Something on my scalp had split open. Blood ran slow and warm down my forehead.
It hurt—badly—but I steadied myself and took stock. The creature ahead, the one with the huge, distorted legs, had lunged without warning the moment it sensed us. Whether it had been playing dumb all along or something had given us away, I still wasn't sure—and it didn't matter now. What mattered was getting through this quickly and moving on before anything else arrived.
I shook my head, breathed deep, and without hesitating activated Unity's active ability.
"Help on the other side."
Learning from last time, I only drew a small, manageable amount—just enough that I wouldn't black out.
The door in my mind opened a crack. Power surged through me, sudden and clean, and for a moment I felt like I could put my fist through a wall without thinking twice about it.
It's payback time.
Through the cracked visor, I locked my eyes onto the creature with the huge legs.
"Serein—don't engage, just restrict its movement! We're not wasting time here, we run!"
Asylia's voice was muffled as she rolled across the ground to dodge a strike, already back on her feet before the impact had finished.
Thud!
Serein adjusted, pulling back from offense and shifting her focus to containment. Every time she moved, cold air rolled off her in dense waves, wrapping around the creature's limbs and dragging at them—each step it took heavier than the last, as if it were wading through something it couldn't see.
Between dodges, her eyes swept the dark behind him, searching.
Where are you?
She was breathing harder now, her body pushing itself to stay sharp—heart beating faster, heat spreading through her limbs as her focus narrowed. The memory of him hitting the wall played in the back of her mind—the crack of the impact, the way he'd gone down. A direct blow to the head, unprepared. The worry was small and persistent, and she couldn't shake it.
A shift in the air pulled her attention back.
The creature from the wall had arrived. Its howl rose and broke strangely, half scream and half something almost like words, shaking the corridor around her. It came off the wall in a long lunge, its body like a falling coffin—rotten and enormous—dropping toward her with all its weight behind it.
Her pupils contracted, measuring the force of it.
"Asylia—duck!"
Asylia yelled, her hands already rising—arms sweeping upward in a fluid motion, hips and upper body twisting together at the wrist like a coiled spring releasing, aether flowing through her in dense, practiced currents. A force like a concentrated gale erupted into the air in front of her, twisting and converging, pulling the creature into its edge as the wind blades bit into it.
Wizz!
The lunge was interrupted, giving Serein the opening to step clear—but it gave the other creature an opening too.
Thud!
A huge foot caught her like a battering ram. Even through the suit, the impact hit deep enough that she felt it in her bones, her feet leaving the ground for a moment as her balance tilted sideways. The creature pressed the advantage without pause, raising its leg again with that wrong, lurching gait, something close to a laugh rattling in its chest.
Then a blur came out of the dark and connected with its head.
The creature's face caved inward on one side, bone cracking, the whole structure warping from a single blow—a straight punch with aether compressed at the knuckle, all of it detonating on impact, the kinetic force driving the creature's face into the ground and pinning it there.
Ren had arrived.
He didn't give it time to recover. He came down on it with his full weight—fists and feet, no form, just force—each blow landing like a hammer swung by someone who had nothing left to hold back. Blood was still dripping into his eyes from the cut on his forehead, blurring his vision, and he didn't stop for it. He knew, somewhere beneath the ringing in his head, that stopping was the wrong choice here.
But the creature wouldn't go down. No matter how many times he hit it, it kept moving—slower now, visibly damaged, but alive with a vitality that felt almost offensive, like the thing existed just to spite the concept of dying.
Then a stillness settled beside him, quiet enough that he almost missed it.
"Thanks."
Familiar cold air gathered at his side.
Serein had pushed herself upright, fingers raised, something beginning to form at their tips—pale blue light swirling and condensing, slow and inevitable, like a nebula collapsing inward on itself. The icy symbol at the center glowed faint and deep. The cold came off it in waves that reached beyond the air and into something else entirely, and for a moment Ren felt it in his teeth, in the marrow, in the blood still moving through his veins.
