The boy didn't look back.
Not once.
Every step he took felt like a personal insult to my struggling body. He moved over the frozen roots and jagged shale like he was gliding on a sheet of glass.
then,there was me, a walking disaster.
My boots dragged through the thin snow, leaving a messy, jagged trail—a crime scene, not a path.
Every time my left foot hit the ground, a spike of white-hot agony shot up from my ribs, echoing through my collarbone. I could feel the edge of the broken bone grinding against something deep and soft inside.
A wet, sickening sensation.
An hour. That's what the porcelain-faced kid had said. One hour before the lung collapses.
I tried to check the moon, but the trees blurred into gray smears. Time didn't mean anything anymore. Only the pressure in my chest was real. It felt like someone was driving a blunt stake into my sternum, pushing harder every time I tried to suck in air.
I focused on the back of the kid's uniform. His shoulders were unnervingly still, even when the ground beneath him dropped away. Then I noticed it again. The shimmer.
The air around his neck was vibrating. In this godforsaken cold, he was radiating enough heat to distort the light. It wasn't magic. It was internal.
it was like there was an oxygen burner behind his ribs, walking through the frost.
"Breathe deeper."
The voice was flat. Dead. He didn't even turn his head.
"I can't," I spat. The words tasted like copper. "If I take... a full breath... the bone... it hurts."
"You are already dying."
He said it like he was describing the color of the dirt. "Your heart is failing, Your muscles are turning into lead. If you don't force the air in, your heart will quit before your lung even has a chance to fail."
I wanted to kill him,I hated how easy it looked for him. But I could feel my pulse pounding in my teeth—a frantic, weak rhythm that was losing the fight against myself.
I watched his chest again.
It wasn't a normal breath. It was a violent, deep expansion that went all the way down to his gut. He'd take it all in, lock it for a split second, and then hiss it out through his nose in a needle-thin stream of steam.
I tried to copy it.
I pulled in a massive, freezing lungful of air.
The pain was an explosion.
It felt like a red-hot iron bar had been shoved through my side and twisted. My vision went white. My knees hit the frozen dirt before I even realized I was falling. I slammed into a pine tree, the rough bark scraping skin off my face as I slid down.
I didn't scream. I didn't have the breath for it. I just hung there, gasping like a fish on a dry deck, the whole world spinning in nauseating circles.
The kid stopped. He didn't come back. He didn't offer a hand. He just stood there, ten feet ahead, a small, dark shadow in the morning fog.
"You are fighting the air," he said. "you need to Inhale slowly and deeply through your mouth, focusing on filling your stomach first, then your chest, ensuring your abdomen expands"
expanding my abdomen? It sounded like some suicidal fever dream. But as I leaned against that tree, clutching Kū-on, I realized I was out of options.
I closed my eyes,then i started.
I found the fracture. I felt the jagged, sharp edge of the bone. I took another breath.
This time, when the pain flared, I didn't pull away. I leaned into it. I clamped down my core. My obliques, my abdominals, every tiny muscle between my ribs—I locked them all.
I squeezed the air until it felt like a solid pillar of stone inside my chest.
The grinding stopped.
The pain was still there, but it changed. It went from a stabbing knife to a dull, heavy crush.
I could work with a crush.
I took a step. Then another. I wasn't gliding, but the staggering was gone. Then the heat hit. It started in my lungs and washed outward, hitting my fingertips that had been numb for hours. The oxygen wasn't just air anymore. It was energy .
I could feel it burning the fog out of my brain.
"Better," the boy said. And he started moving again.
We hiked for miles in total silence. The woods started to thin out as we hit a high ridge. The kid stopped suddenly, eyes fixed on the horizon. The sky was turning a nasty, bruised purple. Dawn was coming, but it didn't feel like a relief.
"We are at the edge," he said.
"Why are you helping me?" I asked. My voice was gravelly, but it didn't shake.
The pillar of air in my chest was holding me together.
He turned his head just enough for me to see one eye. Pale blue. Empty. Like looking into a well with no bottom.
"what kind of man you think i am?," he said. "im helping you because its my job"
"quiet now".
He looked back toward the ridge. "Something is coming."
I felt it a second later. The vibration in the ground had changed. It wasn't the steady hum of his walking anymore. It was a heavy, irregular thud. Something huge was moving through the trees below us, snapping trunks like they were dry twigs.
I gripped the hilt of my sword. The adrenaline flooded my system, and for the first time, the pain in my ribs didn't matter. I only felt the air. I drew it in, deeper than before, feeling the pressure build until my skin felt like it was going to tear under the tension.
I wasn't a master. I wasn't like him.
But I wasn't just a victim anymore.
I was a pressurized bomb, waiting for a reason to go off.
The boy drew his sword. A cold, sharp sigh.
"Stay behind me," he said. "And don't stop breathing. If you stop, you'll die."
I planted my boots. The ridge in front of us exploded in a spray of dirt and splintered wood. A shadow loomed—a mountain of pale, knotted flesh and too many limbs.
I didn't count the eyes. I didn't look at the teeth.
I just focused on my lungs.
In. Out. The cycle was everything.