a half-melted tag. Phoenix insignia. Burned through.
"Too late," one soldier muttered.
"Orders came late," another replied. "Clearance code from Rygar. Direct."
They all went still.
Vell said nothing.
He just stared at the crater.
"This wasn't a battle," someone said. "It was... precision."
"No," Vell replied. "It was restraint."
None of them noticed the feather lodged in the rock behind them — scorched, but untouched by snow.
Still warm.
Still watching.
Orion Comment:
"Oho~.
Ash settles. Tracks vanish. But some storms don't chase — they wait.
Next: 'The Devil's Hour.'
Let's see who walks in uninvited."