Aether moved through him in a sharp, reflexive surge, pushing the cold back just enough to let him breathe.
He stepped aside.
"Die."
She said it softly, and the light released.
There was no explosion. No grand display of force—only a quiet, spreading wave that rolled over the struggling creature without ceremony. It managed to open its mouth, and then the cold closed over it completely, wrapping it in a thin, pale shell. The air around it crystallized into slow-falling flakes that settled over it like the beginning of a burial.
The creature he hadn't been able to kill through sheer effort was gone in seconds.
Then a sharp scream cut through the dark behind him.
He turned fast, something dropping in his chest.
Asylia.
He'd lost track of her completely—tunnel vision, all of it on the creature he was fighting, and then on Serein's ability—and now guilt hit him quick and cold as he spun toward where she'd been.
But as he turned, his cracked visor caught something moving fast through his peripheral—a shape hurtling toward him at speed.
"What the—"
He threw himself sideways, barely clearing it, and heard the thing land heavily behind him. He looked back. It was the creature's upper half, arms still attached, severed cleanly at the torso. Completely, unambiguously dead.
"Asylia?!"
"I'm here—stop yelling, you'll bring something down on us."
Footsteps, clear and steady, came toward him out of the dark. Asylia emerged from the dimness with a frown that had no real bite to it.
Serein came forward too, scanning her quickly from head to toe before exhaling.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, but I burned through a lot of aether this time." Asylia's expression turned serious as she glanced between the two of them. "We need to get there before this floor gets any worse." She looked briefly at Ren's head before adding, "Ren, on your feet—we're keeping going."
He moved to join them without argument as they resumed their climb toward the upper floor.
"Are you okay?" Serein slowed her pace, trying to soften her voice.
"Yeah. I can keep up."
My voice came out strained and rough. A dull ache sat behind my eyes, softening the edges of my thoughts—noticeable, but bearable.
She looked at the cracked visor for a moment without saying anything, then nodded.
This time they reached the other side of the stairway without encountering anything. Whether the infected creatures had some instinct for territory or whether this stretch was simply far enough from everything else to be forgotten, there was no way to know.
Either way.
I raised my head and looked through the brighter bioluminescence on the other side of the long stairway.
We had arrived on the upper floor.
The atmosphere here was lighter, the architecture leaning toward something deliberate—slender lines and a clean, understated luxury that felt like it had once mattered to someone. Even the water visible through the windows beyond seemed a different shade of blue, paler and somehow calmer.
I leaned against the wall to steady myself and looked both ways. No creatures in sight.
But the floor in front of us was a mess—an unrecognizable liquid spread across the tiles and belongings scattered the way they only get when someone is running and not thinking about what they're leaving behind.
I picked something up without really meaning to and found myself holding a photograph.
Asylia glanced over out of habit, then went still. Something in her expression shifted—not dramatic, but definite.
"Can I see that?"
She asked it quietly, gesturing toward the photo in my hand.
"Huh? Yeah, go ahead."
She took it, and for a moment she didn't speak.
"…Isn't this Laycia?"
Serein looked over her shoulder, drawn in by the pause. Her voice carried the faintest crack when she spoke, something tightly controlled.
"I remember she was still with her friend when we split up earlier."
"…It seems like she didn't make it."
Asylia lowered her eyes and took in the room around her—the chaos of it, the kind that doesn't leave room for good endings. She had already worked out what likely happened, reading the traces without needing to say it out loud. It was expected, in some sense. That didn't make it land any less.
After a moment, she pushed it down, took out the map, and marked their position. Her gaze paused on the red marking to the right—Possible flooded area.
She looked back at the scattered debris around them, at the direction it all seemed to originate from. Even in the chaos, the pattern held. Everything pointed away from the right side of the floor—whoever had been here had been running from that direction, not toward it. Whether her read on the flooding was accurate or not, something over there was driving people the other way.
She glanced at the dark corridor to the right, then turned her attention to the two of them.
Ren's visor was cracked, but he was upright and moving. Serein had taken a minor scratch on her suit from the last fight and nothing worse. Manageable.
"You two—can you keep going, or do you need to stop for a minute?"
"My aether's still there." Serein checked quietly, feeling the slow return of it, then looked at Ren.
He nodded. The wound wasn't hurting as sharply anymore—he couldn't tell if it was healing or if the pain had simply faded into the background, something his body had stopped treating as urgent. Either way, stopping didn't feel right.
"Yeah, let's go."
They moved out to the left after a brief pause, keeping close to the walls.
"Ahh!"
A scream rang out somewhere ahead—sudden, followed by an eerie, distorted roar—and then a crash, something tumbling, and then silence as whatever had happened moved away from them.
The group held still in the shadow of the corner.
After a moment, someone leaned out to check.
"Looks like someone else had the same idea."
Asylia whispered it, her eyes tracking across the still-fresh blood on the wall. She didn't sound surprised exactly—it made sense that others would try to find their own way out, especially with the restaurant's security clearly unable to get the situation under control. What it meant, practically, was less comfortable to sit with. Every other group working toward the same exits meant fewer options, less time, and more pressure on everything they were moving toward.
Serein nodded, her gaze moving quietly along the corridor while she listened past the edge of what her eyes could reach.
They were on the third floor now—a long hall to the left opened into a wide common area, full of storefronts and seating that had once been crowded with people. The stairs leading down to the second floor were through there, and below that, the level that housed most of the building's infrastructure. The elevators sat somewhere in that stretch too, but with the power out, they weren't worth the risk.
"Have they gone?"
Ren's voice came from behind them.
"Mm."
Serein's answer was brief through the filter of her visor.
"Let's move."
Ren stepped over the ruined remains on the ground without looking too closely and kept pace with them. Then he stopped.
"What's this?"
He crouched quickly and picked it up—something small lying in the blood. It left a wet smear across his fingers as he turned it over. A key, or something shaped like one.
He pocketed it without hesitation.
"Alright. I'll keep this."
He murmured it to himself and caught up with them.
By the time they reached the hallway filled with stores, something had shifted in his head. It felt heavier and dull, like the edges of his thoughts had gone soft. The cut had mostly clotted over, but new blood was still working its way down his forehead and catching on his brow, and between that and the pressure behind his eyes, focusing was starting to take real effort.
He shook his head once, trying to clear it. This was not the moment to slow down.
"Come on… hold it together."
He said it quietly, mostly to himself.
"Hm?"
Serein slowed, her slender ears moving slightly.
She glanced back over her shoulder, noticing the small, off rhythm in his steps—the slight tilt of his head. It was subtle. Easy to miss.
But she didn't.
Without saying anything, she fell back to his side.
"Hey…"
Her hand touched his arm, gentle, like she wasn't sure if she should—but did anyway.
"Huh?"
Ren looked up.
She leaned in a little, trying to see his face through the cracked visor, even though she couldn't. Still… she tried.
"You… don't look okay."
She said it quietly, a quiet certainty in her voice now, realizing he wasn't alright despite what he said earlier.
Asylia glanced back at the pause, scanned the corridor out of habit, and closed the distance between them.
"What's going on?"
"Asylia… he might be more hurt than we thought."
Serein's visor cleared, revealing her fair, beautiful face, with strands of white hair falling naturally across the bridge of her nose.
The composure she usually wore had softened; her brows were drawn together, worry plain in her eyes as she glanced between Ren and Asylia.
Then she turned back to him, a little closer this time.
"Ren… can you tell me how many fingers this is?"
She lifted her hand in front of his visor, gently waving her slender fingers.
For a second, Ren just stared—caught off guard, not by the question, but by how close she was… how much she cared.
"…Three?"
His answer came out quieter than he intended, tinged with a shy awkwardness he couldn't quite hide.